Carrie Kelsch on Transformative Cultures at A Plus Garage Doors - EP.296

0:00Being an entrepreneur, that's what I do is I take risks. As a business owner, part of the game is taking a risk. Like scared money don't make money, right? You don't actually fail if you don't stop, if you don't quit. If you just keep going and reinvent yourself and be able to shift when things aren't working, shift away from that and just keep reinventing it and tweaking it until you get it right. But failure just comes when you quit and give up. How would you describe how the business started and where it began in your time in mortgage? Yeah. Everyone kind of has a winding road into garage doors.

0:45I'm curious what yours looked like. Yeah, that is definitely a winding road into there. So back in 2005, I was a mortgage broker, a single mom. and I was dating a guy that worked at a garage store company. So he kept asking me to open a garage store company for him because he just felt like he could do it better. And I was dating him. I wasn't really interested in that. So after asking me a couple more times, he finally came and overcame all my objections. And one of them was he really got me excited about being able to have the opportunity for my kids to work at the garage store company when they get older.

1:23so I had some little littles and I wanted to be able to make sure that when they turn 16 they can go get a job how old were your kids at the time you know what they were like under 10 so they were just just younger and so I opened the garage store company so that they would have a place they could work and it was supposed to be set it on a shelf and forget it I wasn't supposed to do anything but I think it wasn't even a month in and he's calling me up going I need some help I'm like oh my gosh what do you need help with and I'm just doing my mortgage broker and think is that is what's providing for our family's lifestyle and he's like I need someone to answer phones so I go to my resources and I find somebody that can answer a phone for us remotely and so I set that up and I get going and then I'm you know there's really nothing to it and then pretty soon he gives me another call.

2:15I need some more help. I'm like, okay, what do you need? And he's like, I need some advertising done. So I started doing some advertising. So I just kind of slowly got like pulled into it more and more and more. And at first it was just after hours and weekends. And then it was like half my day was garage doors. The other half was mortgage brokering. Well, here comes 2006 and, and seven and eight when the housing crisis just crashed hard. And so in 2008, when all of the banks were just going under, I'm like, this is a really good time for me to transition from mortgage brokering into the garage door space.

2:53What was that like on the mortgage side for you? What was your experience week to week, month to month as that crisis unfolded? Oh, my gosh. It was scary because that was my only source of income was these deals that I was closing. And I really specialized in jumbo home loans. And jumbo loans were the first ones that were hit. And so I had a whole bunch of clientele that were like ready to close. And then Lehman Brother comes, their rep comes to see me. And he's like, by the way, we just went bankrupt. And we're closing our doors. And I was like, what? We're closing next week. And he's like, no, we're not.

3:30And so it was shifting from one company. And then I'd have to like rush and move everything to Countrywide just for the same thing to happen to Countrywide. And then, and so it just was just a domino effect. And so I was like, I don't even know what I'm going to do. Like, how am I even going to make a living? And I couldn't get any of my deals closed. And that's why, and I think this was definitely 2017, the end and the beginning of 2008. And I was just like, this is exhausting. Just spinning my wheels, not getting anywhere, not making any money. And I look and I'm like, oh my gosh, how are we even living?

4:05Well, look back and like, oh, the garage store company actually had revenue coming in. that was supplementing us during those times. And so then I was shifted gears and I was like, oh, now I'm a garage door person. So I jumped in full-time in 2008 to do the garage doors, just run the operations. But to me, it wasn't my own company. This was just a place I worked to make sure food's on the table. And I didn't even see it as a company. I just saw it as like, this is how we get food, right? This is how we provide for the family. and so working that every single day and it wasn't until 2013 when one of my advertisers that he used to sell me online marketing so he would sell me online marketing he told me you should go into a course called Goldman Sachs 10 ,000 small business program and I was curious I was like why why should I do that he's like because don't you own the business I'm like well yeah he's like but I'm thinking, what business?

5:07Like, this is just how we make money. And so I just didn't wrap my brain around that I actually had a company. And so I went, when I went to this course, I walk in just completely embracing my imposter syndrome heart because I'm like, what am I doing here with all these great big business owners that have gone to college and know what they're doing where I'm just running this little tiny shop? I think we were doing like 1.5 million a year. And I had a couple employees and I was like, I don't even know what I'm doing. I don't belong here. So I just really embraced the imposter syndrome part of it and, and grew into it.

5:47And now I can proudly say that, you know, we've, we've grown, we've implemented a lot of things like implementation is definitely the key, but we've implemented a lot of things. And now we're a$55 million company and very proud of where we've expanded and grown to. What did you learn the most or what key ideas came from that time? One of the biggest ones was replace yourself and delegate. I was at the time wearing all the hats, doing everything. And the first thing that you get when you go into the program, then you get business advisors. And the first thing my business advisor said is she's like, why are you doing this?

6:34I'm like, what do you mean? I mean, you got to do this in order to, you know, get to the next step. She's like, no, why are you doing this? This is something you should hire out. It's like, we don't have the money to hire it out. She's like, you absolutely have the money to hire it out. So we just looked at our financials, made sure that like they were clean and started delegating and replacing the jobs that I was doing. And what it did is it open it up so that I could think bigger and grow bigger and grow bigger. So delegation was just such a key part of that. I bet that felt painful with mortgage going away and now delegating and hiring out money that you would have taken home is now going to a new person on your team.

7:17I bet that was painful for a while. Yeah. Having employees come on, it's always going to be a painful part. You're constantly replacing them. And if you're growing, you're constantly hiring and you never know what you're going to get. So as they show up on the interview, isn't necessarily how they're going to show up three years down or seven months down the road. And so it's definitely a painful part, but I feel like if you don't have employees, then you're not able to scale your business and you actually don't have a company that has any value. You have yourself, you have a job, not a company.

7:54You mentioned earlier starting the business was about providing a job for your kids one day. Why do you have that belief? Was that something you grew up with or your parents asked you or imparted on you? That is such a good question and very well thought out. I did have my parents did grow up that way. Like my dad was in the cabinet industry. and when the kids hit 16, 17, 18, they could easily just go get a job from him. Everybody knew that was an automatic end. You can just go get a job at the cabinet shop. I wanted to create that for my kids. So it's something that I never worked at my dad's cabinet shop because I started having kids when I was 16.

8:38So I never worked there, but I did love that that was always on the table and a lot of my siblings went and worked there if not all of them do you wish you'd work there no i'm i'm really good with the way my life turned out and where i'm at and i think when if it would have went a different way i definitely wouldn't have been here and when did your when your kids start working in the business like when they're 10 years old right so it's like oh hey your job is to go get the mail or your job is to empty out the garbages especially when your business is at your house or a shop in your backyard the kids start very young learning that they get a contribute for the family what would you recommend to other owners who have kids either in the business or growing up and they want them just even if they don't like working in the business and don't want to do it long term at least getting like a first job and getting to lift their hands and do something?

9:37Yeah. It's a loaded question. It's really complicated because some children work really well with their parents and then some children need to go out and get another job and they need to learn from somebody else. So it really just depends on the individual, how they are. But I would always say that like, make sure that your children know, and this is what I did, that your kids aren't trapped there. Because if they feel trapped there, like this is what I have to do. This is the family business. Where's the passion? They're like in prison. So I always told my kids, look, this is a safety net. You go do whatever you want to do and we'll catch you.

10:17Like you always have a job here. So it's that way they could go out and decide what they want to do. And if it was garage doors, then that's where their passion was. that's where I want them to be. You have the kind of confidence to go take risks and try their own career if there's something they're excited about. Exactly. Well, you don't want to have family running the company when family doesn't want to be there. That does not make a good culture for your whole team. So just making sure that they really want to be there, I think is important. When did culture feel like it became an important thing you were focusing, you had to focus more on?

10:56I feel like I was always, well, I shouldn't say that. I'm going to back this back up to when I did my Goldman Sachs 10 ,000 small business program. They actually asked, hey, what's the culture of your company? And I had no idea what they were talking about. I'm like, the culture of my company? White? I don't know. I had no idea. And they explained to me what this meant. And so ever since I did that course, I saw how important culture was. And I started to lean into it going, wait, if you don't, if you're not intentional with your core culture, it's going to happen regardless. And so looking back, the culture of my company at that time was yell at people to get them to do what you want.

11:44Like if to motivate them, you just disgrace them and tear them down. and that motivates them. Push really hard until you're just exhausted and you can't go on any further. Like that was our culture. So it was really, it set itself up. Did any of them work for a little bit, but not long-term or was it no, none of this is working. None of this is helping. There's things that work when you're smaller to build up your culture. You can see touring our company. There's a lot of culture things implemented. Well, there's things that work when you're a smaller company that don't work when you're bigger.

12:21And then there's things that are going to work when you're bigger that you cannot do when you're smaller. So you really have to scale your culture as you scale your company. And there's also the remote situation. So like, how do you get the culture to bleed over into other locations? And so there's new problems coming at us all the time to make sure that the culture is protected. And that's what my HR and my general manager really are good at is they feel like they're like protectors of the culture and whoever they let in they have to know that when they're hiring first of all they're a good human being so if they don't even pass that one of you're a good human being you're not going to make it to round two like we're not even interested you could be the best salesperson and it's like but you're not a good human being it's great for you you're just not the right fit for us What were the first basic things you did culture-wise when you were smaller?

13:18We would do events to get people together and show appreciation. Like maybe there was this one time we rented a big Hummer limousine. And we drove to everybody's individual house and picked them up. And then we drove to a really high-end restaurant. And we had dinner and drinks and enjoyed it. And then we jumped back in the party bus, you know, the big Hummer limousine. and we drove and dropped everybody off. It was just something to show our appreciation and it just kind of starts there. I mean, we've always done like Christmas bonuses. One of the things that we started, this was from, came back from my boyfriend that I started the company with and it was his grandpa owned like a yard, which was like, I'm trying to think of how to put this.

14:12It wasn't an Anderson lumber, but it was like an Anderson lumber yard, like a lumber yard. And so he owned this lumber yard. And so he had quite a few employees. And every year around Christmas, he would give every employee$100 for every year that they've been there. So my boyfriend at the time, which turned out to be my husband, wanted to do this. And so we implemented that right away. so we implemented this right away because of something he thought was so fun that his grandpa did and so on the one year anniversary everybody like you get a hundred bucks or it was the Christmas so one year you get a hundred bucks and then the next Christmas you get two hundred dollars and it starts small but what now we're giving out like two thousand dollars just to you know in cash giving it out and so they it really grows into it and they they really enjoyed that over time.

15:06And it just, it really celebrates really a hundred dollars isn't much. And when you've been there five years, like even$500 isn't like going to make or save your mortgage, you know, it's just like, it's, it's going to help out, but it's not going to save you, but it's nice to stand up and be acknowledged for the time that you've been there. So that's really what it was, what it meant to me was recognizing how long they've been there year over year over year. I really liked your quarterly revenue bonus concept. I never heard any company, either garage or anything else, do that before. Yeah. Can you explain that concept, where that came from?

15:46Yeah. So I'm just going to start out with all my great ideas came from someone else, right? So I don't have to reinvent the wheel. It's already invented. I just go and see it and then we make it better. We were touring other shops and I was touring WeCare in California. It's a plumbing and HVAC company there. And as I'm walking through, I see these alarms that are going off. And so I asked them what it's for. And they're like, they didn't have a loud sound, but they did have the red flashy lights. So it wasn't super disruptive. And I asked them what it was for. and they said every time they hit a huge sale.

16:27So when I bring it back to my team, I bring it back to my executive team and I'm like, this would be so fun to do. How do we celebrate when we hit our landmarks or hit our goals or, you know? And so I told them like, can we get red sirens going on, you know? And we're trying to figure this out. And one of my staff's like, what if we just did like an old school bell? It's like, all right. I mean, that wasn't my vision, but that's an idea and there's no bad idea. So we brought in this, just this little bell and we were like, okay, now let's do it with like every, but at this time we're also restructuring how we did bonuses and we wanted to give people a bonus based on revenue.

17:08So we're like, perfect. Let's base it on revenue and base it on a million dollars. And so that's where we came up with for every million dollars that we do, the whole office staff gets together and we ring the bell and we celebrate that we just grew another million dollars. Now their bonus just grew whatever if they're at$75 per million or if they're at like $200 per million their bonus just jumped. So as you were seeing as we were doing the tour we have hit 15 million this quarter and so whoever their bonus is going to be is their bonus times 15. So X times 15 will be their bonus. And that will be handed out, I would say, at the end of October is when we usually hand them out the month after the quarter end.

17:59So, and then bonus day is such a fun celebration. And all of this goes down to culture, right? Work isn't really that fun. So how can we make it fun, even if it's just for a moment, even if it's just to ring the bell, everybody gets together and we cheer cheer and ring the bell it takes maybe five minutes and then everybody's back working again how can you just break it up so it's not so mundane right and so now once a quarter we have our bonus handout well when you start working for the company on day one you've got to pick your walk-up song this is your celebration song some people call their money song if we're celebrating you or if we're acknowledging you if we're giving you a bonus, we're playing your walk-up song.

18:45So on bonus day, everyone wears their bling, wears their gold chains. We come in and I walk around and I hand out these checks playing whoever's check I have. That's the bonus song I'm playing. And I'll walk up to them. They already know they can hear it coming. They're up dancing at their desk before I even get there. Then I give them the bonus, then on to the next one. And it's just a very fun time. Like everyone seems to show up for bonus day there's nobody sick no one's taking a vacation it's a fun time well there's little things you do around the office too that there's certainly awards but even stuff like in office or in meeting or the name tag on a monitor yeah there's a lot of small details that come together in a nice cohesive way it seems yeah i feel like it's all the little details that just like a mozark painting you know mosaic painting when you have the mosaic painting and you've got all the little tiny details and then you take the view out and you just use this beautiful picture it's no different here i put name tags on everyone's computer or desk clear down even even mine has a name tag so that people know who they're talking to right and you're more likely to talk to somebody if you know their name and with the size of our company then you've got and people out in the field that aren't here every day when they come in they can go up and say hi amber and feel very confident that that's amber you know and they don't do like think was that her name what was her name so it's it's really helpful just like when you show up at the customer's house and you've got a name tag customers are more likely to talk to you if they know your name nobody wants to call you hey you and it's just it's really uncomfortable so making sure that there's name tags so people can be addressed just makes it that friendlier opening and it's the same in the work field as it is in the office what didn't work what ideas did you try that i got it i got it i have so many of those Like I say, I have a thousand ideas and, you know, a small percentage are good.

20:58So one of the ideas that didn't work. Well, there's some ideas that worked for the time and then didn't work. And I'll just tell you, one of those was I used to have all of my technicians text me their numbers at the end of each day. So they had to personally text me. And we were on a group text, so it was me and a couple other people on the text. and so each individual had to send a group text of what their revenue or it's actually their sales what their sales numbers were for the day and that worked for a while but then once we started like our new crm we didn't need to do that so then it was just duplicate and taking up more it was like a duplicate process and it was taking up more time than what it was worth and you know they're having to add up all the numbers so it seems like that that like They worked and then we transitioned and they didn't work.

21:49Something that I implemented that didn't work. We have this software that made it so you could take any garage door out there, any design from any of the manufacturers, and you could actually project it right onto the customer's door in real time. so like how amazon has display in your space or view it in your space you could do that so you could view the garage door in your space and i think that is such a good idea but it just never took off it's like enough people didn't use it or it just wasn't made simple enough and without any glitches but so that's one of them we really enjoyed the the ads your team created too when did you realize that they are pulling more people to create content for the business yeah so as you scale the business you've got to scale your marketing right and rather that is keeping it in-house or going out and scaling it you know third party it's it naturally will scale third party, if that's what you're doing.

23:03But we knew that we wanted it to be always in-house. And so it was 2023 is around when we started to really grow that department. And in 2024, we got a really good CMO that had such a good creative mind. And he took it to a whole nother level with the ads. So I think it's just finding the right seat on the bus, but you know, finding the right person to be on the bus with you that really can help get your vision and your mission across to in the homes and to customers. And his goal was to make A plus garage doors, a household name. And that's what he was set to accomplish. Are there some memorable milestones similar to that along the way in growing the business where suddenly we can do this or this becomes possible or we can have this person's running team now yes absolutely to grow and scale the way we did there's a lot of different milestones i mentioned one being goldman sachs one of the first times that i was like oh my gosh i've got a company wait who's running this company like it was there was no systems or play processes in place and so that was one of the first ones and then going on i found i needed a really good CFO.

24:24So I didn't have a really good accounting person. I had somebody that I taught. So I taught them how to do accounting, but I'm not an accountant. So they only knew what I knew. And so stepping out and going and finding a really professional CFO to run the company with me, that was a huge milestone and pushed us in the right direction when you can just look at like, what's my cost per vehicle? What's my revenue per vehicle? Like every little thing that you need, they could get you the numbers for and it just help you be able to see what your company's doing at every any given point then after that would be the crm that we went on so the the cfo came around 2016 the crm came in 2018 and that's service titan and when they we started implementing them they took us from a very faulty process that could be hacked by almost anybody and could be manipulated by anybody in the field or anybody in the office to a very robust system that we can scale and grow with.

25:37And once we did that, we were able to just continue to grow. And Service Titan has continued to add more and more to help us grow into that. And now with AI coming, we're already set up in a really great position to just incorporate more of that to make us even more efficient and more productive. What were you doing right before Service Titan? So before Service Titan was really writing it down, like a lot of pen and paper, write it down, text out the message. which, so you get the call coming in, you would just handwrite the job and then you put the text message together and send it out to somebody in the field.

26:18And then we got to the point where we're actually putting the phone calls into Google. And so everybody had access to this Google calendar. And so you could see how faulty that is when everyone has access. They're like, I don't want to go there and they just move the job to somebody else. It was very problematic. but we would put the jobs in google calendar and they would see the job and then they would they'd be able to see everything they're doing and they'd see everything everybody else was doing but they'd be able to see their job where they're going and then once they're done then they could go to the next job problem was is that it was super easy to hack it and you could yeah you could scan the system pretty easy with that one would you in google calendar would you add the Yeah, like parts replaced or an address and you add the technician's email so they get the invite and all that.

27:11No, we weren't even that advanced. We just everyone had the same email. So we just put in their name. So everybody had the same calendar. Like it was very elementary. This is when it first came out. Like we thought we were like for us, we're like genius because we're going from pen and paper to now we're online. We feel like we're online. It's certainly better. Yeah, definitely better. They could go see it, but they're just in doing that, it did open up all sorts of new issues that were like, okay, now we got to stop people from changing the system or erasing jobs that they just don't want to show up to.

27:47Like there's a lot of situations that it exposed. And so then we were constantly trying to find how do we lock it down? And so we really went from Google Calendar to Service Time. we did try one more in between and it was like the most incredible failure so we're like okay we can't do that yeah that's a lot and then what did you learn about hiring those executive positions cfo cmo ceo like what did what was that hiring like compared to maybe hiring technicians or CSRs? Yeah, we're definitely more higher level. Like you, you want to make sure that when you're hiring somebody that is a part of your executive team, that there's a huge amount of trust between you.

28:39And it's hard knowing that when you're just interviewing for a couple days and then you're like, okay, I think I trust you. I think we're going to have good chemistry together, but it is really vital that you've got a really good work chemistry and that you can trust them and you're speaking the same language and you've got the same goals in mind, same initiative. So I think it's, for me, it took, takes a lot longer to fill those positions and it's something I don't take lightly. What do you ask or try to do in an interview to figure out if it's somebody you can trust? I don't do a lot of the interviewing anymore.

29:25Like I used to when we were smaller, but that is another thing I delegated out. So I'm not really able to answer exactly what I do. I mean, I did interview the new CMO that's coming on board. And I think to see if you can trust them, it's just a handful of questions and you still don't know. And we still won't know until we're down the road away. And then we're like, okay, this is somebody I can trust. so you just kind of have to get a feel for it i don't know if there's any brilliant question that i that i have locked and loaded that i would necessarily discover but that would be interesting to know i'd be curious too yeah it's definitely a high you know it's a bigger hire than you know techs and others what is your technician hiring and training process look like today?

30:19So a technician comes in. So this is a garage door professional. They'll come in and they're going to, they're going to diagnose what's going on with the garage doors. And then they're going to recommend the fix or the replacement. And so what it looks like for them is they'll come in and they'll do a three month or more training and they're doing ride alongs and in-person trainings to get set up so that they can go in their own vehicle. So, I mean, there's in three months, you're not going to know everything that you need to know about garage doors, but you're going to have a really good idea and get a lot of experience.

30:57And do you have new hires coming in on a regular basis or are there kind of cohorts? Like you'll train a group at a time and go from there. What we like to do is bring in no more than two new hires at a time because we want them to really feel like the attention's on them and they get the full experience going around and meeting everyone. And we don't want them to feel like they're just thrown into a group. That makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of little things you do like that in keeping the personality and making people feel comfortable and seen. It seems like really unique. Yeah. I'm going to go back to another question you asked a while ago.

31:43You said, what is something that you're doing that or that you did that didn't work? And I said, you outgrow stuff. I'm going to give you another example because it's a fun example of what you're just talking about. When we first hire somebody and so it's their first day, I want them to feel like very welcome into the pack. Right. and the best way to make somebody feel welcome is if they feel like they're giving value already so what I would do is I would have this new hire go around and pick up lunch for everyone and so they'd go and ask everybody like Alex what would you like for lunch and so they'd write it down and they'd have to have a little bit of a communication with your conversation with you and then they would usually go with the manager or somebody to go pick up lunch and then they bring it back and then they bring it to your desk like this is what you ordered so they're giving you a gift and now they have a way of connecting with you like hey you know you're the salami guy you know or you know you like the turkey on rye you know what i mean and so they just have a way to connect with you because they've already broke the ice of talking to you but we realized once you're so big you can't do that we are too big to be doing that it's a lot of lunches it's a lot of lunches.

32:59And it was like, pretty soon it's overwhelming to this new hire that just started. And they're like, I can't do it. This is way too many. Like 40 lunches is way too many for me to be ordering day one. And so we're like, okay, we really got to back that off. And so we do it differently now. We just take them out to eat. And so a couple of the team will get together and take them out. That's fun. What new things are you thinking about trying in the business? Well, we're always looking at where can we implement AI. So we've just taken on this huge project of taking on Service Titan Max, which is Service Titan with all of the pro products and all the AI that is needed to run your business.

33:46so we're really leaning into that and it takes all hands on deck it takes everybody knowing what their job is and how it needs to be running and everybody working together so that has been a big project that we're taking on but the vision of what I see it being like we just had the other day I was just talking to a couple of my team leads as they were everybody was leaving the office and they were speaking on their frustration with, well, this person's calling out sick tomorrow or they took a day off tomorrow. And so we're short on people to answer the phones. And I'm telling them, well, maybe it's time we just launch AI and see what it does.

34:31So I'm very excited for when we don't have to worry about somebody taking a day off. And I think the exact question I said to, or the exact comment I said to them when I, because they were just talking about, yeah, this person's taking tomorrow off. And so we're short on people answering phones. And I said, do you know who won't call in and take a day off? And they're like, AI. I'm like, exactly. So it's just leaning into things that will help us get better at what we're doing without having to take on more of, we don't have to take on so much of the heavy operational costs. Have you been using AI for after hours or do you have folks who work after hours for?

35:17We do both. Yeah, we have AI and we use somebody for after hours. It's just you have to train AI. If they say, oh, you can just set it and forget it, that is not the case. It does need to be trained, but yes, it does remember much better. And has it been working well so far? So far with this new system that we're doing. So far it's been, we're very encouraged by it, but it still needs some work. Is there, what other ideas come to mind as things you're excited to see and what happens or if this idea works? Yeah. I think just growing into markets and finding out like how to get into these markets, looking at the challenge of different, your different locations.

36:06Every location is different. Like Salt Lake is completely different culture than Reno, which is completely different than Las Vegas. And so figuring out how do I get in and can build a connection with the community? it's just it's it's such a challenge but it's it's really fun to try things and then see something working and then you know lean into it even more well i'm curious about new locations because there's within any new location what's important in getting it how do you first off maybe how do you decide if we want to go to any one city how do we decide if if we do if that's a valuable city for us to be in.

36:50Yeah. Again, AI is going to make it so easy to make these decisions. So I keep going back to AI, but I'm like, it really has made our process so easy. So what we used to do even six months ago, isn't what we have to do today. So today you just go like, how many people are in the market? How many garage door needs do they have? You know, you just ask some simple questions that it's going to tell you whether it's a good market to go into or not. And you can just ask AI, it's going to tell you, we used to just do all the research ourself and just find out how many people are in there, how many, you know, how many homes, how old are the homes, what is the repair like, you know, just finding out what our competition is.

37:29So now we don't have to really do much of that because the research can be done by AI. And then once you've decided, like for Reno, for example, we're going to go to Reno. How do you decide how many, how many folks you'll need on the team in Reno? What kind of space you need? What should our marketing spend look like for Reno? How do those decisions kind of come together? So that's something that we do with an executive team. So we kind of put all our knowledge together and we look at it by historically like, okay, so what do we need to start with? We need to start with this many departments and what support can people that are at the facility here, what support can they give and what's needed, what's not needed?

38:13And we've already done the trial and error with the Greenfield, opening up a new location. So the first location we actually opened was in St. George. And when we opened that location, we just thought, okay, we'll do what we're doing here in Salt Lake. And we'll just open it up in St. George, which means they have their own dispatch. They have their own accounting. So they would have everything themselves. And then we would just tell them how to do it. Well, that didn't work because they're not the same systems and processes and people. And so what we found worked is to pull all of that back and say, okay, we're going to keep the call center here.

38:53We're going to keep the accounting here. We're going to like the only thing going to the greenfield is just the warehouse and people in the field. And so just doing that and being able to shift and go, okay, we didn't do it correctly. but we learned from it and now we're gonna this is how we're gonna do it moving forward and so now when it comes to reno we knew how many people we need we know like when we need to hire another person we've got the signals that trigger us to like you need to hire somebody new now we need to you know get this person going and so we we really kind of have the roadmap of how to get there because we have done it multiple times there's a smaller bet to make if there's fewer new things being stood up and created in this new location.

39:41You don't have to risk as much in making a new location happen. That is so true. You definitely don't have to risk as much. And it's easier to grow into it, like start small and then grow into it, than to try and just dominate right out of the gates. And as for marketing, like how much marketing spend, you're always going to spend more in a market, on a new market than you do in an existing market. So you can spend up where of like 15 to 20 % for marketing in the new market and you're not making the revenue yet, but you know it's coming. So I would say just make sure and know your numbers. I mean, the goal is to get your marketing somewhere around 10 % or under, but when you're going into a new market, you might want to shift from an established market and put more in the new market.

40:31and it keeps it means you're like probably more willing to take risks and take a bet on a new place oh absolutely you may not really know you can do research and until you're there you may not have a super strong sense of what will happen yeah being an entrepreneur that's what i do is i take risks so that's that's just part of the game as a business owner part of the game is taking your risk like scared money don't make money right yes i agree what last pieces of advice would you have for other garage door owners i would say don't you don't actually fail if you don't stop if you don't quit if you just keep going and reinvent yourself and and be able to shift when things aren't working, shift away from that and just keep reinventing it and tweaking it until you get it right.

41:30But failure just comes when you quit and give up. So let's keep going at it and being willing to implement and delegate. I also like taking ideas from other industries. Oh, absolutely. Right. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. None of us do. It's already been done. on. Yes, yes, I agree. Carrie, thank you for sharing your time and for having us. This has been awesome. I appreciate your time. Yes, thank you. It's been lovely being on.

41:58Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of Think Like an Owner. If you enjoyed the show, please consider leaving us a review and telling a friend to help more folks find Think Like an Owner. For full episode transcripts in our weekly newsletter, please visit our website at tlaopodcast.com.

42:17Thank you.