I’m Looking at an Empty Pipeline

hello everyone welcome to the first 21 hats podcast of 2025 I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week Lena Maguire in her first appearance as a regular on the podcast tells Paul DS and Jackie Russo about her plans to turn her hobby remodeling homes into a real business in just her third full-time year of Building spoka kitchen and bath Lena says she's already experienced both a quick rise in revenue and then a surprising decline a decline she attributes mostly to marketing issues one of those issues she says is that she refreshed her website and it started producing more prospects but fewer qualified prospects that said Lena is off to an impressive start having targeted a well-defined niche having created a clear process to connect homeowners and contractors and having demonstrated both a real need for her services and an ability to learn from her mistakes I don't look at failure as failing she says in a conversation we recorded in late December member plus Paul tries to explain why his Revenue surged 50% in 2024 now there's a problem we'd all like to have even in Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit her hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone and facing challenges in fact that's the whole idea behind the 21 hats Community engaging with other owners to get the kinds of insights only another owner can offer if you're interested in learning more step one one is to sign up for a free trial of the Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners so you don't have to go looking for it step two is to get on our slack Channel where you can ask questions get vendor recommendations and tap the wisdom of a very impressive crowd just search the 21 hats Morning Report to subscribe joining me this week on the podcast are regulars Paul DS CEO of Paul DS cabinet makers which is based outside of Philadelphia and custom conference tables Lena Maguire CEO of spoka kitchen and bath which is based in Camis New York and designs and manages Home Remodeling projects especially for those looking to age in place and Jackie Russo CEO of bran Russo a marketing agency based in Lafayette Louisiana the episode is titled I'm looking at an empty pipeline welcome Paul Jackie and a especially the latest addition to our podcast Team Lena Maguire Lena thank you so much for joining us it's great to have you here thanks Lauren I appreciate the opportunity this is very exciting Lena you're building a new business called spoka kitchen and bath uh maybe you could start by telling us a little about your background what what led you to start this business I started it basically because my children begged me to Mommy please don't sell our house I have been serial Remodeling and it takes about 5 to 5 and a half years to remodel a house and then I need a new project so we sell the house and buy a new one and they got a little tired of that when we got to house number five so I started remodeling for other people and uh spok a kitchen and bath was born I love doing kitchens and baths that's my main focus and uh this is where I am now I believe spoka has a particular Focus you don't just do any remodel can you tell us about that I do like to focus on people who are nearing or in actual retirement so what I do is uh I am a certified aging and place specialist so I do take into consideration their physical and mental and well-being needs as they are trying to transition into a period of time where they may spend the next 30 Years in their home everybody wants to stay there be healthy and happy as long as possible so I try to incorporate that into every project that I do no matter how old people are um whether they are themselves Aging in their home or they have parents or neighbors or friends who are coming in we want to be able to live in our homes so that uh everybody can be accommodated um and we don't want it to look institutional we want it to feel like it's very much their specific home and they're comfortable there Paul aren't you in the process of doing precisely that I am what a coincidence yes we uh we've been in our house for 22 years and came to the conclusion we only want to go out feet first and so we are adding on to the back of it and putting in an elevator and trying to do as much as possible to make get a place we can stay in until the very last moment so yeah it's good good timing yeah that's great it's it's not everybody who can put an elevator in your home that makes it so much easier well we we're we chopped off the back third of the house and then pushed new another 15 ft or so and that's where the elevator's going so we weren't trying to snake one through existing structure yeah that that's ideal when you can do that most people have to deal with stairways um not everybody has to have a stairlift but mostly what we're doing is we will take and make sure that they have doorways that are wide enough to accommodate a walker or a wheelchair if they need um they'd have that 360 degree turning area which requires 5T so things like that it's mostly about making sure if you're doing new construction that your hallways are wide enough we want to do a 42-in hallway if you can 36in doorways so that fingers can clear when the wheelchair is pushing in do you have other things in your background that are helpful for this have you ever owned a business before yes this is actually my second career um I was a graphic designer for 22 years so I have a degree in a Bachelor of Fine Arts so um I'm very good with color theory and spatial um relationships things like that which come in very handy for doing interior design work so um yeah I did the graphic design for 22 years um I took 15 years off to raise my children I was very fortunate that my other business was successful so I I banked some money and uh the money didn't run out until my younger son was a a junior in high school so I almost made it to plan and then once they were in high school I went back to school got my degree in kitchen and bath design and started working part-time a couple couple of jobs a year and once I decided I was going to be a little bit more serious about this I took a part-time job so that I would be able to finance a studio so I work 20 hours a week um working on a grant program at a local University Medical Center and that allowed me to open up my 400t studio space and put my shingle out there so I did that for about four years and I have been doing it full-time now um this will be my third year full-time how big did the graphic design business get uh it was just me but I was clearing you know about $150,000 a year in take-home pay so I was doing well just little me um I was right on The Cutting Edge of when the Macs came out I go way back to the Apple Lisa wow so uh I've been with with the Mac programs for a long time and as a graphic designer I was on the team that created for lret they had a a software program called Ready set go that was a precursor to page maker and quork and all those and I designed their um their manual for that back in the days when they used to have manuals that still came out with software Nobody Does that anymore so yeah I go way back so you've been doing spoka for about three years now what's his current status how far have you gotten so right now it's me and I'm doing about 20 hours in the business and 20 hours on the business which I I really like that I have a 1099 uh employee who is um an admin and she does all of the um administrative stuff mostly the procuring pricing estimating um getting the invoices out scheduling appointments things like that but uh all the creative work and the client facing stuff I do can you give us a sense of your business plan how how are you going to find people like Paul to uh to help the business plan well I'm working with my score mentor to create a business plan because I don't have one so I am very new when it comes to actually running the business as a business rather than a hobby that pays well so this is the big transition for me so 21 hats has been really great um learning how to actually be a business owner rather than a hobbyist I'm working on the business plan for marketing I I basically have been doing Library seminars they've been very successful for me so I'm becoming um an expert on my topic here in the local community I am the number one organic uh search engine when it comes for my hometown here what what is your hometown I am in Camis New York which is about six miles west of Syracuse Lena would you talk a little bit about your library series because I think it's brilliant and I think people would appreciate seeing how you're using that tactic oh yeah I love the library series it's a longtail effort um it costs practically nothing all the advertising is done through the libraries themselves they send out to their marketing U their email list so what I do is I create um a series of programs so my most successful ones I have two series I do a kitchen um remodeling series and a bathroom remodeling series each is three parts the first one is um a remodeling 101 specific to the kitchen or the bath and then we do a second one on budgeting and then the third one is on tips and tricks for successful remodeling which reinforces how it's necessary to hire a designer um to save money and to get better results so you know just trying to educate the community on how to use their resources well so I create the power points my slides are 20 my each slide deck is only 20 slides these seminars will last about 45 minutes and then I have Q&A after that and then I give them homework and send out reminders uh and it's been very good when the people come back to me they'll call me it's usually six months to two years later I'll get the call saying do you remember me I was at your library seminar um and and I still have my wants and needs list and I'm ready to go and they are ready to go when they call me and and they have very good knowledge about what to expect how it works how much it's going to cost and and they're just ideal clients when they come through so uh I would recommend it to everybody the publicly funded libraries have an obligation to give back to the community Through community service so the only thing you have to do is make sure it's generic in our case when I'm presenting um I'm allowed to have a slide in the beginning that introduces who I am that showcases my business but all the content is generic and then at the end with a Q&A it can get more specific um I can say things like you know this is what I do in my business it may be done differently in other businesses but it gives them an idea of what's going on but the content for that 45 minutes of of education is actually generic do you have to go Library by library to set that up or is there some kind of Library Network oh no it's one at a time and they are very slow to accept that this is something good for them um I have been doing one library for about five years took the break for covid and we're getting back into it I had another Library come on um and now I have these two Librarians that are willing to um talk to other Librarians to say no this isn't a sales pitch this is actually community service where you know we're enriching the community giving them some knowledge so it can be a slow haul depending on your relationship with your local Librarians so where's your mind at as far as the development of your business is there anything that's keeping you up at night uh the cash flow is always always the thing um my pipeline um because I didn't Mar Market I was very busy before Co and then Co hit and um I didn't I wasn't able to do the library seminar so basically the pipeline went dry and then I am now finished up with the projects I had so if I had a kitchen project theyd call me back and I do a bathroom or two if I had a bathroom project they'd call me back later into a kitchen so now all that work is dried up so I'm sitting here looking at an empty pipeline so I've hired a marketing agency and we're working on the marketing I have a strategic plan where I am approaching specific libraries with specific goals and um that seems to be working well we're filling up our calendar for 2025 with some Library seminars um the goal is to do 12 um and I have six booked so I'm I think I'm getting in there pretty well and then the marketing is uh doing a brand refresh and getting my website updated and doing some um nurture email campaigns as well as getting some um landing page free resources um handouts and things like that I also do marketing at the uh local home show so we have a central New York home and garden show every March and I do take a booth there and I usually get about four to eight jobs from that they're usually pretty small but I'm seeing that the jobs are growing I'm moving forward just not as quickly as I would like how do you uh price your services my services are priced flat rate because people like to know exactly what they're going to get into so depending on the complexity of the project and the quality level of the materials they looking for we do an exploratory phase one where they pay a flat rate to determine what it's going to cost to do their project um we'll find out what their goals and objectives are we'll talk about the quality levels that they want to um achieve and how much they want to really invest and we can see if they're in alignment so it's really a reality check so it's a standalone um phase one that once they have that information they can choose to move forward or just stop there and decide if they want to go forward with the project or if they want to save up or figure out how they're going to pay for it or if they want to you know downsize some of their ideas and if they choose to go forward then we go into the concepts um and there's a a flat rate to do concepts and get them right through the selections and and that will get them all of their design and their product selections done then I work with the contractors to figure out how much the labor costs are and we combined the labor costs with the uh design and product cost and that gives them their full contract price and then they again have the opportunity to bow out or move forward depending on what that combined price is and then we can get it on the schedule and um get to installation and construction the process is pretty pretty well set so I'm pretty pleased with how that's working and you end up managing the whole project all the way through if if that's what somebody wants yeah uh I started adding project observation um Services uh about a year ago people have been asking typically there's a real shortage of contractors so when you have a contractor and a homeowner and a designer in the middle it makes it easier so that if the contractor is unhappy with the with the homeowner who is there and that you know the homeowner is telling them to do this or that or their dog's always in the way or you know there's always an issue um if the contractor says something to the homeowner then the homeowner gets upset and doesn't want to pay but if the home owner sees something going on with the contractor and say like oh that backsplash tile is crooked you need to fix it the contractor might get upset and then the customer would think well if I say something he might get upset and he won't come back and then my kitchen will never be done so I act as kind of the middleman it's like the contractor can tell me or the customer can tell me and I kind of do the um arbitration for them so that everybody's happy and you know the contractor is getting coffee served by the homeowner and the homeowner is getting a beautiful kitchen it's it's just a nice win-win what are your uh Ambitions how big do you hope the business will be well I would love my business to be Nationwide um when I think about what my why is why I want to have this business because obviously I could work for somebody and it would be a lot easier but my goal is to be the boss I've never had and I credit my sister with giving me that tagline there because I grew up in a family where most of the family Works in retail and when you work in retail your hours are never set straight you don't work 9: to 500 you can work you can work 6:00 a.m. to 1: p.m. one day and then 8:00 P p.m. to 11: the next night and then maybe have three days off so Ian you can't even Schedule a dentist appointment um and then you're not getting paid well you're not being treated as well as you should be so I would like to be the boss I never had I want to offer in employes living wages I want to have regular schedules I want to have the benefits that they feel that they would benefit from the most so if they're young and they don't really care if they're fully funding their retirement they'd rather pay off their student loans let's give them that benefit instead I would like to offer opportunities uh right here in my community to make it so that people can have dignity and work balance so and the more people I can help um the better it will be so that means I need to grow bigger so I can help more people Jackie Paul any questions um it's a pretty big Journey from where you are now to Rolling that all out nationally how long do you think that would take oh probably forever but uh it's like the starfish thing if I can get one back into the ocean that'll be good so I'm I'm starting out small and these are aspirational goals I don't know that I'll be able to meet them but um I am going to strive to get towards them closer every day okay and can you give us an idea of what your current revenues are and I know that that are is horrified to talk numbers but that's my thing I have no problem talking money money is a tool um so two years ago my revenues were 350 and then because of the pipeline closing up my revenues this year are 150 so I had a goal last year thinking I was going to be able to hit uh 400 and that obviously didn't happen this year so I'm very disappointed but it was a Learning lesson I see the value of having to uh always be marketing so now I have jumped on that train and let's see if that can get me going because I I do know that I can hit that 350 Mark and uh if I can hit 350 it shouldn't be too big of a jump to get to 500 within a couple of years so it just needs to get back on track okay well that's decent numbers for a one or one and a half person operation well the good thing is even though the revenues are low my profit margins are still there so even though I'm not making as much in Revenue what I have been able to do is still maintain the profit margins that I have so uh I am taking home 42% as profit okay you're you're a service business you don't have to buy materials and presumably your rent isn't all that expensive what are major expenses that we're not thinking of uh my biggest expenses would be uh the rent and the software that I have to use so running the software uh I have to use specialized CAD programs and I bought the program several years ago it was $4,000 but you know the upgrades now they don't want you to do that you have to go to the subscription model and you know it's $67 $800 a month and then I I have probably seven or eight different software that I run on a regular basis every day so the software costs the subscription costs are are pretty big chunk yep I got to pay a few of those too are you enjoying it so far oh I love it I play for a living I couldn't ask for better work yeah and I'm learning that I like um I like since I've divided the business into doing 20 hours a week of work design work and 20 hours of of getting the business together um I'm really enjoying that part of it it's a nice balance for me have you thought about what would trigger the hiring of your first employee full-time yes I plan to open a showroom a retail location so I'll be moving out of my I'm in a professional building right now I have a a 400q foot um Studio space that I use um as an office and a a mini showroom so I have my cabinet displays and my countertop displays and other types of things that I I sell a lot of tile and paint chips and things like that it's getting very crowded so I'm going to be moving um looking for a space I'm looking at several in the area up to about uh maybe 12 to 18800 foot space so I'll be signing a lease first quarter and 25 and then when I have that I will be no longer working out of my home because I typically work from home and it just go into the studio space when I need to make selections with a customer or if I'm signing documents so when I have a showroom I'm going to be in the showroom every day and while I'm out with customers I'm going to need somebody to be in the in the showroom because I don't want to just lock the door and have a come back later sign so I will hire somebody to help me with uh kitchen design work and uh keeping the showroom up and up and running so that's going to be very soon so that's pretty scary have you ever had employees before I'm sorry I can't remember in the graphic design whether you did or not no no I have never had an employee okay so that's the scary part yeah yeah what could go wrong Paul what can go WR um you want an answer well you shared a number of answers over the years here yeah I've heard the horror stories uh and I've learning that uh hiring for values rather than skills is the way to go so yes so looking at that I can teach people how to do something I can set up a training program I actually have someone who is a training person um she can set up training programs so she's uh on speed dial so that when this happens uh once I have the studio space the showroom space leas I will be contacting her about how to set up the training programs for for the first hire because they are going to be need to come on board and I'm going to have to have a plan of how to assimilate them into the business and teach them the process so they can hit the ground running within 3 to six months well one of the challenges of having your first employee is just realizing that you've got to give them tasks to fill their whole day so your job becomes much more about communicating than just doing things but if you're already spending 20 hours a week on just working on the business at least you've got some time to do it I think a lot of people end up hiring an employee when they're drowning and so not only do they they think they've found the solution but they've just found the the beginning of the path to a solution and it requires even more work than just doing the job so if you can avoid that I would say that's number one and then the other thing is just making sure that you understand all the legal ramifications of what you can do and not do and uh telling yourself you will never miss a payroll ever ever ever that's important yeah yeah to do that uh I am taking a capital uh influx from where I've talked with my husband and we've decided to invest in my own business here so we're going to have that cushion so I don't have that cash flow problem because the rent has to be paid and the employee has to be paid so uh I'm I'm putting $100,000 of my own money into the business just to make sure that I have that safety net that sounds about right I generally like to have a month's worth of cash on hand and I've heard people say three months or six months and in a lot of businesses that's just not possible but one month yeah yeah nice if you could do it right well if you could do that then chances are good you're not buying something you should be buying or you've just hit an insanely profitable business but a lot of times people have cash because they don't think about the thing they should have bought with it like insurance or you know bookkeeping or whatever and they're like I got all this money but they're really on the razor's Edge and they just don't understand how vulnerable they are now I use the profit first system so I actually have seven different bank accounts so I can see what my profit is I can see what my owner's equity is I can see what my cost of goods is uh and my operating cost because they are each balance is named by what the account is and that's not all my money you know the profits is the business money the owner's equity is my money well that s i mean it sounds like you're you're well prepared for what's about to happen congratulations well thank you I've been using that 20 hours a week for all during covid yeah and for the last year trying to get my act together it seems like um there must be a vast Market out there I mean we hear all the time about the Aging population uh in this country do you know are are there other people who specialize in the area that you're focusing on yeah there there's local competition um everybody has people on staff who either work with aging in place or Universal Design so it's not unique to me what's unique to me is that my process requires uh a partnership with my clients so I meet with them in their home each week as we progress through the project so it's a side by-side collaboration where uh most of the other U companies who are doing what I do they are contractors who just want to get the job done they're not really designers um so it's you know bring me your plans and I'll build it or you go to a design firm and it's I'm going to present you with the one or two best Solutions instead of working side by side to create the solutions so that's pretty much my differentiator I do take eight weeks to complete a design and it is done in their home so that they can see you know we can get right up from the dining room table and when there we're talking about putting a a cabinet in and we're talking about you know should it be 15 inches or 18 inches we can go into their existing kitchen with a tape measure and say well this is a 15-inch cabinet this is an 18-inch cabinet can you fit the silverware in this drawer and that helps them visualize so they're basically they're saying yes to every design decision as we go along so they're creating ownership of the project before it's even built and then by the time it's installed they already have that vision and they they know what to expect and they they feel good about it and the other companies um I haven't seen anybody else that's doing it that way so that's how I set myself apart well that's reasonable speaking as one who going through this there are million decisions and it's often takes some thought to understand the difference between a 15in and an 18-in drawer or how deep they should be or whether you want drawers at all I mean one of the things that i' I found as I'm doing my age in place is trying to design everything so I never have to kneel down so things like the height of a of a dryer or uh my Bugaboo which is no no cabinets below countertop level all drawers so we don't have to ever look into something but um there's bound to be more and if you can you can provide that insight to people who know they got a problem but don't know the solution then yeah that's a business yeah that's that's how we do it so I I insist that they have one week between between meetings so that they can digest it so once we get past the rough sketches and we get into the the 3D the um software that shows them visually what it looks like we work on one work Zone at a time so if the kitchen has four walls and you're going to do an L-shaped kitchen you have two walls that we're working on so we'll work on one wall one week and one wall the next week and that allows them to look at each individual cabinet working with the drawers and I'm always talking about using drawers instead of doors with rollouts because that's just double duty the work you know drawers are much better so we work on that and then I'll give them a um I'll email them the drawings so that they can pencil in what goes in each drawer and then they realize like oh Lena when we come back next week we talk for five or 10 minutes about last week's work to see did you want to make any changes was like well yeah this uh pasta pot I have isn't going to fit in this drawer I need it I need to find a place to put it so then we can make some revisions to that or they'll say I have more spices than I thought I did I'm going to need a bigger place or additional places to store the bigger spices versus the smaller spices so having that one week of time in between for them to wrap their heads around the decisions they made while I was there it gives them time to think about it and really internalize it so I give them the home work of doing that and then we come back and we revisit it and then when we're all finished with the entire kitchen we'll come back and do one more overview of everything the whole meeting is just to review the kitchen as a whole to see if they had any other thoughts before we really get into the doing the pricing of everything and making selections so the whole time we're making those decisions you'll hear them come up and they'll say well um are we going to do Shaker cabinets or can I have a Blue Island it's like well we'll talk about those decisions when we get to the selections right now we're talking about the form and the functions we're still staying in our black and white drawing and they're like oh okay yeah I'm getting ahead of myself so it it's helpful for them to know what to expect each week and be able to make some changes each week have you had any customer disasters uh I lost a job once when I was working for somebody else because of a disaster I worked at Lowe's as a project specialist and we have contractors back then that were assigned by Lowe's and they did uh did not pull a permit and the neighbor across the street saw the construction going on and didn't see a permit sign in the window and that job came to a screeching halt and they were without a permit for maybe five or six weeks and then I lost my job because of that because they said that uh I should have known that and somebody had to be held accountable for this so they couldn't find another contractor but they could find another designer so I lost my job so I started my own business after that wow even the clients came in and uh we're talking the store manager that they wanted me to continue on and you know they were saying how it wasn't my fault but you know it's the real world and you know when you have the territory and managers coming in they have to show that they did something about this big problem we had so they came right out and told me I was going to be the scapegoat on this that's too bad so that brings up something which is is the constraint in your business not you or customers but the availability of contractors hugely it is an extremely big problem so I am not a design build firm I am um a design dealer so I sell cabinets and countertops and I do design work I am an interior designer who specializes in kitchens and baths I am not a contractor who installs but my customers think I am because I have a lot of construction knowledge my husband's in the construction business I've been reading blueprint since we were dating 40 years ago so um I know construction inside out um I like I said I've I've built remodeled houses I'm in house number five six now so they come to me and they want that everybody wants that that design build and it's hard to find people who do that that they can trust so the design build are usually the contractors who are building new construction or very large remodels who are doing additions if you just have somebody who has a small $50,000 kitchen project those people don't want to take them on so they come to me they trust me and it becomes an issue when they don't have a contractor or the contractor has problems that doesn't show up they call me which is why I instituted that project over observation segment because uh they think that I'm the contractor even though they sign a thirdparty contract with the contractor I'm not involved with that my name's not on it they still think oh it's your contractor it's like no here's a list of people that I recommend I've used them before you can interview them and hire them it always comes back to your guy so it's it's an issue um and there aren't a lot of contractors there currently in our Market uh there is anywhere from a six to 18 month wait to get a get somebody to do your work so if you have an emergency situation where your tub is leaking you want your bathroom remodeled it's really a desperate situation so basically you can get a plumber out there in a week or two to stop the leak but to repair the bathroom it could take you a year before somebody gets in why what's going on is the overall economy in the Syracuse area just not that attractive or what what's going on it feels like we're the new Detroit we have a lot of blue collar workers here it's it's you know you can still buy a home for 200,000 to to $300,000 for a starter home so you know it's still affordable here but it's an aging Market uh everybody in the trades uh Co we we saw so many people if they didn't die they moved away they retired uh I used to have six contractors that I used on a regular basis I'm down to one and he told me just last week he's retiring in April so fortunately I've been out there marketing and and asking people for recommendations so I have four new contractors that I have worked with um that I'm bringing on board but uh it's still it's rough how old are they they are in their 50s also so I I just got a notice from my um what my favorite plumber has merged with another company because I'm sure it's his Exit Plan my electrician left a year ago he sold the business to um his number one guy from inside the business so it's still the same business but so my number one plumber my number one electrician um you know the main owners are have been moved on so now they have different ownership my contractors are gone and it's really hard to replace them and I'm in the business I know a lot of people so you know for a homeowner to try to find somebody that will come in you know they call me it's like can you come out next week like no I can come out in six months I can help them with their design work but I can't get it installed right away what will you do Lena when you try to expand beyond your region and you go into areas where you don't have contacts with trades people well that's what I'm doing now so I am a member of Brain Trust down in Nashville Tennessee my son lives down there so I travel down there once a month for our meetings what's Brain Trust Brain Trust um I like to think of it as a women's accelerator um it's kind of like a mastermind group that set you up in a vault with um there are seven women in a vault and you work on your business together um so it's very experiential The Vault I'm in it's to get you from where you are to $1 million and then you graduate to Key Club so I'm in Vault and I go down there and what I'm doing is I'm laying the groundwork for when I open my studio down there so I'm meeting all these women and networking and communicating and connecting and I'm learning about the different towns the different physical areas the demographics who is available to do what type of work uh and so you know I'm just laying the groundwork there so I'm hoping to open a studio down there um maybe the end of 2025 because I do travel down there and I I will be spending about half my time down there once my husband retires in June so the idea is to be able to um live in both areas and have a studio in one and a showroom in the other but networking and getting to know the the area is really helpful I don't know that I could go to an area where I don't have those connections it would be very hard it' be like starting over again but you do anticipate doing that eventually yes I do so the goal is uh to have something here in the C in the Syracuse camillis area and then have something in the Nashville area uh anything beyond that would be gravy but uh because I'll be living in both States I do want to have work in both States because I don't plan on retiring I there's no reason to I love what I'm doing it's it's fun I get up every day and I just love what I do so why would I stop I'm just curious about you know if the constraint is really the contract trors no matter where you go and it it probably is what are you bringing to the local market I presume one way to do it would be to find someone like you who's in whatever de Mo Iowa do you find someone who's got great at maintaining relationships and needs business help I'm just thinking about the expansion path what is the value of of teaming up with you yeah with the contractor the value is in having it all tied up in a a nice little package with a bow on it hand delivered so when I work with the contractor if they bring me a customer then what I do is I help them get all the design together they make all the selections we get all the materials together and then the contractor can get the pricing together based on all the decisions have already been made it's it's a a complete package that he can price and then when it's priced and the customer signs the contract then I get all the I do all the procurement so all the products are delivered on the day he wants so we usually deliver three days before the preconstruction meeting so that everything can acclimate so if you're bringing in you your cabinets and your hardwood floors and things like that you know we want everything to be acclimated to the the climate conditions of the new job site so they don't have to deal with uh Mrs Smith who doesn't know what faucet she wants and the plumber is going to be there tomorrow but we now we have to wait a week because the the faucet she want isn't in stock so everything is there ready to go when he's ready to break ground they don't have to deal with the hassle of figuring out what the what the client wants uh what the products are uh when the products are going to be delivered it's all figured out and ready to go when they need it to leen's point I've done two massive house remodels the First with just a contractor and it did not look as good as it could have and there were a lot of stops and starts along the way and some overall frustration the second time we started with the designer she brought in the contractor and some of the subs and really manage the project for us I mean we still had a GC because that's what the contractor did but it looked better it felt better it was on time it was on budget when I got frustrated she stepped in and helped make it happen I think what Lena's doing is invaluable thank you because that's exactly what I do so what I do is I try to make it so that my clients can sleep at night and I make it so that the contractors are profitable because every time a decision isn't made and they're losing time and they have to reschedule Subs they're losing money time is money when you're a contractor and and it it's it's rough so I do my best to partner with them um I pay them very quickly if I'm hiring a wallpaper hangers so I'll hire installers and they go through my business uh the job is done I get visuals of the the work being done they send me the invoice I pay it the same day or the next day because I want to keep them happy good trades people are really hard to find so I try to treat them like the the Kings they are Lena it sounds to me like you're uh extremely well prepared for this and and off to a great start even if it was a bit of a difficult year this year and I'm really looking forward to following along as you uh as you build this going forward so thanks again for joining us yeah likewise I think that you're you're you're one of the better prepared newbies that we've run into thank you hey I was the most recent newbie before her no not I know you're not really a newbie you're just you're just a bee because you've been around you your experience I think in for someone who's starting a business yeah very prepared all right all right I'll allow it allow it so this is an exciting adventure and and uh I plan to do like they say you know go out uh sliding into first base there all all used up when it's time my time comes so I'm just going to make the most of it and do what I can and and got the people here on 21 21 hats uh great inspiration lots of people with wonderful ideas and the willingness to share the experiences um the failures uh I call that the uh education you get from the School of Hard Knock so that's the tuition you pay so so a failure is always the education so I don't I don't look at failure as failing I look at it as an educational opportunity and that's what that particular class cost me that day not a loss it's a lesson what do you want from us today I mean is there something here we are I'm very nervous about being this I'm in awe of everybody's success and I feel like uh I am so far down the road of uh I have a long way to go and I look up to you and I I feel like um you have been very generous with your conversations that you've been having on this podcast that I I just feel very welcome and safe and to me that's the world because it's very hard to find people to talk with about things that are business I mean I can talk to my husband but he's not a business owner he's the spouse of a business owner and it's very hard to have somebody who's been there done that learn the mistakes and is willing to share the experiences so um just being welcomed into this group is incredible it's it's a wonderful opportunity and I'm very grateful yeah well put that that's sort of the the feeling I had for decades before I met Lauren it's just like my wife's friends are lovely but they don't know anything about my world so it was hard to hard to find support someone to talk to so welcome aboard all right Lauren you got the master plan what are we doing next wait hold on I want to jump into what Lena just said real quick uh one Lena welcome we're glad to have you I think you're going to be a perfect addition to our Merry Little band uh but the second thing is from where you're sitting I think you feel behind because you're looking so far ahead but if you turned around and looked behind you to the people who are still working for somebody else in a toxic company miserable dreaming of the day they go out on their own look at the people who may have started and stopped or started and not been able to keep going because of health or economy or a lack of marketing understanding or not being an expert in their craft you are exactly where you need to be and you're light years ahead of where you were and you just keep moving forward that's true that that's really good to be reflective on that because the one thing I can say positively is I am happy every day even if I'm suffering with the flu or I didn't make uh you know didn't get that account um you know I'm still happy and there's a lot to be said for that all right we only have a little bit of time left before we go I've been asking everybody uh about what kind of year they've had uh I already hit you Jackie uh Paul what kind of year did you have in 2024 uh we had a great year after a pretty scary year last year so we had sales you know running way ahead 50% ahead of 2023 throughout the entire year and we're going to end up at just under 6 million in sales this year and we did 4.1 million in sales last year and 5.1 the year before that so it was kind of a weird whips saww in 24 months but yeah I mean it's it's been good we' we've been running steady we've completed some very cool projects I have the same number of people that I did at the beginning of the year but we lost a few older ones and replace them with younger ones so now a quarter of my company is under 30 which is very unusual in the trades as we just heard and uh honestly I just hope it's as good as this next year cuz it's been fantastic and I have really no explanation for why really the big difference between the two years because we did all more or less the same things for marketing had a similar number of people contact us you know it's just the way it goes sometimes people feel spitty you had a similar number of people contact you but you closed more of the sales yes so we keep track of how many calls we get and uh in 2022 we got 1254 and in 2023 we got 1239 and as of today we're 1263 for now $1299 projected for the year so not a huge difference in the number of people calling us just a big difference in who was putting their money down and I can't give you an easy answer as to why why ADV varies so much because I can't see one from any of the data that I've got I can make a suggestion because I changed my website and I found out that the website I had prior was acting as a gatekeeper for me and when I got a phone call from my old website they were much more qualified buyers they had a better indication in their own minds of what they were purchasing from me and they were buying higher ticket items and spending more money when I changed my site to make it more mobile friendly I did a quick down and dirty kind of job and just got the website up it is no longer functioning as a gatekeeper I'm getting more phone calls but they're like do you sell vanities and it's not a full house project so the quality of the people that are calling has decreased so I'm working with my new marketing agency to get back to that quality website I had because the phone calls even though you're counting the numbers of inquiries you're getting the people who are self uh selecting are not a the same caliber was that was my experience well that's that's a that's a good observation for many people but we've already been through that particular set of experiments about 15 years ago I mean I've been running a website for a long time and uh now we have a lot of metrics that we're tracking on on the websites now we did introduce a second website last year that was designed for a different audience but I wouldn't say that it is has produced a 50% increase in in the jobs cuz the people who were supposed to be looking at the news site were not the ones who are buying more and so I I think that your advice is excellent for most people which is pay very careful attention to whether you're getting qualified leads from whatever your source is and that having a a qualification step in your process is pretty important now we do it a different way I would rather everybody on Earth call me and then we sort out who we want to deal with as opposed to necessarily putting some kind of step in front of our interaction with a person but different businesses are different so some people want to set up e-commerce you just you know put in your credit card your business is probably more similar to mine in that you need to talk to the person to figure out whether whether they're any good or not and part of that is just dealing with the number of people who want a bathroom vanity um and so hopefully what you have is some very scripted response to every call that allows you to pretty quickly sort through and not get all busted up if you're not a good fit for somebody right because that's what we we came to we developed that process to to quickly send away people who aren't aren't a good fit for us yeah we even call it the good fit call and I tell the customers who we're talking we're just all the purpose of this is just to see if we're a good fit yep that's exactly what we say can I do what you're asking me to do can I fit it in my schedule is it in your price range that's basically it that's right well maybe you're getting more referrals not necessarily I think if if I had to if I had to Hazard a guess I would say that the economy is just doing well honestly we deal with pretty much everywhere everybody everywhere and so that when people are feeling confident they do the kind of thing that leads to them using me which is moving a facility or expanding their business um or government budgets are are healthy I would say that the last year has just been aside from all the drama around the election that people were basically acting as if they were feeling confident even if you couldn't get them to say that um and now that the election's over I mean usually election years have been very bad' been down years for me and this one was just unusual not that and now I'll see whether the whether it happens next year when whatever actually rolls out of Washington arrives on on Main Street all over the country but we'll see I don't know Paul has the bouncing around of your revenues the last few years does that make it more difficult for you to budget for 2025 not really I don't I don't actually I've been bounced around so many times that I don't budget the way other people budget what I have is a very good good idea of what normal looks like but I don't have like set up an account from my finishing Department say here here's the amount of money you know use it or don't use it we just don't do that I just kind of watch what comes in and one thing that I found uh is that you can you can make a pretty good prediction about how an entire year goes from the first three months that's what my data shows that the projected annual sales of revenues at by March 31st are pretty much where you're going to be with the exception of Co year which was a surprise in March but all the other years you kind of get off to where you're whatever pace you're going to be on and then you can tell what you're heading for so that makes it easier to make decisions but I wouldn't call it budgeting I know what what it takes to run a $4 million year and a $6 million year and keep track of things as we go along all right well thank you all Lena you you will be coming back I hope we haven't scared you away no this was fun actually thank you excellent well my thanks to Paul DS Lena Maguire and Jackie Russo uh this is the last episode that we are uh recording in 2024 I'll see all of you next [Music] year one thing before you go everything we do at 21 hats is created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs to help us all learn together if you get something out of listening to these podcast episodes consider joining the conversation you can do that by joining the 21 hats sounding board a slack Channel where you can tap the wisdom of a very smart crowd or by becoming a founding member and joining our monthly Zoom Forum where you can be part of conversations much like the ones we have on the podcast you can sign up for both by subscribing to the morning room report if you have any questions you can email me at Lauren 21h hats.com and if you get something out of this podcast or out of the morning report please tell a friend tell an enemy tell every business owner you know your word of mouth owner to owner will always be the most effective way to build this community for all of us thank you it means a lot this episode was produced by another entrepreneur Jess steron founder of blank word Productions thanks for listening everyone [Music]