Crafting your Life and Business with Matt Kuehlhorn – EP.279

(00:00:48) – Matt on his podcast backstory

(00:03:47) – Crafting is Intention and attention

(00:06:59) – Pivoting to garage doors

(00:15:16) – Becoming laser-focused on one service

(00:22:49) – Seasons in the life of a company

(00:31:52) – V 1.0 of the company vs. today

(00:38:49) – Strategic problem solving

(00:40:57) – Customer service training and improvments

(00:54:00) – Final thoughts

Alex Bridgeman: Matt, thank you for coming on the podcast. I’m so excited to chat with you more. Think Like an Owner is a podcast all about how ambitious business owners grow companies. And we were just talking on your show about the different, you know, things you’ve done in your, your business and you know, things I think about with the podcast and, and whatnot and the Craft Your Life Radio show.

I, I’m, that’s the. Name of your podcast and show, like, what got you into that? How did you start that and what kind of prompted you to start podcasting? Every podcast, there’s kind of a unique origin story for why they created their show, and I’m fascinated what yours is.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah, there’s, there’s really two pieces.

The first one is out of necessity. I started cooler garage doors up in a small cow town called Gunison, Colorado. And. A number of years ago, we had a gentleman that I was super loyal to. He moved a couple hours away into Grand Junction, which we’re now in, and this is our sole market currently. But during that time, I recognized that in building cooler within Gunnison, I had easy access.

I was there. I was entrenched in that community. People knew me, but I also knew who were the influence. You know, I call ’em bell cows, who are the influencers in town? Not social media influencers. There’s just the, the folks that kind of led town and and knew people. And if I go and meet certain people, then all of a sudden I’m included in a broader community.

And so when we moved into Grand Junction, I utilized the podcast initially to make those connections. So if you see episode 1, 2, 3, 4, I mean, it’s the chamber director. It’s, you know, different people that were in leadership roles or influential roles, and I was trying to find people that were essentially elk cows.

And then it just formed into, and it, and it evolved in the sense that. You know, I now hunt what it takes to really craft, and I love the idea of craft and craftsmanship and its intention and attention. So it’s taken, its a life of its own. It’s still very much a networking tool, but out of the gate it was literally to build relationships in a new market.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, similar to reason I started think like an owner was to meet business owners and I didn’t really have in unless I was just gonna cold email everyone and try to have a couple minute conversation with all these different people. It’s kinda harder to break in. But a, a podcast as, as you’ve clearly found out, is a really unique way of introducing yourself and meeting somebody that they probably don’t hear every day and don’t get a lot of, so it, it’s definitely a competitive advantage personally, you can develop too.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Without a doubt. I think of it as a, a win-win. I mean, when it’s done right, you know, everybody loves talking about themselves to a degree and they have somebody that’s curious and being like, oh man, I’ve already been so inspired by you. I’d love to chat some more. Be like, what? Alright, sounds good. Yeah, yeah,

Alex Bridgeman: yeah.

We’ll do that.

Matt Kuehlhorn: What other stuff

Alex Bridgeman: do you or work on?

Matt Kuehlhorn: Myself. Almost everything and, and what I mean by that is again, I would boil down craft to intention and attention, and as I get more and more maturity. I am looking to craft all aspects of my life. Like I wanna be very attentive and attentive to the relationship I have with my wife.

I wanna be very attentive and attentive to the relationship I have with my kids, with, with my spirit, with my health, with my business. You know, business these days has grown to.

In part, it, it is just a bunch of gratitude, but it’s also an honor to be able to lead others and help them craft lives. And that’s really important to me. Like I look for people that wanna go somewhere and I don’t just have a job for people.

Alex Bridgeman: Like,

Matt Kuehlhorn: it’s a little different. And, and I think that’s really important.

So, you know, other, other realms of like, I craft my hobby, I’m getting. More into juggling again and cycling and RC airplane piloting and you know, that kind of stuff will continue.

Alex Bridgeman: I’m a huge aviation geek. I have a uncle who, I think he’s still into it, but he was for, for as long as I can remember, he was really into RC planes, and he had even the, the gas ones, like he’d fill up this tiny little geral sized gas tank with fuel, and then it was loud, it had exhaust.

It was about the size of a, you know, an office table or office desk, and he’d fly it around. I got to fly it a little bit. I didn’t crash thankfully. ’cause I feel terrible. I, I’ll crash my own plane, but I, I feel bad crashing someone else’s.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah. I grew up and never, never crossed the threshold of, of gas airplanes, but never got into airplanes.

Growing up, I stayed in cars and we would race them all around and then. When my boy was old enough, we got into airplanes and, and these days the, the barrier is low. Buy a whole kit for a couple hundred bucks and go figure it out. ’cause it’s all electric. And so one day I will get into the gas ’cause I see these guys rolling off with big trailers and big planes.

I’m like, Woohoo, that looks cool.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, you can, some people spend a lot of time on them. They try to make a, you know, a replica 7 37 or 7 47 or Concord or something. They usually spend a ton of time like, you know, custom building it themselves. Really handy and yeah, that’s impressive. There’s also the entry level, like which what I is, what I had, which was the kind of 50, $60 indoor helicopter with the two blades and you had little like remote control.

You can land it on like coffee tables and like fly around the house. That was always really fun. Those didn’t last long. They, they crashed, but they were, they were a ton of fun.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah, that’s fun.

Alex Bridgeman: And so how’d you get into garage doors? Is there, what’s the thread between cars and garage doors for you?

Matt Kuehlhorn: I don’t know if that, well, I don’t know if there’s a real thread there.

This company, I say, started by mistake. I didn’t have a plan to get into the trades. I didn’t have a plan. I, I never thought of myself as a tradesman. And so my background really is in education and nonprofit leadership and not a school. I was a guide and I. Kids and adults out backpacking, kayaking, rock climbing, you name it.

And we would, we would teach life and, and I always loved that. Once I found that, I was like, oh man, this is, this is amazing. We can go have an experience and we could talk about and reflect on that experience and actually learn some real stuff. That’s cool. And brought me around into a.

Ultimately got me into drug prevention, which is a weird little side into, into that realm mentoring. That just is a preventative piece. And so in 2012 in Colorado, I legalized weed and right at that time I got the job to be the director of Gunnison County’s Substance Abuse Prevention Project. And I ran that for two years and I was really charged with bringing in funding So.

I got the job I love to go achieve and I went out and achieved a million dollars in grants. I figured out how to write grants and and net some money for this organization, and after that I just didn’t have another thing to achieve and I definitely was not built to be a county employee, and so I left.

Young babies at home didn’t really have a plan, didn’t have a net to jump. I just knew I could not stay at the county. I just was not gonna be a mentally well human being. And, and I left, I was like, I dunno what’s gonna happen. But I started an entity, entity community, thrive, and that was gonna join in education in, in the new.

Newly forming cannabis industry, and I didn’t have a revenue generator. So three months in, I’m about to go broke, and a buddy of mine just offers me 20 bucks an hour to paint out walls of a spec house. So I’m painting walls, learning how to roll, paint onto walls, learning how to make cut lines at the ceiling.

And all of it is kind of feeling good, like I feel a, a sense of accomplishment. And it’s at that time, right? Hear through the grapevine, an old landlord of ours where my first. Daughter was where my first kid was born, she was looking to get somebody to paint her house but couldn’t get anybody or call her back.

And at that time I was so desperate. I was like, I can call her back. Let’s do this. And so I cut a deal. I didn’t have a dime, and I cut a deal, shook a deal on an $8,500 paint project, and I just went to work figuring it out. I was like, all right. What do I need to know? What, you know? I, I did some of the prep work to find the number and took $2,000 of a deposit, bought a pump, got my LLC, got a $5 logo.

Company name came off the back of a hockey jersey and I was off and running. I hired a guy at 25 bucks an hour to come on site and use my pump sprayer ’cause I didn’t know how to use it. But after a day of watching him, I figured it out. And so the next day I’m moving around and we get the, we get the house done.

But that’s where it started.

Alex Bridgeman: So you’re painting the house eventually. You must have, she must have asked you about the garage door, right? Or something. How

Matt Kuehlhorn: did she Well, she did not. So I, I’m, I’m painting the house and figuring out how to market it. So I get the next house lined up and the next house, and I’m building a, a small crew of college kids at the same time.

So I’m figuring a lot of stuff out. During that time, and I know that exterior seasons and the mountains are gonna be short. So I’m like, all right, what’s gonna happen through the winter? And I went after garage doors because I had a stint of being an installer for a company that was no longer in town.

So I knew the niche was gonna be there, and I was like, all right, now instead of cooler painting, it’s cooler painting indoors. Let’s go do that.

Alex Bridgeman: The

Matt Kuehlhorn: perfect combination

Alex Bridgeman: of

Matt Kuehlhorn: businesses. Yeah, it’s perfect combo. It actually was really good for a moment. I had both of ’em and we built it, you know, we were a seven figure company within a couple of years in a county of 18,000 people, and it was all because of the two of ’em.

You know, I’m running basically two businesses in one, and I was fortunate to have a really good individual who would run the painting so I could sell it. I would sell the doors, I would sell the painting, he would execute it with a crew, and I would execute on the doors. And then we got to a point of of growth where they became like two siblings and they just started arguing with each other and, and battling.

And then instead of. Like hearing any of the signals and being smart. I chose to keep adding and so we got into epoxy flooring, we got into garage storage cabinetry, and we got into different levels of painting. We went into really high-end custom homes and started painting cabinets and places where I should never have been.

We made some very costly mistakes. Always made it right, but it was. It took me a minute to learn the art of focus and this individual that was running the paint projects at one point and all of that, he left. Once he left, it really got messy, but we got through that and now we focus, and now we know what our wheelhouse is.

Alex Bridgeman: Did the storage and epoxy floors work better with garage versus painting? Did you do those today?

Matt Kuehlhorn: I, I would go, I, I would flirt with the idea of storage. I always flirt with that. I’d be cabinetry and racks and, you know, I’m working with a manufacturer right now for a motorized ceiling rack that I think would just crush, and there’s a very similar delivery system.

With the idea of you’re selling a part, you’re selling a piece of equipment, whether it’s a cabinet, a rack, or a garage door, and then you have a installation system that gets it in. So there’s some similarities there. I would, I would add that we, we have a, a current ceiling rack storage, but to go the realm of garage customization is another animal and.

These days, I’m just very, I don’t know if gun shy is the word. I think it’s smart. I think it’s just focused.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. The, the flooring is interesting and storage is interesting ’cause you’re already there, you’re already in the garage. Have you, is there a market for like spring cleaning? Like, we’ll, we’ll come by once a year in like Marie Kondo your garage and put things back in order and sweep

Matt Kuehlhorn: it Could be, there could be, yeah.

I, you know. Epoxy is a wild animal. Like that is an animal in and of itself, and I know there’s folks that do it really well. I never locked in, I never figured out the, the right SOPs or, or something to it. I think there is garage cleaning Marie Kondo style, like editing. Let’s help you do that for the right customer.

Yeah, it, it could all be there, but the, the magnitude of complexity that happens when you add one line of revenue is more than one, and it has to be something to really thought through and like carefully done.

Alex Bridgeman: What complexity maybe did you see removed when you stopped painting? Walk me through like a day in your life before and after that change.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Oh man, you’re bringing up some PSD, you know, so I’ve always ran the team, as you know, assuming that. There’s really good people that wanna go somewhere and do something that is beneficial for them in their lives. And there are some amazingly crafted craftsmen and women who are in the coatings business.

The painter on an entry level area can be. There’s, there’s a low barrier to entry and you can attract a different type of person that has addictions and addictive behaviors, and maybe some of those are unhealthy. And so when I was just recruiting people be like, oh, you’ve got a pulse. And you can shake a hand.

Let’s go. Like we had, we had a team of 20 at one point and most of ’em were painters. The very I, the variability of, of humans in general. And then you bring a number of humans into a not really well organized organization, and then you bring different standards of humans into an organization that have yet to really define standards.

There’s all sorts of stuff that could happen, and it was just running around being a fight or fighter and, and tamping out stuff like nonstop These days, like it’s almost so easy. It’s boring in a, in a real way. Like I’ve got really tight SOPs. People know what they need to do, they show up on time. We have.

Upleveled culture. And so we have really great humans that live really great standards that wanna go somewhere and deliver a true craftsmanship style experience. So a lot of the issues that we’ve dealt with are gone, but I’ve had, I’ve had painters go in the wrong house and paint. I’ve had all sorts of stuff we’ve had to do airport.

Hanger floors, like redo stuff. Like it’s just, I could go on and on with, with pain. Lots of mistakes.

Alex Bridgeman: Oh geez.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Worst I’ve heard was someone like, they built a house on like the wrong lot or something like that, which sounds just like a nuclear problem to, to solve that.

Matt Kuehlhorn: That’s pretty big. Yeah. I mean, when my paint crew went into the wrong house, we had to replace window sashes, but.

That was, that was the extent of it.

Alex Bridgeman: Wow. Yeah, that, that gets really painful. I can see how, I’m just thinking through like all the different ways that your life got better and was totally different when you focused on garage doors. Like what, what do you feel like became possible when you focused on garage doors?

Like what opened up for you?

Matt Kuehlhorn: Well, a lot. You know, when I, when I look back, I’m like, yeah, even if I had just been like fine being an exterior painter and just painting for four or five months while I could, I would’ve been earning probably more money than I did trying to scale up something and put in a bunch of multiple revenue lines.

And, you know, we ended up. Getting rid of paint. I was, I was gonna close up paint right at 2020 and then all that weirdness. I was like, we’ll keep it’s, and for another two years, which I. I was just procrastinating the, the shift, because we talked earlier about identity shift and I was just attached to paint and this idea of potential revenue, but the art of focus actually opens up opportunity to more revenue, which is weird because I’m like, oh, I don’t wanna give up.

You know? At that point we were running six. 700 K in paint. And I was like, that’s significant revenue just to be like, oh, I’m done. But as soon as I’m done with that, like it can open up more opportunities in a different line that’s more focused and that I actually enjoy more and, and so it. The idea of scarcity, and I think that’s what I built the company on was scarcity at first and, and working through, you know, whatever I needed to work on in that journey to get through it and just be like, okay, you know, we’ve got a new level of maturity here.

But in letting that go and, and really focusing, you know, I look at it as a, uh, like the eye of a, a needle. You really need to focus to put a thread in between the eye of a needle, but as soon as you get it through the eye of the needle and you could pull it, you can do whatever you need with it. And I think there’s a point for just about every business to go through the eye of the needle.

And then after that there can be some really smart ways of expansion and growth and different rev lines. But there’s still, there’s, there’s initially a, a real point of focus. And it wasn’t until recently because. You know, in our, in our journey, we got rid of paint and then I, I meet a guy in the door industry, go to his conference, his name’s Tommy Miller.

A lot of people have heard about him. Like he shows me a new school way of doing doors and I’m like, oh, I’m all in. And so it took me a couple years to really shift the model. ’cause I had an old school model and we could talk about that. But as I get the new school model in a larger market. Now I can just be super focused.

And what that offers me is the honor of leading people. I’m not just tamping out fires now. I actually get to coach, I get to mentor. And you know what’s the cool thing about this is everything I loved about experiential education and guiding, I get to now do just within the confines of a garage door company, but I’m still the guide.

I’m still the educator. I come in and I just do that. I’m not. On the tools, I’m not putting out a bunch of fires. I have, I have real focus on strategy. I have real focus on recruiting and just helping people, um, really be better people and whatever that means to them.

Alex Bridgeman: It sounds almost like there were seasons of life to your business and there was the early season of doing a lot of different things, less focus than the early kind of time on shifting focus to be only looking at garage doors, only working on garage doors, and then this kind of like old school, new school.

Maybe change of season. Is that how you’ve, like when you think back on the 10 years running the business, do those feel like the distinct seasons or are there some others that you feel like that was a pretty big change in the company or like this time period was really unique for some reason?

Matt Kuehlhorn: I’ll answer that two ways.

One, when I look at seasons, you know, it makes me think of my, my kids cooler is just one of my kids, I think, and, and I recognize my kids are not. Me, they’re not mine. I don’t need to be attached to them, but I, I reference that as a lifespan. Like every, there’s a bell curve that’s a lifecycle of any business.

And you start out as a baby and you go through like toddler phase and then teenager and then adult, and then you can get into like. Really old and then, and then you peter out. Or for business. What’s fun about business is you could start the downward trend and then resurrect. You could change, you can reignite.

Industries, do this, businesses do this. The garage door industry was on the down slope like the eighties, nineties, like this industry was on the down slope and then it resurrected and technology moved a lot of that, and it started adopting from our cousin of hvac. When I look at this, like my kids were little when I started cooler, they were, they were 2, 3, 4, 5, somewhere in there.

But I’m, I’m Trajecting cooler, that’s, it’s right along with my kids in a lot of ways. Like cooler’s a teenager right now and, and I have to put in the guardrails and now it’s time to put in the financial systems and just manage cash because teenagers are. Can be all over the place and eventually we’ll get to young adults right around when my kids are young adults.

Like it’s, it’s crazy in that realm. So I could look back and be like, yeah, there’s the baby stage, there’s the toddler stage, now we’re in the teenager stage. Like that’s, but I could also look back and, and this is, this is a, a testament to who I am, like my personality. Some of this is just baggage, like running.

Immature patterns. Some of it is, is literally how I’m wired, like I love change. Every year there’s significant change. Up until last year, like 2025 and 2026, I could lay over each other and be like, okay, here’s some really comparable stuff. January to January, February to February, I can compare those same market, same business model, every year prior.

I cannot do that every year prior. There was some significant change and sometimes that was just me thinking I was. Needing to do something or running in a wrong direction kind of deal, but, you know, the stability comes, you know, as, as young adulthood starts coming in, like cooler’s, doing some adulting,

Alex Bridgeman: are there some changes you feel like you.

I didn’t have to actually do.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Oh

Alex Bridgeman: yeah. Or maybe

Matt Kuehlhorn: without a doubt.

I don’t know, Alex, I don’t know why. You know, I felt like I had to make so many changes. I mean, it was almost weekly. I’ve got a guy that has ran with me for just about the 10 out of 10 and a half years. He’s now our operations director and, and great individual. I talk about the amount of patience that he must have had to, to hang in and, and do his thing, and his niche has been indoors the whole time, but he saw us on the paint.

He saw us in epoxy. Like, I don’t think I would’ve, I, I definitely would not have hung out with the version I was as a leader. You know, I, I just look at that and be like, dude, no way would I would deal with that. But he, he hung in and, and you know, he’s, he is such a stud, but I, I would literally create change for change sakes, and part of it is just my own discomfort with success.

I remember my second year, I, my second year.

Restain A 30 plus home HOA, and it was like $150,000 deal. We netted a lot of money on that project. I felt. Really uncomfortable winning that big. I gave a lot of it away. Like I could go through different archetypes. I mean, this, it, it’s so fun to look at and just be like, oh man, there, there, it’s, but I, I would do stuff that would sabotage.

I would do stuff to create change just because. Felt uncomfortable, starting to feel comfortable. It, it’s weird. Messed up psychology, but it, it was so true. So yeah. Were there things that I needed or didn’t need to touch and change without a doubt. Like, I’m just learning how to do this. What

Alex Bridgeman: helped you shift away from that mindset?

Um, can you frame when things go well?

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah, I mean there, there’s a lot, man, you know, having, I’ve always done a good job of having really great mentors and really mature individuals that I look up to and get inspired by in my life. I’ve always gone into professional development and coaching, and that all accrues and adds up over time.

I also think a little bit is having the experience to look back on and be like, yeah, all that running. All the change, all of that isn’t really working, so let’s try something else. Let’s try maintaining. Let’s try consistency and see how that goes, and we’re getting there.

Alex Bridgeman: Did you have to set a rule for yourself, like, okay, we’re gonna do this change, we’re gonna do it for a full month, and we’re gonna see, did it work?

Did it suck? What needs to change Now? I’ve tried,

Matt Kuehlhorn: you know, more, some of it is, is learning the skill of faith and trust, and there certainly are some parameters in place. However, it’s more about just getting me out of the way. And what I mean by that is, is bringing people up that care, that are a different personality, that are more of the mode of, of maintaining and keeping feet on the ground and one foot in front of the other and, and getting stuff done.

And then for me to be really employ that long-term patience, like, okay, we’re gonna be fine. We’re gonna be fine. You know, and in the entrepreneur mind, I could take a rollercoaster every day and you know, I’m, I’m recognizing the times where past versions of me would react and understanding that cycles.

This is what cycles do, cycles cycle. And, and I don’t need to react, I don’t need, just because we have like one down does not mean I need to. Revamp a sales process doesn’t mean I need to add another revenue line. Like I’m starting to recognize the cost of change and just being okay with, with faith and, and mapping it out and be like, all right, here’s the plan, and then you guys run it.

So I don’t just go in there and create change for change sakes.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, I feel that sometimes too around, like, I know like certain days are often better than others and like, like Monday can be sometimes a really abrupt day. ’cause all of the things you were holding off all hit on Monday and it, it feels like a lot of change all at once.

And then the rest of the week is usually like a much like greater improvement or like a, like things will throw me off. I think faster than hopefully a version of me 10 years from now. And I think I’m learning to accept that. Like, there’s gonna be a lot of bumps on the road, but it’s gonna be fine. The long term is still there, still very consistent and still you’re, you’re still on that, that path.

But being able handle some of the day to day changes that make you. Are not going well, or like, I need to change this, or this is gonna happen again. It takes a long time to get over. I’m definitely not over that piece.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a skill.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm. Tell me about the old school version that you were running.

What did that cooler garage look like?

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Feel like if I was a customer, what was my experience versus today?

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah. Yeah. You’ll, you’ll appreciate this ’cause some of the legwork that you’ve done, you can, you can see it all over the place. I mean, there is a disruption in the garage door industry. There is old school, there’s new school.

Old school is going to race to the bottom and commoditize the garage door and chase builders. And old school is gonna go straight for GCs and do stuff as cheaply as possible and just slam, jam it in. And then if they have the capacity to run service for homeowners, they come in, they do bandaid repairs, and they get out.

There’s no relationship. There’s no craftsmanship. There’s in fact a lot of sloppiness. There is an under-regulated industry for garage doors. Like there is no real, like there is a real certification, but there’s no license needed in most places. Like it’s under-regulated. So you, you get anybody, you get people with addictions, with weird backgrounds, moving through garage door spaces and slapping things.

That’s old school. So when I ran old school, I chased builders and it became a, a pricing. Bore for the most part. And then a homeowner we’d run in and and swap out something. But I certainly wasn’t assessing the full system. I wasn’t looking long term. I wasn’t even asking what the homeowner really wanted.

I wasn’t given options, i’s just making things work again. And of course as a tech, like I can make anything work. Of course we’ll do this weird bandaid thing ’cause I’m creative and I can problem solve new school. Is what I would call a home service model, and it’s all about serving the homeowner. So. We work with a few builders, but I don’t chase builders and I certainly don’t price match, and I’m talking only to homeowners and we’re talking about long-term value.

We’re talking about security, we’re talking about peace of mind. I’m giving options. I’m running what we call the motorized door analysis, like we have a, well, a in depth process because if something happens on a door, it’s usually not the thing that’s really wrong. There’s something underlying it. So I was just at a customer yesterday, did a ride along.

I’m out with my guy, Cesar. We get to this house and the operator where it attaches to the garage door pulled out and so it, it pulled the panel apart a little bit and that was the complaint. Like this thing’s dangling. I don’t trust it anymore. I just need you guys to put it back on. Old school would come in and be like, oh, no problem.

And we would put like a operator reinforcement bracket in there and get it slung up, run the operator, be good to go. But that doesn’t alleviate the problem. The real problem was that whoever installed that just a few years ago used the wrong springs. And the way we found that is, well, we weigh the door with a scale.

And we note that there’s 55 pounds of force sitting on the concrete. So when the door’s closed, a normal counterbalanced door should be like five pounds on the floor. It shouldn’t have this 50 pound, like this is a guillotine unsafe scenario. Had that really ripped off the operator, this thing would’ve been like a free fall guillotine like.

60 pound door and it just was incorrectly sprung to begin with. And we only found that through our, our door analysis. And so, you know, springs are wrong. We ended up selling a spring replacement and the operator reinforcement and doing it right now that costs a homeowner a little bit more in the initial, but that’s gonna last them way longer and be way safer and more secure.

And so. That’s, that’s the real difference. I mean the, the new school I, I’m not gonna say it’s, it’s better craftsmanship ’cause there’s some really solid craftsmen and women on the old school frame. It’s just the model of chase the builder, deliver to the homeowner price on commodity pricing or price on value.

Totally different games.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Very different businesses to run too.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Very,

Alex Bridgeman: like the customer interaction’s very different, but the, the owner’s experience running that business, each business is gonna be totally different.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yep. Without a doubt.

Alex Bridgeman: Did you make that shift kinda like, like that wholesale change like all at once or was it over a period of time that you kind of started adopting, like piece by piece that new school?

Matt Kuehlhorn: It, it was over a period of time. I initially saw the model in 2022 and I started investing, and during that time, you know, I just hired the best and the best to bring in operating manuals. I rebranded at that time. That’s where we get this logo of today. Started investing in, in sales training and coaching and understanding what that process really was.

It took a minute, like you can’t just take, you know, we weren’t very big, so in theory I could make this more effective in the future, but you still have a ship sailing in one direction. You don’t just 90 degree it and go another direction. It takes a minute to make that turn and arc. What ended up happening really for us was that we were in a market that was too small for the new school market.

You need some volume, you need some homeowners, and we were in a county of 18,000 people that just wasn’t enough. Like you could run the homeless service model and you know, have a one truck that’s kind of part-time lifestyle, maybe owner operator. But to really grow, we had to get into a larger market and that’s where we ended up going to markets for a moment.

Now we’re just consolidated. We’re still in a small market, but it’s healthy to where we could run the model fully. And so it took me, you know, roughly four years and a new market and a full move. And there’s a lot in there to really make it happen. But I would never, I would never look back. New school is a way, it’s way more, I think, way more friendly and, and it creates win win-wins for everybody.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm. I imagine too, it’s a maybe more intellectually interesting experience for service techs too, like diagnosing problems and kind of getting to use some of your problem solving and then thinking of different solutions, like that’s probably a lot of, a lot of fun versus just kinda installing the same thing.

Across 2020 homes all at once.

Matt Kuehlhorn: I would agree with that. The piece that you know, I might push on is we have simplified so much the options like we have, we have menus. Really we sell 12 things. That’s it. Building this, you know, to be easy to move across wherever we want to go. And so we make it simple. And what I mean by that is, you know, for, for a craftsman, for a technician or installer.

There’s some variety. There’s certainly problem solving. The solutions are, are packaged for the most part. Now, the intellectually really stimulating piece in my mind, and I talk about this with my team and those who wanna join, is in the human component. Like I will leverage technology in order to human better.

And what I mean by that, there is, there’s psychology, there’s leadership, there is communication. All of that stuff I geek out on and we talk about it daily. And if somebody is interested in that, we’re a great place for that. It’s just understanding how do we communicate better ultimately with ourselves and others, and that changes the fabric of all of life and our experiences.

So it’s not so much. The real like problem solving. I mean, yes, we have to problem solve and then we have packages of solutions and we have to know how to execute on those. It maybe is not as creative as like the bandaid repairs where I’m just creating something outta thin air, if you will.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, maybe a little too creative in that sense.

Yeah,

Matt Kuehlhorn: yeah, yeah. I’ll use my creativity and conversation and relational leadership dynamics.

Alex Bridgeman: What are some principles you teach your team or coach your team on as they think about like interacting with a homeowner or a customer?

Matt Kuehlhorn: Oh my goodness. I think a big one is that we communicate for response. And so this morning, you know, we were, we’re having a conversation and.

I am encouraging them to try, try things. Like it takes courage, right? Like one of our core values is to improve 1% or more every day. That takes courage. We have to try new stuff. We don’t learn until we do. And so, you know, just. We communicate for a response. So if I’m sharing something with you, if I’m not being attentive to you, I’m not paying attention to the response.

But if I am paying attentive, then I’m watching your eyes, I’m watching your facial expressions. I might even move around and identify if there’s a position that actually gets a more favorable response. And there’s so many nuances in communication. So just having my guys. Do specific things in specific ways and then try new things and say things differently and move around differently.

Is part of figuring it out, like what’s really gonna make people respond in, in ways that are, that are beneficial? How do we move somebody from state to state? A lot of times homeowners don’t plan on calling cooler garage doors when they wake up. Like something broke and now they have to figure it out and they’re gonna call cooler.

And so they call cooler knowing that something’s broke and they don’t know what it’s most of the time. So that individual might actually feel guarded. A guarded individual is not going to buy. And so we talk about state and outcomes communicating for response, and then I give them tools to be able to do that.

And I expect them to go experiment with those tools and see what actually fits and what it works, and these tools can get played with outside of the job, which I love thinking about because ultimately. These individuals. We have a, a young team of men currently. They’re gonna go home to their spouses, to their kids, to their significant others, and have a better way of communicating.

That’s the gold for me. They’re gonna be better humans because of their time at cooler. That’s gonna impact their family and create ripples in our community.

Alex Bridgeman: That’s what I wake up for. What’s like one example of a maybe subtle skill improvement you’ve seen in communication from your texts or one, not even like a big principle, like something small, like as a, like a tactical thing that your texts now do better than they used to with either positioning or phrasing or the way they answer the phone or the way they open the door.

What comes to mind?

Matt Kuehlhorn: Two things. You know, for some of these guys, it is their confidence and presence. And some of this is, is really drilling into a self value piece. And I think this is where, you know, we go back to industry disruption and you, you can’t really talk about that without talking about the 2020 era for garage doors to be labeled as essential services.

Immediately you could see some of these old garage door guys that burned out shoulders and whatnot, like stand a little taller. Be like, oh, I’m essential. Got it. You know, and that’s, that’s like a self, self-worth kind of deal, right? And so, you know, some of this is just how they enter a room. Like it’s subtle, but you just see these young men walking in and they’re like, they own the space a little bit more.

Like, that’s really cool. That’s, that’s confidence thing on a tactical piece. And this is really fun. Anybody can play with this today. As soon as you hear about it, it’s just a powerful thing. It goes. Really well with storytelling, which I’m working on training our guys to do even better. Like if you, if you tell the story of like who you are and why you’re here and why you’re even a part of this company, like now people start connecting to you as a human and they wanna see you win.

Like is, it’s just ridiculous. But the pause, the pause is such an interesting tool and you can use it everywhere. You could use it in opening up a story like lemme tell you a story and you pause and you get somebody’s attention and then you can bring them somewhere. And this is all stuff I’m learning through a lot of studies with Michael Bernoff and, and his communication.

But it’s incredibly powerful. And so the pause, I would just encourage anybody to experiment with whether you’re opening up a story or you’re just saying, look. Let me, let me show you this. That’s it. Like you just use a pause in there and all of a sudden people are like, what? You’re paying attention.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah.

I mean, silence is uncomfortable and if you force it, you’re doing something that you know is seemingly uncomfortable, but makes it look like confidence, like it sounds like confidence or, uh, an intention. Absolutely. I mean, you

Matt Kuehlhorn: can, you can take leadership with it and I think. A nuance in there that your comment just highlights is, yeah, you do that and you’re in a specific state and, and state.

I, I think of as just about everything. I mean, it’s the, it’s the mindset state game, and if I’m being the type of person that I need to be in order to get the type of outcome that I’m after, then I can pull that off all day long and, you know, I’ll have the confidence, the poise, to be able to carry off any good.

Pause.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, there’s gotta be some interesting psychology. I’ve not heard of Michael Burnoff before. Is there a book that he’s written that you really liked or what made a big, big impact on you?

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah. No, that guy’s awesome. But his book is average, sucks.

Alex Bridgeman: Average sucks.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yep.

Alex Bridgeman: Write that down.

Matt Kuehlhorn: And he’s got a number of courses, but he’s a big communications guy.

And you know, the frame of that book is not, not that average sucks, but your average sucks for you. My average sucks for me. Our averages might actually be different or we might be above average if we’re gonna compare. SAT scores or whatever, right? But at the end of the day, the thing that holds me back is the way I communicate to myself and the way I think.

And so the communication zone I is the gold, and most of the time we’re communicating for a response in that frame. We understand also that we’re communicating to ourselves. Anything I say, I hear you don’t always hear what I say, but if I recognize that I’m communicating for a response that I’m recognizing, I communicate for my response, and we’re always communicating to that subconscious mind, which is running patterns that we don’t even maybe not fully aware of.

Alex Bridgeman: That’s pretty wild.

I like the pause one. That’s a good one. One thing, um, with communication, I’ve tried to do more, is you see it a lot when you do your own podcast. Editing is filler words and ums. Yeah, it’s really hard. It’s really hard to cut them out entirely. But when you do your own editing and you hear your voice five or six times, as you go through a recording and you see every single one of them, and you’re tempted to just delete every single one.

It’s painful. You, you start thinking, okay, next time I’m gonna talk more cleanly, more smoothly, so I don’t have to work as hard on the editing after the fact. There’s things like that that have, I think, have made a big impact for me that podcasting directly helped.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah. The thing that, that brings up Alex, and this is.

I, I have to go find this clip. There is a clip of an individual that is standing at the podium and he’s addressing a crowd, and the individual at the podium is actually a paid actor. The crowd is thinking that this individual is a real professional and. Filler words are, are one thing I’m not, I’m not suggesting that filler words are really a part of this.

This is just where it sparked it, because a lot of times it doesn’t matter what we say, and this clip kind of proves it because when you watch this clip, the actor is talking. Fancy words, but he’s saying nothing. He’s only saying stuff in a certain state with a certain outcome and he gets to the end of the speech and everybody’s like, oh man, that was great.

Like, wow, that was awesome. And he didn’t say anything. He’s, he’s just rambling. And so, you know, sometimes I’ll go to trainings or I’ll be training and I’ll just run

fine. Maybe too often people can be too concerned with being perfect, where it’s more about an outcome and the outcome doesn’t care about perfection.

Alex Bridgeman: As you pause,

Matt Kuehlhorn: as I pause

Alex Bridgeman: as well, just to let it sink into,

Matt Kuehlhorn: yeah, yeah. The outcome doesn’t care about perfection.

Alex Bridgeman: So then what does a outcome focused interaction or conversation sound like relative to striving for perfection?

Matt Kuehlhorn: That’s a great question. From an observer standpoint, potentially there’s not that much of a difference until one understands nuances in, I.

Having outcomes everywhere I go, and so this morning. We run, wow, Wednesdays on Wednesday morning. I’ve got everybody in a circle. I can see myself in the in the shop, and I have an outcome of delivering value that impacts them on a wow level, which is really how we communicate for response with our customers.

I don’t have a lesson plan, I don’t have a topic going into it. I see where they are at in their state because if I’m communicating for response, it’s what’s my state, what’s my outcome? What’s your state, what’s your outcome? And, and we’ll go for that. And so I have this outcome of, of delivering some value and, and getting some new behaviors that are create wow experiences and.

There’s also an outcome for meeting in our conversation here, and my outcome is like, well, my outcome is to add as much value as possible to Alex and his listeners in that it’s. It’s being a little bit creative and open to play and exploring where we might be able to go and somehow we got here and, and that’s cool.

Like some of this is a little bit of a, of a letting go in some ways of attachment. Some of it is also just like, if I wanted to be perfect, I might slow down. My communication and search for the exact right words to use all the time, and I might actually come across as stale or dry or boring. Whereas if I’m going for outcome, I might just free flow a little bit more.

I might use run on sentences. I might just continue talking until something lands in response. And now I know that it’s

Alex Bridgeman: like.

Constrained by the whole list of things you’re trying to do. It’s just one thing now.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that.

Alex Bridgeman: What’s one thing about your business or life or craftsman that you’re excited about for this year that you’re looking forward to working on?

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah. This year I am choosing to allow really good, healthy profits.

I’m excited about that because. What that requires is Matt matures as a operator, as a leader, and I don’t react as much. Like reactions are costly and we hone the process. And, and we get really good at rinsing and repeating and training and recruiting. I’m really excited for that because that also means that my guys win.

Our community wins. I will win. And I think the hardest part about that is allowing myself to win. There’s, there’s like underlying subconscious debris that gets cleared out as I lean into that more and more.

Alex Bridgeman: Also takes consistency.

Matt Kuehlhorn: It does.

Alex Bridgeman: That’s a strong value. That’s a good value.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yep. I have to be okay with it being boring.

It, it becomes like a, a nervous system reset in a lot of ways.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm. I agree. That’s exciting. Matt, thank you for coming on the podcast. This has been a ton of fun. I appreciate all your time. Where can people find your show and more about you and cooler.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah, I appreciate that. And yeah, this conversation’s been awesome.

My podcast of Craft Your Life Radio show [email protected] and everything cooler is at cooler garage doors. So you’ll find us in all the socials with that handle at cooler garage doors. Certainly would love follows interactions and. Yeah, keep, keep a watch on us. You know, last year, 2025, we were one of Colorado’s finalists of Colorado companies to watch and I think we’re still worth watching

Alex Bridgeman: next.

That’s exciting. Also, great domain name craft your life.com. That, that’s pretty nice. When did you buy that?

Matt Kuehlhorn: Well, I now have two of them. ’cause now I start spelling everything with a K. But I, I wanna say a, I mean it’s maybe two, three years ago. We picked up after your life. Okay.

Alex Bridgeman: I would’ve thought that would’ve been gone decades ago.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah. I, I mean, I think I paid maybe a couple K for it. It was not, it was not just a $12 domain name.

Alex Bridgeman: It was special,

Matt Kuehlhorn: but it wasn’t, it wasn’t astronomical from some of the others I’ve seen that I’ve chased either so. It was right and I’ll, I’ll never let go. I have a whole collection of domain names.

Alex Bridgeman: I heard of someone making a ton of money right before the AI craze.

They went through the Fortune 500 websites and bought all of the company name.ai domains

Matt Kuehlhorn: Smart,

Alex Bridgeman: and then just resold them to those companies in a few months or a year later.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah,

Alex Bridgeman: like Walmart AI or something like that.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Yeah. That’s smart.

Alex Bridgeman: Extremely well. Yeah, it’s pretty

Matt Kuehlhorn: well that’s, that’s a whole right wave that we, we didn’t touch on in any of our convos, but it’s, it’s an AI wave is coming for sure.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Matt, thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

Matt Kuehlhorn: Appreciate you.