What $1M+ Garage Door Owners are Doing Right Now | TLAO x TGDLP

0:00Andy Felice: All right, what's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Garage Door Podcast Lab. I'm your host, Andy Felice, and here we've got Alex Bridgeman of Durable Trades. Alex, how you doing, brother?

0:10Alex Bridgeman: I'm good. Yeah, thanks for having me, Andy. I appreciate it. It's good to see you again.

0:14Andy Felice: Yeah, no problem, man. So what do we got today?

0:16Alex Bridgeman: What do owners need to do today? Like people have a lot of questions around marketing in 2026, late 2026 at that. Every owner I talk to has some marketing question of some kind, varying complexity. Some are just getting started. Some are deep down the rabbit hole. But, you know, marketing well done. There's enough for a full time focus just in marketing. and so there's just, there's a lot to do, there's a lot to keep track of. It's easy to lose it if it all falls on the owner who is also doing eight other things throughout the day.

0:52Andy Felice: 100%, yeah. 2026, crazy year for garage door companies in my opinion. I think just to set this up properly, give it nice context, what are garage door companies? One million plus in revenue. what are they seeing in the economy and what are they what are they thinking what are they doing maybe as it relates to marketing or or other things as well but before we jump into that brother you want to like give us like do introduce yourself to to our audience because I think a lot of people that listen to our our podcast would benefit from getting to know you

1:33Alex Bridgeman: yeah absolutely i am from portland oregon i started we met because i have a small business podcast that i started while i was in college so senior year i started think like an owner to go meet small business owners eventually after talking to almost 300 at this point really enjoyed it and want to spend my career owning and building great small businesses and decided that of industries I had spent time around, like Garage Doors had the most personal tie from the podcast and it felt like a business that I really enjoyed the people in and the owners that I was meeting. I was having a good time spending time with them.

2:10Alex Bridgeman: And so with a co-founder, started Durable Trades here in Portland, meant to be a long-term permanent owner of great garage door businesses with a focus around the Pacific Northwest. And we formed the business a couple of weeks ago. We finished our initial fundraise and formation and are now getting started and talking to more and more owners. And they have a lot of marketing questions. They have a lot of operational questions. And they have a lot of questions about what working with us and what us investing and buying part of their business looks like and feels like. And we can talk all about different areas of kind of the strategy of durable trades, which we could spend some time on.

2:53Alex Bridgeman: But I'm excited for using my podcast and time with you in this podcast, going over, you know, talking to owners in garage doors, what they're seeing, what they're paying attention to, and then using that content and sharing it with other owners so that they can have a sense for what are others doing? What ideas have other owners, you know, found work for them? And maybe that idea works for this other owner over here and whatnot. It's also just, as you know, podcasts are a great way to spend time with someone, get to know them. It's an excuse to spend 60, 90, two hours with somebody and really get to know them and go in depth on topics that usually each person is kind of a nerd about.

3:37Alex Bridgeman: And so it's a really, really fun way to meet lots of people. And we've been using my podcast, which I've now run for eight years to meet owners, guys like you in the industry who just know a lot of people. and know a lot of things about the industry that we can learn from. And so it's been a fun way to use the podcast for something bigger here.

3:56Andy Felice: I love that you use the word nerd in that because I'm such a self-proclaimed nerd. Like I own it all the way around and I throw that term out, like talking to garage door guys all the time. Like you want nerds, you know, working with you. I want to kind of adjust something because the way you put that is just so eloquent and so nice. I mean, I'm a simple guy. I'm a marketing guy. The way that I've introduced you to a couple people, I think people need to know you. And the way that I describe you, either tell me I'm a fool because I'm not articulating this the way that you'd like, or I don't know, tell me your opinion.

4:34Andy Felice: But I like to say, hey, this is my buddy Alex. He's a PE company that's not a shark. That's not sketchy. That's not someone to be afraid of. No, someone to be ready to, you know, where's it coming from? It's private equity. But you and I have had so many conversations, and I have a little bit of knowledge of how finance and such works. And I just think the way that you're going about acquiring, looking for a couple garage door companies in your neck of the woods, your part kind of northwest United States, maybe down into Utah, Colorado, potential for that too. Do you feel like that's a reasonable way to put it?

5:18Andy Felice: Because I feel like when we talk about ourselves, making as short as possible and making it as simple as possible, the way to make it land with people. That's just me being a marketing nerd, but I would love to hear your opinion on that.

5:33Alex Bridgeman: It's fair. There's durable trades that exist to build a great garage for a business. And our business is owning these businesses across the Pacific Northwest and retaining brands, owning them for long term and having sustainable growth over a long period of time. It's a company with shareholders versus a fund, a private equity fund with LPs. A little bit of a difference there. But I think private equity has done like a service to us. They have done a phenomenal job of reaching lots and lots of owners. Owners had a chance to hear what selling their business to private equity sounds like and could look like.

6:07Alex Bridgeman: and it feels like for them. It's a phenomenal fit for a lot of owners. A lot of owners prefer that and choose that. And it works great. Others want something a little bit different, a little bit more long-term oriented. That's where we come in and we have a different story and a different potential path for their business that I think other owners resonate with. But there's over 10 ,000 independent garage door businesses out there. That's 10 ,000 owners. Every owner has a different opinion, different view of what they want their life and their business to look like and feel like. There's an answer out there for everybody.

6:40Alex Bridgeman: And for some, private equity is a phenomenal answer. And for others, we can talk to them and we end up often being an interesting example or interesting potential way for their career to go. So there's a lot of ways out there that someone could transition their business and take on a partner.

6:56Andy Felice: Love that, man. And that's why I think you and I kind of connected. You see the value in this industry. you see how things are operating, how they've operated in the past, and you've got a really good niche, within a niche, within a niche. I love how focused you are. The more niche you are, the easier it is to market. So awesome, man. Well, I'm glad we got that out of the way. I'm sure more of that will come up in our conversation. But the topic of this episode, what are garage door guys and gals or a couple gals in the industry that are 1 million plus in revenue what are they seeing in the economy and what are they doing about it you talk to a lot of garage door guys and gals I talk to a lot of garage door guys and gals have you noticed anything has anything come up anything

7:55Alex Bridgeman: at all I've I'm not certainly not the expert on marketing that you are I have little anecdotes

8:02Andy Felice: I want to just say real quick, I like this podcast to be all about garage doors. Of course, marketing does get into it, but I think we don't have to see it through that lens only. Of course, I'll tie it into that once in a while, but nothing's off limits, finance, ops, anything. Absolutely.

8:25Alex Bridgeman: We found there are businesses that are idling, staying consistent over last year, some are declining, some are growing. Oftentimes you can find all three in the same city. It's a unique time. There's a lot of really ambitious owners who are thinking about what their business looks like in two or three years and building towards that, investing in teams. And it's not just AI, it might be like a key salesperson or getting their financials in order or finally making a key migration or software migration or looking at rebranding. Like there's everyone's busy with some project and moving on with their business and it doesn't have that doesn't all, you know, tie to AI or whatnot.

9:09Alex Bridgeman: It has been interesting seeing more, I think, you know, old school tactics get mentioned more and more. I've heard I've heard more people talk about canvassing, you know, than I thought I would expect to hear or farmers markets. I did not expect those to be like a topic among a few owners. Those have done surprisingly well, shockingly well in some cases. So those are exciting.

9:32Andy Felice: I've got one client that he just crushes it at farmer's markets, selling replacements and then adding on to his email list. And then he does his own monthly emails. You just don't expect stuff like that.

9:48Alex Bridgeman: It's silly, but it sounds funny to talk about, but crushes it. Because you're in person. And customers are, potential customers are walking by. They can talk to you, interact with you. You can bring, you know, panel samples if you want to, but not even that. Just have a signup form and, you know, spin the wheel for the kids to win a free tune-up. And, you know, just collect names and emails, addresses. You can do surprisingly well. I think people like, especially with, you know, so much AI and digital being like top of mind right now. I think people like the analog of there's a person right there that I can go talk to, build trust with them, have them come out and see.

10:32Alex Bridgeman: There's a realness to that. There was one anecdote from an owner who had a really good farmer's market recently. And a lady was walking by and came up and said, I've been needing a garage door for like two years and just hadn't gotten to it. And here you are. And they're going out and they're getting her new door. And it's awesome.

10:50Andy Felice: It's just, those kind of places, it's like people have their guard down. You know, they're going there to get their fruits and vegetables and, you know, fresh milled grain, you know, bread and stuff. And you just don't expect a garage. And so you see it and it's like, oh, what a convenience. Like, I can't believe that's here. Yeah, I'll go and chat with them. You're not going to a home show where everyone's trying to sell you when you go to a home show. So I think it's about knowing your audience and knowing there's some psychology. there. You know, there's just more relaxed. But what you're saying, you brought up AI a couple times.

11:26Andy Felice: And in the economy, like right now, there's so many, like the technical term would be externalities, like AI, like inflation. These are things that we can't control, but they do impact our reality. There's a few of them going on. Inflation, I think just in general, maybe a little bit of fear on the consumer side. Just people watching news maybe a little too much or getting a little too deep into some rabbit holes or something like that. Would you say those are like the three kind of things that are going on in the economy that are making this kind of dynamic landscape where garage door guys are trying different things and taking on these different projects like you're talking about to to kind of get scrappy maybe is that would you say that's

12:18Alex Bridgeman: articulated well or what are your thoughts i don't know if it's a you know trying to collect leads in a tough time as it is just experimenting with new growth avenues that they hadn't really considered before we we spoke to an owner this morning who is having his best month ever in you know september 2026 a couple days left but it's like crushed it way beyond his expectations and you start thinking like man like we we have all this there's all this stuff in the news and everything else but at the same time this this owner has plenty of customers and seems to be doing really well and has the right approach and you just think there's there's more to it than just there's a lot there's perhaps more that you can control about your own outcomes than maybe we think.

13:09Andy Felice: Absolutely. Yeah, I talk to a lot of guys and usually it's the ones that aren't doing as well that are so focused on the not so positive things that are going on. Looks like we're having internet connection challenges. Let's stand by and see what happens here. Hey, how are you? I am off grid and there's not a lot of sun, so solar is not working as it normally does. Had to swap out the battery for the Starlink right now. But apologies.

13:42Alex Bridgeman: No worries. By the way, Starlink on planes, have you had a flight with Starlink yet? No.

13:48Andy Felice: Is that a thing?

13:51Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Oh, yeah. So a bunch of airlines, Hawaiian, United, Alaska, are adding Starlink. They're in various phases of the rollout across their fleet, so not every plane has it yet, but My running joke with owners is I'm looking to buy companies anywhere that I can fly that little Embraer Regional Alaska Airlines jet. And if I can fly nonstop from Portland, I want to come see you and meet you. And all those flights, all those aircraft all got Starlink. For some reason, they decided that was the first plane that they were going to do Starlink with, not the Max's or anything else. And it is so fast.

14:29Alex Bridgeman: I got 120 megabytes a second on my last flight. it was faster than my grandmother's wifi at her house and it was free and I was sitting there on a plane with the Steelers game going and I had email and everything else and it was unbelievable it was incredible, I was totally blown away

14:49Andy Felice: That's amazing I think the more, I love Starlink I mean obviously with my lifestyle I'm always off grid, I have no cell service can't hit a cell tower it's my lifeline for the whole business But the more important question I have for you is, did the Steelers win? Because that is my team. My dad's from Pittsburgh. That's really what was on my mind when you were talking.

15:11Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, it was the Falcons game. So they did win that one. The Pats game was pretty ugly, especially in retrospect. Like week three Pats, that loss looks even worse. The Bengals was quite a surprise though. So I don't know what to think of the Steelers this year.

15:27Andy Felice: That's the Steelers. You just never know. it's like one second they're amazing next second they're losing to a team they have no business losing to that's the life as a Steeler fan but we've got six Super Bowls so I let it slide I don't let it

15:44Alex Bridgeman: I'd like to win one more in my adult life the last Steelers win or Super Bowl was the Cardinals and Seahawks games when I was a kid I was pretty young and don't really remember a whole lot of those I do remember losing two Aaron Rodgers in the Packers Super Bowl. But I'd like to get one more. I don't know how far away or how close we are, though. It seems like, like you said, you'll beat the Ravens with Hotlamar Jackson and Derrick Henry, and then you lose it at the Browns the next week.

16:19Andy Felice: Yeah, no, I can go on and on about football. But before we left, before I had to skedaddle and address the Starlink battery, I think we were talking about the externalities. So let me get back to what my thought was on that. A lot of times what I hear from garage door guys that maybe are a little bit on the smaller side, maybe less than a million or just maybe a little newer into the space, they're a little bit more focused on these crazy externalities. AI, I think I just need AI. Inflation, how am I even supposed to compete? But yeah, like you said, so many people are still having massive business success.

17:03Andy Felice: And I think, in my opinion, what it comes down to is just knowing what the right next best step is. Instead of doing a good step, that's just like, oh, this is something that's, it's not negative. This is positive. If you can really drill down to figuring out, okay, right now we're having a little bit harder time, you know, selling or keeping our average repair ticket at about$1 ,300. it's starting to slip a little bit. What do we do about that? And instead of just trying to force it down the consumer's throat and just say, really trying to hard sell them, what you could do is, what I've seen my clients do, is focus on the annual maintenance program.

17:44Andy Felice: So after we do sell a door, let's get them for life. Let's make a couple one-pagers about our annual maintenance program. What's included? let's hold a once a month 45 minute meeting with all the technicians, you know, people doing sales to present it and explain how to articulate it. Cause it's little things like that. You gotta, you gotta articulate it. You gotta serve it to your team on a, you know, on a platter to make it, make it very clear on how to do it. So it's just getting scrappy with little things like that. Figure out like, okay, what, what can I do instead of focusing on this negative?

18:20Andy Felice: What's the thing that's easy to do? Have you seen it? Have you seen stuff like that? Yeah.

18:25Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, if I can add one more football comment, Garage Doors is a five yards a carry kind of game. You don't need the big chunk plays. You need to execute basic power counter inside zone all down the field. And if you get four or five yards at a time, that's great. And that looks like, are you missing calls? How many missed calls did you have this week or this month? and how do we not miss calls? You know, if there were over the year, there were 150 missed calls, like why did we miss calls? Did we get back to those? There's usually it's a bunch of little small things, like you said, that you can kind of work on.

19:07Alex Bridgeman: And all right, let's get this one thing done and improved. And there's also momentum to that. You know, if you set a big project that takes you a long time to accomplish, you're not gonna feel much momentum. But if you get after like a couple of small things and you start getting a little bit of a snowball going, your team starts seeing improvement, buy-in gets better, bleeds come in maybe a little bit more easily if you're not missing them or you're converting better, your booking rate goes up. It's a lot of like just day-to-day execution. And what I love in particular about GarageDoors is if every single day is a new, generally a new set of customers, you'll have some recurring customers, but every day is a brand new day of execution.

19:48Alex Bridgeman: And if you want to make a change, you can make a change this minute. for the rest of your afternoon or the rest of your morning calls. There's things you can adjust and experiment and try things. You could try a new way of doing things for a week, and you'll probably see pretty quickly if it works or not. And then you can iterate and test. One of my previous jobs was as chief of staff at this media business. And one of my jobs was selling a data product. And that was a really long sales cycle. It would take four, five, six months from the point where I first talked to the customer to them actually signing a contract for our data.

20:29Alex Bridgeman: And it's a long time for you to see results from any sort of experimentation or things you want to try and just, you know, take a risk and see if it works and roll the dice. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. It would take a long time to see what worked. Whereas in garage doors, like within a day or a couple of weeks, you'll have a pretty good sense of what's working and what's not and you can iterate from there. And I think there's something exciting and fun about that. And you can try lots of little things and like the worst that happens, like it maybe ruins a couple services or a couple service visits or something, but just fix it, try something else, see if it works.

21:05Alex Bridgeman: You know, there's not a whole lot of, not a lot of things that will like immediately implode the business. And so I think like a healthy experimentation and treat every day as a fresh set of downs and a fresh opportunity in front of you, I think is just, I'm an inherently optimistic person too. So I like seeing like, what's the, what is the potential upside of anything we try, any experiment we try or improvements, no matter how big or small, just see how they go, see what happens.

21:33Andy Felice: A hundred percent. I grew up playing, this is just going to keep circling back to football, I think today. I grew up playing football my whole life and I didn't play in college, but prior to that, quite a bit. And our coach would always say, have a good forgettery. I played free safety. The game is not set up for defense. The game is set up for scores because that's more exciting, that's more entertainment, and that's the reality of things. They know the snap count, and they know what play they're running. You have to interpret it on the fly and make sure your hips are moving in the right direction, all this stuff.

22:08Andy Felice: But having a good forgettery. Not just having a good memory, but having a good forgettery. So just like what you're saying, every day it's a brand new business. You've got the opportunity to do, let's say, three, four calls. Most of my clients are capping their guys at calls three a day, four a day, so that they develop the relationship and make sure the sticker's on the door and they're taking the notes in their CRM and all that sort of thing. But you can try articulating good, better, best in a totally new way. Maybe even a way that this new marketing guy that the owner of your company just signed up with.

22:49Andy Felice: And the next thing you know, you're doing a Zoom meeting with this Andy guy. And he's coaching you on how to do a sales process and articulating things in a different way. And I've got a funny story. It's about exactly this. We do sales coaching for all of our clients. It's in my best interest. This is a selfish thing. I retain the client longer when I train them on how to sell and convert you know that's just that's just how it is and it helps them obviously a bunch it's a win-win one time I had like 15 20 different technicians all for one company on a zoom call and we're talking about how to articulate good better best hey mrs homeowner yeah yeah no you called me out here and you're right there is a problem with your with your garage door one of your springs is out and And so we've got three options here.

23:40Andy Felice: One, we can just do a Band-Aid solution, just kind of replace that one thing that's broken. And I'll just wait for your call for the next time you need me out here. And we got better, and then we got best. You just replace all the variable parts. I don't think we need to explain the whole deal. But the way that I articulate things sometimes is different because I've installed two garage doors. I don't consider myself a true garage door guy. I know enough to be slick and good at sales and good at marketing. Yeah, I was a consultant to Tommy Mello for six months at A1 Garage Doors. But that's just how I kind of see it.

24:20Andy Felice: And I articulated things differently. And one guy goes, hey, Andy, I'm on a job. I just pulled out to my next call. I'm going to hop off and I'm going to try that out. That one word that you used, I never even heard that word, but it makes sense. And I think I understand it. I was like, awesome, brother. Like, go for it. Full send it. And he went, I don't even remember exactly what he said. It was a spring job. He went on and he upsold it. And he jumps back on the call and he's like, hey, yo, guys. I'm talking, you know, being more formal and stuff. And he gets on and he starts yelling. Dude, it was so out of nowhere.

24:58Andy Felice: He's like, hey, yo, guys. That, he starts cussing.

25:01Alex Bridgeman: He's like, that stuff, that guy, Andy.

25:04Andy Felice: Like, I'm serious. I just got a job. It's$1 ,200 average repair. And his average was like$700 for repair tickets. And so he was just high on life.

25:14Alex Bridgeman: And it's just a matter of trying something different.

25:19Andy Felice: Using different words when you articulate what you're pitching, which is what you do every single time you go on a job. Try stuff out. Just aggressively throwing you-know-what at the wall until you figure out what sticks. But you've got to try stuff. You got to feel like you got to be comfortable getting outside of your comfort zone and trying something that that random marketing guy on Zoom suggested, you know, giving a shot.

25:45Alex Bridgeman: And just be a good listener to what do they care about? Are they going to be in the home for a long time? Are they are they techie? Do they have new kids, like young kids that might be woken up by the door from nap time? there's there's just signals and questions you can ask that get you a sense of what is this person interested in having their door perform like someone really quiet we had ironically our door broke you know two weeks ago here at our house and we called someone out here and i was curious what are the you know what things could we do that would make the door quieter and there were all these different suggestions and whatnot and because the opener at that point was builder grade and ac and it was really loud so i was like i want something a little bit quieter and i was totally ready to spend like get a new opener new rollers all that and so i think a lot of it is just what does this person care about and for whatever reason i've heard the term like shop he sells out of his own wallet as like a common phrase say that i've heard he say that again like he shops out of his own wallet or sells out of his own wallet or something like that.

26:56Alex Bridgeman: Yes. The technician, if it feels like a high price to the technician, they're hesitant to share that with the customer. Even if the customer might have, you know, just you can see their house is being totally remodeled. There's a new kitchen. There's they're building a new shop, new cars. You know, like if they just maybe they just sold a business or something or something's going really well and they just decided I'm going to spend this money on a big home remodel. and as part of that remodel, I want new doors on my garage because we're expanding that and we're getting the floor redone. That person is interested in probably a high-end door that performs well and it's going to last a long time, hooks up to their phone, all the fancy things that's insulated, and is probably going to be more interested in those suggestions.

27:41Alex Bridgeman: And so I think a lot of it is just, I think, education. Like not many people know how their garage door works or functions or why it's loud or why it breaks or where the weight is being held, what parts wear out. And so a lot of it is explaining like how the door works and how all the pieces kind of fit together and why fixing this thing is also a reason why this piece over here also broke. And I think great technicians I've met are really, they love people. They love interacting with people. They love asking questions. They're curious and they want to help and are also listening for ways to make their life better that maybe they weren't really thinking about immediately, top of mind.

28:22Andy Felice: 100%. I love what you're saying, that term. I'm going to start using that, like shopping out,

28:29Alex Bridgeman: selling out of their own wallet. One of the things that I tell on these sales,

28:34Andy Felice: 90-minute sales coaching sessions that are included in a couple of our better packages, or programs rather, is that most people want you to get the hell out of their house. It's weird that you're in their house to begin with, especially if it's a lady. Let's say there's a child and the dad's at work. Very common kind of setup. It's weird for some random dude to be there. Like, don't, they want you to solve the problem and get the heck out. And a lot of times what they'll do, instead of having to ask you a million questions so that they can learn and understand that the motor doesn't open the garage, there's a spring involved?

29:16Andy Felice: Is there shocks? What's going on here? They have no clue. I worked at Discount Tire for a while. My whole family did. And before I started working there, I thought there was tubes in tires. I literally thought there was, because all I had the experience was with bikes. I didn't know. And I think that a lot of garage door guys, they don't realize just how valuable they are. the information they have about the garage door system and how it interacts with the framing and you know all the pieces of the garage basically to make sure that this big heavy thing doesn't drop and kill somebody or the spring doesn't snap and kill somebody i mean spring snap and they kill people a couple people a year but knowing that if you present good better best instead of just oh i got them to buy rollers like oh i got them to buy cables or bun a bottom rubber you know like who cares like you're thinking little let's think bigger these people that don't want you in their house to begin with and i'd be in that boat too they'll just pay for the higher the best package so that they can have some confidence they can have that confidence with ease and you get what you want and you can get the heck out of the house faster like that i tell my clients that all the time just don't take yourself for granted because you have a phd in garage doors and that's worth something.

30:38Alex Bridgeman: I think people want peace of mind too. Like they often hadn't thought about their garage door before until it breaks. It's not really something you actively think about. I think about my washer dryer way more than my garage door. Like I use the garage door more, but like I'm not, when I use it, I'm not really paying attention to it. It's more invisible in your day-to-day life. And so when it finally breaks, it's like, oh wow, I didn't really think about this breaking and what an inconvenience that causes. How do I make sure this never happens again and doesn't stick open again and risk all my stuff getting stolen out of my garage and stuff like that?

31:15Alex Bridgeman: So I think there's a peace of mind you provide, but they have to trust you. They have to trust that you have their best interest and you're also thinking ahead for problems down the road that you might be able to solve today. And I'll be out here again in two or three years unless we do this here or that part there. There's lots of ways that you can provide, I think, future peace of mind for someone. Maintenance plans are part of that too.

31:39Andy Felice: Absolutely. And something I bring up a lot is, you know, growing up in Phoenix, your HVAC system, your AC, I mean, 120 degrees in Fahrenheit, summertime, like you care about your AC in Phoenix. So being on an annual maintenance program for your HVAC system is commonplace. when you put it in those kind of terms for the homeowner coming from a garage door guy, it makes a lot of sense that way. Because the garage doors, it can ruin your day fast if it doesn't work. If your car's stuck in there, kids are getting to school, no one's getting to work. I mean, it's a big deal, and it's dangerous. Something that I think garage door guys are seeing in the marketplace is the value of helping customers with something small, like a$49 tune-in lube, what I call luber-tunity.

32:39Andy Felice: Hopefully you're ethically upselling, you know, because a lot of people are filling out the reaching out because there's a sound. They don't want to investigate. They've got a million other things, and, you know, I'll just get this$49 thing, you know, whatever. Hopefully you're ethically upselling on that, but if not, no problem. Because you're slapping stickers on the doors. You're asking for referrals. You're asking for the reviews. And then your technician is going next door, left, right, and across the street, and knocking on the door. Hey, you know Janice over here? I'm actually just doing a tuning lube on her garage door.

33:17Andy Felice: She was hearing something weird. I'd be happy to offer this to you too. It's$49. I'm here right now. I'll be done there in about 25 minutes. If you'd like, you can stop by and I'll just come on over and take care of that for you. If not, no problem. And so I think a lot of garage door guys are seeing, okay, when or if stuff slows down. Because garage door business is like this. It follows children's school schedules is what I've found. You can take that to the bank. It's really, really interesting. Having these kind of tune and lube opportunities and maybe even making the little competition. Hey, everyone's only getting three jobs a day this week instead of the normal four.

34:00Andy Felice: But your fourth one, three repair jobs or replacement, whatever, your fourth one is going to be a tune-in lube. And at the end of the month, we're going to see who got the best average ticket for the tune-in lube leads in particular. You can't let that skew your repair average or your placement average. So hopefully you're savvy enough to make the right cost centers or whatever in service tight in a house called Pro, Jobber, Workies, whatever, to run these types of reports. And give someone a gift card,$50,$100 to Flemings. Take your wife out somewhere nice. Getting creative with little things like that.

34:38Andy Felice: Because even if you just do the$49 tune loop, you slap the sticker on the door, maybe you took your shoes off at the front door. I just want to be respectful.

34:48Alex Bridgeman: I don't want to walk on your carpet.

34:50Andy Felice: It looks like you just had it cleaned recently and made that good impression. When their 16-year-old son backs up into the door and it's off track, it's all jacked up, you got to get it fixed, they're going to remember you. And they remember you from this little tiny$49 Tuna Loop. So I'm seeing owners seeing that in a new light where before Tuna Loops, I don't know about that. It just seems like so much effort. And now they're like, hey, yeah, Andy, we want those Tuna Loops. Let's shift some budget over to that because we see a big increase six, eight, 12 months later. It's like an investment in your business.

35:29Andy Felice: So that's just one of the things that I've seen recently. Owners being more open-minded to getting value that's not just like immediate gratification. You know what I mean? Like spending money on Google Ads or that sort of thing.

35:44Alex Bridgeman: Tune loops also give you a chance to, if a homeowner didn't take you up on a new opener and the previous visit. Maybe next year they'll be open to it and you can kind of check in with the door and add other components over time that become interesting. Puts you in that neighborhood every year reliably too. So you can continue canvassing, knocking on doors, all that. I am curious, what are some of the most unique monthly sales competition prizes you've seen owners put together? I'm thinking of like, like there's the steak dinner gift card new pair of boots like what comes to mind

36:24Andy Felice: I wish I had more fun wild ones to tell you but most of them have been gift cards yeah honestly that's it there's probably a huge opportunity to get some engagement with a more creative kind of setup for competition for our company our company's growing we've got about 10 employees now full time and something that I did recently and I'm comfortable talking about it and this came up with an owner a multi-state garage door company two weeks ago there's got to be a sense of a vision like where are we going? Are we all working here to be on a hamster wheel and get the check at the end of the week?

37:11Andy Felice: Or is there a destination? Is there a goal? Is there a revenue amount that we're all aware of and we can all have some visibility to some reasonable degree on getting to it. And is there going to be a reward for that? And so for my team, I've got these, a series of$1 ,000 bonuses just straight up cash, $1 ,000,$2 ,000 bonuses. You know, Americans, cost of living is higher in America than some of our teams overseas in the Philippines. So we make sure it makes sense for that. But After I did that, and I just got kind of excited because I've been impressed with what our team's been doing with AI.

37:53Andy Felice: It's been revolutionary. Truly, I'm so blessed that I'm alive in this time period of history. I just had momentum. This is the goal. This is how we're going to get there. And once we get there, this is what you guys get. And Alex, I had no idea. Like, no one told me to do this. I didn't see someone else being successful at it. I had no clue what was going to happen. In the last, I think I did this like four or five weeks ago, the team is different. And it is so refreshing. It is so, it's addictive, really. Like I look forward to working every day. I look forward to my one-on-one meetings with each team member.

38:35Andy Felice: I do one hour per person per week. And I had a client and we were talking and I was like, you know, does everybody feel like they are rowing their board in the same direction because I was seeing a lot of inconsistency between how the CSRs were answering the phone, how the technicians were selling to the jobs, whether or not they were even reading the notes, listening to the calls, stuff like that. And it was very clear, everyone just felt like they were just on their own hamster wheel, like, oh, that's not my job, I don't really care. But when you have that kind of vision, that kind of direction everyone agrees on and buys into, it kind of creates like, instead of just like sales here, operations here, it kind of creates a little bit of overlap where people are more incentivized to be supportive, to not let things slip through the cracks.

39:30Andy Felice: And I wish I could say I'm seeing in this economy garage door companies between$1 million in revenue plus are increasing their vision and their leadership and communicating that with incentives. I wish I could say that because that's what I want all my clients to do. That'd just be amazing. Have you seen anything like that on your side with any of the clients or people you've talked to?

39:56Alex Bridgeman: I've seen incentives. incentives don't only have to live with the technicians your csrs could have performance pay you could have performance pay too you know if there's someone on your finance or hr team there's there are measurable goals that you could you know compensate against there's there's a broader um you know opportunity for that i think that i think more owners should take advantage of and think about for their own business. It is interesting and fun meeting owners who see that. Every person on this boat has an oar to row, even if it's not immediately facing customers. And we need everybody.

40:37Alex Bridgeman: So getting everyone aligned around a key goal is important. You don't have to be a huge company to set goals or to have incentive plans or get everybody aligned and focused and excited about a singular goal. It doesn't take a big business to do that.

40:55Andy Felice: I do feel that the garage door industry is slow to adopt these. I mean, you and I, I think, did you study business in college?

41:06Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, I was an accounting major. I did not do accounting after graduating, but the skill is incredibly valuable. And I'm really glad that I took accounting.

41:16Andy Felice: I studied marketing and entrepreneurship. I'm a unicorn. I do exactly what I studied, but I didn't learn how to do any of it in school. That's for darn sure. I wish I did. But I think that the garage door industry is a little bit slow to do some of the basic things that, not even that you just learn in college about business, but just that happen in business. Because I think most successful business people don't go to college, to be completely honest. For example, garage door industry, private equity has become interested in this industry. I think Tommy Mallow kind of led the charge on that. He built the biggest business.

41:52Andy Felice: So like, you know, that just draws attention. And he built a great business. He also went to my college and got a master's at U of A. So I just got to give a shout out to the University of Arizona. But even private equity did not get involved into the garage door industry until like later. Plumbing, HVAC, roofing. I feel like those industries were way more attractive to them. And now it's garage doors.

42:16Alex Bridgeman: Oh, there's all these business things that we could be doing to run our company

42:20Andy Felice: instead of just slanging springs and cables. Is that something that you've noticed? Like, oh, the garage door industry is starting to elevate. The garage door industry is starting to get a little more well put together, more professional, more elevated. What's your thoughts?

42:35Alex Bridgeman: I think so. I don't think it's still not super widespread. Most of the owners we spend time with, they're doing some of these things. I think they know that these opportunities are out there. They just may not be able to take advantage of all of them simultaneously. If you look at some of the largest H5 businesses or even garage doors, the most advanced, the most technologically forward, the best training. There's a lot of things that happen to build an organization that looks like that. And there's only so much time in the day. A lot of owners, even if they see all that opportunity, they may only want to focus on one or two things at once.

43:11Alex Bridgeman: And so it just takes time for, I think, best practices to get through a portion of the industry. But you mentioned HVAC. There's still plenty of HVAC businesses that are run on pen and paper and have not really evolved and they're still out there and still doing well. So even in industries where we think, oh, there's not the opportunity for running a business better or technology or sales, whatever, it's probably still there. There's probably still a lot of opportunity in any of these industries. One concept one of our shareholders really made clear to Rob and I was that the economy is a lot bigger place than you think.

43:52Alex Bridgeman: You may think the industry or the economy or market is this big. It's probably a lot bigger. In fact, it may just take you time to meet everybody and get a sense for what's going on and then realize over time, wow, okay, this is a huge country. There's a lot of companies out there. A lot of owners have very different ways of running their businesses. A lot are going to be really on the cutting edge of sales and AI and everything else. And there's a lot in the middle that you can still learn a lot from. And there's just a, it's a big world out there. There's a lot of people doing a lot of different things, even markets or industries where we think, oh, I'm sure all the best ideas have already been executed.

44:30Alex Bridgeman: Like, I doubt that. right

44:33Andy Felice: no I completely agree awesome man this has been such a fun conversation thanks for your patience again with my you know swapping at the battery on the Starlink real quick of course I don't know if you can hear

44:46Alex Bridgeman: my corgis but they're a corgi noise has happened every now and then some water drinking some ears slapping around so thank you for your patience on mine too

44:55Andy Felice: yeah no stress

44:56Alex Bridgeman: yeah big ones yes

44:57Andy Felice: the last couple minutes of the episodes I like to just ask just a few pointed questions that like to give you, for you to give us a quick response back. And then you're welcome to ask me questions. Wild questions. Ones that are like, wait, what? Why are they talking? You know, what's going on there? So I'm going to ask you a wild question right now. You ready for it?

45:19Alex Bridgeman: I'm ready. Yep. Hey, man.

45:20Andy Felice: How long do you think it'll be until a robot is replacing a spring?

45:25Alex Bridgeman: Seven years. Why?

45:27Andy Felice: Not by themselves.

45:28Alex Bridgeman: I think they will be an assistant to a tech. especially for installs. There's going to be a tech. They'll have a robot assistant. By that point, they'll be coordinated enough and a little more generalistic that you could train a robot fairly quickly and easily. I'm sure AI software will help you. You could talk to the robot as a person like, hey, pick it up on that end. We're going to put it up here and they'll know what you're talking about. And I think there'll be an assistant. They'll help you lift heavy things. They can help bring tools from the van and stuff like that. But I don't think robots will be on their own for quite a bit longer.

46:02Alex Bridgeman: I think people like the trust and authenticity of a person coming to help and fix their problem, especially for something as personal as home services, where you are serving that homeowner literally at the place they live, their kids and spouse sleep. It's a very intimate and personal space. I think for a long time, we're going to want that to maintain and still be a personal space. I think robots have a little ways to go before we get there. Yeah.

46:30Andy Felice: Yeah. Have you seen the Neo robot? It's only like 20 grand. I mean, that's a big number, but like for what it does, it's nothing, I think. Like it'll do every single chore. Oh. Yeah, NEO. I've got a buddy who's considering it.

46:46Alex Bridgeman: But that's right. It reminds me of iRobot where he goes to his mom's house and the robot's like slicing zucchini or something for a soup and doing it really fast too.

46:56Andy Felice: Right. and doesn't he like give him lip service or something in that scene? Like hates that robot or something? He's like rude to it?

47:03Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, and he remembers, he makes some comment at the end about like, I'm not that dangerous or something. I can't remember.

47:10Andy Felice: I gotta watch that movie again. I just, I vaguely remember that scene. I love that movie. That movie made me fall in love with motorcycles, actually. Because at the end of the, you know, you're riding a motorcycle and the girl's like, is this gas? And he's like, yeah. And she goes, gas explodes, you know?

47:26Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, it blows up. It's unbelievable. You're burning a bunch of dinosaurs.

47:31Andy Felice: All right, next question for you, brother. What are two techie things, softwares, devices, anything that you think are great for a garage door business?

47:47Alex Bridgeman: So Rob has one of these. It's a card. It looks like a thick credit card that is effectively an AI assistant. so it will listen and then sync with your apps. What's it called? You know what it is. Plod or plaid. Yes, plaid, I think. Plaid, P-L-A-U-D. You got one of those recently and it's pretty low profile. You can slap it to the back of your phone. It's not this big microphone you're sticking in someone's face. We've brought it to meetings. No one's offended by bringing stuff around. I think we've all gotten used to like gong and chime and other stuff like being in your Zoom meeting. And so it's like, okay, you want to record notes for your meeting?

48:25Alex Bridgeman: Great. at least you're taking notes and listening to what I say. That's important. So I think that would be a cool piece of tech. I've just recently

48:36Andy Felice: because I've got a big diesel truck and had to get the diesel particulate filter replaced on it yesterday actually. And I had a different vehicle, a fast vehicle before this. And so it's like a whole different learning experience to learn how to take care of the vehicle properly. And I I was using the record button yesterday. When the RAM dealership would call me, I would, while I'm on hold, I would press the record button, but it would say, this call is being recorded. And I was like, good God, like this is annoying. I need one of those little plaid things to slap on the back. So I'm glad that you said that.

49:16Andy Felice: I feel like it's the universe saying like, yeah, Andy, you probably should grab one of those things because there's a lot of valuable information that you can just give to AI and hey, tell me what I need to do after this conversation with a homeowner or whatever. So I love that product and I will be purchasing one of those.

49:36Alex Bridgeman: Yep, that's a good one. I am interested to see what the use cases will be for a foldable iPhone that has a bigger screen. If it takes the place of an iPad mini and you can slap surface tighten on it with a better camera for better photos or something. I don't know. I'm not a foldable phone guy, but I feel like someone's going to try it and see how it works.

49:59Andy Felice: I think that that phone, it could replace an iPad for a technician as long as the functionality is the same between the different device platforms. Because you pull that thing out, it's way less serious. An iPad is very formal and it's almost like a clipboard. but you just kind of open that up and flip it and like oh yeah here you want to see like what I'm talking about just so it makes more sense yeah okay so here's good better best like I said the band-aid solution is just replacing and then just have the right aspect ratio the right dimensions of the image to show that off I think that's going to be a great tool for some garage door guys for sure.

50:40Alex Bridgeman: It is more expensive I think iPads are still cheaper if I remember right from looking at the spec sheet but I mean, someone's going to figure that out and find a good way to use it. There's plenty of ambitious garage door owners who are going to try it.

50:54Andy Felice: It could consolidate two devices into one, in theory, if you're getting phones or paying for subsidizing the phone plan.

51:03Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, that's a good point.

51:05Andy Felice: Possibility. All right, so for a garage door company at about a million in revenue, I call these micro-projects. It's not a whole project that takes a week. It's a project that might take three, four hours, either in one day or over the course of multiple days. What micro-projects do you think could be the right next best step for quite a few different garage door companies doing about a million in revenue? So like a micro-project example, one that we really kind of promote with our clients, is creating an annual maintenance program. Another micro-project would be get into Service Titan And if you haven't done this already, I mean, most garage door companies do in a million.

51:50Andy Felice: They've done this already. But make the top five good, better, best options for your top 10 most common garage door sizes if you don't already have that. So I'd say those are micro projects that would be worth your time. Or maybe having a script, making a script for your CSR that's a little bit more succinct. That would be a micro project. You don't want to just whip that up in a second on a sticky note. Kind of want to listen to a couple calls and that sort of thing. But those are just some examples.

52:26Alex Bridgeman: I feel like after hours answering would be a good one. Figure out a way to do that consistently, ideally without the owner just taking those calls themselves. This is more like a personal peeve of mine, but if a company I have already worked with before, if I can give them a call, and they say who am i speaking to it's like you have my phone number you should shouldn't be like hey is this alex or something i would love to find a way to either whether it's setting up your crm or your answering system or a script or something that says like if we if this customer has worked with us before and they're in our crm and we we should know who this person is it's their cell number?

53:10Alex Bridgeman: Is there a way that we can consistently answer with, hey, so-and-so, thanks for calling again. How can I help you today? That sort of thing. Something that makes it a little bit more personal and makes it clear you remember them.

53:23Andy Felice: Yes. I love that. A lot of people just want to feel, period. They just want to feel something. If a garage or a company can do it, then they're going to spend some money with you. That's just the God's honest truth. I think at the end of the day, this is a human business. And yeah, I love AI. I don't even want to tell you how much extra usage I've done this month alone, you know, with Claude and with our team and such. But at the end of the day, nothing except for human connection matters, in my humble opinion.

53:55Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, I think little things like that make a difference and make people feel heard and understood, especially in a time where they're not calling you just to chat or because their day is going amazing, like something broke, something happened, then, you know, they'd like your help.

54:09Andy Felice: Right. It's awesome, man. I mean, I feel great about this conversation. I feel like we could talk quite a bit. Anything on your mind that you want to chat about or questions or anything like that? I kind of, I don't want to feel like I'm just, you know, grilling you. I want to give you the opportunity if you've got anything on your side.

54:29Alex Bridgeman: I'm a big fan of like mail, like physical mail, letters, mailing books, stuff like that a lot of owners we've talked to have not had success with mailers. What's the key to a good mailer? What makes a good mail campaign?

54:44Andy Felice: So I've done, I started building our mailer division this year, early, early spring. And long story short, it was not the right next best thing for us to provide for our clients. Even though we had success with it, we did one test with one of our clients. And I was like, hey, this is in beta. I've got a lot of really good ideas on how this is going to be successful, but it takes tests. And we were ROI positive on our first try, which I was very proud of. But in my opinion, it's got to have a signature. A written phone number. So like you print out all the mailers. I like eight and a half by 11 vertical fold it fold it into thirds it's all printed you know black and white just written letter put like typed out the logo and color i think having a qr code helps as well it makes it extremely trackable too i i did do that and then the phone number it's got to be a tracking phone number that's non-negotiable of course but go through that stack of a thousand give 250 to each one of your kids, you know, whatever at the dinner table and have everybody write down, hey guys, write this phone number with your handwriting right here.

56:02Andy Felice: And that's the only phone number that's on there. You do that, you're going to have success.

56:07Alex Bridgeman: I like the handwritten piece. I'm a big fan of handwritten letters. It's a good way to reach out to people. I've done that a lot. And I think handwriting is again, back to the human connection piece. It's authenticity. It's someone who took their their own time out of their day to write something that's what was meant to be sent to you. It goes a long way. It's a lost art too. And there are ways to kind of like automate it to some degree. I've discovered only like two months ago that there are robots that will like match handwriting.

56:38Andy Felice: Simply noted.

56:39Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Didn't realize that that was a thing. So that's an option. If you don't have a bunch of kids who can help you. But, you know, expo marker and a little sheet of paper can go a long way.

56:50Andy Felice: Definitely. So I'm traveling to the United States in my truck and trailer, and my favorite thing, and I've been able to do this a couple times recently, is having my window open while I sleep behind a creek to hear the water running. it's an evolutionary thing humans just kind of chill out when they can hear that the most precious resource in the world is right next to them and I think that humans recognize when they're you know the mailer that I sent out to my client's audience 30 mile radius around their shop it was in Florida I think seeing the handwritten the human handwriting I think it's like hearing water behind you it kind of makes you relax a little bit kind of let that guard down.

57:38Andy Felice: Because I studied, I started my education in psychology. I thought I was going to become the Walmart of psychological needs. And I was like, okay, this is not, you know, I'm passionate about entrepreneurship. That's clearly it. You know, and that's how my family is. We've got the curse or whatever, bug, whatever you want to call it. But getting your audience to lower their guard, that is huge. To get the conversion, you know, we can get as technical as we want. and I will nerd out aggressively. But the nerdy stuff means nothing if you can't let your audience or your target market bring their guard down and feel like they can take action without repercussion, without being scared, without being nervous of getting screwed over, getting overpriced, whatever.

58:27Andy Felice: I think that's a big part of this business.

58:30Alex Bridgeman: Yep, yep. Making people feel heard that they're not just a light item in your day, that they're more than that. It makes a big difference. I agree. Definitely.

58:40Andy Felice: Awesome, man. Well, this has been a lovely conversation. Thanks so much for joining us. I've been a guest on your podcast. We had an awesome conversation there. I'm going to get this distributed out to our list. We've got quite a few garage door guys on it, so I'm really excited about that and would love to have you back sometime in the future and maybe be on yours again just because these conversations, I think that, I mean, the feedback I think we both have gotten is that these conversations, they help people or they have the ability to, you know, it's, I think that there's more for us in store.

59:15Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, just connect dots and hear from different people, different ideas. Even if you don't use them, it's interesting to hear how others think about the business, think about growth, new projects, marketing, everything in between. It's just a, it's a fun way to reach people.

59:30Andy Felice: 100%, man. thanks again Alex have a great rest of your day alright sounds good you too sir enjoy your travels thanks