Building A Referral Only Remodeling Business Takes Relentless Standards with Jessica Lichvar, Red Saw Remodeling

0:00Everybody sees the success. We want the story behind it. This is Epic Entrepreneurs from Action Coach Business Growth Partners. My name is Cliff McRae. Each week, we sit down with business owners and leaders to uncover the decisions, setbacks, and turning points that shape their companies and the lessons you can use to grow yours. No fluff, no highlight reels, just what it really takes to build, lead, and grow a successful business. Let's get right into it.

0:45All right, everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am Cliff McRae with Action Coach Business Growth Partners, where we work with local business owners to turn big ideas into real scalable growth. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Jessica Lickvar with RedSol Remodeling. Jessica, how are you doing today? We're excited to have you. I'm doing great, Bill. Thanks for asking. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, yeah. We're definitely excited to have you. You know, a little bit about Jessica and her business. She's a Pittsburgh area interior remodeling company known for working with older homes and for creating bathrooms, kitchens, basements and storage solutions that emphasize comfort.

1:21So, yeah, Jessica, we're very excited to have you. So thanks for being here. Let's go ahead and jump right into it. Sounds good. All right. So, you know, Red Saw talks about being, you know, old home experts. What does Pittsburgh's older homes teach you that newer construction never did? Wow. I think that it's it just speaks to the fact that like really nothing is perfect in an older home. But that's what gives it its charm, its livability. And it's usually what draws people to those types of homes. People that are choosing an older home are doing it for that nuance. And whenever they come to us, they want to be able to maintain that aesthetic.

2:03But, you know, modernize it, make it their own. Maybe, you know, make the wall straight, make the floor level. Older homes make you appreciate those things that you just expect to find in a newer home. So the older homes can give you the best of both worlds whenever you're willing to remodel them. okay okay now take me back to the moment you first realized you know this this red saw remodeling could become a real business i'm sorry when i realized it was a real business that it could become a real business oh that it could become a real business well i'm gonna answer that in a more long-winded way i guess whenever we started the business it's 10 years ago this year coming up here in October.

2:50We had done so after moving to Pittsburgh from Denver. And I had always lived, I had been from Pittsburgh before, but lived around the country. My partner's from Connecticut. And after we had our daughter, we decided to move back to Pittsburgh to be by my family. Two months after moving back and having a newborn, both of us not working, he decided he was starting Red Saw, the remodeling business. It wasn't called Red Saw at the time. And I'm a very practical person and I'm like, what? Who does this? Who starts a remodeling business when there's no other income? You have a newborn baby. You're in a totally different place.

3:35But those are the kind of people that we are. So I guess in that being, it made sense. So once we got it off the ground, I really saw the momentum that John was able to pick up. I knew his knack for older homes. People loved working with him. We've built our business purely on referral. So people were coming back to him time and time again. And at that point, I was still in the corporate world and doing my thing on that side, always having a hand in the business, but, you know, not necessarily participating on the day-to-day. But once I saw him drowning, so to speak, knowing that he really couldn't keep up with running a business, making sure the taxes are paid, making sure our contract's tight, you know, customer service, building proposals, and, oh, by the way, actually doing all the remodeling work.

4:33I'm like, what am I doing in corporate America? I need to jump over here and really go full bore into the business so we can make sure that we scale this thing, do it effectively, and, you know, we can both keep all our hair in the meantime. Okay. Now, what did your path look like before Red Salt Remodeling and what pushed you towards business ownership? Sure. So I have always been in sales or relationship building type roles. I've worked my entire life and I always had a natural knack for being able to build relationships with people, communicate with them clearly, setting and managing their expectations so that at the end of the day, like everyone walks away from the table happy.

5:21So I spent about 10 years of my career working in wealth management. And I managed the relationships in wealth management with all other areas of a bank. I worked for a bank doing wealth management. And I really enjoyed that. And I'm telling you, when you work with people's money and see the way millionaires and multimillionaires think about their money and the emotion that goes into that, you know, it really was a great foundation for any kind of customer service, customer experience type of situation, and the importance of making sure that communication is clear and that, again, those expectations are set.

6:02After wealth management, I went into technology. So it was an industry switch. And I was able to apply everything I learned, but then I really got into how important all the technical aspects were. It was funny when I worked in wealth management, even though I would explain what I would do, people would automatically ask me about, oh, well, what, what stock should I buy? And, you know, what should I do with my checking account? I'm like, I, I don't know. I manage the relationships. I don't, I don't do any of that, any of the specificity of wealth management. I work with people that do that. And then, so in technology, it was the same thing.

6:41I managed those relationships and I worked with partners that really knew the nitty gritty of those technical systems. I became more involved in the details and I saw how the details played into the bigger picture. But I still got to, you know, handle my side of the world and then make sure that I was able to bring partners in that were specialized in their areas. So then once I have that sort of lightbulb moment of, wow, I could really take these two totally different industry experiences, but yet having the same type of role and then move into yet another industry, I really see how I can apply these skills.

7:23And so that was the confidence booster, I guess, I needed to be able to make the leap to being an entrepreneur. I've also always been the type of person that one, I don't fit into like a box very well. So like corporate America didn't really work out for me for that reason. Like they really like a black and white sort of person answer. And I am anything but that. And, you know, I also always sort of like went to my own, you know, went to my own beat and that was just how it was. Yeah, exactly. So entrepreneurship, like I was not afraid of the hustle. I was not afraid of the learning curve. I was not afraid of like any of the things that most people are afraid of that keep their cheeks in the seat of a company for 30 some years.

8:13I just didn't have that. I don't know. I guess I had more ego than that. And I was just like, you know, I've always been able to figure it out. I've always been able to, you know, just hunker down and make things happen. So, you know, if why wouldn't that be true over here? So so I was really able to leverage, you know, those 18 years of experience really in the corporate world, let alone, you know, the years of like management experience I had in college and managing a bar and restaurant and bring it into this atmosphere of home remodeling. okay okay all right just all right so now we're going to get into the real nitty-gritty kind of what people really want to hear because we have a kind of a kind of a large entrepreneurial audience that kind of listens to podcasts every week so you know what would you say right now is the biggest challenge your business is facing right now the biggest uh finding quality employees it is and and you know for the longest time i was in the employee scene you know i wasn't I wasn't the one running the business.

9:22I was the one showing up and doing the work. But there's just this, I think there's a couple different inflection points happening right now where people need and expect a certain amount of money to be able to live and be able to live well and within their means and all those kind of things. But then there's also like an expectation that comes with that kind of a salary. Happy, you know, we're definitely people that we feel like we pay well, we offer, you know, everything that we can to our employees. But with that kind of payroll comes the expectation that, hey, you're going to show up to work on time.

10:06You're going to treat our customers with respect. You're going to understand that you are inside someone's home. This is their most private, peaceful state. You are there to only add to that because what you're doing is already disruptive. So if you're going to come into one of our customers' homes and be disruptive, we cannot have you as a part of our organization. Our customers tend to be families with young kids and pets or they're taking care of an older parent. We need people that can come in and act professionally and be polite and bring that level of understanding to the table. And that's baseline.

10:49You know, that it's amazing to me how many times you I have to explain like baseline expectations to adults, you know, just like, hey, yeah, you you told us you were going to be here at nine o 'clock. We agreed that you would be here at nine o 'clock and you're calling me at 11 o 'clock telling me you are tired. Well, like, same. I'm always tired. Like, get over it. If you want me to give you money, I'm going to come to work. Like, you know, so, you know, you're always trying to find this balance of, you know, this sort of like Machiavellian mentality of it. Is it better to be feared or to be loved?

11:37Like you want to treat your you. Of course, your employees, your best customers, you want to treat them well. You want to do right by them. You want to, you know, share in the success of the business with them. but they have to come to the table, not only like meeting those baseline expectations, but then with the willingness to grow, to learn, to, to want to improve. And that is just, cool. That's tough. And then you throw on top of it, just the nature of overhead in this industry of like, holy crap, workers comp. I mean, need I say more anyone else in the industry? I totally get why so much of the work is subbed out and it's hard to bring on actual full-time employees because otherwise, you know, otherwise you're passing, you obviously have to pass that expense off to the customer in some regard of your overhead calculation.

12:31And the cost is just so exorbitant. And then, you know, obviously there's other insurances and things like that to play into it. So I think that yes, it's employees, but it's employees that like, it trickles into all these other areas of your business that, you know, if you're not going to show up and do the job that we're paying you to do, then this is not the place for you. And it's time for us to part ways. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Now, what do you believe is, you know, Well, let's get into that a little bit more. What is that challenge costing you in time, money, or missed opportunity or stress, would you say?

13:12Oh, it's honestly, it's hard to, it's hard to even calculate, right? Because it's, there is like the hard dollar cost of, okay, whenever I did this estimate, I worked in the number of hours that we expected that they would be on the job site. And now, you know, a half an hour here and two hours there and, you know, a half a day here. That all really adds up and lengthens the job, therefore changing your margin on the project at the end of the day. But then there's also like the reputation management of that experience. we come to the table why we have been able to grow over 10 years purely based on referral is because of how we operate our business we communicate we show up and we not not just show up we show up every day we clean up after ourselves every day we protect your home every day and that's all very intentional.

14:22So whenever we have an employee that's either showing up and not doing that, like disrespecting a homeowner's home or disrespecting everybody by not even showing up or showing up late, that is an intangible cost that is just hard to articulate. you know and you can do all you can to apologize to the homeowner and make it right and you know all you could do is hope that they understand and you know and they go on from there but that's why like with employees like that just don't have a place in our business yeah yeah because the cost really is something that is can be incalculable yeah i love that i love that now oh i love that answer.

15:09Now, what do you believe is preventing the business from reaching its next level? Would you say, honestly?

15:17What's preventing us from reaching the next level? I don't, you know, I don't mean to sound arrogant, but like we really, like what we have been able to do just over the course of the last two years, the amount of growth that we've had is really extraordinary and invigorating for, for me and John. I mean, something that we're super excited about, I guess, I guess the challenge would be just like being able to bring in those people that are going to help support that effort or being able to find those partners that are going to support that effort. You know, I brought it up earlier about having the right like sub, you know, subcontractors or partners in your business that, you know, where you support each other's business.

16:00And I think that's just key. It's finding those other business owners or those other leaders in those complimentary businesses that have that same mentality. And that, you know, know that, hey, if we're both rowing the boat the same direction, we're both going to get there faster. Like, I'm not going to tell you I'm going to do, you know, there are some people that like, they tell you they're going to do that. And then they just kind of go rogue. And you're like, oh, my gosh, like, no, not only are you now not going to get the business, but you've now hurt my own sales cycle. So I think it's, it's stuff like that.

16:40Like we definitely need to be able to bring in more part, to have more partnerships, to be able to hire more employees and just continue, you know, being aggressively adamant about what we do well. You know, I don't think it's changing what we do. I think it's just doing more of what we do well and helping and getting those either employees or partners to buy into that and be like, okay, yeah, we're here to support, We're here to support how you do business. Okay. Okay. I appreciate that. Yeah. I appreciate that thorough answer. Now, Jess, what would you say is something people assume is easy about running, you know, a red saw remodeling type of business that is actually very difficult?

17:35They think they're like, oh, well, you know, someone just comes to you with like an idea. People know what they want to do to their house. And, you know, you just make it happen. You get to just make their vision come to life. And it's like, you know, I think people think that that part's very easy and that part actually can be the most challenging, especially depending on the room in your house. A kitchen, I think, is a primary example of that. in just it comes back to that topic of like expectation setting and this idea of like you can have anything you want but you can't have everything you want you know you don't get to have a full custom kitchen with 20 cabinets and pull out shelves and a spice drawer and pay ten thousand dollars like that's just that's completely unreasonable so i think walking through that process and helping customers, you know, take their vision of what they want for their home and refine that vision into what is realistic within their timeframe, within their budget, within like what are your must-haves versus your nice-to-haves.

18:45You know, like some people get really hung up on one specific detail and that's okay, but then that's your must-have item and then maybe you have to make a concession somewhere else, or maybe you have to change your expectations around time or budget. So I think it's walking through the nuances of those projects with people because at the end of the day, we all know the devil's in the details. And, you know, it's going to be that one little thing that ends up driving a homeowner crazy six months, 12 months down the line and they'll never work with you or your company again because of one teeny tiny little thing that had you just addressed that up front, it would have saved you so much time, effort, and energy.

19:33And you would have had a customer that's going to come back to you time and again. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. Now, how do you design a space that is safer and easier to use without making it feel clinical or institutional? I think colors are a really big part of that. I was just having a conversation this morning actually with a, yeah, with a kitchen designer and we were talking about subway tile and the, you know, we're both kind of surprised of that. That's still something so prevalent in design that people really love subway tile and really want to use But the difference of using white grout versus a darker grout goes a really long way.

20:17A white subway tile with white grout can come off as feeling clinical or commercial even. You know, that might look great in a restaurant, but it's not really going to work in your home kitchen. Or if it does, you should be aware that that white tile or that white grout that's on your white subway tile. It's going to get dirty if it's behind your stove and you're cooking pasta sauce every Sunday. So it's one of those nuanced details that you could talk to a homeowner about and say, hey, if we just change up the color of the grout, you're still going to have the subway tile that you really like.

20:57You're still going to get that aesthetic. You're going to get that differentiation and contrast in terms of the grout. And oh, by the way, it's going to be easier to keep nice one year, five years down the road as compared to like white on white. Okay. Okay. Love that. Love that. Now, what is something about you, you know, and this may be something you have to dig down for a little bit, but you know, as far as your personality type, have you had to change anything about your personality type or anything in your personal life to make your, to have your business grow? No, it's such a short answer, but I can't, I am not one of these people that can be a chameleon and change my personality.

21:43And I, I lack that ability, but that said, my authenticity is what people I think like about, they either like or don't like about me, right? Like, I'm not gonna, not gonna lie to you. I'm not gonna tell you something you want to hear just because you want to hear it. I truly don't have that ability to be able to shapeshift. So, you know, you kind of know that upfront about me, and you either want to work with me because of it, or you won't want to work with me. because of it. So, no, I have not changed my personality at all. I accept that I'm not for everyone. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. Now, about how many hours a week are you saying right now that you're putting into the business, would you say?

22:33Oh, gosh. I don't know. From like physical working behind my computer screen, meeting with customers, 40 to 50 from strategy perspective, talking to my partner about things, ideating. I mean, much, much more than that. It's every day. You know, when you're a business owner, there isn't this delineation of time or personal life. Like it's all one big mishmash of things. And, you know, like today is a perfect example, just like any other day. You know, I was working on things when I got up this morning after I had my coffee. And then I took a break to make lunches for my daughter and for John to get them out the door for the day.

23:24I threw in a load of laundry. I responded to some more emails. I met some customers at a cabinet place. You know, I came back, I made some lunch, and here I am doing a podcast, and it's not even one o 'clock. Yeah, you've already had a failed day. We're only halfway through. It really is. You know, in this modern day, with technology at our fingertips and the positive and negatives of that, there really isn't, oh, I'm working these hours, but I'm not working these hours. I'm just always some version of working and it's either on my personal life or on or on the business or some combination thereof.

24:08So we could have whatever balance, you know, the mythical beings say exist. OK, I like that honest answer. Now, what would you say, Jess, is your greatest strength as a business owner right now? I think it's my ability to say that I don't know something. And to ask questions like I am. I am very much too proud. Yeah. Yeah. Like you can't I you can't be the master of everything, you know, and people like puff their chest and be like, oh, I you know, I do these 10 things. And it's like, well, then you're not doing nine of them well, you know, be good at one thing. and for me, I think like my ability to just ask those questions and dig it, especially when my customer is like standing there making a face, like I could tell that they're not fully grasping what another contract, like contractor might be saying or, so I'm not afraid to jump in and ask the question and be like, Hey, you know, Hey Bill, can you break down that thing you were saying about, you know, drawers?

25:18Can you break that down a little bit more? I want to make sure that I am understanding it the way you are describing it. A lot of people are so hesitant to just like get clarity. And you know, it's, I don't know, some people are good communicators. Some it's just like a perception thing. Some it's a general knowledge gap. There's so many reasons why people hesitate to do it, but I'm not afraid to just like kind of ask the question and dig into my lack of knowing. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. That's actually a really good thing. Now, what is one leadership or business skill you know you still need to improve?

25:57Oh, I think thinking about the, that's, that's a really great question. You know, very much from my his, my career history, I was, I was an operator, right? Like I was the person that the CEO or the head of sales or the executive manager turned to and said, Jess, we need to get this thing done. You're the person that can do it. Go do it. You know, I knew how to, I was like the engineer in the fact that I knew how the machine worked. I knew the parts that would break down. I knew how to get the output we all needed. And so it's, it's a mentality shift, right? From like going from an operator to being the owner of a business.

26:43My partner has that same challenge, right? He's like the artist of the business. He's the creator. He's the craftsman. And so going from that mentality to business owner, it's just a different mindset. It's just a different like, yeah, you can still do all those things. I still have to operate the business. He still has to be the craftsman, but there also has to be this additional layer, this umbrella of, hey, we're also the owners of this. And we have to think about how this functions as a whole and the sum of its parts, essentially. There's been a book I've been reading about that it's called The Road Less Stupid.

27:29And the author of the book, whose name I don't remember, but he talks about this a lot. And that sort of like that mentality shift of like, hey, just because you're a great doer doesn't mean you're like automatically a great business owner. It's a mindset shift and it's making sure you're focused on the right things for today, tomorrow, and a year from now. Because if you don't think about it like that, you're going to be too short-sighted. You're not going to see the things coming down the road and you're going to get tripped up on something that, you know, you could have been prepared for had you just looked up.

28:07I like that. All right. So remodeling requires sales, design, estimating, production, and communication to work together. Where is the handoff most likely to break as volume grows? I think handoff is the key word. So earlier in the conversation, you had asked about, you know, the business scaling and what's preventing that or what could be preventing that. And I talked about partnerships. So in any one of those areas, you, as you expand, you're going to be handing off any portion of that business to either a subcontractor, an employee, whoever the case might be. And when you don't have the right employees and when you don't have the right subcontractors or partners in place, that is where the breakdown happens.

28:52you know, as a business owner, especially when you're like a sole owner in the seat that John was in, you know, really up until a few years ago, you hold everything so close to the vest, right? Like this is your baby. You created this from the ground up and it's hard to hand over your baby to someone else to help raise, right? So when that happens, now we have this brand and we have this reputation of being good communicators, of being trustworthy, of all these great qualities that we've built up, we have to bring other people in to help continue that. But if they aren't thinking the same, if they aren't aligned with our business and how we operate, that's where the breakdown's gonna happen.

29:37And not only is that gonna be painful for us, it's gonna be painful for our customer. So keeping that pain away from the customer at all costs is absolutely paramount. You know, for the most part, people are understanding that things happen and especially in remodeling, you never know when you're going to open a wall and find all kinds of insanity, especially in older houses. But, you know, I think, again, like if you have the right partners, if you have the right employees, that doesn't hit as hard for a homeowner, you know, because you know you have the right people that are going to address you calmly and be like, okay, yes, this is a terrible thing, but here is the solution.

30:22Or here's the problem we face or the hurdle we face, but I have a solution for that. You just don't ever want to leave your customer in a spot where you're bringing them a problem and then you're hitting a period at the end of the sentence. You know, it's just like it, that's just a terrible customer experience. And I have to have the right partners and employees to avoid that at all costs. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Now, what is your biggest challenge? Would you say when it comes to hiring, leading or retaining quality people? That's always the big thing because you can hire and retain, you know, people that aren't great, right?