Building Communities from Foundations to New Heights

It’s not uncommon for Saturday to be a school-aged child’s favorite day of the week, but the excitement was especially pronounced for young Neil Agarwal. That’s because every Saturday, Neil would climb into his father Prem’s truck and visit the mill owned and operated by Frisco Woodline, the company his father purchased in 1985 just a year after Neil’s birth.

Neil was captivated by the bustling work environment, and it didn’t hurt matters that he’d typically get a donut or a small toy from Toys "R" Us by day’s end, a tradition that stayed for many years.

“That was really special,” Neil says. “I woke up every day looking forward to it. In the early 90s, there was always work taking place each Saturday morning.”

At the time, Neil never could’ve foreseen that he would one day lead the company’s operations that so enthralled him as a child. But after career stops in investment banking and corporate strategy that Neil credits with refining different areas of his business acumen, he and his wife Shilpi returned to their DMV roots in 2014 when the opportunity arose for Neil to join the family business. In 2021, Neil became President and CEO of Frisco Woodline after learning the business and implementing innovative changes to keep pace in an ever-changing industry.

“Outside of those Saturday mornings, I had not worked in our family business much. Truthfully, I never thought that I would,” Neil says. “Moving back home was the first chapter of our new life. It was a lot of change in our life, which took some getting used to. But overall, moving back to the DC area and getting close to family has been one of the best decisions we’ve made.”

Founded by George Edward Frisco in 1955, Frisco Woodline began as a hardwood supply business focused on commercial and industrial projects, including bridges and other public works. Prem Agarwal purchased the business in the mid-80s after immigrating from India in 1969 and obtaining a graduate engineering degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and he did so without any knowledge of the lumber industry. But Prem longed to be his own boss, thought the business was fairly priced and believed he could simply resell the business if he discovered it wasn’t for him.

“They were selling it essentially for asset value, and Mr. Frisco sold the business to my dad with seller financing,” Neil says. “His whole thought process was that my dad would fail at the business, and he would get the business back. That was the bet that Mr. Frisco took against my dad. Luckily, my dad proved him wrong. Year 1, he turned the loss into a profit. He worked very hard to build relationships in the space and learn the space, and the rest is history.”

Though Prem engineered a quick turnaround of the business, its growth in the years since has been mostly steady, organic, and opportunistic. Frisco Woodline pivoted to focus on softwood and pressure-treated products in the 1990s, and those remain their best-sellers today. More recently, Neil identified a surge in the market’s need for PVC, trim, custom molding, and pre-finishing services corresponding with the post-Covid residential construction boom and amended Frisco Woodline’s offerings accordingly, leading to new business channels and growth.

“It gives us an opportunity to diversify into residential, whereas historically we’ve been almost all commercial,” Neil explains. “I can’t control the price of lumber. It has a market price driven by supply and demand, but unfortunately all of our costs are going up. Over the last few years, lumber has been deflationary while everything else is going up due to inflation. I wanted to diversify us into something I had a little bit more pricing control over, and something where we can pass on the costs.”

The unexpected return to Frisco Woodline was a homecoming for Neil, who was born and raised in Prince George’s County along with his two sisters in the house his parents still call home today. Neil’s life took a formative twist in the sixth grade when he transferred to St. Anselm’s Abbey School in Northeast Washington, DC, an all-boys Catholic school with only about 30-35 students per graduating class.

Neil stayed busy with extracurriculars including basketball, soccer, and karate in addition to learning the saxophone and piano, but his transfer to St. Anslem’s forced him to take his studies more seriously.

“It challenged me,” Neil recalls. “It made me think, ‘I want to go to a good, respected university.’ It’s not to say that wouldn’t have happened at a large school, but I think that was more at the forefront by being at a small, private school that focused so much on education and outcomes.”

Encouraged by his mentor Abbot Aidan, Neil decided to pursue acceptance to Georgetown University, which had not accepted a St. Anselm’s student for a long while despite its close proximity. Staying close to home for school was no small factor in the decision for both Neil and Shilpi, who enrolled in George Washington University’s medical school program, as the high school sweethearts are similarly tight-knit with their families.

Although he flirted with medicine due to his love of biology, “I decided I’m going to go the business route not really knowing a lot aside from growing up in the entrepreneurial, business environment,” Neil says. He decided to double-major in accounting and finance. “For me, accounting is the science and finance is the art. Having both really helped ultimately.”

Neil studied abroad at the University of New South Wales his junior year in an attempt to broaden his horizons and experience a different culture, but upon his return to Georgetown, he discovered to his dismay that many of his peers were well ahead of him in the process of securing internships that would set them up for jobs after graduation, particularly in the highly competitive investment banking field.

Neil became familiar with investment banking as a freshman and was initially struck by the potential to make a six-figure salary directly out of college, but it wasn’t until his junior year when he truly grasped what the career path required and how far behind his classmates he was in the process.

“I had to play catch-up to really get up to speed, learn what it is, and put myself out there,” Neil says. “Unfortunately, I didn’t succeed and didn’t get the investment banking internship that, in my head, I thought I could get. I did well at Georgetown, but there were a lot of friends that were much better prepared and had more experience in the recruiting process. It was a failure that I took to heart and changed my approach in life.”

The missed opportunity for a summer in New York with his classmates was a wakeup call for Neil. He realized that charting a path for himself after school was going to take more time and effort than he’d previously exerted, and he resolved to not face a similar disappointment again. His friends left town for their spring break adventures shortly after Neil learned he would not receive an investment banking internship and, rather than tag along, Neil spent the week at school planning his next steps, including securing a summer internship in the risk management group of an energy company.

“I didn’t think I deserved to go on a trip,” Neil remembers. “I told myself, ‘I need to get this job opportunity.’ I committed to investment banking and decided that’s what I want to do after college. I came back for my senior year ready to go, ready to interview, and ready to open those doors for myself. Luckily, that’s when I got interviews at several banks.”

After graduation in 2006, Neil secured the investment banking analyst position he’d sought with Citigroup. He spent two years in Citigroup’s Mergers and Acquisitions Group before working a third year in its Special Situations Group while awaiting Shilpi’s residency placement. Neil left his investment banking career to move with Shilpi to California at close to the height of the Financial Crisis, but not before learning leadership lessons that would serve him well down the line.

“It was the first time I got to hire and train others,” Neil says. “I was involved in the interview process and brought in two guys I’m still in touch with today. It was a great opportunity to mentor, teach, and learn from the new hires.”

Of his leadership style today, Neil describes himself as someone who prefers to keep things light-hearted and maintain an open-door policy so that he can hear ways to improve from colleagues throughout the organization.

“I will always listen if someone has something to say. I think that is important,” Neil says. “I am personable and enjoy conversation. However, there is a fine line between being overly nice and getting work done and holding people accountable. I think people generally will work harder for a person and purpose that they like than they would otherwise.”

Neil recalls his experience in investment banking as a grueling one full of long hours and inefficiencies that he believes made the work more difficult than it often needed to be. On the other hand, he also credits his first career with teaching him analytical skills and leadership lessons he otherwise might not have obtained, which is the root of advice he shares with young people today.

“I absolutely believe you should love what you do in your career, but I do not believe you have to absolutely love what you do in your 20s,” Neil says. “In your 20s, focus on learning and building your skillset. Find something you’re good at or could become an expert at. We’re going to need individuals to be experts in many different areas. There are certain things that a computer is never going to be able to replace, and that is putting a human touch on certain bits of knowledge.”

Neil and Shilpi married and moved to California in 2009. Neil moved to Los Angeles in the middle of the financial crisis without a job. but it did not take him long to land in his next role. Wanting to diversify his experience after leaving investment banking, Neil landed a position in the strategy group of Live Nation working on the company’s merger with Ticketmaster. Neil also attended business school at UCLA during his time in California, and both experiences aligned with his goal of continuously learning.

“I have a personal mantra: every day, learn something new and make someone laugh,” Neil says. “I have always been a curious individual. I mostly read non-fiction, and I have a lot of useless facts stored in my head.

Neil returned to the East Coast in 2014 following Shilpi’s residency and as the couple was expecting their first child. He was eager to join the family business and put his varied experiences to improve it, but he quickly discovered change would not come easy.

In his first week on the job, Neil noticed that some of Frisco Woodline’s salespeople were using email addresses from Yahoo.com, not the company’s domain. On the very first day on the job, he struck out on a project to migrate all email addresses to Frisco Woodline’s domain, drawing the ire of several salespeople who had used the Yahoo emails to correspond with clients for years. It was a valuable lesson for Neil: slow down, learn the basics of the business, and always gather input from those who are more knowledgeable before making a decision.

“It was an uphill battle to some extent with the owner’s son coming in,” Neil says. “Day 2 to Day 700, I kept my head down. I expressed to the team, ‘OK, you all know more about this business than I do. I’m here to learn from you. Hopefully, I can make things better over time, but I’m not here to say I know it all. I need to learn from you.’ That was important to build goodwill with a good number of people. There were always going to be people who didn’t respect me no matter how amazing I was or wasn’t. That was going to be a natural mental block for some people.”

Once Neil settled in and gained a better grasp of the business, he began adding allies to his team who could help him implement the changes he wanted to make to move the company forward. He prioritized growth and change as the business environment required it, which didn’t always go over well with employees who were used to the same way of doing things after decades at the company.

“The reality is complacency had set in,” Neil reflects. “There were a number of people who were great, super loyal to myself and the business, but I wanted to grow the business. To me, being at a company that was stagnant or mildly growing would not have been success. I wanted to grow the business, so I had to change that mindset. If you’re going to be a part of this team, we’re growing. The only way is up. That took some time.”

As he works to continue evolving and improving Frisco Woodline, Neil says his motivation remains the same as it has always been: family. He credits his natural curiosity and pragmatism to his father and attributes many of his best childhood experiences and his appreciation for America to his sisters and mother, the latter of whom immigrated from India with Neil’s dad in search of a better life for their children.

Of course, Neil is also quick to credit Shilpi, who he says balances out his strengths and weaknesses and is an invaluable partner in raising their three children together.

“She’s had a wildly profound impact on my life,” Neil says. “When I met her early on, I was very shy. She’s helped me to really open up as an individual. That means being more confident about talking to people, putting myself out there. We’ve become stronger together and continue to build on our best friendship.”

Family is also indirectly at the heart of one of Neil’s favorite personal objects, a Lamborghini Sián Lego Technic set comprising over 3,800 pieces that Neil built about three years ago. The Lego Technic sets are mindless fun Neil found to scratch his analytical itch, but it also connects three generations of his family. He attended car shows with his dad from age 4, and his own children assisted with building the Lamborghini Sián set. Some of his children love cars just as much as Neil always has.

“As a kid, I would get the car magazines and could spit off every fact about cars – the horsepower, all of it,” Neil says. “It goes back to that passion and the memory of building these as a kid. It was fun to put this together with my kids.”

Neil and his family faced one of their toughest personal challenges just a couple of years after moving back to the East Coast when Shilpi’s father passed away after a battle with leukemia. It was a trying but formative experience for Neil and Shilpi, one that taught them to take things lightly, laugh at every opportunity and enjoy each day with those you love.

They are lessons that Neil thinks about daily, ones that inform his relationships at work as much as outside of it.

“We realized that life is short,” Neil says. “It’s really easy to just be a good, nice person, so why not do it? I’m an extrovert and get good energy from good people, so when I show up to the office, my goal is to create a great working environment for our team. At the same time, I want each of us to do something to improve upon ourselves every single day. It sounds somewhat simple and trite, but I love having a good time full of laughter with good people over a nice dinner. That is one of my favorite things in the world.”