Jamie Breneman founded his Chattanooga Exteriors construction business nine years ago, but he’s been in the home renovation game since he was 8 years old.
“My dad had a construction company, and I worked with him from 8 years old to 18 every summer,” Breneman says. “He paid me a dollar a day and all I could eat, and he said he always came out on the losing end of that deal.”
After a globe-trotting stint as an airplane mechanic in the Air Force, Breneman landed back in his hometown in 2002 and earned a business degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He put that degree to work in business development across three states for James Hardie, the manufacturer of fiber cement siding and other home exterior products, but ultimately had the entrepreneurial itch – and good connections.
“I’ve got three other partners that had a construction company,