How I Restarted My Remodeling Business From 0

Aaron Horner
If you had to restart your remodeling business today, what would you change? Today’s guest, Bryan Sebring had the opportunity to answer that question five years ago when he completely restarted his nearly 3 million dollar design build business. After spending 20 years in Illinois, he moved his whole family and completely restarted in Franklin, Tennessee. No existing team, no existing client base. He had to start over just with the knowledge that he gained over the past 20 years. Today’s episode, he’s telling us about all the things that he’s changed that’s actually resulted in a leaner business today. How he’s able to meet the same revenue number by doing far fewer projects every single year.

Logan Shinholser
Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Contractor Growth Network podcast. I’m Logan Shinholser and today I’m joined by Bryan Sebring of Sebring Design Build out of Franklin, Tennessee. So Bryan is. We’re going to be talking all about. Basically, Bryan started over and that’s like a crazy thing to think about when it comes to the business where he moved from Naperville over to Franklin and he and I were talking about this down on Job Trade Connect with Dallas down in Dallas and just said, hey, this is a perfect topic. Let’s go ahead and chat about it. So Bryan, welcome back for the second time to the podcast. How does it feel this time around? Because last time was all about seminars.

Bryan Sebring
It’s funny, I haven’t done a seminar since COVID It all stopped doing seminars from 2020 on. And then I obviously I moved my business, but we will bring them back eventually. So, yeah, thanks for having me on your podcast. I appreciate it.

Logan Shinholser
So let’s just go through Sebring Design Build up in Naperville. Can you talk more about, like, what’d you do? How’d you do it? What made it so successful? I’ll then give my take on like, what I saw from, you know, my side of things because it was super impressive and you were very early to the game and a lot of things. But like, in your own words, if you’re a Naperville resident and you heard about Sebring Design Build, what were you guys known for?

Bryan Sebring
So, yeah, I started the business in Naperville, Illinois in 1999 and I was there all the way up until January of 2024. So 25 years I was there and I started out a company name of Sebring Services. I kind of started that name going, okay, I can do everything right, A little of everything. Someone calls me, I can do painting, I can do like not Even handyman work. But I had my boss at the time, you know, my mentor. He’s like, you know, make it very general so you can do anything.

Bryan Sebring
Not a great idea in the end because, you know, I, I, you know, I was like, grew as a business, and I would get a lot of bad leads because, you know, I would do certain things in the beginning of business that I wouldn’t do 15 years later, if you know what I mean. You. You kind of adapt and you grow in a business. And so, yeah, I was, were there. We went from working out of my house to, you know, renting a space with a big storage to then buying a design studio and, you know, finishing it out and having designers on staff.

Bryan Sebring
So I kind of evolved into a, what I call, you know, just a basic contractor, Someone that bid out this work, bid that job type of work to then controlling the process as a design build, which I highly recommend to anybody in this industry. So, yeah, then we then moved. My family and I moved in 2021, predominantly for the reason of my daughter’s music career. There’s many reasons we moved. Covid kind of amplified a lot of that. And she blew up on TikTok in March, February, March of 2020. And so June of 2020, we came down and met her manager. I mean, we had all the label, you know, we talked to all the labels. They all wanted to sign her, that she decided to stay independent just because she wanted control of her music. But her manager was in East Nashville.

Bryan Sebring
And so we had a discussion with them, and they’re like, have you ever thought about moving your business to Nashville? There’s a lot of work here, a lot of people charging a lot of money, and the quality is horrible. And I’m like, the weather’s better, there’s tax benefits. Moving here is a lot of things. And I’m like, maybe. And so my wife, after some discussions and some research to the area, Franklin, I was very surprised at how affluent it is. And were leaning in Naperville’s upper middle class, but we kept leaning towards the more affluent clientele there. And we just weren’t getting as many jobs because of it. People didn’t have the budgets to do all the fancy stuff. And so I’m like, oh, maybe this is the opportunity to move to more affluent market.

Bryan Sebring
Kind of that fits us better with our design style. And that’s kind of the story. So 2021, we moved in, I think January, like February, March of 2021, while still having the Naperville location still open. I was flying back and forth and that first year that I was doing this, I think I had maybe 150 meetings with subs, trades, trade partners, you know, from Cambria to cabin companies to, you name it. I decided to do some remodeling in my own house, which allowed me some drawings to get bids and start to meet subs. And. And by January 1st of the following year, we started our first job. I couldn’t. You can’t market your company until you are licensed in this area. So I had to wait till about July, August before I could actually start marketing the company. And.

Bryan Sebring
And so, you know, we started going on estimates and late that year and then we got our first job that started in January. And it’s been a slow path up. So, yeah, it’s been. It’s been really good and really amazing to kind of start this process over again. And I’ve learned a lot, so.

Logan Shinholser
And that was like a big thing that. When were talking in Dallas, because I remember, it’s funny, like both my brother and I, or one of my brothers, we both own our own companies. And when we now go back to my dad with. Or, you know, up until a couple years ago, he’s not like fully retired, but we’d ask him questions around stuff and we’re like, how would you approach this? And he would give the answer as the person that has 35 years of experience, has all the money in the world, doesn’t have a team, you know, he’s good. So it got to the point where like a lot of his answers started to kind of not. Not fall in deaf ears.

Logan Shinholser
But like, he’d be like, my brother would have an issue with the client and my dad would like, you know what, just give him all their money back and just walk away. It’s not worth a headache. And teacher’s like, I need this money. Like, I can’t just give this away. So when you and I were talking where it was like, okay, you basically started all over all, you know, in Franklin after having, from my perspective, super successful company up in Naperville. Because I remember, I think I told you this in Dallas, the first what I was super proud of website that we built at cgn. I actually had your website up and I sent it over to. I remember it was Jamie Raya, and seven years later, he’s still a client of ours, but I showed him this website and it was your website.

Logan Shinholser
And I said, look, I did not build this thing, but I can build one very Similar to it just for you. And he was like, that’s amazing. So, like, you know, I’ve. I’ve used the Sebring design build brand, you know, to my benefit to a certain extent for a while, which was awesome. So I appreciate that.

Bryan Sebring
Sure.

Logan Shinholser
But when you go from that, you have a huge SEO following. You were super early to the game when it came to, like, blogging and content and, like, you were very well known to basically saying, I’m going to pack up and move. And to me, it’s almost like a real estate agent that has their entire network in one location. And then now you got to move and redo everything all over again. Are you excited? Are you nervous? Are you anxious? Are you thinking, God, I got to go back to the beginning all over again? This is like. This was different when I was 20 years younger. Like, how you feeling when you finally make that. That decision in your head?

Bryan Sebring
It was. It was a challenge. It was a challenge. But I had my entire family on board, and I came to my staff, this is again, July of 2020. And I said, I’m moving. I’m. I’m moving, but I’ll be coming back and forth. Obviously, they were very like, what? Like, what’s going on? You know, But I. I was just done. I think I. I think I mentioned here, Dallas, is that my wife thought it was a miracle that I actually made this decision within a week of going, meeting with her management team, and week later, let’s do it. Because I’m a very loyal, consistent, stay in my lane type person. Right where I’m like, I don’t. I literally lived in the same town I grew up in. My wife, my daughter was going to the high school. I met my wife.

Bryan Sebring
And so it was a massive decision, but I had been unhappy for five years. And so I was. Every. Every Christmas, I go down to Naples, Florida, and go, how can I be in warmer weather? Or, like, how can I do something? I was felt trapped because of being in Illinois and. And just all the taxes and, I don’t know, I mean, just the weather, all that stuff. And so for me, it was in looking back now, because it’s been five years since we’ve moved next month. It was a big challenge. I mean, I. I’m still. I kind of look back, so I’m going, I can’t believe I did it, because I wouldn’t do it again because I’m young. I’m not young anymore. I’m 50 years old and I’m not old, but I’m not young, if you know what I mean. So it’s.

Bryan Sebring
It’s one of those where I’m like, I’m going to do this. I’m going to figure it out. And I. Ironically, the. You know, when we first closed our house, I decided with my son. He was, I think 16 at the time. Like, let’s do a room of Shiplap. Like, install Shiplap in the room. And I realized from that moment I was sore the next, because I live basically in three because I had to get it done fast because I actually that we closed in the house. I did this work and I had painters coming in, all that stuff. And I had to take the test, the contractor’s test. I didn’t even study for it. I just like, let me go take it and see how I do. I ended up passing very easily just because I’ve been doing for so long.

Bryan Sebring
But the shiplap, it was £4,000 of shiplap. It was MDF shiplap. And I was. Some of it I was having to do by myself because my son was still work, you know, going to school remotely because Illinois was still remote work, you know, schooling. And so I remember walking. I was like, I am not meant to do the physical labor, so I have to figure out a way to not do it. Even though I’m moving and starting over. I thought to myself, I’ll start over. Like I did in 1999 when I was 25 years old, you know, 24 years old. No, no, I was. It was not meant for me. I’m. I’m a, you know, I’m a salesperson connector with clients. I’m not meant to do the work anymore, even though I know how to do it.

Bryan Sebring
I. I learned the hard lesson of that during that process. So I kind of. I guess it woke. Woke me up to say, I cannot. I. I cannot do this on my own. So. So yeah, I. I mean, that’s the. The crust of me doing it, I would say, is how I did it. I stuck to my guns of what I learned. I was in a peer group from 2015-20 when I made the decision to. To move here. I was in a peer group for that long. And so I kind of stuck to what I learned and said, I’m not going to go outside of that rail. I’m not going to do this. Meaning I’m only going to do design built. I’m not doing handyman. I’m only. And I’m still going to charge for design. I’m, you Know what I mean?

Bryan Sebring
Like, and I’m going to. Like you mentioned about your. I think you said your dad, the best salespeople, I always say to them, or people are struggling with sales, I say the best salespeople pretend that you’re just wealthy and you have all the money in the world and you don’t need any jobs. And that is a hard thing to do when you need jobs, right? And so, but I had Illinois still going. It was still successful, doing well. And so I didn’t need the money. Tomorrow I was again flying back and forth doing sales calls. I had a team running that. I had an estimate, everyone, estimator, bookkeeper, designer, still there. And so when I finally moved here, I actually moved. One of the designers asked to move with me. She was ready to move with her husband as well.

Bryan Sebring
So that there was benefits, but also concerns like, how am I going to keep her busy? And so the first year she moved here, she would fly back and forth occasionally, not always. But the funniest thing we learned is that we learned that you don’t have to be in front of a person to sell Zoom. Because of COVID Zoom opened the world up to saying, hey, this is our process. I would meet with someone in Illinois, I’d have my designer here design it. We’d get on a Zoom to present it and then say, you know, we do two step design process and like, okay, now are you ready to move into design? And she would be like, I can come back, we can figure all this out in one, two days. I’ll travel into town, we can do the layout over Zoom.

Bryan Sebring
We can talk about the kitchen layout or whatever. And then we can pick all the selections. And we’ll spend two days, you know, I’ll go do some shopping, bring it here out two hours one day, two hours the next day we’ll have everything picked up. And we did that for probably eight projects over a period of year or two. I still had a true designer still working there doing it as well. And she was, I do designer sales kind of combo. And so. But yeah, I mean, I guess the biggest things I learned is to stick with what you do well, stick to a process, and when you do that, you find the client that fits with you best. And so, yeah, I mean, that was the amazing part of this, is that it worked. I mean, so, yeah, it did.

Bryan Sebring
I mean, we slowly built up our business. Last year we did about 2.5 million in revenue on our, well, our fourth, third or fourth year, right. Of actually doing work. And this Year, we’re projecting three or four million dollars in revenue. So if you do it right. And again for me, I learned from my peer group, I learned from smart people and created all these processes and how to do things. And then I just did it. And so one of the things that people struggle with so much when you first start business, like no one knows what they’re doing, right? In 1999, I didn’t know what I was doing. Even though I had a mentor, I followed his path a little bit. Two different mentors, but it was like I had a preconceived notion of how to run a business.

Bryan Sebring
And then when you finally get around other smart people in a peer group setting where they can start picking apart what I do, both financially process driven marketing, all those things, you grow and you’re like, that makes sense. You’re doing it. I can do it. And so that’s what I did when I moved here.

Logan Shinholser
And that’s like, that was a lot of stuff. Like with my dad’s thing where he, because he sold his first company, he like built it up. It was like a pool management company. When he sold it In, I think 95, it was like the largest in North America. Sold it, made a bunch of money, lost it all in the dot com bubble, and then basically had to go back and figure out what to do next. And that’s when he started that pond and water feature company. But his whole thing was he said, if I’m going to do it on my terms. The first business was basically didn’t see my kids until I basically retired. And then this time I’m doing it differently. But I’m also, I’m not going to go out unless I’m going to make a thousand bucks a day.

Logan Shinholser
And that was like his number where he basically by like year two, and this is back in like 2002, like I think his personal income was like 100 grand. The next year was like 150, then 200. So it was just like consistently stacking while still coming to all of our gymnastics meets and stuff like that. And it was always interesting because when he would turn around and teach contractors, like, hey, just make sure you make 1000 bucks a day.

Logan Shinholser
The reason I’m bringing all this up is with you now getting back into it, do you feel as if, when you say things like, I’m sticking to my guns, is that because you have more of the environment around you where you’re not 25, you probably have some money saved up you have, you know, a good designer or is it more of like the mindset piece where, like, you have 20 years of experience so you know, what is what. And if you could basically have taken that mindset and put it into Bryan Back in 99, it would have worked, but you just didn’t know it mindset wise.

Bryan Sebring
Oh, 100%. Yeah. I mean, when I say sticking to my guns, I’m charging the correct amount of money, I’m not going to lower my margins, I’m not going to cut my numbers. You know, all that stuff is making sure. Because what happened is I had an estimator in Illinois and so I said, when here, I’m going to do my own estimating. Because she has no idea what it cost here. And ironically, it’s more expensive here than in Illinois, which I never would have thought. I mean, they do Romex and pex, the plumbers are like. And in Illinois you do conduit in copper. That should be more expensive. But here it’s. There’s not a lot of competition. I meaning, like they can charge what they want because there’s not a lot of good subs.

Bryan Sebring
Where Illinois, there’s tons of competition and they, they can’t charge as much because there’s. You can, you can find guys easy here. It’s harder to do that. So. So stick. Yeah, I mean, definitely, if I, I would even say before I moved, if I had the brain I had after seeing in a peer group for five years compared to when I was 24. Oh, my gosh. I mean, I, I lead a peer group now and some of my peer group members, I’ve been in business only two years. I’m like, oh, my gosh, I wish I, if I would have had that in 2001, I would be retired. I mean, because ultimately I did not know the basic structure of finances. I thought I did.

Bryan Sebring
I mean, the difference between margin and markup and, you know, I mean, again, the idea of, you know, charging enough money, again, we’re not, I’m not independently wealthy. It’s just charging an appropriate amount to make a living. And so, you know, doing that and doing it consistently and not bending the rules for people. Because when a client asked me, when I say bending the rules, lowering my price, changing the process, doing things in a different way, those are always the biggest nightmare clients. And so for me, it was. There’s some people that I literally turned down work that would have been a great job. I don’t think would have been a great job. That’s why I turned down the work, you know, and could have been that way. But I’m like, nope.

Bryan Sebring
I want clients that are fun to work with, that we have a good time with, that are happy with us getting the work done. And not to say I was perfect, trust me, I’ve had some tough clients in the last few years. But I, you know, my goal is to try to find the clients that want us do their work, willing to spend the money and then happy in the end with it. And so, yeah, I mean it’s worked for sure.

Logan Shinholser
And when you had Sebring up in Naperville, I know it’s like a transition out, but this year you do three to four down in Franklin area. What, what was like your revenue, let’s say like your last year up in Naperville and then like team size wise?

Bryan Sebring
About. I think it was 14 employees. We did about. Well, I would say in Today’s dollars, around 4 million. It was probably 2.8 back then. I mean, things have gone up so much. So probably a 4 to 5 million dollars today dollar type thing. But. But yeah, I mean, it was. So we’re getting back to where were. You know, that’s the best part. You know, I, for three years I was doing, estimating, I was doing some sales with my designer. I was doing project management. I had a superintendent on site that did carpentry here. But I just hired my new project manager a few months ago. He’s been doing a great job. But part of is I know what to expect from a project manager. I know the things.

Bryan Sebring
You know, as an interviewer, that’s the one of the biggest things is a hiring right is the most important thing of any business. And I’ll be honest, contractors don’t know how to hire properly. Learning personality profiles, using that interviews and, you know, having good questions. I do team interviews. I mean, all these things where I’m like, I’m building a team and I want them to be a part of that decision because then they own these new team members. So it’s kind of a encompassing. I don’t know if I answered your question, but yeah, I mean, it’s again, it’s encompassing of a lot of different things. Not just selling correctly and marking up. It’s saying, I’m going to do business the correct way and then we’re going to create a reputation that blows everyone away.

Bryan Sebring
Because, I mean, because I was in Illinois and because we really. I was heavily on the marketing side. I’d get reviews And I mean, we probably have triple the amount of 5 star reviews here in my Google, my business than any other remodeler where, you know, because I was in a bigger market, I brought all those with. Right. Because I moved my Yelp and my Google, my business page here. It’s helped from. Sure. But again, nowadays with AI, it’s change. The marketing side has changed a lot. We. That’s what we had a discussion with.

Logan Shinholser
But anyway, so did you change? I mean, like we just did a podcast with one of our clients. They’re actually here in Charlotte and they do kitchens in seven days. It’s like this crazy cool process. They stack it. It’s. It’s awesome. By the way. A lot of what they focus on is like, we have to have the right subs that like buy into this. We know who we’re going after. If we need a demo guide, this is basically who the ICA is going to be. Things like that. I know as you hire again, knowing what you know, you want to go after better and better people. Did you also change, like the structure of the business?

Logan Shinholser
Like, did you have like a different org chart or different approach than what you had up in Naperville, Knowing what you know now and you know you’re switching up for Franklin, or is it like exactly the same, but just you have better mindset and tools on who are we going to hire?

Bryan Sebring
Starting over allows you to say, you know, the first time I did this, even with my. For I loved all my employees, but there’s different people I wouldn’t have hired now. Right. I’m different point in my life. Right. Different dynamics in this culture. And so what it did was, you know, when I sat down with my wife, said I’m ready to move and I kind of create, you know, I said the plan was I’m going to hire this types of people and, you know, fit well together. And. And so, yeah, I mean, we’re doing similar things. Our org chart in the end will be very similar, but it’s about the people that I want. I can, I get to choose my. It’s not a family because you can’t fire a family member, but you get to choose almost like a family member. Right.

Bryan Sebring
I spend a lot of time with my staff and so being able to start over, it feels like when I was first in business, it’s like I need to put out a fire. I need to hire someone right fast. I need to get one. And so probably the biggest thing I’ve learned in the last four years is to slow the hiring down. You hear it all the time. You know, the last two hires, I think it took me four months to find somebody and I was getting antsy because we really needed those people. But, but I wanted to find the right person. And when I found them, I, I punked fast, right?

Bryan Sebring
You wait, you wait and like I want to get on a call with you tonight, I want to get an interview tomorrow and I’ll make it, you know, if they’re good and make an offer. And so. Because the good ones are the least what I believe fit our culture well, what I call good, you know, they’re probably getting a lot offers, right? And so, and so you gotta pounce on it quickly. You have to be ready for it. And then, you know, you have to have. I mean, I have a little bit of an onboarding with them, you know, with just hopping into a company of people they don’t know and how to help them again. I review all their disc, everyone’s disc profiles so they can understand each person and all that stuff. And so. But yeah, I mean it’s definitely similar.

Bryan Sebring
I mean, we’re building out a design studio. I had one in Illinois because that works, I believe. A small design studio with a really cool atmosphere, right? From details like music playing and candles going and just the ambiance of a high end feel, right? Like an Apple feel, if you know what I mean. Apple, you know, Apple store type feel. I’m like, we, I mean, we’ve literally built a business making, you know, a really good margin out of our house. Okay, People can do it. I just, I want to take it to the next level, right? And I want to sign more because I mean, here we have designer row, right? We can go down to design area. We can get. We also sold our own.

Bryan Sebring
We brought our cabinet line here and they allowed us without a showroom to sell it for a little bit. Now we’re about to. We just bought a lot of money in cabinets with the design studio. But they saw that were selling and if anything we increased our selling by having two locations. And you know, some cabin gives like, well, you know, they get really strict about you to have eight linear feet of cabinets if you want to get this discount. They were like, you know what, we’re going to work with you. We know you’re a great person. I referred them to a ton of other people and they’re like, yeah, we’re on board with your new location as well. And then when I closed down Illinois, I bought all the samples with on it. We have all that stuff and so it worked.

Bryan Sebring
But like having a design studio, that’s what we did in Illinois, you know, I mean, so it’s similar. I wouldn’t say it’s exact because I’m hiring new people with new ideas. You know my superintendent, he found me, he reached out to me like, do you need to hire someone? I would even have an ad out. And he’s been great. I mean he’s old school guy, it’s about to retire. And he came down here to kind of semi retire and came work for me and he, and he had a really good eye for detail crafts. He was from New Jersey. And one thing I found that the northerners tend to bring more quality. I mean quality is bad here.

Bryan Sebring
And so I, you know, I, I would love to hire someone from Tennessee, but it, most of my, all my company is made from people outside of the area. I don’t do it intentionally. It’s just happened to work out that way because I’m really looking for craftsmanship, communication styles with people and skill.

Logan Shinholser
So yeah, I was going to ask like, how are you building out the team? Like are you? Because I know like there’s certain positions that they’re tough to fill. Office admin, you could probably find somebody local off. Indeed. Or LinkedIn pretty easy or easier. But like you know, a lead carpenter with a bunch of experience or like a really solid pm. I mean are you just trying to do it through like your referral network down there as you’re building it out? Are you going out and saying screw it? Like now that I know what I’m doing correctly and I’m charging the right price, I can go out and hire a recruiter for this stuff. Like what are you doing in the hiring process that allows you to get that top level talent that maybe it took you 20 years in Naperville to figure out?

Bryan Sebring
I mean part of it is I know what I want and people think they know what they want. But you know, if you’ve never hired a project manager, you don’t necessarily know what you’re stepping into. Right. But no, I do have a recruiter that I use that it’s a little bit different type of recruiter, you know, pay him a monthly fee, he puts out all the ads. It’s part of, you know, the fee is all the ads are included in that. And he has a system where he uses, I think it’s called Preview, where he does an aptitude test whether they can handle doing the job. They get scored by that. Then we do. Trying to remember it was a wedge interview where people will do a five minute, five basic questions interview so I can see them visually because I’m a visual person.

Bryan Sebring
I want to see when I’m picturing and looking at someone, can they fit within the company culture? And normally I can tell by just those five questions. They’re really basic questions like team dynamics and basic stuff. And then, and then if they move past that, I get on a zoom with them and just my questions are part of. Is what you want to get paid and tell me about yourself, both personally and professionally, whatever you feel comfortable. The more you tell me, the better I’ll know you and the more likely I’ll hire you. So the more you can lay off me because this is not just work, it’s family. So I. And, and I’ll ask a little question. Most of the, most of that interview, it’s 15 to 20 minutes. It’s all trying to pick up what their disc is. The disc profile.

Bryan Sebring
I’ve learned disc so well that I’m usually, I would say probably 80, 90%. I can pick up their disc profile because each applicant or each job description has an associated disc that I’m looking for. And so once I do that, like my. The last designer I hired, she really. I think she interviewed. Phone interviewed very well. I thought she was a D on the disc, which is more of a dominant personality. I wasn’t looking this way for a dominant. Working with clients. I was looking for more of an sc which is loyal and detailed. And I, I was actually the Ramallers on the Rise summit with Kyle. And I went into my hotel room, interviewed her and I, I’m like, I think she may be good. So I sent her, I said, would you do a dish? She did it that night.

Bryan Sebring
She was energetic. She wanted the job. She reached out to me like she was. She wanted the job. Which obviously every applicant. The best advice I can give people is if you want a job, go after it. Email and email. Even if I say no, that’s fine, but then follow up, you know, can you tell me what. The more people I can go want the job, the more likely I’m to hire them because I want them to want to work for me, you know. So then we did a disc and then we did. Literally, I think I set up a week later to do it because she lived in Denver and so she was moving here and she’s like, how about I come? You know, I’M going to be in town this time, like, okay, I’ll meet with you.

Bryan Sebring
And I had my wife, my, the other designer trying to think. I think I had a couple other people also in that to interview. So we had a group interview and interviewed her and she interviewed very well. And so we hired her. But part of that was a process of, okay, she can do it. I know some of the things I was looking for someone that knew chief architect. She had that experience. She also worked for a company that I knew of, a company in Denver that also had a location in Illinois in the same town. So they had multiple locations. So I kind of knew what to expect. She only worked eight months for them, which wasn’t a great thing. I wish she had worked longer, but there was still a bunch of experience that helped her. And so when, you know.

Bryan Sebring
But it was a step by step process, but it was wait, wait, and then sprint, right? The problem is that you wait too long and you’re. We. If you’re wavering over a couple different people and you wait and wait, they’re going to find a job and you’re going to waste your, both of your time. And so my thing is that I do some phone interviews. I think for that designer. I probably had 10 phone interviews in four, three months or whatever it was. But it wasn’t. That’s not a lot. I got hundreds of applicants and so. But I wasn’t finding what I was looking for. I was looking for someone that had experience, even a little bit experience doing residence remodeling. Not hotel, not commercial, not new construction, residential remodeling. And so I was very specific in that, in the application.

Bryan Sebring
But you get tons of, you know, resumes that don’t necessarily fit. And so, yeah, you just kind of go through it. And so my column, headhunter, once a week we’d get on and review the people and okay, what about this? What about that? Do you want me to reach out to him? You want me to talk to him myself and that sort of thing. And part of that is that she. He made sure to interview her as well. And he gave the thumbs up to her as well. Like, he’s got tons of experience with other people in the remodeling industry. So it’s not just a headhunter. It’s someone that knows what we do every day and work with hundreds of other remodelers. And so that’s worked for me. It’s, again, it’s worth the money to me.

Bryan Sebring
To not waste my time hiring the wrong person, because that’s expensive.

Logan Shinholser
And so we have a very, like. Like you, a very extensive interview process. It’s like phone interview. Then it’s preliminary interview, behavioral assessment, practical interview, culture fit interview, final interview. So it’s like, it’s long, and we should go through the same idea of, like, it. Sometimes it would take six weeks to hire somebody, and people were dropping off, and it was a pain. So basically, we took the same thing and said, we’re not willing to budge on each of these steps because we’re going to be with somebody for, you know, more time than we are with our spouses. But how do we take five interviews and condense it down into three weeks? And then that way we just have momentum going and going.

Logan Shinholser
But I will say that some of the things that we’ve fallen victim to in a certain extent is like, for certain, we used to do for everybody, you had to do a video application. No matter what the position was, you had to do a video application. And I remember when I was hiring for an assistant, somebody made a comment and was like, I’m not sending in a video. This is not like an audition. What a weird thing to ask. And I got my own feelings of like, oh, man, am I weird? Am I being too much? But lo and behold, Sophia, who now is our ops manager, is no longer my assistant, but ops manager, she said in a video. And it all worked out really well.

Logan Shinholser
When you were hiring for this, are you also like, hey, if you’re going to be a project manager or a lead carpenter or the guy that’s older on his way out, are you also requiring him to go through the exact process of you got to do a video and you got to do this disc thing and you’re not willing to let up on that? Or are you saying, hey, for this role, you’re a little bit older. You’re probably more old school. It’s going to be tougher for you to figure out how to use this video application. I’ll make an exception.

Bryan Sebring
We always do disc, no matter what video. I agree with you. I mean, we had one in the. In the designer process. We had one local designer that emailed the. Actually me and them and said, your process is too long. I’m going to bow out. Okay. Honestly, I have no problem with that. And so, I mean, when I say again, too long again, if you’re. If someone’s really good and they want to work for you, they’ll go through that process. Now I will Say, yeah, a carpenter, a field guy doing a video interview may not fit. I don’t know. Well, you know, we’re actually just about a month to talk to my. I’m ready to hire a lead carpenter to replace that superintendent. I have that. It’s about to retire.

Bryan Sebring
And so, yeah, that may tweak a little bit with the technology side of things because. But I also really would love. If I’m hiring a lead carpenter, I want that’s a great lead into a project manager. Right. If they have the skills to do quality craftsmanship, they’re going to be a great leader and maybe a good project manager. Where, you know, my superintendent doesn’t like working on the computer. That’s just not him. And so, you know, I’ve had, that’s why I had to do all the project management I draw because I use job tread, do all the schedule. He, like, he would just get. That’s not him. Right. And so, you know, this next role, I would love to find out.

Bryan Sebring
He calls himself a codger, but another codger, you know, an older guy that, you know, gray hair, you know, someone that can teach. Because I got a couple young guys that work for me as well. And they, I still want to keep teaching them and have them grow into some good, you know, quality craftsmanship and good their carpentry skills, maybe tile as well. But yeah, I’m really looking for someone that it’s hard, but I’m doing now he’s not leaving till the end of the year. I’m doing it now. It’s February and I’m bringing him on. So, you know, I know it’s going to take me months to find somebody, but again, when I’m ready, I need to be able to jump at it. And so that’s why I’m trying to do it now, get it up and run, start looking at resumes.

Bryan Sebring
And because ultimately that right person comes around, I gotta take the initiative fast.

Logan Shinholser
When you think about, like, the hiring and like, where your role is gonna be in a few years, are you already starting to plan for that? Like, because you’re still doing all the sales. Correct.

Bryan Sebring
So I do a little bit. Ultimately, my designers, I do more designer sales, but she, you know, my lead designer right now, she likes having me at least at that first meeting. It’s not always going to happen, though. I mean, because if the owner comes, it’s more likely to sell. Right? You’re more like this, I mean, yeah. So no, I, I, I’m more designer sales. So in the end, you know, as we grow, you know, that’s the best part of kind of creating my own thing. What’s the next lever should I pull? Right? Should I hire a designer? Should I hire. I know I definitely need a lead carpenter, but I mean, are we close to needing another project manager? I just hired one, but we’re growing fast. This year has been really busy. You know, he’s busy.

Bryan Sebring
Maybe do I do an in house. I call it project coordinator. Someone to help the outside project managers to do all the paperwork and get things ordered and, you know, tweak the schedules or. So that’s the thing is as a team though, I will talk to them. What do you guys think we should do? Right? Because I don’t want just them, you know, me pushing my thoughts on them. I first, I want them to understand my, the way my brain works and what I’m thinking in the future. And as long as they’re thinking for the greater good of the company, I listen to them. If, if it’s a selfish view, obviously I don’t have that view. If it’s a jealous view, I don’t have, you know, I mean, if someone’s.

Bryan Sebring
I don’t want to hire this person because they’re afraid they’re going to lose their job because that’s a different type of worker. But everyone that I have now is not that type of person.

Logan Shinholser
And so we have people differences. We have, you know, charging and sticking to your guns differences. Is there anything else that, like as you’ve restarted, you’ve changed the sales process, you’ve changed the scheduling process, you’ve changed, I don’t know, the client communication process or anything that like, as you have gotten to a fresh start, you didn’t have to then go back and convince the team in Naperville to relearn certain things that you said, screw it this second time, I’m going to go ahead and do this specific thing completely differently.

Bryan Sebring
The process is the same. I will say that the two things that we’re going to be doing job. So we have all these processes kind of old school, right? We were using QuickBooks Desktop and we do work in progress accounting. If you’re a contractor listening to this, you need to be doing WIP accounting. That’s the only way you’re going to be successful in business, I believe, because you don’t know what you’re doing, how much you’re making on a monthly basis if you don’t do that. So we do that, I would say is so job tread I think is we’re pouring more into job tread. I’ve used it for three years. I call it JobTread Lite because were using for scheduling, files, communication, but now we’re going to QuickBooks Online next month and we’re starting to.

Bryan Sebring
Because I went to japter, I’m like, okay, I really need to do this. And so, yeah, it’s that. And then when we moved here, we do discovery, then design. We’re so it’s two steps, 2%, 5% we charge. Okay. We were doing a lot of free discoveries here because no one knew who were. So we’re saying, okay, this first step we’re going to do for free. We use a canvas scan and it cost us money. But man, we got some great jobs from that. Because suddenly people go, now I know why you’re not the cheapest. I’m. They’re looking at the design going, holy cow, we want that. Right? And so that was a big step. And I’ve talked to my peer group that I lead. I’m like, sometimes if you don’t have work, sometimes you got to do free work to get free.

Bryan Sebring
Get that work. You know what I mean? And so yeah, it’s. That, that’s part of it. But most everything I don’t need to. I mean, there’s little tweaks probably here and there. I, I mean, like, I do some marketing in a magazine. I would never do that in Illinois. Here. That makes. Makes sense for sure, because it’s a little bit of an older retired crowd. I mean, it’s semi retirement here because the weather’s so much nice and the taxes are so cheap. And so we, you know, we’ve done some of that, but it’s little stuff, not major stuff.

Logan Shinholser
So there’s no, like complete, like 180s of like, we used to do this one thing, this one process. We’re not doing that at all anymore. And you get a fresh start. It’s like tweaks and small optimizations. Nothing crazy.

Bryan Sebring
Exactly.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Bryan Sebring
Yeah. When you, when you’ve got a good process that works, why reinvent the wheel? Right? And that’s the number one thing I get because I recently had a new member of my, of the peer group. And I mean, he’s a super sharp husband and wife team. They’re going to be super successful, but they just don’t know where to start in the process. And do I do this and how do I do this? And, you know, I got on a call with Them to kind of give them just a, you know, an orientation of the group. And, you know, I went through my process like, oh, my gosh, I just learned probably more from you in two hours. And I’ve learned in five years. And part of this because I’ve learned from somebody else, you know, it’s paying it forward.

Bryan Sebring
And so he’s like, can you send me that contract and this and what you do there? I’m like, and I have a flowchart starting all the way through about what our business is know what our business does and so. And all that stuff. So he was, you know, like, this is amazing. I’m just going to copy you. I’m like, make it your own. You can certainly. He’s not in my market. He’s not competition. So I didn’t care. But that’s what I’m here for, is that, you know, what’s. What’s nice about job tread, Remodelers on the rise, all these great connecting groups is that you don’t have to do this alone. And so when someone. You find someone that’s doing it right that you feel is doing it right, I mean, that’s how I learned.

Bryan Sebring
I reached out to people not just in my direct peer group. I would reach out to people that weren’t in my direct peer group and go, hey, I know you’re really good at sales. I’m coming to Dallas. Can I spend a day with you learning how you sell?

Logan Shinholser
Sure.

Bryan Sebring
Come on. I mean, how many people I’ve met with at their showrooms, I probably have seen 15, 20 showrooms over 10 years. And so there are so many people willing because I’ll give anything to them. I’ll give it back. What do you need? I’ll help you. And so I say this a lot in some of the podcasts have been, we’re not alone. The best thing to do in business, period, is to connect with other people and just ask the people that don’t want that aren’t generous. You don’t ever call them back. People that are, you just need to make sure you give back and you’re thankful. And that’s what I’ve been. That’s how I’ve had success in this business, is that I have had some good people pour into me. And now that’s what I’m trying to do for other people.

Logan Shinholser
So we’ve had Kyle Hunt, and now that you’re a coach in one of his peer groups from Remodelers on the Rise, what is something that you Coach in within the group. That is a very common thing that you see pop up a lot, that you kind of go, oh man, I forgot that I didn’t know that thing. It’s almost like the first time that you hear the difference of markup and margin, then you look back five years later and you go, I can’t believe I never knew that thing. But, but you forget about some of that stuff. So is there something that’s common that you’re like, wow, I forgot that I didn’t know this. At some point.

Bryan Sebring
I don’t know if there’s anything I forgot. I mean occasionally, I mean there’s occasional stuff where I’m teaching on to do something, but I’m like, am I doing that right? Am I like, you should do this? And I mean sales is a good one, right? I use the Sandler sales system, but I’m not, sometimes I got to go back and read the book again and you know, I’m like, I’m not doing everything I should be doing. I think that’s definitely probably a good one for sure. I mean, I taught the group something I learned from Judith Miller. I don’t know if you know who that is. Judith Miller, I call her the accounting guru for remodelers. Brilliant lady. She was my facilitator probably four or five times in my OP group and she used to teach on the five stages of remodeling.

Bryan Sebring
You know, level one, two, three, all the way to five, where you’re ready to sell your business. And one of the things in that, those stages I really pressed upon is that you don’t have to get to level five. You need, you probably need to get to level three. Because level one is when you’re first in the business tool belt on getting the work done. Doing 10 jobs, you know, that’s hard and then you can’t sustain that. By the time you get to level three where you’re maybe the lead sales person, maybe an estimator, but then leading a team of people, it’s very profitable and you can retire someday on that, right? You don’t have to. To grow your business to a 10, 15 or 20 million dollar company you don’t have. Some people have those goals, some people, it’s ego driven.

Bryan Sebring
Some people really want to grow to that for whatever reason because they feel like that’s where I want to be. I, you know, the biggest thing I taught at our last group is like, okay, you find what you want and go after it, but doesn’t have to Be ready to sell. It could be just getting to the point where you’re making very much profit and maybe you hand it out to a son or a daughter or an employee and you sell gets very profitable and you can make a lot of money on it.

Bryan Sebring
So I mean in probably some of the basics that I learned from my peer groups was things that remind me when as someone young in business again, some of these guys are only two years in business and I’m like, gosh, I haven’t thought about that in a long time, but I’m doing it. But sometimes it bringing it up to memory is like, am I doing it well? I would actually say it’s more of am I doing it well?

Logan Shinholser
Got it. So it’s almost like because it’s like you got to learn something to then not like unlearn it. But it’s because like everybody here, if you’re an account manager and sales, we, you know, you go through Sandler. So like we go through it and you learn it. We don’t, we don’t really enforce like an upfront contract as much because it kind of gets to that point where it’s like, hey Bryan, we’re going to talk today. And by the end of it I want a yes, a no, or maybe I just don’t, you know. So it starts to feel a little bit too like played out. Yeah, it is. So you start to like learn it, but then you got to like learn it to then decide, is it for you, is it not for you? And go from there.

Logan Shinholser
When you are coaching in the peer group, is there because the one thing that I always like, not with peer groups, but I’m in a marketing agency, Mastermind. It’s great because it’s like I’ve done the general business coaching before and when it’s not specific to what I do, there’s a lot of almost like consulting that needs to happen. Where I remember I had a guy, CEO coaching, international, great guy, really nice coach. But I would talk about this is what I want CGN to do. And he would go, that sounds great. In reality, it was far fetched. It would be as if you went to a business coach and said, I want to make 90% gross profit margin on all my jobs and I want to grow 200% per year. And they go, great, let’s do it.

Logan Shinholser
And you’re like, you realize it’s not that it’s impossible, but it’s damn near impossible to do that thing. And a peer group that’s specific to your industry is going to be able to go, look, you could do that. However, it’s not really going to happen because of all these limitations. So when you are coaching in this peer group, are there certain frameworks that you always like to start off with that make sense regardless of what type of remodeler you’re in? But you know, because you’re a remodeler yourself, that it’s like, hey, you got to nail these few things first before anything else is really going to click.

Bryan Sebring
I mean, financials is always number one. Yeah, right. That again, if you’re not charging enough money or net, you’re. You’re gonna spin your wheels and you’re gonna quit part of the dynamic. So I’m a strong believer to have, like, companies, not different companies, you know, like a lawyer and a dentist. I. I don’t think I would learn as much. I. I think I would struggle with that. And the number one thing I say to people that are thinking about a peer group, when you’re in a group of 10 other nine other companies and you see success in them and you compared to a consultant, right? There’s a lot of great consultants. Kyle. I mean, obviously Kyle Hunt’s amazing. And there’s Tom Reber, all these guys. There’s great guys.

Bryan Sebring
But I prefer to be in a group setting because I like to pick and choose what I learned from different people. And the number one thing I say to them is that you’re going to get into a group and there’s going to be a guy in the group. You’re like, that guy’s a schmuck. And then you go, wait a minute, that guy’s making a lot of money. That schmuck can charge that amount of money and I can’t. So instead of someone telling you see people doing it and go, okay, I need to get with that schmuck and start to figure out what he’s doing. And because ultimately you get in a group like that, you have all this head trash. I call it head trash, where you go, I can’t make a certain GP and I can’t do this.

Bryan Sebring
My market doesn’t allow this for me. And all the things that I said when I first was in the group, I said the same thing. But then as you evolve in the group and you see when you see numbers, because you all expose your numbers, right? And you’re like, wow, that guy’s successful and he’s not that much smarter than me. Why can’t I do this? Right? And so I struggle With a consultant saying, you need to do this. And I prefer to see they’re doing this so I can choose to do that, right? So I had a good friend of mine, now I haven’t talked to him a little while, but he was in my peer group for years. His name is Andy Haste out of Lafayette, Indiana, Riverside Construction.

Bryan Sebring
And when I first got in, he was only doing maybe a million and a half. But man, his profit was there every single meeting. And I’m like. And he was just kind. No ego, but amazing salesperson. Just matter of fact and just words of wisdom every time I talk to him and I’m like, I need to hang out with him, right? So after the group I’m like, hey, would you mind showing me your cost codes? Would you mind showing going through your step by step? And me, my two step process came from him, discovery than design. He goes, and he would say, this is why I like it. This is, you know, this is the pros and cons of it. And I’m like, okay. And so I, I learn better in that way. Show me.

Bryan Sebring
I, I learned by over the shoulder showing me from videos from people, whatever that is. And so, you know, you find those types out of nine people, I always say the best you’re going to find people that you don’t get along with or not get along with, but you don’t necessarily connect with. Then you’re going to find the two or three people, like I’m going to connect with them. And then every time you come across something that’s not working or pushback from the homeowner, you call them up and go, dude, what would you have done? And not just on a consultant basis. You’re helping each other, right? The dynamics of helping each other grow. And then you see the fruits of your labor, you celebrate together. That’s why I’m a big proponent of that style of learning.

Logan Shinholser
When you restarted the business, were there any like, I don’t know, like types of projects that you refused to take on? And now that you’re teaching the group, you can start to really see, hey, now I can articulate one, why I didn’t go this direction or I didn’t take on with this client or like you’re teaching them like, hey, you know, you brought up earlier, there’s a couple clients that you didn’t, it probably wasn’t going to go really well. And these are some of the red flags that 20 years ago you 100% would have said, you know what, they’re kind of quirky. But I think I could work with them. And then you get two months in and you realize this sucks.

Bryan Sebring
Yeah. Red flags are. Amy. And the number one thing, I don’t know. It’s not the number one thing we talk about, but I talk about with my group all the time is trying to, you know, and it’s asking lots of questions in the beginning steps. Right. People can still slip through the cracks, though. I mean, and that’s the tough part of doing what we do is. Is, is, man, it’s very pain because I’m not gonna just quit. I’m gonna keep up with it, even though it’s so painful and. But it just, it can ruin a company culture for sure as far as what we wouldn’t do. So I decided when I came here, so in Illinois, I did, I, I did some new construction spec homes, but I hadn’t done that in years because of the 20089 crash. So I experienced building homes.

Bryan Sebring
I experienced doing additions as well. But when I came here, I’m like, I’m just going to do interiors. I don’t have to deal with weather. I don’t have. You know what I mean? I, I don’t have to deal with a long. These long lead times dealing with an architect that I can’t control. Because we have designers on staple. They’re not architects. Right. And I’m like, I. My thing is that I want to be able to control the timeline, control, at least in house, how quickly we can start a job. You know what I mean? All that stuff. And so I leaned on that. I think as we grow, we may open it up to doing more additions.

Bryan Sebring
Maybe right now it’s been again, year five that, you know, we’re doing bigger jobs than we’ve ever done, you know, in Illinois, and just they keep growing and they’re only interiors because the market here is so strong, you know, and everything. I mean, the price increase, you’ve heard it around the nation, but this is a one big Franklin, Tennessee. I mean, you know, I bought my house for 850. It’s probably worth 1.6 now. It’s almost double in. It was probably almost doubled in three years.

Logan Shinholser
You probably got a hell of an interest rate too, huh?

Bryan Sebring
Two and a half percent. Yes. And so that’s the thing is there’s so much equity in people’s homes. They’re like, why move into something else? Why do the. And they like their neighborhoods. And there’s. I mean, Williamson County, I think I told you, Dallas is The most affluent county besides the coast. That’s what I’ve heard at least. So more affluent than any county in Illinois, which I thought was a very affluent area. But again, when you have demand from people moving here, you know, people want it done. So that’s another thing. I know we do a lot of work from. A lot of people from California are moving here, some from Illinois, some from New York. We do a lot of people, a lot of work for people outside of the area.

Bryan Sebring
They find that I’m not from the area and I think they feel connected to that because I’m like a skit at Dawningal and I’m very schedule driven. I’m what I say I do. It’s not always the case in Tennessee. A lot more laid back. People in the Nashville, you know, people from here, they’re a little more laid back and like, oh, they’ll get done type of people. And so for me I found subs that are that way. I found trade partners, I’ve found employees that are that way. Because you’re getting a lot of transplants that want something different. They, they want if, if you’re gonna, if they’re gonna spend top dollar, you gotta get it done on time, on budget. And so that’s, I mean for me that’s where we’ve focused. But yeah, I mean we may grow.

Bryan Sebring
I mean there’s a bunch of guys in my peer group that are doing all different types of things and sometimes they get up, they get over their skis a little bit. Like we call it the whale project, right? This big, you know, hey, I got offered to do a two million dollar job and I’m like, oh, okay, let’s talk about that, right? I go 2 million jobs mean you could be go bankrupt a lot easier if you don’t do it right. And you know, so I, I’ve talked down some of my guys, talked them off the ledge where they’re like, oh, they’re also wanting to do cost plus and I don’t always do that. And so they’re going outside of their process and like, but they’re tantalized by the money, which I totally get.

Bryan Sebring
But it’s like, do you think you can do this well or is this going to put a burden? I mean, we just didn’t turn down work, but we had a big project come across our way and we’re like, oh, this is going to take a lot of our bandwidth and we’re going to pour into this one job probably months of design And I mean, year of project, a big project, and I’m like, and it didn’t happen. And then we’re fine that it didn’t happen. Right? And so that’s a good jam. It wasn’t necessarily a red flag, but it was something that, okay, it was. We could do it, but will it screw us later when we, when, you know, I mean, when we’re done with that project, we’re going to not have anything because we’re going to fully focus on that job.

Bryan Sebring
And so, yeah, I mean, there’s some things that maybe I’ll grow into, but nothing right now. I, again, I think I’m stubborn. I’m an SCD in the disc profile. And S is, you know, if you’re an S, you’re normally pretty stubborn. And so if it’s working, why change it?

Logan Shinholser
You know, what did you do from a marketing perspective? You moved down there. I know you got your gb, your Google business profile transferred, which crazy because usually it’s like, not Google wouldn’t do that. So I don’t know how you did it, but either way, what did you do from like a marketing standpoint to get your first handful of clients when you basically have to reestablish yourself?

Bryan Sebring
I think that if I did it, I’ll start with this. If I did it over again, I would have changed my name, even though my name is on the business. Partly because I probably could have sold the business in Illinois and made a little bit of money and handed it off to somebody else, but I was too afraid that they were going to run something into the ground and it would affect me in Tennessee with the same name. So I would have definitely changed my name. What happened was, and it was somewhat painful, you probably have experienced this, but I started a business, Google, my business in Franklin, out of my house. And I started building reviews. And some of those reviews are trade partner reviews, subs, reviews, clients, all the mix.

Bryan Sebring
And I had, I think I had, I got to a point where I had 50 reviews in like a year, two years, real fast, because I know how important reviews are. And so what I did was when I finally closed down Illinois, I decided to bring the Illinois location to a remote office to have two locations, hoping that I could capture a region in Brentwood, Tennessee and capture a region in Franklin. They’re only like 25 minutes away, 20 minutes away. And I kept getting blocked by Google. Other marketers were blocking me. They were reporting me because they would see two locations. They didn’t like it. You know, I had Images. I did everything legit. All the reviews were legit. They weren’t spam. They were, they were. Again, even if I had a.

Bryan Sebring
Again, if I had a friend that was a contractor and they gave me a review, they would say, I’ve known Bryan for 10 years. I’m a contractor. Nothing were lies. Everything was truthful. But they kept blocking it and kept. I kept having to go back to them and reapply all this stuff. Finally, they just merged my Google, my business accounts without not even giving me an option. And I’m like, so that’s why I had a hundred in Illinois. I had 50 here and now I have 150, right. And it sucked. I didn’t like it. But the number one thing that I. Again, I know SEO well, not as well as you do, but I know it enough. And I learned that by. I really confused Google because I had a location in Franklin. Then I moved to Brentwood and that.

Bryan Sebring
And then I moved to. To. We ended up buying the design studio. So in the end, when they merged, I just moved it to the design studio. But then I literally spent. I had an assistant help me probably over two weeks. 300 citations for that location. Exactly the same. And then I started to do better because I lost. I mean, I was. It wasn’t doing well. It. That’s probably. That’s part of the reason why you change your name. Just start over. Don’t try to be in two places at once. It’s. It was too difficult. I thought I could use the strength of my website because I have a pretty high domain rating website. A lot of backlinks to my site. I’m like, oh, that’ll help me down there. Well, it doesn’t. Because of the location. Google just got really confused.

Bryan Sebring
And so that’s where I think if I started over, I would have changed my name. Even though I had my. Some of the trucks I brought here had my same logo and you know, it was just easy to do that. It was pretty painful to try to fix it. I did and it was fine. But I had a lot of. I had a lot of marketing people that could not figure out how to fix it. I kind of did my own research and did it, figured it out and it’s. It’s definitely helped for sure. But you know, Google my business, I’m still on Yelp, even though I don’t get a lot of calls from there. You know, definitely the magazine, a very affluent magazine around here, does well, again, not in Illinois. That was. That’s not a magazine. Market.

Bryan Sebring
But yeah, I’ve been in there and that’s branded us well. Even though every month I don’t get five leads every month, you know, sometimes I go, is it worth the money? But it’s really about the luxury branding that I do. So everything has been around the lens of we are expensive. We’re nowhere expensive. And if it doesn’t work for you, we understand, but we want to find clients that want the luxury experience. And so every single thing we try to do is based on that.

Logan Shinholser
Got it. So when you first got, we’re not scared.

Bryan Sebring
We’re not scared for someone says, I think you’re too, I think you’re going to be too expensive. We, we’re not the most expensive here by any means. Okay. But we’re not the cheapest. You know, you know how many people have said, you know that kitchen that you price at 250. I got three other bids at 150. And they still go with us because they see what we design and see what we’ve prepped and no one else is giving them that experience. Experience. I mean, we’re a rarity here. It sounds weird, but we use 3D renderings in chief architect. Everyone does around the country, but there’s only a few people that use chief architecture. A couple of them use 2020 and you know, some designers that kind of hand sketch things out. But it’s, you know, Illinois is a design build mecca.

Bryan Sebring
Everyone is a design build. Normandy Air Roam, all these bigger companies, great companies, big 50 million dollar companies and they do it well. That was a lot of competition in Illinois where we, where here. There’s not as much of that.

Logan Shinholser
And what do you think having a design studio is going to do for you there?

Bryan Sebring
It’s next level in my mind, first of all, convenience. Right. You know, being able to bring people in to be able to see, feel and touch. Right. We, we all have, you know, sensory, from visual to seeing. You know, like there’s all different ways that you can sell. And so there are some people, you know, where they want to feel it and touch it and see. Roll that drawer back. And they want to feel the quality. I mean, it. We. I remodeled my first flooring. We used it as a showroom sort of. We bring people over there and show them the cabinets and all that stuff. And, and they were fine with it. And we did some good projects. We, you know, we did some from some celebrities as well. And so it works.

Bryan Sebring
But I’m like, it’s just Going to be the next level of professionalism. And we, and we can also do some things in there to show people the, the breadth of what we can do and bringing someone in to be able to see the craftsmanship. Well, it’ll just be easier selling. It’s really what it is, a selling center. It’s all we’re doing. And we’re, you know, good. I’ll give you one example. We’re not putting just tile everywhere, right? Countertop samples everywhere. Everything is going to behind closed doors, right? You walk into our kitchen vignette, or we’re gonna have also a separate comfort. Everything’s going to be closed up and we’re only going to have what we’ve procured for their project. But if they don’t like it, hold on, let’s go to the other room or go into a cabinet door.

Bryan Sebring
We’re going to open it up and okay, what about this, right? Everything is. Because you get overwhelmed in these selection centers. And so, I mean, that is one little thing, right? That when someone walks in, they’re going to have a different type of experience with us than somebody else, rather than just have everything all over the place. And so I’m just a believer in that. I’m not saying the other way is wrong. For me, it’s wrong put that way.

Logan Shinholser
And was this how it was set up in Naperville where it was like. Because basically what you’re describing is it’s the experience. It’s. I, we did this with like our, our booth. But I remember, like, we had our booth designer for these trade shows we go to. I said, look, I don’t want a graphic designer. I want somebody where, like, we’re going to map out the flow of somebody’s. How they’re going to walk through our booth. What we’re going to say, what we’re going to say it. Then based off of all of that, then we’re going to design the booth setup itself.

Logan Shinholser
And I was like explaining to him, this is like the Bose store at the mall where like, if you want surround sound, they stick you in a room, nice couch, big screen tv, the subwoofers all the way up and you feel it and you go, damn, I would love this in my family room. So it was all experience based. And as a result, our showroom is based off or not showroom. Our booth is based off basically our showroom, but it’s like our traveling showroom. Was that how it was in Naperville. And that’s where you’re able to take those elements of like, I know how this is. I’ve done it before. Now we’re just going to tweak it for Franklin. Or is this completely different?

Bryan Sebring
It’s. It’s. Yes. I mean, we don’t work on flow. Okay. Walking through the space because you’re normally coming and sitting. But it’s definitely experiential. It’s not only with the design studio, but. But Logan, it’s also where we sit. Do we sit across the table or next to them? I mean, everything is about the experience, right? When you are across the table, it’s more of a combatant. On the opposite. Again, we’re trying to pose ourselves as a consultant. We are your consultant. Let use our brain to get you the best experience in the most amazing kitchen you can have. We are not adversaries. Some homeowners want to be that win. Know or the feel that it has to be that way because they were taught that way by their parents. Right. It’s got to be like a used car experience. We got to battle each.

Bryan Sebring
No, no, we. So, yes, we’ll have a large screen tv. We’ll pull the drawings up. Little things. Kyle Hunt talks about it where you have. When people enter, you have a little sign saying welcome the. You know, the Smiths. You know, I mean, all those little things. All the way you present yourself. Like I said, from the candles, from the music. We’re going to have music coming, you know, from a Sonos and. And we’re going to have night. You know, it’s not going to be just coffee. It’s going to be cappuccino or, you know, some. It’s going to be the next level. And, you know, we’re not going to have Costco water. We’re going to have the expensive, you know, all those. We used to do cheese plates. If they come in the evening. Now we don’t do evening appointments anymore.

Bryan Sebring
But if they come in the evening, we’d have something for them to snack on and eat and let me. Oh, I grabbed this for us. I grabbed from the grocery store. Again, it’s the entire experience. And if you want. If you want to be luxury, you have to feed the luxury experience and the type of client that wants. That, expects that they expect that. And it’s kind of like going into a Porsche or Mercedes dealership. It’s a different experience compared to going into Chevy, you know. And so I guess for us, we’re trying to Capture that while maybe not being the most expensive, but we’re on the premium side.

Logan Shinholser
You know it’s funny, we’ve played around with the idea of like, do we, you know, like we built these like feature project pages that walks through like a remodeling company’s like full project story and all that stuff. We’ve toyed with the idea of like, do we bring music back for these pages and basically set the tone for that page of like if this is a, you know, like we actually have a client that’s in one of the peer groups that Kyle himself runs and their whole style is coastal, cozy. So we’re like great. What if you had a more of like a. Like what you would get like at a massage where you’re walking through this thing and you’re able to see it. So we’re not bold enough to get back to that yet. We’re not quite the mic space.

Bryan Sebring
I think you may be on track for that because if you think about it right Now, Instagram and TikTok, the music that you choose really tells you how you know how you’re going to do well with traction on the content. TikTok has kind of changed the game with that, with music. And I know I have firsthand experience because my daughter got found from a TikTok expert. I don’t know how to describe him. He had software that managed music and then he would sell influencers to that. If they played their song on their page, they’d get paid. Right. So music is a big portion of this and so I think that you may start to lean towards that maybe if it’s just background music. But yeah, I think the more we’re going to bring into that I think makes sense if it’s the right.

Bryan Sebring
Because I mean when I watch, I mean I love cinematography and trailers. The perfect song. I’m going to go see that movie. It’s nuts how they crescendo comes up right at the right moment. I’m like, I mean so I think music is a big again, everyone sells in different way, visual, auditory, kinesthetic, all those things. And so I mean, I think it makes sense what you’re saying.

Logan Shinholser
Are you familiar? Like there’s a automation company called Savant. Have you ever heard of them before?

Bryan Sebring
No.

Logan Shinholser
You should look them up. They, they do this really cool thing where basically they’re like very high end automation, software and basically it’s like home automation. But instead of just saying these are all the things that we can do in your Home. They actually have this thing called the Savant Timeline. Basically it says from 7am when you wake up, this is how you use the app. Then it goes 8am, you start the day 12pm, you get things done after work, you unwind, basically 7pm, you get dressed for dinner, then the after party. Basically what it does is it maps out almost like the flow and the experience of your day using their product. And it’s like for each phase of the day.

Logan Shinholser
So it’s like the whole point is instead of just saying, hey, we connect everything to your life and make it easy through automation, it is like we’re just going to demo basically what the product is through stages of your day to show how simple it is. It’s such a unique spin on how to make the experience happen. It’s super cool.

Bryan Sebring
Well, part of that is that you’re putting the person in the app like you’re putting them. And so, I mean, I remember, I don’t think were talking about maybe you actually know of something, but like AI is the buzzword right now. And so we’re using it a little bit for renderings for, you know, but we’ve been looking for. And maybe you know it, but we’re looking for some. An app where I can take a rendering. It’ll make it perfect, right? But then it will also turn into a video where a person is walking through the space and chopping up.

Bryan Sebring
Maybe not them, but if it’s an older person that we’re working for, it’s a senior citizen tech person where they can visualize themselves walking through the space, where we can show that them early on and we can send them that video early on and go, okay, you ready to start design or what? I mean, so they can feel like they’re in the space because, you know, it’s always better to have people in these images. Right. But if you can then change it to a video of a kitchen, that’s their kitchen without even. We haven’t even started demo yet. That’s what, you know, the next level. We’re always trying to next level it and AI is just growing so fast, so quickly that it’s hard to keep up with.

Bryan Sebring
But that’s, I mean, part of the reason went to KBIZ is that we’re trying to find apps that did that as well. There’s many reasons went there, but that was one of them for sure.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, we did that with video. So basically what would happen is like when we do like a video walkthrough of the after we have the before photo, but it’s just a boring. We would then animate that. It’s an app called Runway, but basically you could take a photo and put that up there. And what we would do is we would actually walk through the before. So you’re actually walking through the. The ugly before and it would then shift into the after. So it was almost like a before and after as you’re moving through it. And it was all just using before photos that honestly the client provided and that.

Bryan Sebring
And you’re using it on a marketing level. I’m talking about using it on a preliminary level to show. Show them what they would be in the space. I’ve heard of. I think it was called Archie Smith or something like that. But I don’t think it does what I’m looking for. That’s probably all these say that they do a portion of it. They don’t do it well. And so. But we’re close. We’re close to the point where we can just upload a rendering and actually put someone in that space. I pay for that. I pay a monthly fee for that. I mean, I think would really help sell.

Logan Shinholser
Well, I would try the Runway one. You gotta play with it a little bit. But like we’ve also done it where, like we now have it where we have a client that job tried. They were actually job trade user vaught. And we’re about to launch their website. And basically what we did was we took a. He wanted more moving on the site, which is really cool. But basically we took a still image of a project that he had where there’s like trees and bushes in the foreground and we animated it. So now it’s a video where the whole image is static minus the bushes. So it’s very subtly swaying in the breeze just to kind of give that feel to it. It’s super. It’s super cool. Yeah, I love it.

Bryan Sebring
That’s unique and different. But how do you. Again, I don’t. How do you balance speed of website with that type of video? Right, Because. Because I struggle with that.

Logan Shinholser
I used.

Bryan Sebring
I don’t have anymore. I used to have a video like a GIF or whatever video on my site. But it slowed it down tremendously because you’re trying to keep it as fast as possible. Maybe that won’t happen anymore with AI. Maybe you don’t because Google really penalize you if it was slow.

Logan Shinholser
We find that balance where it’s a lot of, you know, we get people and I can pretty much instantaneously tell did you have an SEO company build your website or not, because typically your pages are all going to have one image, maybe two if anything. But it’s like super pixelated because the whole goal is as fast as possible. But then the downside of that is people don’t have a good experience. They then leave the website which then dings you on that. So it’s either way. It’s like with SEO, any website that we put out, some other SEO company can look at it and go, well, these are all the things that they aren’t doing correct. Because SEO, there’s 200 ways to skin a cat.

Logan Shinholser
We just find that balance of like it still, ultimately still has to look good and it still has to be visually impactful. Where like if I showed you this, you would not look at that and go, that looks grainy. But it’s fast enough because we’ve done things on the back end to update it to make sure that like it’s got a load. It’s not going to be instantaneous where it would load as if there was no images. But it’s going to be still within a two second time frame. The same as most websites because we’ve just figured out what is that right balance to then have conversion, which is the beautiful photos, but also SEO ified where people could find it. So it’s all a balance. It’s like what you do. It’s like form versus function.

Logan Shinholser
You can make this thing look beautiful, but ultimately you pull both cabinets out and they hit.

Bryan Sebring
You gotta live with it.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Bryan Sebring
There’s stuff for pictures, especially on WordPress. I forget where. And there’s apps that squish a video but doesn’t pixelate it. Yeah, not more video pictures. I think it was called Squish actually, but I forget the name of it. Yeah, there’s stuff like that, but it’s Squish. That’s what it is. Yes, but, yeah, yeah, cool.

Logan Shinholser
All right, well, Bryan, anything else on restarting the business? Peer groups. I know you talked a lot about peer groups. Is there any final words of wisdom that you would love to bestow upon the audience?

Bryan Sebring
I mean, I mentioned it earlier. I mean, if, if you’re watching this and you’re not on Remodelers on the Rise, Facebook group, jodtread Facebook group. I biggest, the biggest thing is connect with other people because you’ll grow faster and quicker. I mean, it’s as simple as that. And peer groups, I’m on again. Peer groups changed my life. And that sounds dramatic. But it really did, because I would never been able to move to Nashville if I didn’t have the knowledge and the money that I earned from having being in a peer group. It really changed my life. And so that’s the thing is if you’re out there and you’re going, you’re just struggling to figure out how to make be successful in the business. Figure it out. Get coaching. I mean, maybe coaching is meant for you. I’m a believer in peer groups more.

Bryan Sebring
And reach out. I mean, reach out to me if you have questions. I mean, I’m a pretty unbiased view. Tell Kyle all the time. You know, Kyle’s group is amazing, but it’s not always the right fit for everyone. Right. Sometimes other ones, like Tom Reber, maybe may a better fit for other people. And so. But yeah, I think the biggest thing is that. And again, I’ll say it again. You’re not alone. Don’t be alone on an island out there. Because the more you start to connect with other people, the more you’ll grow as a person. Cool.

Logan Shinholser
Well, Bryan, I appreciate you coming on. This is super cool. Thanks, man.

Bryan Sebring
Yeah, thank you.