The difference between dreamers and doers is drive.

For the first six years of his company, Marshall Walters, founder, president and CEO of Architectural Polymers in Palmerton, didn't take any income. All of the profits went back into the company.

How did he survive? He worked as a bartender, while working full-time to make his company a success.

"It was an overwhelming urge to do something," he said. "I suppose, I've never lost that."

Walters grew up in the Lehighton area with a love of art and history. He went on to college at Pennsylvania State University.

During the summers, he worked at Slaw Precast in Lehighton and learned a great deal about the concrete business. After graduating from college, he came back to Slaw, but soon came up with an idea of how to turn functional, utilitarian uses of concrete into art.

"As soon as I had the idea, I knew I had to do it," he said. "Now's the time to take a shot while you're young," he figured. "I honestly just didn't believe I was going to fail."

And he hasn't.

One of his favorite quotes is from Andrew Carnegie, "The harder you work, the luckier you get."

Walters' idea was to transform the concrete facade of buildings, bridges, arenas and highway noise barriers from the stark gray, bland surface of concrete to one with colors and designs that reflect the identity of a community or add beauty to a structure.

He took his dream and knowledge of chemistry and created polymer-based molds that enable architects to dream up any surface for a structure and make it a reality. No longer do architects have to design around the materials, but instead the materials are created to fit the design.

"You can reuse it a thousand times," he said. "It becomes inexpensive for what it does."

With a $1,000 investment from the Bank of Mom and Dad, he started Architectural Polymers, and paid his parents back in three years.

"I was one of those 'started in the garage types,' " he said. In this case, it was his parents' basement. "I still sell art, but I do it with chemistry. I always loved chemistry."

He also received assistance from the Northeastern Pennsylvania Alliance with financing, connections and business development information.

Today, his concrete form fabrication company includes pre-cast, tilt-up and cast-in-place construction projects. Depending on the number of uses and application, the form liners are made of elastomeric-urethane, high-impact polystyrene and low-use acrylonitrile butadiene styrene.

Customers can also choose to use thin bricks in a tilt-up application that allows for the look of traditional brick, but at a fraction of the time for installation.

This product uses lightweight polystyrene sheets with overlapping edge points to enable workers to basically snap the bricks into place. The quick installation also allows the contractor to reduce the overall cost of the project.

"The product itself is a labor saver," he said.

It has become very popular in areas of the world where labor costs are high.

"If (the construction project) is going to be expensive, then they better be quick."

Because it saves time, labor costs are reduced.

Municipalities really like this. They have to be conscientious of how they spend taxpayer dollars.

The polymer molds also give municipalities the ability to have a design that reflects the identity of the community, such as seagulls for a city near a coastline.

In 2004, Architecture Polymers was approached to do a project that would make it known as "the company" that made an architectural icon. It's known as Mulberry House.

The project is an apartment building at 290 Mulberry St. in New York City.

The surface of the building consists of varying depths of gray brick that form waves of squares casting across the building. It's a highly intricate pattern that was made possible with the use of Architectural Polymers molds.

"Once that happened, it became the standard," he said. "It propelled us into a leadership position in the industry."

When architects find out his company did Mulberry House, they tell him that if he can do that, then they're on board to work with him.

"They want the building to be the art," he said.

After more than 20 years in the business, Architectural Polymers has made its mark on projects throughout the United States and internationally, as well as an office in Australia.

It was actually the delayed delivery of their product to a client overseas that led Walters to seek out an overseas office.

A volcano erupted in Iceland for weeks in 2010, sending dust plumes up into the air, delaying flight travel. Unfortunately for Architectural Polymers, the airplane carrying its product was delayed, and the product arrived late, Walters explained. The client was unhappy, and his company lost their business.

Not wanting that to ever happen again, Walters decided to look for a site overseas to open an office.

He found a lead while on vacation in Australia. Walters read that pre-cast concrete is very popular there, so he took a look around and found a site for an office.

"The first year out of the gate was profitable," he said.

Opening another location is easier the second time around.

"I'm doing the same thing with them, with less mistakes and much quicker," he said.

The Palmerton headquarters handles all of the domestic work. Some of that work includes all of the concrete surface work on the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation's highway overpasses, and a prestigious contract to do work on the renovation of the Statue of Liberty.

The future looks very bright indeed.

"As soon as I saw this, I instantly knew what I was going to do for the rest of my life," he said.