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

(00:00:00) – Intro

(00:00:34) – From mortgage broker to garage doors

(00:02:53) – Surviving the 2008 housing crisis

(00:04:42) – Goldman Sachs 10K Small Business program

(00:06:04) – Learning to delegate and replace yourself

(00:07:54) – Building a business for your kids

(00:10:51) – Building intentional company culture

(00:13:13) – Early culture initiatives and team events

(00:15:36) – The quarterly revenue bonus system

(00:18:25) – Walk-up songs and bonus day celebrations

(00:20:47) – Ideas that didn’t work

(00:22:38) – Scaling marketing and creative content

(00:23:49) – Key milestones in company growth

(00:25:58) – From pen and paper to ServiceTitan

(00:28:13) – Hiring executive team members

(00:30:15) – Technician hiring and training process

(00:31:40) – Making new hires feel welcome

(00:33:24) – Implementing AI across the business

(00:36:22) – Expanding into new markets

(00:37:49) – Learning from greenfield expansion mistakes

(00:41:00) – Final advice for garage door owners

Carrie Kelsch: Being an entrepreneur, that’s what I do, is I take risks. As a business owner, part of the game is taking a risk. Like scared money don’t make money, right? You don’t actually fail if you don’t stop, if you don’t quit, if you just keep going and reinvent yourself and be able to shift when things aren’t working, shift away from that, and just keep reinventing it and tweaking it until you get it right.

But failure just comes when you quit and give up.

Alex Bridgeman: How would you describe how the business started and where it began in your time in mortgage? Like-

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: th- everyone kinda has a, a, a winding road into garage doors. I’m curious what yours looked like.

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah. That is, that is definitely a winding road into there.

So back in 2005, I was a mortgage broker, a single mom, and I was dating a guy that worked at a garage door company. So he kept asking me to open a garage door company for him ’cause he just felt like he could do it better, and I was dating him. I wasn’t really interested in that. So after asking me a couple more times, he finally came and overcame all my objections, and one of ’em was he really got me excited a- about being able to have the opportunity for my kids to work at the garage door company when they get older.

So I had some little littles, and I wanted to be able to make sure that when they turn 16 they can go get a job.

Alex Bridgeman: How old were your kids at the time?

Carrie Kelsch: You know what? They were, like, under 10, so they were just, just younger. And so I opened the garage door company so that they would have a place they could work, and it, it was supposed to be set it on a shelf and forget it.

I wasn’t s- supposed to do anything, but I think it wasn’t even a month in and he’s calling me up going, “I need some help.” I’m like, “Oh my gosh, what do, what do you need help with?” And I’m just doing my mortgage brokering thing ’cause that is what’s providing for our family’s lifestyle. And he’s like, “I need someone to answer phones.”

So I go to my resources and I find somebody that can answer a phone for us remotely, and so I set that up and I get going and then I’m, you know, there’s really nothing to it. And then pretty soon he is- gives me another call, “I need some more help.” I’m like, “Okay, what do you need?” And he’s like, “I need some advertising done.”

So I start doing some advertising. So I just kind of slowly got like pulled into it more and more and more. And at first it was just after hours and weekends, and then it was like half my day was garage doors, the other half was mortgage brokering. Well, here comes 2006 and, and ’07 and ’08 when the housing crisis just crashed hard.

And so in 2008 when all of the banks were just going under, I’m like, “This is a really good time for me to transition from mortgage brokering into the garage door space.”

Alex Bridgeman: What was that like on the mortgage side for you? What was your experience-

Carrie Kelsch: Mm-hmm …

Alex Bridgeman: week to week, month to- month to month as that crisis unfolded?

Carrie Kelsch: Oh my gosh, it was scary because that was my only source of income, was these deals that I was closing. And I really specialized in jumbo home loans, and jumbo loans were the first ones that were hit. And so I had a whole bunch of clientele that were like ready to close. And then Lehman Brother comes, their rep comes to see me and he’s like, “By the way, we just went bankrupt, and we’re closing our doors.”

And I was like, “What? We’re closing next week.” And he’s like, “No, we’re not.” And so it was shifting from one co- one company and then I’d have to like rush and move everything to Countrywide just for the same thing to happen at Countrywide. And then, and so it just was just a domino effect. And so I was like, “I don’t even know what I’m gonna do, like how am I even gonna make a living?”

And I couldn’t get any of my deals closed. And that’s why, and I think this was definitely- 2017, the end, and the beginning of 2008, and I was just like, “This is exhausting.” Just spinning my wheels, not getting anywhere, not making any money. And I look and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, how are we even living?” Well, look back and like, oh, the garage door company actually had revenue coming in that was supplementing us during those times.

And so then I was shifted gears, and I was like, “Oh, now I’m a garage door person.” So-

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah …

Carrie Kelsch: I jumped in full time in 2008 to do the garage doors, just run the operations. But to me, it wasn’t my own company. This was just a place I worked to make sure food’s on the table, and I didn’t even see it as a company.

I just saw it as like, this is, this is how we get food, right? This is how we provide for the family. And so working that every single day, and it wasn’t until 2013 when one of my advertisers that he used to sell me online marketing, so he, he would sell me online marketing. He told me, “You should go into a course called Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business program.”

And I was curious. I was like, “Why, why should I do that?” He’s like, “Because don’t you own the business?” I’m like, “Well, yeah.” He’s like… But I’m thinking, “What business?” Like, “This is just how we make money.” And so I just didn’t wrap my brain around that I actually had a company. And so I went, when I went to this course, I walk in just completely embracing my imposter syndrome hard because I’m like, “What am I doing here with all these great big business owners that have gone to college and know what they’re doing, where I’m just running this little tiny shop?”

I think we were doing like 1.5 million a year, and I had a couple employees. And I was like, “I don’t even know what I’m doing. I don’t belong here.” So I just really embraced the imposter syndrome part of it and, and grew into it. And now I can proudly say that, you know, we’ve, we’ve grown, we’ve implemented a lot of things.

Like, implementation is definitely the key, but we’ve implemented a lot of things, and now we’re a $55 million company and very proud of where we’ve expanded and grown to.

Alex Bridgeman: What did the… What did you learn the most, or what key ideas came from that time that-

Carrie Kelsch: One of the biggest ones was replace yourself and delegate.

I was, at the time, wearing all the hats, doing everything, and the first thing that my, that you get when you go into the program, then you get business advisors, and the first thing my business advisor said is she’s like, “Why are you doing this?” I’m like, “What do you mean? I mean, we gotta do this in order to, you know, get to the next step.”

She’s like, “No. Why are you doing this? This is something you should hire out.” It’s like, “We don’t have the money to hire it out.” She’s like, “You absolutely have the money to hire it out.” So we just looked at our financials, made sure that, like, they were clean, and started delegating and, and replacing the jobs that I was doing.

And it… what it did is it opened it up so that I could think bigger and grow bigger and grow bigger. So delegation was just such a key part of that.

Alex Bridgeman: I bet that felt painful with mortgage going away and now delegating and hiring out. Money that you would’ve taken home is now going to a new person on your team.

Mm-hmm. I bet that was painful for a while.

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah. Yeah. Having employees come on, it’s always going to be a painful part. You’re constantly replacing them, and if you’re growing, you’re constantly hiring, and you never know what you’re gonna get. So how they show up on the interview isn’t necessarily how they’re gonna show up three years down or seven months down the road.

And so it’s, it’s definitely a painful part, but I feel like if you don’t have employees, then you’re not able to scale your business, and you’re… you actually don’t have a company that has any value. You have yourself. You have a job, not a company.

Alex Bridgeman: You mentioned earlier starting the business was about providing a job for your, your kids one day.

Yes. Why did you… Why do you have that belief? Was that something you grew up with or your parents asked you or-

Carrie Kelsch: That- …

Alex Bridgeman: imparted on you?

Carrie Kelsch: That is such a good question, and very well thought out. I would… did have my, my parents did grow up that way. Like, my dad was in the cabinet industry, and when the kids hit 16, 17, 18, they could easily just go get a job from him.

Everybody knew that was an automatic in. You can just go get a job at the cabinet shop. I wanted to create that for my kids. So it’s something that I never worked at my dad’s cabinet shop, because I started having kids when I was 16. So I never worked there, but I did love that that was always on the table, and a lot of my siblings went and worked there, if not all of them.

Alex Bridgeman: Do you wish you’d worked there?

Carrie Kelsch: No, I’m, I’m really good with the way my life turned out and where I’m at. And I think when if it would’ve went a different way, I definitely wouldn’t have been here.

Alex Bridgeman: And when did your, when did your kids start working in the business?

Carrie Kelsch: Like when they’re 10 years old, right? So it’s like, “Oh, hey, your job is to go get the mail,” or, “Your job is to empty out the garbages.”

Especially when your business is at your house or a shop in your backyard, the kids start very young, learning that they gotta contribute for the family.

Alex Bridgeman: What would you recommend to other owners who have kids either in the business or growing up and they want them just, even if they don’t like working in the business and don’t wanna do it long term, at least getting like a first job and getting to- Yeah

work with their hands and, and do something.

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah. Oof. That’s a loaded question. It’s, it’s really complicated because some children work really well with their parents, and then some children need to go out and get another job, and they need to learn from somebody else. So it really just depends on the individual, how they are.

But I would always say that, like, make sure that your children know, and this is what I did, that your kids aren’t trapped there. Because if they feel trapped there, like, “This is what I have to do. This is the family business,” where’s the passion? They’re like in prison.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm.

Carrie Kelsch: So I always told my kids, “Look, this is a safety net.

You go do whatever you wanna do, and we’ll catch you. Like, you always have a job here.” So it’s, that way they could go out and decide what they wanna do, and if it was garage doors, then that’s where their passion was, that’s where I want them to be.

Alex Bridgeman: Give them the k- kinda confidence to go-

Carrie Kelsch: Yes …

Alex Bridgeman: take risks and try their own career if there’s something they’re excited about.

Carrie Kelsch: Exactly. Well, and you, you don’t wanna have family running the company when family don’t, doesn’t wanna be there.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah.

Carrie Kelsch: Like, that does not make a good culture for your whole team. So just making sure that they really wanna be there, I think is important.

Alex Bridgeman: When did culture feel like it became an important thing you were focusing, you had to focus more on?

Carrie Kelsch: I feel like I was always Well, I shouldn’t say that. I’m gonna back this back up to when I did my Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business program, they actually asked, “Hey, what’s the culture of your company?” And I had no idea what they were talking about. I’m like, “The culture of my company? White?” I don’t know.

Like, I had no idea. And, and they explained to me what this meant. And so ever since I did that course, I saw how important culture was, and I started to lean into it, going, “Wait, if you don’t… If you’re not intentional with your cor- culture, it’s gonna happen regardless.” And so looking back, the culture of my company at that time was yell at people to get them to do what you want.

Like, if to motivate them, you just disgrace them and tear them down, and that motivates them. Push really hard until you’re just exhausted, and you can’t go on any further. Like, that was our culture. So it was really, it set itself up.

Alex Bridgeman: Did any of them work for a little bit but not long term, or was it, “No, no, none of this is working.

None of this is helping”?

Carrie Kelsch: There’s things that work when you’re smaller- Mm-hmm … to build up your culture. You can see touring our company, there’s a lot of culture things implemented. Well, there’s things that work when you’re a smaller company that don’t work when you’re bigger, and then there’s things that are gonna work when you’re bigger that you cannot do when you’re smaller.

So you really have to scale your culture as you scale your company. And there’s also the remote situation, so, like, how do you get the culture to bleed over into other locations? And so there’s new problems coming at us all the time to make sure that the culture is protected.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Carrie Kelsch: And that’s what my HR and my general manager really are good at, is they feel like they’re, like, protectors of the culture.

And whoever they let in, they have to know that when they’re hiring, first of all, they’re a good human being. So if they don’t even pass that one of you’re a good human being, you’re not gonna make it to round two. Like, we’re not even interested. You could be the best salesperson and it’s like, but you’re not a good human being, it’s great for you, you’re just not the right fit for us.

Alex Bridgeman: What were the first, like, basic things you did culture-wise when you were smaller?

Carrie Kelsch: We would do events to get people together and show appreciation. Like, maybe there was this one time we rented a big Hummer limousine, and we drove to everybody’s individual house and picked them up, and then we drove to a really high-end restaurant, and we had dinner and drinks and enjoyed it, and then we jumped back in the party bus, you know, that big Hummer limousine, and we drove and dropped everybody off.

It was just something to show our appreciation, and it just kind s- kind of starts there. I mean, we’ve always done, like, Christmas bonuses. One of the things that we started, this was from, came back from my boyfriend that I s- started the company with, and it was his grandpa owned, like, a, a yard, which was, like I’m trying to think of how to put this.

It wasn’t an Anderson Lumber, but it was like an Anderson Lumber yard, like a lumber yard.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Carrie Kelsch: And so he owned this y- lumber yard, and so he had quite a few employees. And every year around Christmas, he would give every employee $100 for every year that they’ve been there. So my boyfriend at the time, which turned out to be my husband, wanted to do this, and so we implemented that right away.

So we implemented this right away because of something he thought was so fun that his grandpa did. And so on the one-year anniversary, everyone would, like you get 100 bucks, or it was the Christmas, so one year you get 100 bucks, and then the next Christmas you get $200. And it starts small, but what now we’re giving out, like $2,000 just to, you know, in cash, giving it out.

And so they… It really grows into it, and they, they really enjoyed that over time, and it just, it really celebrates… Really $100 isn’t much, and when you’ve been there five years, like even $500 isn’t like gonna make or, or save your mortgage, you know? It’s just like, it’s, it’s gonna help out, but it’s not gonna save you.

But it’s nice to stand up and be acknowledged for the time that you’ve been there.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm.

Carrie Kelsch: So that’s really what it was. What it meant to me was recognizing how long they’ve been there year over year over year.

Alex Bridgeman: I really liked your quarterly revenue bonus-

Carrie Kelsch: Yes …

Alex Bridgeman: concept. I never heard any company, either garage or anything else, do that before.

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Can you, can you explain that concept, where that came from and…?

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah. So I’m just gonna start out with all my great ideas came from someone else, right? So I don’t have to r- I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It’s already invented. I just go and see it, and then we make it better. We were touring other shops, and I was touring We Care in California.

It’s a plumbing and HVAC company there. And as I’m walking through, I see these alarms that are going off, and so I ask them what it’s for, and they’re like… They didn’t have a loud sound, but they did have the red flashy lights, so it wasn’t super disruptive. And I asked them what it was for, and they said every time they hit a huge sell.

So when I bring it back to my team, I bring it back to my executive team and I’m like, “This would be so fun to do. How do we celebrate when we hit our landmarks or hit our goals or,” you know. And so I told them, like, “Can we get red sirens going on,” you know, and we’re trying to figure this out. And one of my staff’s like, “What if we just did like an old-school bell?”

It’s like, all right. I mean, that wasn’t my vision, but that’s an idea, and there’s no bad ideas. So we brought in this, just this little bell, and we were like, “Okay, now let’s do it with, like, every…” But at this time, we’re also restructuring how we did bonuses, and we wanted to give people a bonus based on revenue.

So we’re like, “Perfect. Let’s base it on revenue, and base it on a million dollars.” And so that’s where we came up with, for every million dollars that we do, the whole office staff gets together and we ring the bell, and we celebrate that we just grew another million dollars. Now, their bonus just grew.

Whatever, if they’re at $75 per million or if they’re at, like, $200 per million, their bonus just jumped. So as you were seeing as we were doing the tour, we have hit 15 million this quarter. And so whoever their bonus is gonna be is their bonus times 15. So X times 15 will be their bonus, and that will be handed out, I would say, at the end of October, is when we usually- Hand them out the month after the quarter end.

So and then bonus day is such a fun celebration, and all of this goes down to culture, right? Of work isn’t really that fun, so how can we make it fun even if it’s just for a moment? Even if it’s just to ring the bell. Everybody gets together and we cheer, cheer and ring the bell. It takes maybe five minutes, and then everybody’s back working again.

How can you just break it up so it’s not so mundane, right?

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Carrie Kelsch: And so now once a quarter we have our bonus handout. Well, when you start working for the company, on day one you’ve gotta pick your walk-up song. This is your celebration song. Some people call it their money song. If we’re celebrating you or if we’re acknowledging you, if we’re giving you a bonus, we’re playing your walk-up song.

So on bonus day, everyone wears their bling, wears their gold chains. We come in and I walk around and I hand out these checks playing whoever’s check I have, that’s the bonus song I’m playing, and I’ll walk up to them. They already know. They can hear it coming. They’re up dancing at their desk before I even get there.

Then I give them the bonus, then on to the next one, and it’s just a very fun time. Like, everyone seems to show up for bonus day. There’s nobody sick. No one’s taking a vacation. It’s a fun time.

Alex Bridgeman: Well, there’s little things you do around the office too that, uh, there’s certainly awards, but even stuff like in office or in meeting or the name tag on a, a monitor.

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: There’s l- lot of small details that come together in a nice cohesive way it seems.

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah. I feel like it’s all the little details that, just like a Mozart painting, you know? Mosaic painting. When you have the mosaic painting and you’ve got all the little tiny details, and then you take the view out and you just, there’s this beautiful picture.

It’s no different here. I put name tags on everyone’s computer or desk clear down… Even, even mine has a name tag so that people know who they’re talking to, right? And you’re more likely to talk to somebody if you know their name. And with the size of our company, then you’ve got, and people out in the field that aren’t here every day, when they come in, they can go up and say, “Hi, Amber,” and feel very confident that that’s Amber, you know?

And they’re, they don’t have to, like, think, “Was that her name? What was her name?” So it’s, it’s really helpful. Just like when you show up at the customer’s house and you’ve got a name tag.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Carrie Kelsch: Customers are more likely to talk to you if they know your name. Nobody wants to call you, “Hey, you.” And it just, it’s really uncomfortable.

So making sure that there’s name tags so people can be addressed just makes it that friendlier opening. And it’s the same in the work field as it is in the office.

Alex Bridgeman: What didn’t work? What ideas did you try that like, “Ah, that, that…” You got it.

Carrie Kelsch: I have so many of those. Like I say, I have a thousand ideas and, you know, a small percentage are good.

So one of the ideas that didn’t work, well, there’s some ideas that worked for the time and then didn’t work, and I’ll just tell you one of those was I used to have all of my technicians text me their numbers at the end of each day. So they had to personally text me, and we were on a group text, so it was me and a couple other people on the text.

And so each individual had to send a group text of what their revenue or it’s actually their sales, what their sales numbers were for the day. And that worked for a while, but then once we started, like, our new CRM, we didn’t need to do that. So then it was just duplicate and taking up more… It was like a duplicate process, and it was taking up more time than what it was worth and, you know, they’re having to add up all the numbers.

So it’s things like that that, like, they worked, and then we transitioned, and they didn’t work. Something that I implemented that didn’t work We have this software that made it so you could take any garage door out there, any design from any of the manufacturers, and you could actually project it right onto the customer’s d- door in real time.

So like how Amazon has display in your space or view it in your space, you could do that. So you could view the garage door in your space, and I think that is such a good idea, but it just never took off. It’s like enough people didn’t use it or it just wasn’t made simple enough and without any glitches.

But so that’s one of them.

Alex Bridgeman: We really enjoyed the, the ads your, your team created too. When did you like realize that they are pulling more people to create content for the business?

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah. So as you scale the business, you’ve gotta scale your marketing, right? And whether that is keeping it in-house or going out and scaling it, you know, third party, it’s, it naturally will scale third party if that’s what you’re doing.

But we knew that we wanted it to be always in-house, and so it was 2023 is around when we started to really grow that department. And in 2024 we got a really good CMO that had such a good creative mind, and he took it to a whole nother level with the ads. So I think it’s just finding the right seat on the bus, but you know, finding the right person to, to be on the bus with you that really can help get your vision and your mission across to, in the homes and to customers.

And his goal was to make A Plus Garage Doors a household name And that’s what he was set to accomplish.

Alex Bridgeman: Are there some memorable milestones similar to that along the way in growing the business, where suddenly we can do this, or this becomes possible- Mm-hmm … or we can have this person join the team now?

Carrie Kelsch: Yes, absolutely. To grow and scale the way we did, there’s a, a lot of different milestones. I mentioned one being Goldman Sachs, one of the first times that I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got a company. Wait, who’s running this company?” Like, it was… There was no systems in pla- processes in place, and so that was m- one of the first ones.

And then going on, I found I needed a really good CFO. So I didn’t have a really good accounting person. I had somebody that I taught, so I taught them how to do accounting, but I’m not an accountant, so they only knew what I knew. And so stepping out and going and finding a really professional CFO to, to run the company with me, that was a huge milestone and s- and pushed us in the right direction.

When you can just look at, like, what’s my cost per vehicle, what’s my revenue per vehicle? Like, every little thing that you need, they could get you the numbers for, and it had just help you be able to see what your company’s doing at every, any given point. Then after that would be the CRM that we went on.

So the- The CFO came around 2016. The CRM came in 2018, and that’s ServiceTitan. And when they, we started implementing them, they took us from a very faulty process that could be hacked by almost anybody and could be manipulated by anybody in the field or anybody in the office, to a very robust system that we can scale and grow with.

And once we did that, we were able to just continue to grow, and ServiceTitan has continued to add more and more to help us grow into that. And now with AI coming, we’re already set up in a really great position to just incorporate more of that to make us even more efficient and more productive. So-

Alex Bridgeman: What, what were you doing right before ServiceTitan?

Carrie Kelsch: So before ServiceTitan was really writing it down, like bought a pen and paper, write it down, text out the message. So you’d get the call coming in, you would just hand write the job, and then you’d put the text message together and send it out to somebody in the field. And then we got to the point where we were actually putting the phone calls into Google.

And so everybody had access to this Google Calendar, and so you could see how faulty that is when everyone has access. They’re like, “I don’t wanna go there”, and they just move the job to somebody else. Well- It was very problematic. But we would put the jobs in Google Calendar, and they would see the job, and then they would

They’d, they’d be able to see everything they’re doing, and they’d see everything everybody else was doing, but they’d be able to see their job, where they’re going. And then once they’re do- done, then they could go to the next job. Problem was, is that it was super easy to hack it. And you could-

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah …

Carrie Kelsch: you could scam the system pretty easy with that one.

Alex Bridgeman: Would you … In Google Calendar, would you add the, like, parts replaced or an address, and you add the technician’s email so they get the invite and all that?

Carrie Kelsch: W- No, we weren’t even that advanced with it. We just, everyone had the same email. Oh. So we’d just put in their name. So everybody had the same calendar.

Like, it was very elementary. This was when it first came out. Like, we thought we were … Like, for us, we’re like, “Genius”, ’cause it, we’re going from pen and paper to now we’re online. We feel like we’re online. Just able to- It’s certainly better. Yeah, definitely better. They could go see it, but they’re just … In doing that, it did open up all sorts of new issues that we’re like, “Okay, now, now we gotta stop people from changing the system or erasing jobs that they just don’t wanna show up to.”

Like, there’s a lot of situations that it exposed. And so then we were constantly trying to find, how do we lock it down? And so we really went from Google calendar to ServiceTitan. We did try one more in between, and it was, like, the most incredible failure. Oh, yeah. So we’re like, “Okay, we can’t do that.”

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, that’s a lot. And then what, what did you learn about hiring those executive positions, CFO, CMO, COO? Like, what did… What was that hiring like compared to maybe hiring technicians or CSRs?

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah. Well, definitely more higher level. Like, you, you wanna make sure that when you’re hiring somebody that is a part of your executive team, that there’s a huge amount of trust between you, and it’s hard knowing that when you’re just interviewing for a couple days.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Carrie Kelsch: And then you’re like, “Okay, I think I trust you. I think we’re gonna have good chemistry together.” But it is really vital that you’ve got a really good work chemistry, and that you can trust them, and you’re speaking the same language, and you’ve got the same goals in mind, the same initiative. So I think it’s, for me, it took, takes a lot longer to fill those positions, and it’s something I don’t take lightly.

Alex Bridgeman: What do you ask or try to do in an interview to figure out if it’s somebody you can trust?

Carrie Kelsch: Oh, I don’t do a lot of the interviewing anymore like I used to when we were smaller, but that is another thing I delegated out. So I’m not really able to answer exactly what I do. I mean, I did interview the, the new SAML that’s coming on board, and I think to see if you can trust them, it’s just a handful of questions, and you still don’t know.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Carrie Kelsch: And we, we still won’t know until we’re road, you know, down the road a way, and then we’re like, “Okay, this is somebody I can trust.” So you just kind of have to get a feel for it. I don’t know if there’s any brilliant question that I, that I have locked and loaded that I would necessarily discover, but that would be interesting to know.

Alex Bridgeman: I’d, I’d be curious too. Yeah. It’s definitely a high, you know… It’s a bigger hire than, you know, techs and others. What, what does your technician hiring and training process look like today?

Carrie Kelsch: So a technician comes in, so this is a garage door professional. They’ll come in, and they’re going to, they’re going to diagnose what’s going on with the garage doors, and then they’re gonna recommend the fix or the replacement.

And so what it looks like for them is they’ll come in and they’ll do a three-month or more training, and they’re doing ride-alongs and in-person trainings to get set up so that they can go in their own vehicle. So I mean, there’s, in three months, you’re not gonna know everything that you need to know about garage doors, but you’re gonna have a really good idea and get a lot of experience.

Alex Bridgeman: And do you have, you know, new hires coming in, like, on a regular basis, or they’re kinda cohorts, like, you’ll, you’ll train a, a group at a time and go from there?

Carrie Kelsch: What we like to do is bring in no more than two new hires at a time because we want them to really feel like the attention’s on them, and they get the full experience going around and meeting everyone, and we don’t want them to feel like they’re just thrown into a group

Alex Bridgeman: a sense.

Like, there’s a lot of, there’s, there’s a lot of little things you do like that in keeping the personality, and it makes people feel comfortable and seen. It seems- Yeah … like, really unique.

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah. I’m gonna go back to another question you asked a while ago. You said, “What is something that you’re, you’re doing that, or that you did that didn’t work?”

And I said, “You outgrow stuff.”

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Carrie Kelsch: I’m gonna give you another example, ’cause it’s a fun example of what you were just talking about. When we first hire somebody, and so it’s their first day, I want them to feel, like, very welcome into the pack, right? And the best way to make somebody feel welcome is if they feel like they’re giving value already.

So what I would do is I would have this new hire go around and pick up lunch for everyone. And so they’d go and ask everybody, like, “Alex, what would you like for lunch?” And so they’d write it down, and they’d have to have a little bit of a communication with you or a conversation with you. And then they would usually go with the manager or somebody to go pick up lunch, and then they bring it back, and then they bring it to your desk.

Like, “This is what you ordered.” So they’re giving you a gift, and now they have a way of connecting with you. Like, “Hey, you know, you’re the salami guy,” you know? Or- … you know, “You like the turkey on rye.” You know what I mean? And so they just have a way to connect with you, because they’ve already broke the ice of talking to you.

But we realized, once you’re so big, you can’t do that. We are too big to be doing that.

Alex Bridgeman: It’s a lot of lunches.

Carrie Kelsch: It’s a lot of lunches, and it was like, pretty soon it’s overwhelming to this new hire that just started, and they’re like, “I can’t do it. This is way too many. Like, 40 lunches is way too many for me to be ordering day one.”

And so we’re like, “Okay, we really gotta back that off.” And so we do it differently now. We just take them out to eat. And so a couple of the team will get together and take them out.

Alex Bridgeman: That’s fun. Is there… What new things are you thinking about trying in the business?

Carrie Kelsch: Well, we’re always looking at where can we implement AI.

So we’ve just taken on this, this huge project of taking on ServiceTitan Max, which is ServiceTitan with all of the Pro- Pro P- products and all the AI that is needed to run your business. So we’re really leaning into that, and it takes all hands on deck. It takes everybody knowing what their job is and how it needs to be running and everybody working together.

So that has been a big project that we’re taking on, but the vision of what I see it being, like, we just had… The other day, I was just talking to a couple of my team leads as they were… Everybody was leaving the office, and they were speaking on their frustration with, “Well, this person’s calling out sick tomorrow,” or calling, called out…

They took a day off tomorrow, and we’re so… we’re short on people to answer the phones. And I’m telling them, “Well, maybe it’s time we just launch AI and see what it does.”

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Carrie Kelsch: You know? So I’m very excited for when we don’t have to have… worry about somebody taking a day off. And I think the exact question I said to, or the exact comment I said to them when I…

‘Cause they were just talking about, “Yeah, this person’s taking tomorrow off, and so we’re short on people answering phones.” And I said, “Do you know who won’t call in and take a day off?” Yeah. And they’re like, “AI.” I’m like, “Exactly.” So it’s just leaning into things that will help us get better at what we’re doing without having to take on more of…

We don’t have to take on so much of the heavy operational costs.

Alex Bridgeman: Have you been using AI for after-hours, or do you have folks who work after hours for late calls?

Carrie Kelsch: We do both. Okay. Yeah, we have AI, and we use somebody for after-hours. It’s just you have to train AI. If they say, “Oh, you can just set it and forget it,” that is not the case.

It does need to be trained, but yes, it does remember much better.

Alex Bridgeman: And has it been working well so far?

Carrie Kelsch: So far with this new system that we’re doing, so far it’s been… We’re very encouraged by it, but it still needs some work.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm. Is there… What, what other ideas come to mind as, as things you’re excited to see, you know, what happens or if this idea works?

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah. I think just growing into markets and finding out, like, how to get into these markets, looking at the challenge of different… your different locations. Every location is different. Like, Salt Lake is completely different culture than Reno, which is completely different than Las Vegas. And so figuring out, how do I get in and, and can you build a connection with the community?

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Carrie Kelsch: It’s just… It’s, it’s such a challenge, but it’s, it’s really fun to try things and then see something working and then, you know, lean into it even more.

Alex Bridgeman: Well, I’m curious about new locations ’cause there’s… Within any new location, what’s important in getting it, like, you… How do you… First off, maybe how do you decide if we want to go to any one city?

How do we decide if, if we do, if that’s a valuable city for us to be in?

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah. Again, AI is gonna make it so easy to make these decisions, so I keep going back to AI, but I’m like, it really has made it, our process so easy. So what we used to do, even six months ago, isn’t what we have to do today. So today you just go, like, how many people are in the market?

How many garage door needs do they have? You know, you just ask some simple questions, and it’s gonna tell you whether it’s a good market to go into or not. And you can just ask AI, it’s gonna tell you. We used to just do all the research ourself and just find out how many people are in there, how many, you know, how many homes, how old are the homes, what is the repair like, you know, just finding out what our competition is.

So now we don’t have to really do much of that ’cause the research can be done by AI.

Alex Bridgeman: And then once you’ve decided, like for Reno, for example, we’re gonna go to Reno, how do you decide how many, how many folks you’ll need on the team in Reno? What kind of space you need? What should our marketing spend look like for Reno?

Mm-hmm. How do those decisions kinda come together?

Carrie Kelsch: So that’s, that’s something that we do as an executive team. So we kind of put all our- Our knowledge together and we look at it by historically, like, okay, so what do we need to start with? Well, you need to start with this, this many departments, and what support can people in that are at the facility here, what support can they give, and what’s needed, what’s not needed?

And we’ve already done the trial and error with the greenfield, opening up a new location. So the first location we actually opened was in St. George. And when we opened that location, we just thought, okay, we’ll do what we’re doing here in Salt Lake, and we’ll just open it up in St. George, which means they have their own dispatch, they have their own accounting, so they would have everything themselves, and then we would just tell them how to do it.

Well, that didn’t work because they’re not the same systems and processes and people. And so what we found worked is to pull all of that back and say, “Okay, we’re gonna keep the call center here. We’re gonna keep the accounting here. We’re gonna… Like the only thing going to the greenfield is just the warehouse and people in the field.”

And so just doing that and being able to shift and go, “Okay, we didn’t do it, like, correctly, but we learned from it, and now we’re gonna… this is how we’re gonna do it moving forward.” And so now when it comes to Reno, we knew how many people we need. We know, like, when we need to hire another person. We’ve got the signals that trigger us to like, you need to hire somebody new.

Now we need to, you know, get this person going. And so we, we really kind of have the roadmap of how to get there because we have done it multiple times.

Alex Bridgeman: It’s a smaller bet to make if there’s fewer new things being stood up and created in this new location. It’s… You kind of… You don’t have to, you don’t have to risk as much in making a new location happen.

Carrie Kelsch: That is so true. You definitely don’t have to risk as much. And it’s easier to, to grow into it, like start small and then grow into it than to try and just dominate right out of the gates. And as for marketing, like how much marketing spend, you’re always gonna spend more in a market, on a new market than you do in an existing market.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Carrie Kelsch: So you can spend upward of like fifteen to twenty percent for marketing in the new market, and you’re not making the revenue yet, but you know it’s coming.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm.

Carrie Kelsch: So I would say just make sure and know your numbers. I mean, the goal is to get your marketing somewhere around ten percent or under, but when you’re going into a new market, you might wanna shift from an established market and put more in the new market

Alex Bridgeman: And it keeps, it means you’re, like, more, probably more willing to take risks and take a bet on a new place and just- Oh, absolutely

see,

Carrie Kelsch: like,

Alex Bridgeman: you may not really know. You can do research and until you’re there, you may not have a, a s- super strong sense of what will happen.

Carrie Kelsch: Yeah. Being an entrepreneur, that’s what I do, is I take risks. So that’s, that’s just part of the game. As a business owner, part of the game is taking a risk. Like, scared money don’t make money, right?

Mm.

Alex Bridgeman: Yes, I agree. What last pieces of advice would you have for other garage door owners?

Carrie Kelsch: I could say don’t, you don’t actually fail if you don’t stop, if you don’t quit. If you just keep going and reinvent yourself and, and be able to shift when things aren’t working, shift away from that, and just cr- keep reinventing it and tweaking it until you get it right.

But failure just comes when you quit and give up. So just keep going at it and being willing to implement and delegate.

Alex Bridgeman: I also like taking ideas from other industries.

Carrie Kelsch: Oh, absolutely. Right? You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. None of us do. It’s already been done.

Alex Bridgeman: Yes. Yes, I agree. Carrie, thank you for sharing your time and for having us.

This has been awesome. I appreciate your time.

Carrie Kelsch: Yes, thank you. It’s been lovely being on.

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