2026 Dynamic Dozen No. 10: Toth and Associates Inc.

SBJ: What has been the key to your recent growth?
Adam Toth: I would say two big areas have been behind our growth – one is our continued work with 7 Brew and their expansion across the country, and then two would be the growing energy needs of our country, in large part due to data center growth. We have had a client out West who’s been working with one of the biggest data centers in the world going on over 10 years, so we have quite a bit of experience with the infrastructure needed to serve data centers. If there’s a third area that has kind of grown in our market, it’s supporting utilities as companies are adding fiber and broadband into rural areas. That area of our business is still growing.

SBJ: What are your top issues when it comes to managing growth?
Toth: Finding experienced people. We don’t have problems finding new graduates, but finding the people with five to 10 years’ experience is a lot harder right now.

SBJ: What has the company’s growth enabled you to do?
Toth: It’s enabled us to bring a lot more people on board. We will cross 250 employees this year, so it’s enabled us to bring more high-paying jobs to Springfield, Missouri. I’m excited for our community. It means we can reinvest in ourselves to grow our business in other parts of the country.

SBJ: Is your fast growth sustainable?
Toth: Yes, right now. In the areas in which we are growing, we don’t see a slowdown for the next five years. Actually, the horizon is closer to 10 years. Part of our business, our structural engineering team – they do buildings – is very slow right now, but our areas of growth are really growing. We would hire 15 experienced engineers tomorrow if I could. We’ve gotten into a couple of very strong growth niches. With 7 Brew coffee shops, they want to put up a lot more of those, and we’re their preferred engineers. People buy coffee whether there’s a pullback or not. The data center market is accelerating like crazy. We try to diversify other parts of the country, too, because the whole country does not go through a recession at the same time. There are some leading indicators that will pull back first, and we may not work in that market as much for a few years, but the lagging indicators will still be doing well. Once they hit the down part, the leading indicators start to pick back up. Our work is primarily in the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest, and those economic cycles are not exactly in lockstep. Diversification in location and services is very beneficial to us.

SBJ: What is the best business advice you’ve received?
Toth: The best advice I’ve been given is that research shows that nice guys finish first, not last. It’s from a great book by Adam Grant called “Give and Take.” He breaks the mold with stats that actually show givers finish first. In business and in all walks of life, the people that are well connected or the people that have helped out tons of other people through the years – everyone wants to help them when they’re in need.