Latest / Booked Out / A+ Garage Doors: Carrie Kelsch on Systems, Private Equity, and Getting Out of Your Own Way

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A+ Garage Doors: Carrie Kelsch on Systems, Private Equity, and Getting Out of Your Own Way · Booked Out

• speaker-0: All right, welcome back to Booked Out, the podcast that helps home service business owners with the playbooks to scale their businesses. Today I'm excited to sit down with three awesome people. We've got the team from A Plus Garage Doors here. Welcome. We've got ⁓ Kerry Kelch, Mitch Kelch, and Mark Deschweinitz here with us. ⁓ a quick overview on these three with incredibly impressive backgrounds. Carrie Kelch is the founder and CEO of A Plus Garage Doors, one of Utah's leading garage door service and installation companies. She has a passion for leading. And building strong teams. She's helped grow A while creating a people-first culture rooted in gratitude, accountability, and the A plus way. Carrie's also committed to elevating the skilled trades through mentorship, leadership development, and giving back to communities A Plus serves. Mark Desweinitz is the CMO at A Plus Garage Doors. He's done global digital marketing for at now at Dow Chemical at Boncom, then marketing leadership at CINT before landing at A Plus in early 2025. Since then, he's built an in-house team called Team Extra that runs everything from TV and radio to scripted social series and lifted lead volume around 30% in his first year. He's also the guy behind Fix It Today, the A Plus Way. And Mark's also got a half pipe in his garage that he skates on during the day. Mitch Kelch is the chief business officer at A Plus Garage Doors. ⁓ he's been with the company for about a decade now and Really done almost every role over there, starting from an installer all the way up through the executive level as chief chief ⁓ business development officer. Done some amazing things. And Mitch was a big reason why A Plus ended up on Service Titan, which has been a a huge monumental piece of their growth and and scaling the company. So welcome to Booked Out. We're excited to have the three of you on today. Thank you for having us. Yeah. speaker-1: Definitely an honor to be here. speaker-0: Yeah, it's fun to have all three of you here too. Great, great format. We you've all got different perspectives and different wisdom from before your time at A Plus, but now now building A Plus together. ⁓ and you have an incredible business. We're excited to dive in and learn from you. Just to start, we'd love to hear a little bit of your background, each of you personally, what got you into A Plus, ⁓ the background of A Plus as a business, you know, the founding story, and would love to, yeah, we'd love to hear what brought you here today. speaker-1: All right, I'll I'll start with the founding story. So in 2005, I was a mortgage broker and I was doing really well at it. But I'm also an entrepreneur, so I had a couple other businesses just under my belt. I was single mom, so I had three kids and I was dating a guy that worked at a garage door place. And he came to me and asked me if I'd open a garage door company for him. After many months of turning him down, he overcame all of my objections and came back to me with you'll own it. I'll run it and the kids can eventually work here. So it was kind of like all the boxes were checked and so I opened A Plus Garage Doors thinking it was gonna be a company that I could just sit on the shelf and forget that that wasn't necessarily the case. So that's really the founding story of I'll let Mitch kind of jump in and mark. speaker-2: Yeah, I my my background is actually completely nothing to do with garage doors. I'm a relative of Carrie's and her her dad owned a cabinet shop called Fashion Cabinets, and that's where actually where I started my line of work is is in cabinetry. And I did that for quite some time and then moved on to collision repair and then finally ⁓ a shipping manager for a really large company. And actually I had a really good job that was really well paying, but it but I talked to another technician at A plus that was making a little bit more than me. And I told them, well, we'll get me an interview. And Parker and Kerry ⁓ interviewed me. And at first they're like, ⁓ you're kind of overqualified for the job. I don't know if it'll be a good fit for you. We don't have any positions available. ⁓ all we could really do is make you an installer, which is the very very entry level of the company. And I ⁓ you know, knowing what this other guy was doing in the company and just kind of seeing like, man, they've already been on a great path. I took the leap and decided I'll I'll take anything at this point to get my foot in the door, ⁓ just because I think I saw the opportunity that was in in front of me. So I wanted to be in sales. That's something that I had some passion for. And I would I would call Parker after I was done with an install and say, Hey, can I go can I go ride at the technician afterwards or work on Saturday or anything like that to to get some sales experience? And he would just say, Nope, you're doing great. Just keep on installing those doors. You'll you'll you'll do fine. So what I ended up doing is start doing what I want to do anyways. You know, I'm I'm kind of that kind of thinker where, well, you're not necessarily the commander of my ship. I'll I'll I'll go ahead and sell some product anyways. We have all the same tools. So I stocked my truck with a lot of product and started selling, you know, motors or or any accessories that whoever sold the doors wasn't able to sell. I would sell that and install it at the same time. That helped me get my foot in the door to be a technician. And I had no clue about what the garage is. Like we didn't know about any other companies. We didn't talk to any other companies. So we're really just an island out there in the sea. So I I didn't know what was possible, what's not possible. We didn't have that limitation to say you can't do something. And ⁓ this other guy that that helped me get the first interview, he was kind of like my competition. So me and him worked alongside each other and we did a million dollars in sales each in that first year of being a sales technician, which was a a huge feat. Even nowadays it's still a goal. It's still a goal we have for our guys is can you hit a million dollars in sales? For a garage store company, that's not the most not the easiest task because an average ticket nowadays is probably five thousand. ⁓ back then it was probably two thousand. It was quite a bit less. So on a door sale. And that's not just a the service ticket, that's just the door sale. So really took a lot of jobs. I I was working from 7 a.m. to nine p.m. most days in order to accomplish that. But it's it's been a a great journey for me because Carrie finally recognized, like, ⁓ my gosh, this guy's actually doing things. This other guy, Craig, her brother, ⁓ he's doing things in the company as well. So she put us in a position where we could start training and say, you guys are doing amazing, but what would it take for you to help other guys do amazing? And that's one thing I really love about A plus is, you know, the the law of self-aggrandizement. How do how do I get myself to go up? Well, I help those around me. And I think Carrie's done that the whole time. She's been a great example of that. I'm just gonna help the people around me and that will naturally push yourself up. So it's been a a great journey that way. speaker-0: Yeah, that's amazing. Thanks, Mitch. That's pretty cool. speaker-3: Cool. Well first I'd say Carrie and Mitch have amazing work ethics. So if you take nothing else away, work as hard as them and you'll probably achieve big things. speaker-0: Secret sauce is just work work hard. Work hard forever and you're good to go. speaker-3: Work hard. ⁓ so I've only been here a year and a half, ⁓ much less time than both Carrie and Mitch, obviously. I have spent over twenty years of my career in marketing. what appeals to me most about A plus garage doors, which still I love doing, is that anyone who owns a home has a garage door and most people don't think about it very much. I mean, maybe some people are looking at designs, but I never thought about it at all before I came here. ⁓ so how do you get someone when things break or something goes wrong to think of you as a brand? And so that's really appealing to me is like how do we do marketing that's entertaining, memorable, fun, and that also communicates that we're ⁓ the best choice, someone you can call if you need anything done with your garage door, if it's fixed or you need a new door, ⁓ which makes Marketing a lot of fun because you can get creative and you can do memorable things. ⁓ I don't I think most people, at least in Utah, if they were to pick one garage door company they've heard of, it would be A plus. Maybe some people know a couple more, but that's kind of what we're going for. speaker-0: Yeah, we were just talking before this. A plus has become a household name. I mean, I told this story per on the personal side. Just Friday. Today is Monday. And on Friday, I ⁓ I was here at the at the refer office and got a call. My wife, one of the neighbor kids, had had driven his go-kart, pretty big-size go-kart, through my daughter and then through our garage door. So the garage door was stuck, wouldn't go up. My daughter was pinned. She was fine. My daughter's totally fine. But ⁓ yeah, my first thought was I'm calling I'm calling Carrie and the team at A Plus and You had the team out there within twenty or thirty minutes of that ⁓ call. So phenomenal. I think, yeah. Everyone, everyone in Utah, Nevada, you've got four locations now. It's become it's become a very much a household name. ⁓ incredible things you've done. So it's fun to hear the background story from from each of the three of you. And you have an awesome team behind that as well. So, ⁓ yeah, we're big A plus fans and and current customers of A Plus. You so you've been great. ⁓ Tell me a little bit about actually I want to double tap on something you said, Mitch. So in the early days you said you felt like you were kind of on an island, you didn't know what other businesses were doing. It seems like that has changed a lot. I was just at an event that you all hosted last week and you had, I don't know how many, how many different contractors were there in in attendance. Yeah, thirty, thirty plus contractors. And you've done this a lot. And ⁓ this is actually something I love about the trades in general is even though some people may be competitors, a rising tide lifts all ships and speaker-1: Like thirty. speaker-0: A plus specifically, you've done a great job of shop tours and welcoming other people in to see, you know, the magic sauce and the recipe behind your success. So it's changed since since you mentioned the early days when you felt like you're on an island. Talk talk me through that. ⁓ you know, A plus specifically, how have you welcomed other people in and found that as a strength to learn and grow together and and be kind of a you're kind of a lighthouse for other businesses around here and really across all the country. speaker-2: Yeah, and and in that time, ⁓ when we when we joined Service Titan, that's when we ⁓ started tracking our numbers a lot better and starting to see like what what are we actually doing? And after after a couple of more years, we started going to see other companies. And I think one of the first was was Tommy Mellow, right? ⁓ one thing that he does great is he let people in to see what he's doing. And we really liked that. ⁓ I think that that changed our trajectory quite a bit to see like it's it's not as scary as you think to let people in. And see what you're doing and you can see that the effect it can have on them. You can help them. So it goes back to that self-hanger advantagment law. If we can help all the other companies around us, not just our employees, but if we can help our c our the other companies, whether or not their garage door doesn't really matter. It's it's just building those relationships. And so helping them out, ⁓ what we also found is it helps us out a lot. We've gone intoward their shops and we've learned a lot. And when you walk through our shop, ⁓ you're gonna see a lot of things that we stole from somebody else. Like ⁓ this is a great idea. Let's implement that at our at our shop as quick as possible. And and that's been a great way for us to build a company that ⁓ it really entices the right employees to come work for us. speaker-1: Mm-hmm. remember the days when we would talk about sharing our information and we and this was this was me. I mean, I've I've got to own this one, is I didn't want to share any of it. Like I was like, don't tell people what we're doing. Don't don't get on the radar. I don't want anyone to know. And we really shifted from that. And I think that ⁓ Tommy's company had a lot to do with it. And the other one that was a big driver in that would be NER group because they are so open. open arms and welcoming and just they give you advice and like learn here, help let me help you here. And so I'd say we we kind of opened our mind going and Vic touring Tommy Shop. But then once we went in toward any hours, we're we're like, that's who I want to be like. I want to be a company that just can give back to the community for no reason. Like there's nothing involved in that. You just want to give back to the community. And I think that really changed our perspective. And that's when we started opening our doors and showing people and and it did. It made us it made us grow and perform better and you learn a lot when you the teacher, you know. speaker-2: Another thing that stood out to us is how successful we were. We had no idea, really. I mean, we were doing well as a company inside of Utah Utah. Even inside of Utah, we didn't really know like how do we stack up against our competitors. So going and starting to meet with other companies and see what they're doing and going to events like Vertical Track or Pantheon helped us to start to see like what what are the competitors out there doing? And really shocking to me was that, you know, for a privately owned garage door repair company for the on the residential side, we were the second largest that we could see. You know, you've you've got A one and then you have A plus garage doors. And you know, he he keeps a pretty good gap on us. But still, I think we're right up there at the top as far as garage door companies go. And that's just out of Utah, which is not that big of a market. So it's really impressive to me just to to look at that and see how big the United States is and how big these markets are and see that we can actually still ⁓ do the kind of numbers that we're doing here. speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. It's an impressive business you've all built. Tell me what's what's the focus at A Plus today? Mark, let's start with you and what what are you guys working on? What's what's what gets you up in the morning? What's exciting happening at A Plus right now? speaker-3: Well, we want continued growth in Utah, but we're also expanding in other markets. Last year we went into Las Vegas and then recently we went into Reno. So we want to re replicate the success we've ⁓ shown in Utah in other markets as well while maintaining the growth and the customer satisfaction here. ⁓ I'm always trying to reinvent like our messaging and how we're doing that and looking at seasonal things. So Just give more more reasons for people to pay attention to us and to call make us their first call when they need a garage or something repaired. speaker-0: Yeah, I love it. There's exciting things happening. You guys have a great energy about the team and company. What what did things look like early days? I know recently, ⁓ and congrats, you've ⁓ I mean, generally speaking, private equity is is rolling up, garage door companies, HVAC roofing, it's it's changing the dynamic, and I want to talk more about that today. But congrats on on your recent acquisition with the guild group and partnership there. That's exciting. I wanna I wanna dive into that a little bit, but Tell me first, what did the company look like in the early days? You kind of told the founding story, Carrie, but tell us a little bit, peek behind the curtains at A plus garage doors in that first year and then and then how things have progressed since then. speaker-1: So I would say the first I d I told you at the founding story and then the first couple of years up until about two thousand and eight it there wasn't a whole bunch of movement. Actually I would even say up to two thousand and thirteen. It was just it it took us from two thousand and five to two thousand and thirteen to be one point five million in revenue. And the reason being, looking back, is I can see we didn't have any systems in place or processes in place. We didn't really have an organized ⁓ organization going on. We all just worked for a garage door company and we were all just trying to get food on the table. So we didn't really even have a culture established. And in 2013, I really did something that changed the direction we were going. ⁓ I did a college course called Ten Thousand Small Business Program. And that I know it's not beneficial for everyone, but it was so beneficial for me because I don't have a college degree. And so it was like an MBA in thirteen weeks and I was very open to, you know, implementing everything that I've learned. And once I started to like understand what I needed to implement, then that's where we started to see some real growth happen because it was so intentional. And we also got structures and we got systems in place and to the point where I mean we yes, when Mitch started we were pen and paper and I am shocked that they did what they did. Like he actually would hit the million dollars one time I think he hit it on like New Year's Eve. It was just down to the wire. But ⁓ it was just a lot of work to get there and we had ⁓ all of our you pa all the papers are, you know, just stacking up and lining up, but To be able to get a system in place to even handle that kind of volume even then, because when we were on we were pen and paper, 2017, we're probably doing about eight million. And so that's a lot of garage doors that we're repairing and replacing. So it was you had to have your systems in place or else they're gonna get lost all over the place. You know, like you've got to have your guys turn in the paperwork on time. And now through service time, I mean, such a brilliant move. There's no way I could have grown where I'm at. without implementing something like service time to be able to track what needs to be tracked and be able to do everything so remotely. I mean waiting for the technicians out in the field to drive their checks into us and customers would be calling in saying, I gave you a check two weeks ago and my guys just haven't made it in or a week and a half ago my guys haven't made it in to give us the checks, that's a problem. Cause they had the money then, but they don't have the money now. And the way we do it today is just so much more efficient. So it's it's been fun watching it just transform and even watching it go from I mean, when I started, we're phone books. I mean, you just know you put an ad in a phone book and then you're gonna get calls. You put you know, but a hundred percent the reason for the A plus. Yeah, I need an A to be in the phone books. And so we went with the A name, got in the phone books and we just calls immediately started coming in. And so then you're like, ⁓ we wanna grow? Let's do a full page ad. ⁓ we want to go even more. Let's do two pages. Like that's literally how hard it was. And it wasn't until I jumped online and it was probably around 2008 when I jumped online. And even though I wasn't full time in the industry, I was or I was still like as I was a mortgage broker, but I was still kind of doing the side work, like I I'd make payroll happen and I would buy the advertising. But again, we're just a small company, so we didn't need much. Well, when we went online and literally they had to explain to me what the World Wide Web was, I'm like, what are you talking about? I've got a phone book. Why would I need to be online? Like, you don't use that for anything. It's just information. I've I saw it as like, it's just like a dictionary. And I was convinced by a good friend of mine now, so that that you should be online. And so I went online and it really took off and we just leaned into that. And now we have the same situation where here comes AI. And everyone's like, How are you leaning into it? And I'm like, go there now. Just go now. Don't even because I've already been through it. I already know that where it's going and you need to jump on. So you've got to be the, you know, forefront of all these. And some people are like, Well, it won't last. I'm like, I'm here to tell you it's gonna last. You know, I mean, I think people are pretty on to it now, but it's been even before Mark came, I was just pounding going, How do we get on how do we get seen by AI? What do we what do we know about AI? This is like two years ago, three years ago. speaker-0: Yeah, no, that's amazing. And and yeah, you've lived through this first shift of phone books to the web, basically. And now this shift of AI, I think private equity and AI right now are the two big things that are changing the dynamic of all trades platforms. Yes. And what other systems have changed? I mean, Service Titan was a big one that you've implemented, no-brainer to scale a company from where you were day one to where you are today and and the background to support that. Mitch and Mark, what other processes have been, systems and processes have you seen take shape over these past years to help? Change the business from where it was day one to today as as advice to other operators in the same spot. speaker-2: You know, in the early days it was it was Carrie. She would come up with ⁓ a a plan and a system and and start implementing that. And it ⁓ it wasn't until after Service Titan that we really started leaning more into software and and seeing like what else what else can help us move forward. When I was brought into the office, ⁓ actually what happened is Parker got into an accident and you know, Carrie was like, ⁓ crap, my the guy that's running the the company as far as operations goes is now out and who what do we do? speaker-1: Parker was my at the time he was my operations manager. So that just kind of puts him into contact. P CO today, but at the time he was operations manager. And I'm just gonna let you finish your story. But he it was a a Sunday morning when I got the call that he about ripped off his lake and he's gonna be out for a very long time and we're you know, so happy that he didn't lose his leg. Yeah. So it was just a one of those freak accidents, a a weekend freak accident. And Mitch benefited because I'm speaker-0: Today. speaker-1: I'm like, okay, who's who's the next wisest person in the company? And that's when I, you know, Mitch was already doing a lot of this because he's he's a forward thinker. He's like he's thinking what's next, what next. So he already had us like looking at a lot of things and he was already in even though he was out in the field, he was already very involved in the office space of what we're doing. And so it made sense to bring him in to to help us out. But I'll let you take it from there. speaker-2: Yeah. Yeah. So ⁓ me coming into the office, the first thing I did was put on a fire firefighter's hat because it was like, this is unbelievable what you guys are doing. Too you know, one person wearing way too many hats, and I'm sure a lot of small companies feel that. How can I fit in a new software when I'm I'm too busy doing what I'm doing? I d I don't have room for it. So ⁓ it was an eye opener for ⁓ for all of us a day plus to that we need to actually, you know, expand the the office side a little bit. And so after Parker came back ⁓ I did go back into the field for a little bit, but it was very brief. And then they decided, you know what, let's just bring you to the office, ⁓ which was great. I I really thrived there and I I really like to look at how can I build systems that will take care of themselves. I look at it at a machine. You know, if I can build a machine and watch the machine run, that's a lot funner than doing the work myself. So ⁓ one of the first things I really leaned into was Google Sheets. And, you know, because I wasn't aware of a lot of softwares back then that could help us, like, well, I've got a little bit of education on. Google Sheets, so I'm gonna dive into this and make this work for us. So that that really helped keep things rolling really smooth. You know, you've got Service Titan that we knew quite a bit about at that time for what they had, but it really wasn't d designed for garage doors at this time. So there's a lot of gaps to fill. So we used we used that for many years to fill a lot of different gaps, everywhere from HR to pay sheets and ⁓ everything in between and inventory and all that. The next thing that really helped us a lot was actually Bamboo HR. I think that really helped us to it took a load off of all of us just to let another company do a lot of the HR management pieces. and then and then a big part of it is just re leaning back into ServiceTitan to say, you know what, they've got a lot of features. They they they offer the features, but we're piecing things together in all sorts of different softwares or our own systems. And ⁓ by looking around at other companies, other HVAC companies. the ones that are leaning into Service Titan, they were really starting to benefit. So the way I looked at it was we were trying to make Service Titan fit into our business model. But really once we said, okay, let's let's loosen the grip on that a little bit and let ourselves form into Service Titan's business model. They've got the research to back it up. I think things really started to change. So that's probably the biggest thing is Service Titan. speaker-0: Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, no brainer and it's amazing what you've scaled since then. speaker-1: think taking all the all the pieces that are very heavy, like you said, like with bamboo having another company that can actually do all the HR and support our team that way. And man even managing our roles that we have in our our employees and then leaning into like, ⁓ what what's the next pain point? Well it's, you know, responding to all of these chats. So whether you're doing hatch or chirp, like something that can respond to the chats and and being outbound and ⁓ speed delete, so that was really important. And then like even with even with refer pro like being able to go like, okay, it's a pain point for us to get like we already knew we had referrals coming in, but how do we grow this and lean into it even more? And we were just talking about the numbers, how surprising they were. But the just finding out where those gaps are and then going, Okay, do they have software out there that can fill this gap for us so it's not just so much heavy lifting on our team's side. speaker-0: I love that. Mark, what about from your perspective on the on the marketing side over the past couple of years? What are some of those? It's been a lot more developed over the past couple of years. But yeah, what systems, what tools have you used to grow that team? You've done an incredible job growing that marketing side of the business. speaker-3: ⁓ I'm lucky because Mitch likes doing the backend systems or whether he likes it or not, he does it. Yeah, so that's nice. And ⁓ refer pos refer pro has been an a great channel for us. I usually look at all the channels and what I've tried to do since day one is diversify our channels. ⁓ if you're totally dependent on Google local service ads. speaker-2: I like it, I like it. speaker-3: And they decide they're gonna suspend you or go down. You don't want your business to just suffer and people are sitting around in their trucks with nothing to do. ⁓ so from day one, I've been trying to diversify the channels and see, you know, can we double or triple the amount of channels that are bringing in leads to the business so that if one goes down, we have all these other ones that we can turn up. ⁓ I think I've done a good job at that where Now, if even if our Google ads go down, we're still getting leads in. I mean, we obviously want everything to be working, but we can turn up Facebook or even traditional stuff like print publications. I'll look at which one of these is working and can we do more there? Are there other areas we can do? How can we tweak the creative and get more leads through that? But I've been really surprised at how some of the traditional channels have worked ⁓ really well for us, even with digital technology and everything. So my main focus is on just getting people to call us, fill out the lead forms. And if Mitch wasn't on top of the internal system so much, I would have to work on that more. But I'm I'll take the luxury of not having to worry about it too much. So speaker-1: It was nice when Mark came on, I saw that I saw we had a huge weakness. And the weakness was we are so heavy stacked in Google that at any given moment, like if Google went down, our whole company would go down. And to me that's a very vulnerable spot. And so when Mark came on board, he knew the objective was to get us so we had different avenues of revenue coming in and calls coming in that weren't just so reliant on just Google. And I think that's what he's done really well is been able to like tap into these other lead avenues that don't just like if Google goes down we're not everyone's not freaking out and we're not laying off ten people just because our LSA went down or a G ⁓ B got shut down. So speaker-0: Yeah. This podcast is called Booked Out. How do we keep the team busy? How do we make sure we're not laying off technicians that that the board is full, right? So I think it's fair to say ROAS is a love language of yours, Mark, and for all marketing leaders across the trades, right? What if you were starting fresh or advice for newer operators? What are your your top ROAS channels? Where would you start? What are your highest opportunities? speaker-3: Yeah. ⁓ well if you have an existing customer base, definitely the referrals, like what you do is like a super high ROAS. If you don't have an exist existing customer base, it's a little harder to leverage existing customers because you don't have them yet. ⁓ so I would definitely look at maybe the bottom of the funnel first. Where are people searching when something breaks? And that's Google or Chat GPT or you know, all of the AI engines right now. So how do I show up there? And the way to show up there is to get really great reviews and content from customers. So you gotta get a few customers obviously to start. And if you have to go really back to like I have no customers at all, no Google reviews, you can print out little door flyers and hang them on doors. ⁓ you can go to local events, like they have homeowners associations, which will allow you to come in with a table, talk to people. In Vegas, we've done some of this stuff. Like we went to the Las Vegas Athletic Club and they let you set up a table and it's air conditioned in there and there's they said they had three to five thousand people a day just coming through one gym alone. ⁓ so just find a place where a lot of people traffic that own homes and go in there and get your name known, give them coupons, candy, like gamify it, spin a wheel and give them some prizes or something like that. So we're doing quite a bit of that in Las Vegas because it's a newer market for us. and you know, we just need to establish ourselves a little bit more there. speaker-0: How have you how have you found success in scaling your review request engine early on? I mean it's probably one thing early days, but how have you found success in scaling that motion? speaker-3: Sure, okay. Well Carrie and Mitch have done most of that, so I kinda came in after the system was already set up. ⁓ but really getting the technicians in the field to gather the reviews when they're with customers. And we even have some software where we can just make it really easy for them. They can show a QR code on their phone or text someone a link and get a review on the spot. So every yeah, go ahead, Kerry. speaker-1: I was gonna say we we already had tapeasy reviews already implemented in our ⁓ company. And one of the things with that is they're they're like your like refer pro they're really good at implementing like you need a change made, they're really good at like listening to the customer and then making that change and tweaking it on the go. Like you tell them there's an issue, and then within a couple hours or a day, it's fixed. Or you know, here's a gap and it's fixed, just like what we've experienced with refer pro. So that system was already set up, but we made it so easy for our people in the field to be able to get these reviews or ask for these reviews. And it's not I know there's a really easier way when it comes to like service Titan. Service Titan will just send out an automatic request for a review, but where does the ownership lie with ⁓ the person in the field? if they know the the review's just coming, they're like, I don't I just I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do and I don't have to even ask for the review. But if they know they have to ask for the review and be confrontational about it, then they're like setting themselves up the whole way to like their end goal is like at the end of this call or this job, I'm gonna ask for the review. And so they're very intentional about like making sure the customers listen to and taken care of because they know they have to ask for it. It's not just gonna be an automated send out. And I really liked that concept. I don't know if we'll But you definitely leaned into it and any now speaker-3: No, that's Yeah, I kinda just jumped on board, it was already set up and it's a great system, so speaker-0: Powerful dynamic to have, yeah, the ownership piece with your technicians and your employees and the people face to face. Nothing can beat that with powered with the technology on the background to automate that if it doesn't happen, things like that. So you've done a great job of that. That's cool. Talk me through, we're kind of kind of circling back to this now. We talked a little bit about the early days of A Plus and the amazing growth you've seen and some of the hurdles you've overcome and the processes you've implemented. Congrats again on the recent acquisition and partnership with the Guild Private Equity Group. It's it's amazing. We'll love to hear your perspective on that. How has that changed the business? What what does A plus look like as part of the guild partnership versus before as a standalone business? speaker-1: It's definitely it's definitely gonna always change you, right? It's I mean, but you don't you don't make a move like that and not without with thinking, ⁓ nothing's gonna change. You make the move because you're like, I do want to make I wanna grow or I wanna make a change. So it's it's for sure changed us. We've actually had three turns. So the first one, ⁓ I was looking at all the different PE groups and all all the different possibilities, and I thought, well If they could do it, why can't I just do it? And so I thought I would just create my own group. And it would be more of a group, not so much a PE group. But that didn't I think that encumbered more than what I thought it would. And so once we I created that, then now the next move is to go get other companies to join you. And that's where we just didn't have the bandwidth to do it. Or or the like we had some finances we could buy ⁓ out, but we just didn't have the right team built out to to grow that. And so then that's when we joined Guild Garage Group. And so rolling that company, which is ⁓ Epic Garage Group, into Guild Garage Group, ⁓ merging that over there, then we we knew things were gonna have to change, where if we just left it epic we could leave everything the same. ⁓ when we moved to guild. Things did change, like we went from QuickBooks to Intact, and that is, even though it's just a small little sentence, it is a lot of lifting, like a lot of heavy lifting, and it's it's hard on the team. And so thank goodness we had the support of, you know, them already knowing how to do it. And we went from bamboo to ADP. And so that's definitely a a shift and everybody has to learn how to redo everything that they're doing. And now you kind of have to fill in the gaps where this software that they're using doesn't quite fit everything that you need. It fits most things, but it communicates really well with what guild is doing. And so we've kind of had to fill in the gaps there. So it's it's a lot of heavy lifting, but overall ⁓ it's been beneficial for my team because we were able to like give out shares and and then grow the company and then reward those shares. So ⁓ and then going from guild And getting a new ownership with Oak Hill has been to me it's it's been a positive in the sense that I really like the Oak Hill guys and I think it's just professionalizing what's going on more so. And I think there's just gonna be some really fun stuff up next to come. So I I don't Oak Hill doesn't do an investment to lose. speaker-0: Yeah, that's right. No, that's amazing. And I think one of the things I've been impressed with with the whole team and and you specifically, Carrie, is a lot of a lot of times I know when these private equity groups come in, there's a ton of upside there. A lot of times I think it's it's common that founders become a bottleneck in the business for that next stage of growth. And what you've accomplished from day one until now, po three three private equity turns is continuing to scale and stay ahead of that that curve, right? And so it's pretty cool to see that. It's it's it can be pretty rare to see. So congrats on that. speaker-1: Well it's definitely my team. Right? My team that believes in me and believes what we're doing and I've got that a lot of support there. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, takes an army for sure. Mitch and and Mark from your perspective, what's ⁓ what's changed and a and maybe A plus specifically or if you have opinions on that's changing the whole dynamic of the trades in general and I know some of your competitors or some other businesses that you that you work with, how have you seen private equity have a positive impact? ⁓ what what what what have you seen there in general? I speaker-2: I mean, we've seen a lot of both. It can have a really positive impact or a really negative impact. ⁓ the the perception, I think, for most people is it's going to have a really negative impact. To speak to that with A, nobody likes change. So when change does happen, it's not like people in our company aren't like, ⁓ this is terrible. We shouldn't have done it for a moment. But then you look at the big picture and be ⁓ yeah, we're all way better off for this. ⁓ and it and it is changing, changing the industry, I think. there's some really great benefits that it's allowed our people within our company to to grow and to transfer to other states and still work within the same company. You don't have to be rehired. None of that has to happen. For A Plus, it's a little bit unfair because we're we're the largest company inside of Guild and we have a lot more pull than some of the other some of the other companies. So not as much has changed for us as it has for them. But it also hey, you know, we want we want to help this this smaller company really dive in and see how they can expand their growth and things like that. We've done that ⁓ really success successfully with some of the brands. So, you know, it's it's great that way we we get to impart some of the knowledge we have so they don't have to go through those same learning curves and the pain points that we went through. And they can they can start to hit some really, really nice numbers really quick quick. speaker-3: I've enjoyed working with some of the other businesses and it's fun as a marketer to say, Hey, what's worked here? Can we try this in Texas or you know, in you know, wherever the company's located at another business and ⁓ take what's you know, the things that work in marketing, maybe it's a different audience, adjust the creative so that it fits the local demographic a little bit better, but it's just expanded our reach ⁓ as a marketer. And we can go out log into Service Titan and kind of see what's working and the data in different markets and make adjustments month to month. So that's been fun. ⁓ it's been a good experience being able to meet all of the brand presidents and others from the garage businesses across the country too. So it makes you feel like you're part of this big network of like minded people, which is fun. speaker-0: Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. I want to talk briefly about hiring and retaining great people. How many employees how big is the A plus team now? What's the total? Amazing, big team. This can be for any of any of the three of you or all three of you, but how do you how do you find great people? How do you know they're gonna be great? And then how do you retain the great ones that you do get? speaker-1: Yeah, it's amazing. ⁓ I think it really starts with like who's doing your hiring. And for us we have a really good ⁓ team that between my general manager and my HR, my in-house HR, they do a really good job at just vetting everybody that comes across. And the first thing they look for is is this just a good human being? You know, sometimes you think, well, everyone's a good human being. Some people just aren't. Like they just aren't good human beings. And so that's one of their first questions. And the next thing they ask is like, are you a team player? Because we have a very team player culture. Like you were just talking about Mark, his his team's called Team Extra. Right? Every there's just it's a very team culture. And so they want to make sure they're a team cool they're they're really team oriented and making sure they're they're a good culture fit. If they're not a good culture fit and they're like, I'm the top sales here, I'm the top sales here, and that's like that's great. But you've got to really be a good culture fit. So I think that's where it comes down to. And then once you hire ⁓ and they you find out they're not a good culture fit, being willing to let ⁓ go. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, I think even in our business at our fur pro you start to get this flywheel of A players. The more A players you have, the more they attract other A players. I think there's a there's a famous quote. ⁓ A players attract A players, B players attract C players, and then C players sink the ship. So A plus you've done an incredible job. I've been in the shop enough to know you've got a team of A players over there. So ⁓ Yeah, any any other thoughts on the hiring piece for your teams, Mitch. speaker-1: I push it. speaker-2: Yeah. I do. I mean, so we we have a referral program, you know. ⁓ we if somebody if I refer somebody to work for A plus and they are there for a year on on the year mark, I'll get a check for fifteen hundred dollars. And so it's a great incentive for me to always keep my eyes peeled for the next great employee. But also I don't want to refer somebody that's not gonna be a great fit because it's gonna make me look bad. And so I'm really gonna be picky about who I'm referring and I think that's been a huge, huge part of it. And then one thing that's really changed is Like Carrie said, when we went and toward any hour to see how they have their facility set up, ⁓ they offer a lot of really great benefits to their employees just within the building itself to have that little ⁓ mini gas station. You know, that alone right there. That's one of the things that they offered. And ⁓ when we talked to the guy down there, Dustin, he said, you know, a lot of these things may not even get used that much. ⁓ for example, they have a gym in there. He said it's it's a great benefit. And it helps us attract the right employee. They actually may not may or may not use it, but it's going to help attract the right employee that we're looking for. ⁓ something that we've done a lot of, and Mark's really great at is helping us ⁓ win awards. You know, it makes a big difference if we can say we're one of the best companies to work for year after year after year. Now when we place an ad, we have a flood of applicants, we have our the pick of the litter because we've we've proved that we're a great place to work. speaker-0: Was that last month the best best of Utah I saw? All of you on stage accepting that reward. You've won like five. speaker-3: Best of state and best of Salt Lake. And we just won an award in viewer's choice in Vegas right now. So we're we're voting started today for best of Las Vegas. So vote for us if you want. speaker-0: Yeah, there we go. I'll be on there. ⁓ speaker-3: There we go. That's great. Yeah, no, I mean for me it's ⁓ obviously for anyone that's in a career for ⁓ half of their life, maybe, you just want to work with people that you want to be around. So if I'm interviewing somebody and, you know, like Carrie said, is this a nice person, a good human being that kind of checks the first box? And then were they on time to the interview? Did they show up prepared and with some good questions, some of the basics and then the work ethic is a is a big deal for me. Like, you know, we hired someone on my marketing team recently that didn't have a lot of marketing experience, but she was working a full time job and doing a degree at night and finished both and has great references. So I said, wow, if someone can do that in front of customers all day and then at night do their degree, then that's a good sign. And so it's working out well for her. speaker-0: Question for you, Mitch, and anyone feel free to chime in. But when you look at pricing, your strategy, I'm sure that's adapted over the years. But how do you think about that today? Has it been ⁓ has it been scary to ever raise prices and what's happened because of that? I'm sure you've you've gone through every role at A plus now, so I'm sure you've seen it from multiple different perspectives. But speaker-2: Yeah, that goes back to the comment I made earlier that nobody likes change. ⁓ the the cost that you're the the price that you're charging is really the really the the the person that has the most effect on it is actually the person that's offering the product. So my technician, if he doesn't believe that something's worth that value, that's where you're gonna struggle. So a a good example of that is, you know, we we hired someone f ⁓ that came out of California before and Was in the garage store industry. And we don't typically hire people for from within the garage store industry because we want to make sure they're the culture fit and we want to create that right from the beginning. ⁓ but this this guy he was really high performer at this place in California. And just the market alone is just different there. It's it's a lot higher priced market than Utah. So he would come in and sell an operator much easier at full price than any of our other guys. The other guys would have to discount and wheel and deal to try to get that price. And he could sell that as well as many other items on top of it, no problem. Like it wasn't even a problem for him. And even at that, he kept telling us, I feel like I'm giving it away because the perspective that he had was in California, we were charging double this. So I don't understand why we're charging half price here. For but for our guys, w it's too high. You know, so it's it's all about perspective. And the biggest the biggest hurdle to raising prices is getting your guys to just see the value that they provide. ⁓ something that I struggled with myself. I was a technician and I would, I was that guy that was gonna wheel and deal to get that sale. I would I didn't want to leave with a no, but I learned something really valuable from Craig, the guy that helped me get the referral to here in the first place. You know, he he would sell an operator and then sell the accessories additional to them where I was saying, Hey, if you buy an operator, I'll I'll throw in the keypad and things like that. And he said, you know, if I sell it for that price, this job to to do this as a career, it doesn't make sense for me. But when I do That little extra, it's not a lot, it's $100 extra for a keypad or whatever it is. Now I'm making enough money that I can support my family, and now this career path actually makes sense to me. ⁓ garage doors are interesting because an entry door to the home can can run $10,000 on average to replace a semi-basic entry door. But then we go look at the g the garage door and it's gonna be half that. And so, and we have customers that wanna replace both, or they are replacing both, and they're like, hey, how come? Why is this costing me so much and you guys are charging so little? We love to work with that customer because their perspective is this is very inexpensive. But if somebody's not replacing their front door, now we're we're facing an uphill battle. ⁓ so long story short is it all comes back to perspective. and that's what we try to work on is when we're gonna roll out a price increase, we wanna know why we're doing it so that we can train the managers and the team leads and get them to buy into it first and then let them train the people underneath them. speaker-0: Yeah. This is probably for all three of you, but ⁓ you know, Carrie, Mitch, Mark, whoever wants to chime in here, how do you as leaders ⁓ focus on working on the business and not in the business? Again, you've scaled. This this company has gone from founding to a massive com a top garage door company in the country. So how do you get yourself out of the weeds as a leader and focus on building the business itself? That that can be a challenge for a lot of founders and leaders and speaker-1: I I definitely am seeing that as as a struggle for a lot of these industry or these other trades companies. And what I've noticed is you've gotta develop leaders and trust them and know that they're going to mess it up. So delegating for me, I just needed to delegate it to somebody else. And it's interesting because when a an owner delegates it, they don't think, well if I delegate everything, I won't have a job and I'll be You won't need me. They don't ever think that. They just think I'm gonna delegate it so I can go do something else. And you know, I'm I'm sure my time will be taken doing something else. But then I had to realize that the employees underneath me, they were afraid to delegate. And that's kind of when Mitch came in, is we were we were stuck because the person that had everything under them didn't want to delegate anything because they were afraid that if I delegate it off, where's my value? And so I really had to open up those those conversations and let ⁓ know that it's okay to delegate it out and to to train your or train your leaders underneath you. And so just giving them permission to do that. And I always tell my team that leaders develop other leaders. So anybody can manage a group, you know, you're managing this group or managing that group and you're just reporting up. But to be a true leader, you're actually developing leaders. And dre and developing leaders, I was just at this conversation yesterday with a friend, but developing leaders doesn't mean like ⁓ I'm in CXRs or a CSR. I have, I have that whole group and now I have one of my CXRs that are gonna go over to accounting. I just developed that leader. I'm like, no, you didn't. They just transferred over. Like developing a leader would when you develop them up and now they can lead your CXR team. That's developing a leader. And that's scary for employees to do. And I just had to get in that mindset shift of like, wow, this would be scary for an employee to feel like they might be losing their job. So what do I need to do to make them feel safe? And so then we'd have these conversations and then we'd just take it little by little and pull things off. And then once my COO figured it out, then he started teaching other people too. And I just noticed him delegating another thing down. And and it's lovely to watch because it's it's a beautiful thing to watch them delegate their their responsibilities off to somebody else that they trust because you know they're just going to be taking on something more and we're about ready to have another growth. speaker-0: Yeah, I love that. So great. Any other thoughts on that, Mitch or Mark? speaker-2: I think she hit it on the head that I mean delegation is definitely where my mind goes. ⁓ something that I heard Ryan Humphreys, her husband, say before is he said the one of the best things I ever did was ⁓ fired myself and and hired somebody to replace me. And, you know, that that kind of thinking is is helpful because if I'm focused on my value for the company, I actually am not working on the company, I'm working in the company and retaining that. So I think she nailed right on the head. speaker-0: Yeah, I love it. One of the philosophies I've heard is eliminate it, then automate it, then delegate it in that order to to help scale a company. ⁓ that's a great mentality. Tell me this could be this could be a little bit of all of you, but tell me what the current tech stack at A plus looks like. What what works? We don't need to get into what hasn't worked, but what what works, what does the tech stack look like and how has that brought success to the team? We've already we talked a lot about service tight, and that's a that's an obvious one, but ⁓ speaker-2: Man, we we've bounced around a lot. I mean, what's so interesting about AI AI nowadays is there's so many companies offering a lot of the same thing, but everybody's getting better at a phenomenal rate. So it's hard to say w who's the best out there right now because it changes six months down the road. It's completely different. ⁓ there's a lot of great ideas and really what's what's helped us the most, ⁓ I'm gonna go back to service tight and that's just really They they provide so many tools, but then also the relationships on the back end. If you go to Pantheon and different events they have, you're gonna meet people that will help you unlock something that you didn't know you needed to be unlocked. ⁓ but when it comes to technology, I'd say that CHIRP actually really helped quite a bit to open the door to to that speed delete and respond a little bit faster. And now we we currently use hatch, and you know it it takes such a load off the the CSR and dispatch department to do that, but most of it goes. really rolls back to ServiceTitan. And with with the addition of ReferPro in there, it's it's been a huge, you know, eye opener for us that we've we've got this huge database and we really have no way to tap into it. So ⁓ what what you guys have here is really great to help us see like we have a database that we really repr we're protective of them. That's one of the reasons we haven't just blasted them with emails and texts and things like that. We want to be very thoughtful about how we do that, how we approach that. And so That's that's actually been a game changer for us. We had some really lofty goals last year that we really wouldn't have hit if it wasn't for for fur pro right at the very end coming in and helping us get over that. speaker-0: Yeah, it was fun. I was ⁓ we were seeing you guys hit that, ⁓ your your annual goal for twenty twenty five. I love seeing that. It was that was exciting. speaker-1: Yeah. That was another one of those Super Bowl moments where we didn't know if we were gonna do it. Came down to the wire and we hit it like we hit that one on ⁓ the day before New Year's Eve. Yeah, that's awesome. Like we didn't think we were gonna hit that. I mean we did. We knew we were going to, but there started to there were some doubts, you know? speaker-3: ⁓ when you when you mentioned tech stack on the marketing team, it's astounding to me to see what Adobe had, like the with the creative suite, and then what they're losing so rapidly with Canva, Google, AI, Studio, like all these tools. It's like astounding to me that that people that a business like Adobe could get disrupted like that. And I can I can use the Adobe tools or I can do it in a quarter of the time on Canva or maybe hop into Adobe to do like a vector file for a couple minutes. But ⁓ tech companies that don't just realize that there's difficulty using their products are just gonna lose because someone can easily develop a product with AI now that can overcome all of those hurdles like so fast. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's changing the game. It's it's interesting. This next decade is gonna be interesting. speaker-1: I've been hearing people say with AI, they're like, Well, why would I use that software? I could just create my own. And one of the things with that is you're probably right, with all of the AI out there and all the technology, yeah, you could create your own. But if you actually have an expert do it, then they can spend their hours and their time doing it, and you can actually spend your hours growing your company and focusing it on that. And it comes back to what Mitch said with like being able to get on service time. We were actually looking at developing our own software when he presented service time to us. And I was like, well, we could just do it ourselves and we're just and then I started looking at the cost and it wasn't cost effective either. And I mean now I think it's probably a lot more cost effective, but you still how much hours are how many hours are you putting into it? And then what are you really really getting out? ⁓ that's I think that That's really what's gonna hold all these other companies differentiate, like what they can do is how fast they can shift with AI changing. And we already talked about referral shifting so fast. I mean, my whole team was here and they were just telling you guys how how quick you implement things. And I think that's going to be the difference, is and I think CHIRP did this really well too. When we used CHIRP, then we would tell them, like, this is an issue or we need it to do this. They would implement it really fast. I think those companies. that stay on top of implementing things for the change, they're gonna be the ones that are successful. speaker-2: An another one we didn't mention is Bill dot com. They've been that's a phenomenal platform to keep track of your accounting. It's it's very overrated or under underrated because you know we've gotta keep track of every single dollar that's leaving the leaving the bank. And Carrie still does that. She's approving so many transactions still to make sure she knows like where is that money going, and make sure it makes sense that it's going there consistently. And and that's that's been a huge thing to help us grow, I think. You know, we can keep track of that. But not only that. the the ability to have the credit cards for each person and as such an easy app to keep track of every single receipt. I mean, that took a a huge load off of our account. speaker-0: Yeah, that one's awesome. What's interesting, Carrie, to your point is any any of the businesses who have said they're going to build their own referral program specifically have come back within six months and said, Hey, it didn't work. We're we're gonna use referral. Same thing with service time. There's people who today say, ⁓ we're doing our own in-house CRM. The problem with that is anytime you want to go do anything, you need to go update that, maintain it, and it's a huge hassle. So yeah, it's it's we're in an exciting time in the trades and really across the world where You can implement these tools and and these businesses can be the best at what they do and accelerate the growth and like you said, focus on what you're good at. ⁓ Yeah, this has been so awesome to have all three of you on here. It's been fun. I could I could go all day, we could talk forever. But I have a couple last kind of rapid fire questions to to wrap up here to get your insight on. One, we ask this to everybody, but any any favorite books, advice books that you've you've read that have helped you in business or personal that you would recommend to someone listening to. speaker-1: These two already know what I'm gonna say because I've been I've been asking them to re listen to it or read it, which they have. ⁓ but I like the infinite game of business. That one to me and I also like the great game of business, but I obviously like to gamify things. So those two books are have been some that I've really leaned into lately and have asked my leadership team to read 'cause they're powerful. speaker-0: Yeah, awesome. speaker-3: Yeah. speaker-1: You read it? It was good, right? So good. speaker-0: What about you too? Any other book recommendations? speaker-2: Yeah, there's some books out there for sure, but ⁓ I I would go back to Jim Rohn. You you know Jim Rohn. Yeah. ⁓ he's my favorite mentor of all time. It it's the information that he offers is simple and you can apply it to literally whatever you're doing, doesn't matter what you're doing in life. And it's gonna improve not only your business life, but your personal life and everything in between. So that's probably where I would send somebody. speaker-3: I read mostly biographies. ⁓ I've I have a de you know, MBA and I've done a lot of business books I've read also, but Arnold Schwarzenegger's Total Recall is a book that's influenced me a lot because he's a dreamer and he's somebody that as a young boy in Austria in a small town put pictures of bodybuilders all over his wall and said, I'm gonna be one of these world champions, achieved that, then got to LA and is like Now I want to be a leading man in Hollywood and then he's in California. Now I want to be governor of the state. And it's so fascinating to see somebody that's actually envisioned their future and achieved it and what they went through to get there. So I like I love reading books like that and that's a recommendation I have. speaker-0: For those for those listening and not watching, Mark's got a physical physique, mu much like Arnold Schwarzenegger. So I must rub off one of those biographies. All right, this has been awesome. ⁓ we could we could go for days. I've loved I've loved having all three of you in here together. There's been such good, powerful advice for business owners who are scaling their business. Wrap us up. Each of you give us one piece of advice that every business owner should implement next week. speaker-1: So I'm I would tell you tell them to ⁓ do a culture check on the company. See you see what the health of the company is in the culture. I mean if you if you really want to move the needle, I know this is gonna be a shameless plug for you guys, but really implement like refer pro. That really changed us almost immediately, but we have the database to able to do it. So I know that's two things, but I think the culture is very important and people don't realize that sometimes they think it's one way and it's really something else. speaker-0: Yeah, thank you, Carrie. That's awesome. Mitch? speaker-2: I I would say to make a small list, make a list of maybe three things that are the the biggest problems in your company today. And take that and go look in the mirror and see where that exists inside yourself because I you know, you know, most the most of the time it's you that's standing in your own way. So I would say get out of your own way. ⁓ what we talked about earlier as far as delegating and, you know, wanting to feel valuable in in the role that you have, owners do this too. We feel like You know, you feel like you have to continue to do these sir you have to wear all these hats in order to feel valuable to do it. But really you're the reason that the company's bottlenecked and not being able to move forward. So delegate something today. speaker-0: Yeah, I love that. Awesome. Mark, bring it home for us. No pressure. speaker-3: All right. All right. I'd say ⁓ as a marketer, challenge yourself to see if you can double your ROAS next week on some channel that you have. To be like, hey, I know I've d I did this ad last month in this magazine. Let's see if I can double the ROAS this month. And you have to change something. Like you can't do the same thing. So say what am I gonna change? And How uncomfortable can it make me feel that I know like, hey, this is either gonna totally succeed or maybe it's gonna tank. But challenge yourself to, you know, double or triple your return that you're getting from one channel. speaker-0: Yeah. I love it. This is awesome. speaker-1: One more. Everyone has to go do this on Monday. Like you've got to implement it this immediately. You gotta go sign up for trades for wishes. You have to go do that. Like all the all the industries we've got to support these children. speaker-0: It's an amazing cause. I've I've loved I've loved that. So yeah, thank you. Well this has been awesome. Thank you all three of you for being on today. We're excited to have you back soon.