Setting an Ambitious Vision with Alex Johantgen at Rise and Shine – Ep.287

(00:00:00) – Intro

(00:00:41) – How Alex got into garage doors

(00:02:26) – Starting the business with Josh

(00:03:43) – Rebranding to Rise and Shine

(00:04:48) – Growth phases of the business

(00:05:57) – The conference that changed everything

(00:09:39) – Learning from other owners

(00:12:00) – Building systems and training programs

(00:19:48) – Career paths for technicians

(00:23:48) – Hiring the right people

(00:26:36) – Building the leadership team

(00:29:33) – Marketing strategy evolution

(00:39:11) – Looking ahead to the rest of the year

Alex Johantgen: You know, there’s just a lot of things as like a, like a smaller company you don’t realize you’re doing wrong. You know, you don’t realize that you should have systems and processes in place. You know, me, I never went to college, and I didn’t get a business degree, and everything we’ve done, we’ve either taught ourselves or learned from somebody.

So it’s, it’s something where, you know, you kinda need to go see it. You need to go see what’s, what’s possible out there. You, you should … If you’re not attending conferences to see what, what best practices are in your industry, you should be, because you don’t know what’s achievable until you’ve seen someone else achieve it

Alex Bridgeman: Alex, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Things I Can Own is all about building small businesses and I focused a lot on garage doors for my new venture, Durable Trades that we can, we can chat about later too. But I would love to hear more about like, the, like, how did you get into this business and like, where did you start? You have a business partner, like how’d you guys get to this point?

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: It’s impressive, like walking around. I loved the tour you gave last time, and-

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm …

Alex Bridgeman: the inventory management in particular has like stuck with me. Mm-hmm. Like the system you run really well. So I’m, I’m excited to dive into all of it, but like where was the starting point for you?

Alex Johantgen: Yeah, absolutely. So first, thanks for having me on.

Super happy to be here and talk about this. How I got started in garage doors goes back to actually when I was 16 years old. I worked for a, basically a friend of their family for several years, and it was more of like a summertime job, and then I ended up continuing to work there after high school And I worked there for about three years or so, and then I ended up leaving that job to go to work at Comcast, which is where I met my business partner, Josh.

Josh and I worked at Comcast as service technicians for about five years. That entire time we, you know, talked about starting a business together. We had a lot of different ideas. One of them was a liquor store with a drive-through window, which never came to fruition, but it was kind of- Can you do

Alex Bridgeman: that?

Alex Johantgen: I don’t know.

It– They do have them. I’ve seen them in, like, Wisconsin. But anyways, it’s probably a good thing that that never actually happened because, you know, further on down the road, I ended up getting recruited back to the garage door industry. And I went back for a little bit of, I think, right around a year, and I was working 60, 70-hour weeks, six days a week, and I would say I wasn’t necessarily getting paid appropriately.

And at that time, I kinda decided if I was gonna work that much, I wanted to do it for myself. So that’s when I reached out to Josh and, you know, we didn’t have a lot of money to start, but Josh was all in from the start. He’s like, “Heck yeah, let’s do it.” And so I ended up selling my home to have some startup money, and Josh cashed out his 401, and that’s kinda how we started our company.

We each had a work– or we each had a personal truck that we converted into work trucks. And from there, we got, you know, cheap logo designed on, I think it was called, like, Fiverr or something like that, or LogoTournament.com or something. Paid a couple hundred bucks. And we had a website built, and really from there, we just continued to progress.

And we would do everything from going door to door, you know, knocking on customers’ homes and just in exchange for, you know, a complimentary tune-up, we’d ask for, like, a five-star review if they, you know, appreciated the service. And that’s kinda how we started building our reputation and building our customer base, uh, until we got to kinda, you know, being able to take a step back and get out of the field and continue to hire employees and went from one to two trucks, and now over 20 trucks on the road.

Alex Bridgeman: And was it called Rise and Shine to begin with?

Alex Johantgen: No. So the original name for the company was called Garage Door Repair Company. Which, super generic, and you know what? It worked really great for SEO purposes immediately, which helped us tremendously at the beginning, which is why we did it. I kinda had the idea of like, well, if the name of our GBP, our Google Business Profile, is Garage Door Repair Company-

Alex Bridgeman: It’s the Google terms everyone’s

Alex Johantgen: looking up.

Yeah, it’s literally what everyone’s typing in, and our website URL is Garage Door Repair Company. Do

Alex Bridgeman: you have that URL? That’s a great URL.

Alex Johantgen: We do still have that URL, yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: That’s a great URL.

Alex Johantgen: So anyways, it, it did help us with organic traffic right away. It helped a lot of our webpages rank at the top of Google organically right away.

We did not spend money on, like, Google Ads back then. We really just networked, word of mouth, built up a ton of reviews on Google and Yelp, and that’s how we started building the business that way.

Alex Bridgeman: And what year was this?

Alex Johantgen: That was 2015.

Alex Bridgeman: 2015?

Alex Johantgen: Yep.

Alex Bridgeman: So you’re 11 years in now.

Alex Johantgen: Yes.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, that’s, I mean, your own trucks to 20 trucks that aren’t your personal trucks.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: That’s, that’s quite-

Alex Johantgen: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: quite a journey. Mm-hmm. Do you feel like there were phases of life you went through in the business?

Alex Johantgen: Certainly, yeah. There’s definitely several phases. You know- When you’re starting a small business and, you know, the first couple years and being below, you know, a million dollars in revenue, you’re doing everything.

So it’s you’re doing the work in the field, you’re installing the doors, you’re working we- every weekend, Saturday, Sunday. You’re running the emergency call that comes in at 1:00 AM. You’re answering the phones while you’re in the garage doing the work for the customers, booking the next appointment. So and then you’re trying to also, you know, put all the invoices into QuickBooks, get ev- everything ready for the end of the year.

So it’s hectic at that stage for sure. And then, you know, c- you continue to progress. You know, that $3 million mark was a, a pretty big mark for us. Once we hit that, we felt pretty, you know, established. Josh and I really weren’t necessarily in the field anymore at that point. But at that point, that was around like 2020 or 2021, and we ended up going to a conference, which was Tommy Mello’s conference back then.

It’s called, it was called Garage Door Freedom, and it really opened our eyes to what was really possible in the garage door industry, seeing what Tommy had built there. And we got connected with Dan Antonelli at KickCharge, and immediately that was the first thing. We were like, “We have to do this. We have to rebrand.”

It was pretty evident that, you know, we had built a, you know, a decent business to that point. But one of the big things we thought was lacking was we didn’t feel people necessarily remembered who we were after we left. It’s hard to remember a company named Garage Door Repair Company. It’s just generic.

Doesn’t stick with you.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah.

Alex Johantgen: So in 2022, we rebranded to Rise and Shine Garage Doors, and we have amazing graphics and wraps on our vehicles and, you know, customers remember the company that shows up with a giant rooster on the truck and on the vans.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Good colors too, like blue and orange, like kind of a- Mm-hmm

Denver Broncos look. Like it-

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. It stands out for sure.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Yeah. Very, uh, e- uh, eye-catching.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Do you own a home today now?

Alex Johantgen: I do own a home.

Alex Bridgeman: Oh, good. Yes. Good. I’m glad it came back around.

Alex Johantgen: Yes. Yeah, funny, funny story about that. We ended up, my wife and I, when we sold our house and got the startup funds, we actually moved in with my parents for a little bit just to, you know, when we first started.

But it was- Yep … it wasn’t, it was short-lived. But yeah, it was not something my wife was super thrilled about, but she was very supportive. So she’s always been supportive the whole way, which I couldn’t appreciate more.

Alex Bridgeman: That’s huge. Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot– there’s what feels like probably a lot of off-ramps through- Yeah

through building a business like that.

Alex Johantgen: Yep.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. That, that’s impressive.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: It has to feel good now, like feeling some sense of accom- like vindication that like this, this bet we took on ourselves that maybe felt pretty risky at the time, like has paid off. It’s, it’s doing okay.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah, absolutely. You’re Absolutely.

I mean, it’s, you know, if I- If I were to look back, and a lot of times I, I need to do a better job of looking back at, you know, where I’ve been. Did I have aspirations of, like, building something like this? Absolutely. Did I think it was necessarily gonna happen the way it did? I don’t know. Probably not. But, you know, we definitely at least surpassed what my initial growth expectations were when we first started the company.

But as we continue to progress and see what’s possible, you know, we have much bigger growth aspirations now, uh, which is exciting.

Alex Bridgeman: That is exciting. Yeah. And 11 years is fast-

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm …

Alex Bridgeman: to go to do that.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, zero… From zero, and right now we’re on pace to do, you know, 10 and a half to 11 million, so.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. That is a, that’s a good year.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Was there a… You mentioned the conference. Was there some key idea or turning point from that conference or in and around that time that you feel like changed the trajectory for the business?

Alex Johantgen: 100%. You know, there’s just a lot of things as, like, a, like, a smaller company you don’t realize you’re doing wrong.

You know, you don’t realize that you should have systems and processes in place. You know, me, I never went to college, and I didn’t get a business degree, and everything we’ve done, we’ve either taught ourselves or learned from somebody. So it’s, it’s something where, you know, you kind of need to go see it.

You need to go see what’s, what’s possible out there. You, you should… If you’re not attending conferences to see what, what best practices are in your industry, you should be, because you don’t know what’s achievable until you’ve seen someone else achieve it.

Alex Bridgeman: Are there any owners that you really admire, whether in garage doors or other industries that are like, “Wow, that, that was an impressive business”?

Alex Johantgen: Yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s obviously, you know, Tommy’s like an easy one. He’s built something pretty massive and, you know, he’s o- obviously the biggest garage door company in the, in the US, so that’s super impressive. I’ve met several business owners throughout all the networking groups that I’m in and events that we’ve gone to, and one of my best friends, Matt, with M&M Garage Doors in Michigan, he’s someone I respect a lot, and we go back and forth on ideas all the time and, you know, he picks my brain on a, on something, and I’ll pick his brain on something.

It’s really nice to have someone that you can, you know, have that conversation with as a business owner. Sometimes as business owners, you feel kind of like you’re alone. Yeah. So it’s nice to be able to talk out ideas or even frustrations or whatever it is with someone who knows what you’re talking about.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. It’s hard to find like a true peer, like who you can talk to about all the same challenges.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: I’ll talk to Michelle about my work, but there’s a, there’s still a difference in that, uh, she’s not next to me doing the same job. She has her own job in, in a totally different field.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: And there’s, you know, there’s folks on your team you could talk to, but probably not everything.

There’s not this perfect Venn diagram of like someone you can bounce all the i- all, every idea around.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, I, I definitely will, will talk with my wife about certain things here and there, but I also, at the same time, if I’m, you know- frustrated about something or maybe have anxiety about a situation or whatever it is at work, I don’t necessarily wanna bring that home.

I kinda wanna keep that separate ’cause when I’m home I, you know, wanna spend time with my wife and my kids and, you know, have that be, you know, good time, not kinda separate the work and, and home life a little bit, so.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There, there’s a, there’s a balance of, you know, yeah, sharing what’s going on without, yeah, making, making the whole evening about whatever is happening.

Alex Johantgen: 100%.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Yeah. What, is there maybe as a CEO or leaders or anything in particular, either through, like, coaching or just listening to, like, others talk about, like, how they improve their own leadership style that you feel like you’ve taken on and, and focused on?

Alex Johantgen: Like, for personal growth?

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. So, you know, I think books is a great way to, you know, develop as a, as a leader.

You know, several books that have helped me would be, like, Rocket Fuel or Traction. They’re EOS books. We’ve implemented EOS in our business, which I think is a game changer when it comes to continuing to grow your business. And then, you know, I’ve also joined a Vistage group for CEO. It’s a CEO peer group basically, and so we meet every month for an entire day, and it’s, it’s a great group.

If you really wanna develop as a leader, you have to be able to help other business owners solve problems. And they have speakers that are, that come in regularly to help train you or help make you a better leader, and I think that’s been super valuable. We also get, through Vistage, we have a Vistage chair who regularly does a one-to-one with us.

So I get a monthly one-to-one with my Vistage chair and get to bounce ideas off him or struggles within the business or problems that maybe we need help solving. It’s, it’s definitely helpful.

Alex Bridgeman: I imagine it’s also helpful having a… You know, there, there’s peer groups of other garage door owners. Mm-hmm. And then there’s peer groups of broad owners who-

Alex Johantgen: Yep

Alex Bridgeman: may have encountered, like, flavors of the same challenges you have-

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm …

Alex Bridgeman: and then have a totally different perspective or idea that you wouldn’t have heard otherwise.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. It’s, it’s actually really cool being a part of a, a group where I am the only garage door company because it’s, the industries are all over the place.

So it’s really cool to see that It, it’s funny ’cause a lot of the issues all these businesses are facing are so similar. But how people handle them are, is very different. So it’s here, it’s very cool to hear how that business owner’s either handling that issue and then how, you know, this other business owner recommends they handle that issue.

You get a lot of different perspectives.

Alex Bridgeman: Anything come to mind as a challenge you guys worked on in the last year or two that maybe came from, like, a couple ideas from other groups fed into fixing it?

Alex Johantgen: The last year or two? I would say, you know, our sales process has come a long way in the last year or two, and our training.

So that was an area that we knew was definitely needed. I think it’s helped tremendously to keep, you know, from start to finish, the, the overall outcome the same. That’s a big thing that we focus on here, is we want, we want all of our customers to experience the same level of service. Do we make mistakes every once in a while?

Sure, absolutely, everybody does, but I think it’s the way you handle those mistakes and also the way you train keeps your technicians delivering that outcome from start to finish for every customer.

Alex Bridgeman: So… ‘Cause if you have 20 trucks, I assume around, somewhere around 20 techs then too.

Alex Johantgen: Yep.

Alex Bridgeman: That’s- And each are doing three to five jobs a day, like that could be up to 100 jobs-

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm

Alex Bridgeman: per day.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: And you- making sure, like, there’s some consistency and a process across all of them, that’s a constant challenge.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You know, if, if you don’t have systems and processes in place and everybody’s doing things a little bit different, you’re gonna end up with a lot of different outcomes.

So it’s definitely important to train to a specific process and do it regularly, because a lot of times, you know, our technicians go through an eight-week training program and, you know, we teach them everything from day one, but you know, it’s hard to retain everything in a eight-week training program, you know, when, once you’re three months or six months out, out of the training program and you’re in the field.

So it’s important to really go back, and we have weekly meetings with all of our technicians, and a lot of times we’re highlighting a specific part of the process or a specific, you know, way we greet the customer, whatever it is.

Alex Bridgeman: And then i- is this a… Is it, like, weekly in the morning on a Monday or Tuesday or?

Alex Johantgen: Yep. So we do Tuesdays and Thursdays every single week with all the technicians.

Alex Bridgeman: Oh, so twice a week then?

Alex Johantgen: Yep.

Alex Bridgeman: Wow. What’s, what’s the structure of that meeting? Like, how long do you have it? What are you, what are the key topics you tend to cover?

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. So typically it’s 30 minutes, and we typically will have a couple shout-outs in there, you know, for great jobs on with this customer or that customer.

We might highlight a couple reviews that came in, five-star reviews that were awesome. Some, some of the reviews we get are, like, three paragraphs and they’re funny and they’re great to read out loud in front of the, in front of the group. And then, so after the shout-outs, typically there’s a couple admin topics.

Could be like, when’s the next install availability so the guys know if they run into a situation where, you know, a customer maybe backed into the door and now we need to replace it, they know when the next available install is. And then from there it goes to a main topic, and typically the rest of the time is spent on that main topic, whether that’s a part of the sales process, whether that’s…

We recently just did how to ask the customer for a five-star review, because if you don’t ask, they don’t know. So it’s important that we ask.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, it’s a… There is a way to ask in a-

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm …

Alex Bridgeman: in a way that’s not, like, you know, pushy but- Pushy or aggressive … just says like, “Hey, by the way, like, this helps.”

Alex Johantgen: Yep.

Yeah, absolutely. “This

Alex Bridgeman: makes a difference for us.”

Alex Johantgen: Yep.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. What were the different stages before, like we walked through your training facility, which is fantastic.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: What did that look like before this space?

Alex Johantgen: Well, before this space, so we did have a very small training center at our previous location, but I would say before we even had a training center, what it looked like was hire a guy, stick him in a truck with another guy until he says he’s ready to go on his own Yeah There you

Alex Bridgeman: go.

Yep

Alex Johantgen: Yeah, that’s how it was. And, you know, that’s where we started, and we’ve come a long way since then. Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Pros and cons. Yeah.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. What, what are some maybe benefits of that consistent training that maybe seem less obvious, but over time you’re like, “Oh, that, that… I don’t, I don’t have to fix that problem anymore”?

Alex Johantgen: Okay. Yeah, I would say, you know, the biggest thing is just- Less upset customers. You know, you’re, you’re gonna end up with a lot more consistency of like, we pride ourselves on getting, you know, five stars on Google, Yelp, whatever it is, and you get that a lot more when you have a consistent training process from start to finish.

You know, the other thing I think that is a big benefit is having these regular trainings and having these… You know, at first you start having meetings with guys that you weren’t having before, and sometimes, you know, guys might say like, “Well, why are we having all these meetings?” But after a while, like, these guys wanna see each other, and like, it starts creating like a, a better culture for everybody.

So I think that’s like the, the bigger thing that it comes from it, is like having these regular cadences, having consistency, having guys being able to, you know, joke and laugh in the same room, and yeah, it creates a, a great atmosphere.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Yeah. You create friendships and-

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm …

Alex Bridgeman: there’s a sense of, you know, your work affects each of these individuals around you.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. It also creates a sense of pride, I think, in the technicians as well, because we’re all here trying to get a little better every time we meet, and I think, you know, I know they know a lot of the companies don’t do these types of things. So I think a little bit of pride goes along with it where they like, we’re, we’re here to get better, you know, as a team and as a company, so.

Alex Bridgeman: How do you lay out a, a career track for a, a tech? So a new, you know, early career tech joins your team.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: They start looking at… You start setting them up for training. How do you talk through what a, you know, career at Rise and Shine looks like for them?

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: What the options are.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. So if they’re, you know, applying for an entry-level technician role, they’re typically gonna start off in training, and then when they graduate training, they’ll go into being an apprentice tech.

And so as they continue to progress, we have different KPIs that we track and thresholds that the technicians have to reach in order to advance into another higher tier essentially. So they would go from an apprentice technician to a junior to a senior, and then they can get all the way up to a master technician, would be the trajectory of the technician.

And then from there, if they have interest in, you know, advancing their career past that, obviously there’s office opportunities, whether that’s management, um, things like that. We encourage anyone who’s interested in maybe getting out of the field and getting into management, you know, we try to encourage like reading a few leadership books, trying to make sure they are coming…

They have the right why for it, you know, ’cause I think there’s a lot of technicians who think- Maybe that getting out of the office or getting out of the field and going into the office is gonna be easy, and I think it’s, you know, not necessarily easy if, if you’re not used to managing people.

Alex Bridgeman: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

That

Alex Johantgen: makes sense. Yep.

Alex Bridgeman: What are some of the kind of guideposts or things you have to clear to move up? What’s an example of something a tech needs to master before moving to, you know, senior apprentice and then up from there?

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. So, I mean, the big things would be, like, we track, like, OJA, which is opportunity job average, and then we track, like, their recall rates.

We track, which is if they went to a job recently, and then the customer called within 60 days because there’s an issue, and we have to go back. So we make sure that we’re not getting a lot of those. Obviously, we wanna make sure we limit that as much as possible.

Alex Bridgeman: Yep.

Alex Johantgen: We also track customer satisfaction scores, so that’s a big one on our KPI list.

Like, we have to be getting five-star reviews. And then close rate. What’s the percentage of close rate that they’re doing? And then it’s kind of just a career trajectory of, you know, we do have a, like, threshold that they have to reach in total sales to be able to advance to the next level, while also maintaining these KPI thresholds to ensure that we’re delivering the customer service experience that we’re looking for, we’re meeting all of our close rate standards, and we’re not causing a bunch of recalls and stuff like that.

Alex Bridgeman: Gotcha. And then, along the way, I, I imagine then the, your base pay is moving up. How do you balance base commission? What do you like to do, and then how do you maybe translate that across as they move up in their skill set?

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. So their, their pay advances for each step. And I’m sorry, what, what was the second half of the question?

Alex Bridgeman: Like, if they base plus commission, and then how does… What does a tech, like, pay look like as they move up? Like, how does that-

Alex Johantgen: Sure. So our technicians are all– they all have a, like, a guaranteed base pay that they can’t fall below, and then we do what’s called performance pay, which a lot of other companies have, you know, developed over the years.

So essentially, for instance, like, the apprentice tech is gonna start at, like, 15%. Okay? And as they advance, they’ll go up to 17%, 19%, and then 21% as they advance through the, the scales. And so essentially, we’ll pay the technician either their base hourly rate or their commission, whichever is more. Typically, the commission is more than the base pay.

Alex Bridgeman: Gotcha. Yeah. Gotcha. In thinking about hiring a new tech, and you have alternative of someone with tons of experience, but you’re, you’re not convinced on personality and customer service versus, like, someone who comes from awesome customer service background but knows, knows nothing about doors. How do you…

Do you have a preference or-

Alex Johantgen: I’ll take the guy with the awesome customer service and no door experience.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Yeah. ‘Cause the, it seems like from other owners, like, owners seem pretty comfortable training the-

Alex Johantgen: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: technical side.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm. Yeah. The technical side, you know, definitely can take a little bit to master, but the ability to communicate with customers is so important in our, in our industry.

I think it’s what helps us maintain the level of customer service we deliver to our customers. We’ve definitely done it both ways, and we have some great guys who are in our, on our team that have come from other companies. But we’ve also had hires that came from other companies where it’s really hard to- Some people don’t like change, and it’s sometimes hard to get them to buy into how we do things or our processes and, you know, we’re pretty organized.

We like to track KPIs and so, you know, that’s not for everybody.

Alex Bridgeman: Where do you tend to find that person with really good customer service? Is there a couple places you’ve found that are great for recruiting or meeting people or- Yeah … or all over the place?

Alex Johantgen: So Facebook is a great way. You know, we, we have, uh, some hiring campaigns that we have out there.

You know, we do a little bit on Indeed, but honestly like some of, some of the, you know, better ones we get are referrals from people who work here. And so those tend to be good ones. And yeah, I mean, w- we’re pretty, I don’t wanna say picky, but we, we like to Be very detailed and, and make sure the person we’re interviewing has a full understanding of, like, who we are as a company, you know, what the training process looks like.

We give them the first step that we do when applicant comes in here, we give them the full tour like I gave you. So we show them everything, show them the training center, and then we sit down for an interview. And then from the interview process, if we like that applicant, typically we’ll schedule a ride-along interview where that person is gonna come in and go on a ride-along with one of our technicians for one job and kinda get an idea of what we do, interact with that technician, see the job firsthand, because we don’t want any surprises that, you know, obviously with garage doors, you have a little bit of heavy lifting, you have to work with tools, so you wanna make sure they’re comfortable with what that looks like.

And yeah, that’s, that’s our hiring process.

Alex Bridgeman: How have you built out your leadership team over time? You’re obviously not answering the phone anymore.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: You have multiple locations now.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: What were the kinda key hires along the way and then, you know, what have those looked like?

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. So going back several years when it was just Josh and myself in the office, and this kinda goes back to…

Well, we did have CSRs as well, but when we went to Tommy Mello’s event, one of the first things we did when we got back was we decided, you know, we needed to pull Kyle, who’s our director of operations now. He was originally, when we hired him, he was a technician. He had management experience, and we brought him out of the, out of the field and into the office, and that was a really big move for us back then and really helped free Josh and I up to start focusing on how can we continue to grow the business rather than work necessarily on all the day-to-day stuff.

Alex Bridgeman: And how did it grow from there?

Alex Johantgen: Well, that was around the same time that we rebranded and started documenting processes and started training and stuff like that. So, you know, I, I wanna say we were right around the $3 million area, and now we’re gonna be over eight figures.

Alex Bridgeman: And so, like, what’s the leadership team look like today?

Alex Johantgen: Sure. So right now it’s myself and my business partner, Josh. Kyle’s our director of operations, and then we have our three service managers out there who oversee all of our technicians. And then we have a lead CSR who kind of handles all of our CSRs in doing their trainings and stuff like that.

Alex Bridgeman: And you guys take care of finance, HR, those things- Correct.

Yeah … still?

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Any outsourced resources there?

Alex Johantgen: Yeah, so we have a fractional CMO and a fractional CFO,

Alex Bridgeman: so. Nice.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: That, that’s a, that’s a big upgrade.

Alex Johantgen: Yep. Yep.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah.

Alex Johantgen: Going from

Alex Bridgeman: no CFO to one, to one or even half a CFO.

Alex Johantgen: Yep. Yep. That’s pretty great. I’m always

Alex Bridgeman: curious about that ’cause the CFO and CMO, those are huge areas to focus on.

But I’m also just curious when companies and owners tend to, like, take on, like, a full-time person in those roles and-

Alex Johantgen: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: how those roles and fills look like.

Alex Johantgen: I’d say we’re getting pretty close to bringing on, like, a, like, a marketing manager or something like that. Right now I oversee all the marketing.

But yeah, I hired a company as our CMO, and they, they help us with all the planning, the budgeting, how, what, what avenues we’re gonna go down for marketing, and, you know, obviously I approve everything still, but yeah, they’ve been very helpful.

Alex Bridgeman: Well, I mean, talk about how marketing strategy’s evolved over time.

Certainly the rebranding- Yeah … was a big one.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. I mean, obviously the rebrand was a big one. Like I said, back in, back in the beginning, like the only thing we were doing was, you know, word of mouth, networking, and getting reviews on social media. We weren’t doing any, like, paid advertising for a long time.

To where it’s evolved now, we do just about everything. We do, you know, Google pay-per-click, Google LSA. We have several different Google business profiles building up our reputation, and we do radio, TV, billboards, and direct mail and everything, you know. Paid social’s a big one that we do now, and the OTT ads that, you know, follow you around if you’ve been on our website, so.

Alex Bridgeman: Any surprise performers?

Alex Johantgen: Direct mail has actually performed pretty well. You know, it’s a old, older school form of marketing, but it still works if done correctly.

Alex Bridgeman: I brought you the handbook last time. I’m a b- big fan of, like, physical paper.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: So you have to, you know, hold it, look at it, and it’s not as easily just swiped and deleted.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: There’s something to look at.

Alex Johantgen: Yep.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Do you send it to just broad neighborhoods, or like, or in and around- Yeah … do you have a specific one in and around jobs you did recently?

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. So we’ve done both. The better performing one that we’ve seen so far has been when we’re in a neighborhood and we just did some work there.

We have a software that links to our CRM that’s able to grab that job information, and then it’ll send out mailers essentially to that entire neighborhood with specific offers just saying something simple like, “Hey, we were just in the neighborhood and we fixed your neighbor’s garage door spring. While we’re in the neighborhood, we’re gonna, you know, here’s three offers for you.”

And then we have three various offers on the, on the mailer form.

Alex Bridgeman: Is it super specific like we fixed the spring or the door?

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. So we have ones that are like, “We just repaired your neighbor’s garage door,” and we have ones that, “We just replaced your neighbor’s garage door.” So it’s specific to either repair or replace.

Alex Bridgeman: I wonder if the replace garage door, ’cause that would visually be obvious.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. So that’s the one thing we love about it is on a replacement job you have the initial consult where our vehicle’s out center in front of the house, and then from there you’re gonna have the installation, which is a separate appointment, and you’re gonna have at least one of our vehicles there for the installation.

Our technician’s then gonna put a yard sign in the yard, and then the neighborhood’s gonna get dropped with mailers.

Alex Bridgeman: How do you track mailers? Like, if someone from… Like, it, it must be difficult, ’cause they could see the mailer and then Google you.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah, absolutely. So that’s a great, great reason why we have our CMO, our fractional CMO, CMO company.

They do all the reverse lookup attributions, so they’re able to… They get the mail lists, and they’re able to search the mail list and in our CRM based off when the, the mail drop hit, and then they are able to add that revenue back.

Alex Bridgeman: Got it. Yeah. So they could tie, like, this home received a mailer Tuesday- Yep

they Googled us that afternoon.

Alex Johantgen: Yep.

Alex Bridgeman: There we go. Okay.

Alex Johantgen: Yep.

Alex Bridgeman: That makes a lot of sense.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm. Some of them do call the number on the mailer as well, which makes it a lot easier, ’cause that call number’s tracked.

Alex Bridgeman: Oh, that is-

Alex Johantgen: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: is it a specific number for each type of mailer, like the repair or re- Yeah … place?

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. That is, be really fun to, like, study all that data and make sure, or see what’s going on.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. It’s, it’s pretty cool when it comes in and you can see, you know, your advertising efforts work. And we did a, the last match back they did, we were at, like, a 7.8 ROAS on that campaign, so.

Alex Bridgeman: I bet. Pretty solid.

Yeah, that’s pretty good.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. I’ll do that.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Did the podcast you guys had, did you tie that or were able to track- Um … conversions there, no?

Alex Johantgen: No. No, we, we only… I mean, we had the podcast for a little bit, and I don’t know, maybe we’ll bring it back someday.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. Feel like the billboard one would be hard to track.

Alex Johantgen: Billboards are hard to track, but what’s not hard to track is when you go out to eat and the server says, like, she saw, one of our servers saw my logo and she’s like, “You’re the guys that have all the billboards.” And I was like, “Yep, that’s us.” Yes. So anyways, she got a big tip.

Alex Bridgeman: Just anecdotal. Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Johantgen: But I think it’s, you know, I- I’m a big believer in the law of seven.

So like, you know, I think it takes seven times for someone to see your brand for them to become familiar with it. And when it comes to the billboards or the TV and the radio and the social media ads, you know, the biggest thing that I want to get out of that is when they end up going to Google, and they search garage door repair, and they’re scrolling about who they’re gonna pick, but they see that rooster that they’ve seen before and it’s familiar, there’s a higher chance they’re gonna click on us than the competitors.

Alex Bridgeman: Oh, absolutely.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: And they’re… If they’ve seen your trucks-

Alex Johantgen: Yep …

Alex Bridgeman: driving by all the time. Mm-hmm. Especially when you have 20 of them- Right … it’s hard to miss.

Alex Johantgen: Yep.

Alex Bridgeman: That definitely had some familiarity. Have you tried podcast ads, like local podcast ads?

Alex Johantgen: We’re looking at potentially doing, like, Spotify. ‘

Alex Bridgeman: Cause they have…

I’ve noticed that if I… Certain shows will have dynamic insertion.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: So based on where your phone is downloading the episode from, it will, like, use your location to pull, like, any ad, like, advertising spend that’s been happening for people in that area.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: And so I’ll get, like, a local ad for some city I’m passing through.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Or, like, if I’m, you know, on a layover downloading an episode-

Alex Johantgen: Yeah …

Alex Bridgeman: I’ll get something for Minneapolis.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: And it’s like, oh, I guess that makes sense.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: You know?

Alex Johantgen: Yep. We haven’t tried it yet, but it’s something that we’ve talked about.

Alex Bridgeman: Do they tell you what shows you could do?

Alex Johantgen: They don’t necessarily…

My understanding is they don’t specifically- tell you what shows you’re gonna be targeting, but you’re able to target specific zip codes, which is the bigger thing. Like, you’re able … So you can look at, like, whatever, maybe your top 10 performing zip codes, and if those are the zip codes you wanna target, that’s where you’ll show up.

Alex Bridgeman: And then how do they track that? Is there a good way- Track … is there a good way to track it?

Alex Johantgen: Track the Spotify ad or the top-

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, I listened to a Spotify ad with Rise and Shine.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. I don’t know exactly how they track it, but they did say you can actually track the performance of, like, the ROAS from it.

I’m not sure exactly.

Alex Bridgeman: That’ll be- Yeah … that’ll be fascinating. As a podcaster, I’m just curious. Yeah. But, like, that sounds, that sounds pretty interesting.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: Are you the one doing the voiceover for the podcast ads?

Alex Johantgen: No, I’m, I’m not. No. No, no. I, I do enough of our social media ads. I, I… Maybe someday I’ll do a radio ad, but I haven’t done one

Alex Bridgeman: yet.

Yeah. All right. Gotcha. So you’re gonna try podcasting soon, podcast ads through Spotify. What else are you excited or curious to try?

Alex Johantgen: From a marketing standpoint?

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah.

Alex Johantgen: Well, one of them, I actually just did a demo today, was a company called Ride the Wave, which is essentially a, a company that will help you show up more in Facebook groups, so like neighborhood groups, moms groups, or just collective groups that are on Facebook.

They’ll identify what groups would be best to suit your business, and then they create content, and then they’ll post, not spammy posts, but, like, they’ll engage in the group and then help you post some different content in there, in there to help you rank and get more customers. So that interests me.

Alex Bridgeman: That’ll, that’ll be pretty unique. Yeah. What other random guerrilla marketing tactics… I mean, you’ve seemed to try most of them.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah, we do. We also do trade shows, which is a big one for us. So just, like, local trade shows are just one day, it’s usually, like, six hours, and pretty much every, you know, there’s 100 vendors or 150 vendors in the trade show.

One thing that’s worked really well for us is we want customers to experience our level of service, so while we’re at these trade shows, one of the offers we have is a complimentary tune-up. So if you’re at the trade show, we’ll give you a complimentary tune-up, and then, you know, we send the tech out, and we book, you know, on average in a six-hour trade show, we’ll book 20 to 30 appointments.

That’s- One way- Pretty good … to get your name out there, treat customers, um, to a five-star experience, and hopefully get a review at the end of it.

Alex Bridgeman: Have you sponsored auto shows?

Alex Johantgen: We have sponsored a few car shows, yes.

Alex Bridgeman: Do they work or is it kind of a-

Alex Johantgen: Um- …

Alex Bridgeman: fixed conversion?

Alex Johantgen: I didn’t really… It was hard to track that.

Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Cur- also curious just how many other vendors an auto show would let, like, have a booth of some kind.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm.

Alex Bridgeman: Like, if you wanted to show some of the, like, products and, like, making off- make offers to people coming by-

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm …

Alex Bridgeman: probably need some sort of space-

Alex Johantgen: Yep …

Alex Bridgeman: that they may or may not be interested in using.

Alex Johantgen: Right.

Alex Bridgeman: For something that’s not a car.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. I think the one thing that I believe, like, some of those high-end car enthusiasts would like is, you know, the high lift, the high lift garage doors, and we’ve done several of them where customers have, like, a car lift in the garage, so they need the door to go up and over the car lift.

Oh. Which is pretty cool. We’ve done a few of those.

Alex Bridgeman: Those are cool jobs.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah. What are you most excited to see happen the second half of this year?

Alex Johantgen: I’m excited to see our team continue to grow. We have at least one more hiring class that we’re gonna do this year.

Alex Bridgeman: Uh, so- How big is the class?

Alex Johantgen: Depends on our needs, but this next one we’re looking at probably about five technicians.

Alex Bridgeman: Um, so that should be

Alex Johantgen: pretty

Alex Bridgeman: exciting. Yeah. That’ll be great.

Alex Johantgen: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and one of the other things that I’m really excited for is we’re bringing in a trainer who’s gonna be elevated from within most likely. We’re interviewing applicants right now from within for this trainer role, and we’re gonna be hiring that soon, so.

So,

Alex Bridgeman: like full-time training?

Alex Johantgen: Yeah, ’cause currently my business partner Josh does all the training, but to free him up a little bit for him to focus on a couple other, other areas in the business, we’re gonna hire a, a full-time trainer, and that’s gonna be their sole focus.

Alex Bridgeman: That’ll be exciting. Yeah. It’s super exciting.

I love it. Well, Alex, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. It’s

Alex Bridgeman: been a ton of fun.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah. Absolutely.

Alex Bridgeman: And thanks for showing me around.

Alex Johantgen: Yeah.

Alex Bridgeman: Yeah, this is, this is sweet.

Alex Johantgen: Thanks for having me on, man. I really appreciate it. Absolutely.

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.