Honest Same Day Repairs Turn One Call Into Loyalty with Mike Melatti, The Garage Doc

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.

0:45Hi, 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 Doc Mike Malati, founder and president of The Garage Doc in Virginia Beach. Mike, how are you doing today? Doing well. Thank you so much, Cliff. Appreciate the invite. Looking forward to speaking with you here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just a little bit about Mike, you know, goes by Mikey too as well. But Mikey has spent more than a decade helping Hampton Roads homeowners through garage door sales, installation and repair while building a family-owned brand around innovation, trust, and people-first customer experience.

1:29So, Mike, let's go ahead and jump right into things. Let's do it. All right, perfect. So, I kind of went over it there a little bit there in my intro, but I want to hear it from you in your own words. So, what does the GarageDoc do for the community? So, the GarageDoc is a garage door repair, sales, installations company. We specialize in installing and providing garage doors, garage door opener, sales and installation as it repairs. And we also do a little bit of entry doors and lifestyle screens. Okay. Now, and who is Mikey as a person? You know, what do you have going on personally? 44. I have a 17-year-old daughter who's about to be 18.

2:17you know that's pretty much my my world right there my i have an awesome mother and stepfather my my dad it passed last year and yeah but you know really great support system over here family is big to me uh i have sisters and yeah just just work and work and family now do you have any uh i know you work a lot i'm sure you you know work a lot of hours in the business but do you have any hobbies when you're not working i do so i i have joined a bowling team it's not competitive or anything but but we do monday night bowling and then tuesdays i'd play shuffleboard so mondays is bowling tuesdays is shuffleboard sometimes i I like to play poker, but, but yeah, that's, that's pretty much it for, for hobbies.

3:16I like fishing. Fishing's fun, you know, being out on the water. I really like that. So just a few things that, that I like to do to clear my mind. Okay. Okay. I love it. Love it. So, you know, you built a very memorable identity around the garage dock and a physically healthy door. Where did that concept come from and what did you want customers to feel? So the garage doc, we were bouncing names off of each other when I first started this. My business partner, who's my best friend still, he was giving me ideas of what names we should call it. And so I think the garage doc was maybe his idea. But yeah, we went on the garage doc and then went with a Ph.D.

4:11and kind of played that off of, you know, a doctor having a Ph.D. and came up with the physically healthy door. Love it. I love it. Now, what did your path look like before the garage doc and what pushed you towards business ownership? so hmm i when i was younger i worked in restaurants the nightlife was a little wild stayed in it for a long time then got into with a company called fastanol and fastanol is an industrial supply company and i was with them for several years maybe seven or eight years and and And then I was doing really well. I was a general manager of one of their locations. And we were growing, doing good numbers.

5:04And my mom and my stepdad recognized how we were doing and said, hey, do you want to come over and work for the family business? And we're halfway through our contract and we're going to need someone to take over this thing. So 2015 is when I decided to do garage doors. Okay. Now, who is your best fit customer, would you say? I particularly like working with property managers and custom home builders. But it's not the bulk of our clients. however it is those are some of our well all of our clients are our best clients but I enjoy working with those because it's a steady source of income builders are they have projects a few each year property managers have multiple properties the doors are going down and breaking so they're needing to be repaired or replaced on a regular basis and between a lot of their properties so that's That's why I like those two clients for my garage door company.

6:23But then just the everyday homeowner, right? We provide solutions for our customers when it comes to their garage and their entry door needs. And, you know, that's how I guess that's our, those are our type of customers. Those are the ones that we work with. But those two in particular are my favorite. Okay. Okay. Now, Mike, you advertise same day service when available. Now, what has to happen behind the scenes for a fast response not to become rust or inconsistent service? So I like to say that we do every job as though it was for our mom, right? If we're working for our mom, we're doing a job for her on her house, we're going to make sure we do it the best way.

7:17So regardless of if we're busy or not, you know, too busy to get out to you the same day, we're still going to, you know, take care of every job as though it was going on to our mom's house, you know. And that goes for all of us who are in the field or not in the field. We're going to treat every customer the same. So if we can't get to you that day, then hopefully we can get to you the very next. If we can't provide same day service, we try to provide it within 24 hours. Love that. Love that. Now, what would you say is the biggest challenge your business is facing right now?

7:54I would say that the biggest challenge would be the pricing on goods. That's probably, it keeps increasing. So that makes it a little more difficult. There's a lot of competition out here in this area as far as garage door companies go. There's probably like 30 different garage door companies in the Hampton Roads area, not more. So those two things there, pricing and competition, those are some hurdles that we encounter. Now, what would you say, what is that challenge costing you in time, money, missed opportunity or stress? I don't know. I can't answer that for you. I don't really have a good answer for you on that.

8:47I think like, I think it's just part of doing business, right? There's always going to be a, an obstacle. There's always going to be a hurdle that we got to get over and we just face it head on and go with the flow. Yeah. Now you mean like, so you, so going back to what you mean by the challenge, you know, basically it's like the cost of goods, right? Everything is so expensive nowadays. Right. Correct. Yeah. So as far as like cost of goods goes, you know, the material prices keep going up. Gas prices are up there. For instance, I'm having a workman's comp audit the beginning of August. That's going to be up there.

9:25You know, those are some stressors that I think that I encounter. But everything keeps going up in price. The insurance is higher. fuels higher it costs more to provide work and you know cover the labor the material everything just the cost of living is going up in general so oh yeah to i guess to counter that we we have to be in line with pricing however because there's so much competition in our area we have to be competitive as well so you know we're not gouging people we're we're providing a service and we're staying within the boundaries of, of, you know, providing a fair and, and respectable price, I believe, you know.

10:10What do you believe is preventing the business from reaching its next level or its full potential? I, I, I think, honestly, I think maybe a little bit of fear to grow, personal fear, letting go, trust, I suppose. I've brought on employees in the past. And sometimes it just didn't work out too well. One time I brought a guy on, he passed away after we got done working. That was a blow. I tried to bring a friend on one time that didn't work out too well. And then just trusting that the person I'm going to find is going to provide the same care and the same quality of work that the people we have with us now are providing.

10:58Oh, in regards to what you were saying, you know, I hear that a lot from entrepreneurs, speaking to entrepreneurs all the time, that it's not hard to find workers. It's hard to find workers that actually do a good job and care and show up and, you know, give a damn. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you know, like you said, and you're saying it too, that, you know, yeah, you can find people to do a job for you, but it's hard to find people that actually care and put the kind of work in that you're looking for, the kind of quality that you're looking for. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

11:30Yeah. And I don't necessarily know how much, you know, I'm comfortable with the sizes that we are now and our customer base. And I don't know how much more I would like to grow. So growing isn't necessarily on the top of my list for goals as far as the business goes. I just think that, you know, keeping our client base that we have now and providing the same amount of exceptional service, that's what's important to me. Okay. Okay. Okay. So you're pretty comfortable with the revenue the business is bringing in everything? Yeah. Okay. No, that's good. That's good. Now, what is something people assume is easy about running this type of business that is actually very difficult?

12:12I think any type of business that you have to run, there's nothing easy about it, right? there's a lot that goes on with that as far as answering the phone you know providing some sort of marketing to get your information out there keeping up with the social medias you know keeping up with your Google reviews responding to your Google reviews managing your funds all of that is difficult I feel that there's nothing really easy about it but you know just, you just got to show up. If you show up and you answer your phone and you, and you care about what you do, I think you're going to be okay. Now, from what I saw online, kind of through your social media that the company evolved from a Sears garage solutions operation.

13:08Is that right? Correct. Into the garage doc. Yeah. Now, and it morphed into the garage doc. Now what was hardest about carrying trust forward while creating a new independent identity? I think that's something that we're still encountering. But, you know, as long as, you know, we have the same faces, we have the same, everything is the same, right? Nothing's changed. The phone number, work address, the people behind the phone, you know, everything's still the same. So, I mean, as long as we continue to do the things that we were doing previously, I think that's what's important. The hardest part of the transition, I believe, has been the software part of it, internal field management software to manage the crews and the jobs.

14:02That's probably the trickiest thing on this whole transition. Okay. Now, and let's get into the, you know, kind of the per you a little bit more personally, kind of the person behind the business. You know, what is something about you personally or about your personality type that had to change for the business to grow? Did you have to change anything about the way you process information or the way you handle employees that had to change for the business to grow?

14:30I'm sure there are. I'm sure there were things that I had to change. However, I feel that when I stepped up into this ownership role, I've had the relationships with the team. I had the relationships with our customers. And so that was something that was already kind of established before. So, you know, I just feel, I feel that you just be true to who you are and everything will work out just fine. Okay. Now, about how many hours a week are you working in and on the business right now, would you say? Okay. Uh, between probably 50 to 60 hours a week. Yeah. Okay. A little bit, a little bit more than the usual work life.

15:29So how much of that time is spent doing work someone else could eventually own? Hmm. You mean like, what do you mean someone else could own? Like if, if we wanted to sell the business? No, no, no. I mean, like, basically, like, if you were able to hire somebody, like, let's say if you're working on a lot of operational stuff that you could hire an operations manager to take over eventually or something of that nature. Right. How much, yeah. How much work could you, how much work are you doing now in the business that you could eventually hire somebody to kind of take on? Oh, yeah. Probably half of it.

16:05You know, I have a, that's probably one of my downfalls right there is just the control. the control aspect of it. You know, I like to have my hands in everything, but, but maybe like, there's, there's definitely a lot of things that I could pass, pass the torch and, you know, delegate some of these responsibilities to, to someone else that, you know, would free me up with time for, for other things to help the business. Yeah. Yeah. So you're thinking about 50, 50, kind of 50 % of what you're doing probably could be delegated. Yeah. Yeah. Now, what would you say, Mike, is your greatest strength as a business owner that you're aware of right now?

16:47I'm going to have to say my personality. I feel that I'm able to get along with anyone that I face. You know, I can. I'm open. I don't judge. I'm a likable person and I tend to like everybody. I have, you know, I think that that quality is something that that's important to have. I think it's similar to like raising a child. There are some difficulties, you know, as far as that goes as well. And that, you know, separating yourself from, you know, the parent role and the friend role. Same goes with the business, separating yourself from the ownership management role and the friend role as well.

17:40Sometimes that can be difficult. Yeah. Yeah. No, I get it. I get it. No, you're right. You're right. You know, I'm the same way. I kind of judge people based on, you know, how they are. Right. I don't have pre, pre, pre, you know, Oh, I'm going to judge you right off the bat. I don't even know you haven't even spoken to me yet. You know what I mean? It's going to be based off character and how they, I was a person, not based on how they look or whatever, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Same way. Now, now, now going into that, you know, kind of talking about your strength. Let's get into the other side of it.

18:09You know, what is one leadership or business skill you know you still need to improve on? Make your business. Organization. Organization. Organization is definitely at the top of my list. Yeah. If you look at, well, I'd prefer you not take a look at my desk, but if you were to look at my desk, you would see what I'm talking about. Yeah. It's just a mess. However, I seem to know where everything's at. As soon as I start to go through it, you know, I'll have a better idea. I have it more organized. But, you know, when someone touches it, then it throws everything off. That person's not me. I love it.

18:52I love your honesty. I love your honesty. Yeah. Now, garage doors can involve urgent repairs, you know, major replacements and ongoing maintenance. How do you balance emergency demand with building predictable repeat revenue? So emergency, you know, we're going to take our our customers word on on a lot of this. Right. If the customer calls, we can kind of get a sense of urgency from from the tone in their voice. You know, or or they'll tell us, hey, look, my car's trapped in the garage. I need to get out. Sometimes we might swing by to just get their car out, right? And then come back and address the problem the next day if we have a full load.

19:41But, you know, I think that that's how we are able to determine whether or not now the maintenance, we have customers who they call every year for maintenance. We currently don't have a maintenance plan, but it's something that we've been kicking back and forth for repeat business, I suppose. Like, right, I have a customer tomorrow morning. I'm going to who he said he would like to have a tune up done annually and to set us up, set him up with, you know, some kind of maintenance plan. Well, at this point, I'll put it in the calendar to call this gentleman at the beginning of August. but you know that's kind of that's kind of where i'm at now okay okay now what do you and this can typically be tough but i know you said you've been talking a lot about your competitors out there so i know you're definitely aware of them what what do you think why do you think your your customers choose you you know what are you doing versus your competitors that make that makes you stand out a little bit over over the other people out there uh one is we're we're very honest right there's a lot of shady people out there who will tell you that you need something that you might not need for instance there was like a i watched it like a 2020 on it and it was like a 2020 or 60 minutes or something like that where they had these different garage companies go out there and, and, and they, they rigged the garage door and had a camera on it and they showed these other companies going out and, and they had, you know, the people, the homeowner would go inside and then the camera was catching these guys adjust the sensors and, or, or do things that weren't, you know, weren't supposed to, you know, that wasn't broken already.

21:40And then when the customer came back out, they would tell the, the homeowner that, you know, this is, this is what's wrong with it when that wasn't really ever the thing that was wrong with it. You know, we're not one of those companies. So, right. So if you come out and it's just something silly, like a safety sensor that is pointed at the ground or something, we'll, we'll just charge you our service call fee for that and then take care of it. Right. Our goal isn't to get rich off of one job. It's to earn your trust and turn you into a loyal customer so that anytime you have an issue with your garage, you know that you can count on us to repair it properly.

22:23Yeah, yeah. The first person you think of, hey, man, let me call the garage doc, right? Right. Yeah, let me call Mike. Let me get Mike out here. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I love it. I love it. Now, you know, and I want you to be kind of be as kind of be as specific as you can. But when a qualified lead comes in, what percentage of confidence are you that it becomes an actual customer? I would say probably like 30 percent. Honestly, like the leads now. All right. If we can get if we get you on the phone, then that's the first thing. If we can get you on the phone, there's a good chance that we'll be able to get in front of you.

23:03If we can get in front of you, then I would say that we, and this is from our previous studies, we're about 80 to 90 percent when we will close the deal, right? You know, some experts will say if you're at 80 or 90 percent, then your prices are too low. So, you know, if you forget, I want to say it was like around 60 percent or something, but that that you should be at. Don't quote me on that. I take that back. But that's where we're at. We're between 80 and 90. If we can get you on the phone and get and then get in front of you, then there's a good chance we're going to we're going to close the deal with you.

23:46for us it's just important that whoever's answering the phone gets the appointment for us to get in front of you right if a customer wants to get a quote and they try they're trying to get it over the phone we are we won't typically give you a price for something over the phone because we want to get to your house we want to make sure that what we're quoting is is what you need and what you want versus, you know, quoting something. And a lot of homeowners, they don't know exactly what's wrong with it. They'll tell you that my garage door opener is broken and that's because it's not lifting the door.

24:24But when you get there, it can't lift the door because the springs are broken. So, you know, they want to quote on a new garage door opener when that's not the problem. It's your broken spring problem, right? So, you know, if we can get in front of you, then there's a good chance that we're going to close the job. Okay. So 80, 90 % if you can get in front of them. Yep. Gotcha. Now tell us a little bit. That 30 % is like the paid leads is I guess what I'm referring to, right? 30 % of those paid leads that we were doing, for instance, like Angie's and HomeAdvisor and Thumbtack and Porch and Yelp, right?

25:04It becomes, it becomes a lot of those are if you respond first to the customer, right? So there's a lot of times where I had to scale these back because you have leads coming in from all over the place. And if you're not the first to respond to these folks, then there's a good chance that you're not going to get the business, right? So that's, that's the 30 % is, is from these paid leads. Those are kind of difficult sometimes, especially if you're overwhelmed and you have a lot going on already. The paid leads kind of become less of a priority than what's going on. Okay. Love that answer. Now, as far as, you know, can you tell us a little bit of, you know, you've kind of talked about some of the people that you got working to you, but tell us a little bit about the team supporting the business today.

25:56Yeah, so we are a family-owned business, right? I own the company. However, I have my mom and my stepdad that are involved with the business. Carol is my mom. She answers the phones and she takes a load off of me when she's able to do that. So Dave is my stepdad. Dave is, he's out in the field. He does quotes. He'll help pick a door up and deliver that to the job and help you get set up and install, you know, help you install it, take away some of the old debris that's there. We've got Mike Tobias, and Mike is 1099 that is loyal to us and our customers. And Mike is out there installing and repairing and taking care of our customers.

26:51He's a part of the family. Okay. Okay. Now, which role would you say is hardest to replace or hire for? I would say field technician, you know, someone that we're going to be putting in front of the customer, you know, and that also falls back to what I was saying before, you know, with, you know, you can find a, find a person. It's just finding the right person. so I think that would that's the hardest right now finding the right person okay now Mike this is hypothetical let's say if your business doubled or even tripled overnight let's say you come in tomorrow and you got tripled the amount of work to do right suddenly all of a sudden all the leads converted and man we've got triple the work to do for the rest of the week what is the very first thing that would break and need to be fixed

27:55we would need to pull on another technician for sure yeah if it were to double or triple overnight we would definitely need to bring on someone else now we have we do have other Another 1099 that we use sometimes. But we stick with the core group here. But, yeah, another group of guys that are just great people. They're just good humans, and they do great work. So we will use them if we get too busy or backed up. Okay. All right, perfect. Enough of the – well, some of these are business-oriented. But yeah, we're going to get into this or that. So I'm going to give you two things to select. I want you to give me, you know, select one of them.

28:45And it kind of give me a little reason why you chose that kind of getting into your a little bit of your personality a little bit outside of work a little bit. All right. So Liftmaster or Genie? Liftmaster. Okay. And why'd you choose Liftmaster? I chose LiftMaster because LiftMaster is made by Chamberlain, the Chamberlain group. Chamberlain makes LiftMaster, Chamberlain, and Craftsman. And if something goes on a LiftMaster, the parts are much easier to obtain than if they are on a Genie, right? Locally here, there's not a door distributor or parts distributor that provides Genie repair parts. you know, or replacement parts.

29:31So if a logic board were to go out in a genie, it's something that we would have to source from an online vendor versus if it's a lift master, we can go to the door center here and get the parts from them. Truck or sports car? I like truck. Yeah. Just, you know, I love sports cars too, though, but truck because I'm able to tow things. Yeah. Okay. Ford or Chevy? I have to go with Ford. Why Ford over Chevy? I drive a Ford. Yeah, I have two of them. I have a transit, the transit van, and then I have a F-250 Super Duty. So I have to go with our Ford. I know that's a big thing with people, Ford or Chevy.

30:23But we also have a couple Rams, Dodge Rams, and those are good trucks as well. Chevys are great trucks too. It's just what I currently have, right? Yeah. But the Ford has done me right, so I haven't had any issues with it. Knock on wood, but that's why I'm going with that. My stepdad, he drives a Chevy. He just got a brand new one, and it is bad. But yeah, Ford is mine. Okay. Milwaukee or Dewalt? Dewalt. I say Dewalt because I think the Milwaukee batteries are trash. Yeah, I'm with you on that. I swear about Dewalt. So I'm with you on that. I love them. That's all. That's all the tools that I have.

31:11Everything's a Dewalt. That's all I got. I converted. I was at Milwaukee. I had Milwaukee everything. But like my batteries just kept dying and dying and dying. like you know they were just turning you know flashing green and red on the charger so man this thing is this is junk and Dewalt not going back yeah I'm not going back but I'll tell you what those have some really cool tools man their whole 12 volt they got more 12 volt tools than anyone and their whole 12 volt line is really cool but yeah Dewalt for me man yeah you know coffee or energy drink coffee yeah i don't do energy drinks i mean i sometimes i'll have a like a red bull and vodka or something but but i'll have coffee every morning pizza or tacos hmm oh man i like tacos and i like pizza last night but but it's tuesday today so i'm gonna to have tacos because taco tuesday tuesday you know we got the mexican restaurant in front of our place so you know we're pretty loyal to them on tuesdays okay steak or barbecue i like steak yeah nice prime rib can't beat it how do you like your steak done i like it medium rare okay there you go okay beautiful bud yep yeah yeah Yeah, I got a, I got a, my sister-in-law, actually, she likes her stuff well done.

32:50And I'm like, she's like, oh, I only like filet mignon. I like it well done. I'm like, man, that's, you're just ruining that, that poor steak. Yeah, yeah, for sure. She needs to just try it, a little salt and pepper on the grill, undercooked. And yeah, it'll be so juicy. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's good stuff. My mouth starts with water. Yeah. I mean, you know, you're just like, oh, filet mignon. and it's like you're spending all this money on this filet mignon, but then you're ruining it by cooking it all the way. That doesn't make any sense. For sure. Yeah, I do like filets. I think, what is it, the porterhouse?