“What separates Air Force Special Warfare from other branches of military is not that they are bigger, faster, stronger or smarter; it’s how we held each other accountable, how we competed with each other and put each other first, and how we held each other to a high standard,” Bradley said. “But, at the same time, [we also] took care of each other and looked out for each other.”
In 2020, when he took his first post-military job in the construction industry, he found himself in what he called a “subpar culture” and knew he had to make a change.
Eventually, he met “like-minded individuals,” he said, who wanted to start a business where people and culture came first. In April 2022, Bradley co-founded CATI—or, “Come and Take It.”
The business provides pavement marking, sign installation, wheel stop installation, pressure washing and sandblasting, he said.
“The easiest way we like to explain it is, if you can stand in the center of a parking lot and point at something, we can fix it,” Bradley said.
They’ve also received some unusual requests on occasion; the company has been asked to stripe temporary lots on grass and gravel for festivals or church events, and they’ve also done graffiti removal. Bradley also said a large convenience store chain once asked them to create a lime-green “work of art” for their drive-thru.
“At AT&T Stadium ... we’re redoing nearly 900 parking space stencils with a specific gray color number,” Bradley said. “We try to be agile enough to find creative solutions to make individual customers happy, knowing they all have different expectations.”
As CEO, Bradley spends time developing relationships with clients, including the facility manager of the aforementioned AT&T Stadium. During their first meeting, which lasted three hours, they never discussed prices.
“He called the next day and said, ‘I’d like you to take care of this lot.’ That was our first major sale,” Bradley said. “It wasn’t based on our pricing because he never saw our pricing. It wasn’t based on really anything other than we’d established a relationship—you trust me; I trust you; let’s build that relationship further.”
The acronym “Come and Take It” is an expression developed by Texan defenders during the Battle of Gonzalez in 1835, Bradley said.
“It’s exactly what we say our culture is—doing the right thing for the right reasons, regardless of who’s with you or against you,” he said.
