The Team Who Remodels Kitchens in 7 Days or Less

Logan Shinholser
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Contractor Growth Network podcast. I’m Logan Shinholser and today we’re actually joined in studio, which we have probably only done a couple times, but we have Barry Gant and Lynn, both from Seven Day Kitchens. They’re a client of ours here at cgn and they have a very cool, unique business model. I think the name says it. But Barry, founder, owner, can you talk to me about what is Seven Day Kitchens? What are you guys all about?

Barry Gant
Sure. So Seven Day Kitchens is a complete kitchen remodel from floor to ceiling in seven days or less. Brand new everything. Brand new flooring, cabinets, countertops, backsplash, appliances, paint, new lighting, all done in seven days. And we guarantee that. And that’s part of our unique selling proposition is that what contractor are you talking to? When a homeowner is talking to a contractor that says, we’ll guarantee our completion date, none of them do it. So that’s what we set out to do, is come up with a process that gets us from day one to day done in seven days, where everybody’s happy with the project.

Logan Shinholser
So to kind of address the elephant in the room, high level, like, how do we do it? Because everybody’s probably wondering, seven days. That sounds great. But like, I remember when you guys first engaged with us and you’re here in Charlotte, so we sat down, the whole thing was like, you know, can you guys actually do it? Or is this really just like you’re refacing some cabinets in seven days and we’re good.

Barry Gant
So we get a lot of that skepticism. A lot of people believe that either we’re just refinishing cabinets or, you know, we got some fairy dust that we sprinkle around, put lipstick on a pig kind of deal. But everything we do is full tear out, remodel. I would say 90% of our success with that happens on the front end. All the planning. We’ll spend four to six weeks planning a job from demo to done. And once it’s on a schedule and set, that’s the way it goes down. And so essentially all we’ve done is we’ve taken out a lot of the downtime between subs or tradespeople on a job.

Logan Shinholser
So basically it’s just what we brought before was like we’re removing the gaps, if you will, to make it a more efficient process. Because I was bringing up a couple projects I’ve had at my house is like very, you know, we schedule out X amount of time for a demo. And reality is, I think on our Bathroom project. They had like three or four days of demo and they were done that day. So then we just sat there for three days going, well, what’s next? And they were like, well, come Monday, this is who’s going to come in next. So it’s a lot of that.

Barry Gant
It seems like, yeah, there is a lot of that goes on for sure. And it just comes down to planning. If you have the right people, you got the right tradespeople, everybody’s on board with the system. They know the expectations are. My guys know six weeks in advance that they got a job coming. So there’s no excuse for them not to be there, period.

Lynn
Sure.

Barry Gant
And so once we’ve taking all this time out of the process, it allows us to move super fast through everything because we’re just stacking. It’s take care of this, take care of that, and literally by the hour for the week, we got it all mapped out.

Logan Shinholser
That’s crazy. I remember there used to be like this old without defunct. But like 10 years ago it was like the American Football League, if you remember that, where they tried it and they’re like CEO based. Basically. He had his schedule mapped out by 15 minute increments from like 6am to 9pm where everything was account. Like, I think like they knew his like, bathroom schedule. To be able to like block that in to like, all right, 8, 15. We know what we’re doing. So it was like super dialed in. And I was like, that’s crazy.

Barry Gant
But like, yeah, we’re, we’re retentive when it comes tom. Like, there’s no, there’s no need for there to be any downtime. It’s. We’ve proven that you don’t need this downtime between trades. Three, four days of doing nothing. And that’s how you know a project that takes us seven days takes another contractor eight to 12 weeks. Yeah. Is because they’re planning one thing a week and they’re not going to plan the next thing until the one thing is done. So once demo is done, then they’re going to schedule the electrician. Well, that’s why the electrician that show up at your house for five days.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
Iris isn’t like that. Everybody is on site for the week.

Logan Shinholser
And I know before seven days was the thing you actually had. It was Gant remodeling, right?

Barry Gant
Yeah, close. Gant design and build.

Logan Shinholser
Gant design. Build on. When you joined, were you here for a Gant design build or were you.

Lynn
Oh, yeah, okay. I Had to go through the bad part to get to the good part. Yeah, I used to deal with. We did outdoor projects, so, you know, screen porches, things like that, decks. And so it was weather based. If there was bad weather, it just slow you. It put you to a halt. And you’re on some of these projects for two or three months and you show up. I managed the projects. I was also sold. And you show up. And at first, everybody’s excited to see you. By month two, they’re just. They’re avoiding you.

Barry Gant
Right.

Lynn
They see you coming, you’re kind of avoiding them. Right. And that’s what I love about this is you don’t have to worry about that. You can go into a project, if the homeowner is there, they’re happy to see you. They want to talk to you. They want to talk about what’s going on in the project. They’re just happy. And they’re happy. Happy at the beginning, happy at the end.

Barry Gant
They’re being happy.

Lynn
Yes, it’s wonderful. The other thing that Barry, I don’t think mentioned is we always work with the same subs, right. And we have a dedicated project manager. Yes. It’s great to have people that you work with all the time and you can depend on them, but it’s always good to have somebody who is responsible for that project.

Barry Gant
Sure.

Lynn
And so we have a dedicated project manager now. He has an assistant. So if somebody needs to run Lowe’s, he didn’t have to leave the job site. The assistant can run Lowe’s or get whatever little things get begotten. So, so.

Logan Shinholser
So let’s. Let’s talk about, like, how do we come up with this? Because is this, like, did you guys start to see. Okay, we’re doing some exterior projects. We’re doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that. We like kitchens. Let’s do kitchen remodeling, and then, oh, let’s see if we can, like, piece it into seven days or, like, I guess what was the mindset? Because you guys almost worked backwards from what clients really want and said, how do we do it?

Barry Gant
So as Gan Design and Build, were primarily an exterior construction company dealing with the weather. That’s what prompted us to think about doing interior remodeling, because we. You can’t stay on a schedule when Mother nature is the one who’s in control. So all of our customers who experienced us as Scan Design and build wanted an interior model job too. They’re like, well, hey, well, can you do this? Can you do that we always said no because we knew were spending a couple of months outside building a big project. What that would feel like, being indoors in someone’s house. And we’d heard all the horror stories. But a friend of mine, were just chatting one day, and he was telling me he’s going all in on kitchen remodeling. I was like. I was like, that’s great.

Barry Gant
He’s like, and here are all the benefits of it. I can put it on a schedule. It’s interior work. You know, we can. We can plan better, do more, take advantage of the time that we have to sell. And so I started looking into it. We were still getting a lot of people asking us to do kitchens. And finally I said, yeah, I’ll try one. Our first kitchen took us five weeks. I told him, it take seven days. It took five weeks. So it was a big. It was a big learning curve. Our second kitchen, five and a half days.

Logan Shinholser
What was the difference between. Or is that like. Basically, you took. This took five weeks. Let’s remove the gaps. And that’s how you did five and a half days.

Barry Gant
Yep.

Logan Shinholser
Okay.

Barry Gant
Yep, yep. We just. We mapped it out. Like, okay, we got. We got time here. This time could have been filled with the electrician or the rough plumbing, or maybe there’s some H vac work that needed to be done. So were able to identify all that and compress all that time down into a week, and nine out of ten jobs are done in five and a half days. That’s. So we’ve. We’ve continued to even refine it even more, to make it an even tighter schedule. And that’s just part of process improvement. Like, you just got to keep working on it. It’s never going to be perfect.

Logan Shinholser
And on when. When. When Barry comes to you and goes, hey, I’m gonna. We’re gonna sell a kitchen, and I’m gonna tell them we’re gonna do it in seven days. Like, what is your first thought? Because, like, to me, if I’m the homeowner, I’m going, that’s crazy. You know, maybe a couple weeks. But, like, seven days is nuts. So I guess, like, how did that.

Lynn
Like, nuts, too? Yeah, I thought he was nuts, too. Honestly, I didn’t think it could be done. He was sure of it. And since he was sure of it, I was like, okay, then. He’s a smart guy. He’s a really smart guy. I’ve known him a long time. And it just took those first two. And I was like, well, there it is it can be done. And now it’s been done over and over and over again and it’s just a wonderful thing to see. It’s just, it’s great. I love working for this company because as I said earlier, everybody’s happy.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
Yeah.

Lynn
Everybody.

Barry Gant
Subs Are happy, homeowners happy? We’re happy. It’s, it’s been a great business. And I don’t know, there’s a lot of construction companies out there. They can say that about how their sphere of influence on a job, that everybody’s happy. Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
You know, because it starts to go with like once the homeowner is unhappy, all the set feel it and you know, like I remember and this was like the big thing of like so growing up. Like my dad was a pond and water feature contractor and his whole thing was we started every job on a Monday. So you basically knew which Monday your project was going to start on. Most of them were probably going to be smaller jobs, four days, big jobs, eight business days. So you’re either going to have a pond, beautiful pond in your backyard done in either that week or the following week. But it was like not a huge percentage, but there was a percentage of the jobs every single summer that when you would plug that waterfall in, they would cry.

Logan Shinholser
And it was like this, this like move that bus feeling where like with you guys, you know, you do this thing in five and a half days. I mean are the homeowners moving out or not moving out? But are they like going to Disney World for a week and then coming back and it’s like done?

Barry Gant
Yeah, some did about half leave. Huh. Go on a vacation, they come back to a brand new kitchen, they love it.

Logan Shinholser
And that’s like that move that bus, you know, moment for them where like otherwise you kind of lived it the whole time and by the end of it you’re like, this is a great kitchen. But man, I went through like Vietnam to get this thing done. And then, yeah, you know, with you guys, they go to Disney World and they come back and it’s like, done.

Lynn
The Leng Goods went on vacation and when I talked to them, both of them, she was heavily involved in the process. He travels a lot for work, so he went on vacation with her. He wasn’t working so he had no idea what to expect back. And he said, I was blown away. He’s like, I couldn’t believe it. He thought when he got back it was maybe going to be partially done or Whatever. And it was completely done. They were both just like, this is amazing.

Logan Shinholser
That’s crazy.

Lynn
It’s crazy.

Barry Gant
That’s good.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, it’s super cool.

Lynn
Yeah.

Barry Gant
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
And like, when you’re doing these kitchens, like, you know, we talked about the scope of it. Like, this is also like, you guys move like a load bearing wall. Like, you’ll do reconfigurations. You open walls up if need be. This is not just the cosmetic f. Which even cosmetically, you know, you update backsplash, countertops, cabinets, even that in five and a half days is still very solid. More like, okay, I can wrap my head around it. But like, I mean, the fact that you’re opening up walls and stuff like that is nuts. So a big part of this is great planning up front. You get everybody on the same page and you’re able to basically go in there, knock it out. I imagine five and a half days, there’s probably not too many change orders because you’re moving so quickly that it’s.

Barry Gant
Like, well, and here’s one of the things that we do to make sure that we don’t run into change orders is that through our design process, we make sure we answer every single question and get to every single detail. If there’s a change order that happens during the construction, then we did something wrong. And most people don’t look at it that way. Other contractors look at it. It’s just another way to make some more money. Sure. But for us, that’s not the case at all. We’re more about, are we going to. Are we going to be able to meet our timeline? And in order to do that, we can’t have changes along the way. Sure. So we go through a very detailed, in depth, just the way you guys did with us, to learn about us.

Barry Gant
We’re doing the same thing with our homeowners to be sure that there’s no change order that’s going to come down the pipe that’s going to slow us down. Sure. Because we got another job to get to. Just like the way your dad used to run his pond company. Every day, every week for us, we start on a Monday, we’re done on Saturday, next one the next Monday. So we’re just, we’re scrolling through it. And even though jobs are different, the steps to completing a job are basically the same. So we’re just doing the same process over and over again. Once you kind of get it nailed down and formalized like an sop, then you can run with it.

Lynn
It’s like Muscle memory.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Lynn
Now it’s just like muscle memory. Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
And when you first approach this, how do you get subs on board for this? Because like that, to me, I, I mean the hardest part of business is people. At least, at least from my perspective, you know, like, it’s. I’m in this group called EO and basically, you know, I meet up with like these other business owners and no matter what problem it is, whether you own a logistics company, a marketing agency, a kitchen modeling company, it is always the people is like the big thing. And with you guys, you know, having trades, people and subs that you have to work with, I mean, people have emotions and people have ways that they want to do it. So like, was it difficult to get them to buy in?

Barry Gant
Yes, it was.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
And it took a lot of trial and error to find the right team. But the key to it as well is a lot of these subs, they get treated like second class citizens by other general contractors. And these GCs will lean on them to fund their project, you know, stretch them out. And that’s something that we just won’t do. Everybody, everybody gets their invoices paid. They get paid fast and that’s what keeps them coming back. You know, it’s easy for them too. It’s, it’s the ease of doing business with us that makes it so good for them. Sure. They know they got a project, they’re going, they know they got a project a week. All you gotta do is show up and do it.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
And they get paid fast. We treat everybody like family. You know, it’s, it really is a family dynamic with all of us. Like we miss each other when we haven’t seen each other.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
For a job or two. So it’s hard. We’ve fired a lot of people, but once you know, there’s people who will understand what you’re trying to do. And if you get them on board, then that makes the train easier to navigate for sure.

Logan Shinholser
And I can imagine like you guys brought up like the happiness aspect of like the subs of like. That was one of the guys that ended up buying my dad out for his business. He was an architect prior to coming and doing the pond thing. And he said as an architect he was like, I would work on plans for six months and then I’d submit them and maybe they go with my plans, maybe they go with somebody else’s. And I felt as if every six months was like a new cycle and I never get to see stuff come to fruition. But in the pawn world, every Friday or every other Friday, you’re just waiting to see are they going to cry or not. You know they’re going to be happy, but it’s more like are they going to be emotional?

Logan Shinholser
Cuz like it’s like a tenth of the pond. People build a pond as like a, a ceremonial thing for somebody that passed. So like it is high emotion when.

Lynn
It’s very tangible too. Just like a kitchen is very tangible. Yeah, you can touch it, you can feel it. And it does elicit emotions. We just did a photo shoot, photo videography shoot with the bars last night and you could tell talking to them, their kitchen elicited feelings. It made them feel really good. And so when you’re there talking with people and just chit chatting, you can feel how good this new environment makes them feel.

Logan Shinholser
Sure.

Lynn
It’s just wonderful. Yeah. But it is something that they can touch, feel and see every day. It’s the heart of the home. And you know, when you throw a party, where does everybody end up? Yeah, the kitchen, you know, so.

Logan Shinholser
And now they had a hell of a story of like, because usually people walk in and they go, this is a great kitchen. They’re like, well, let me tell you about how this thing was made. Now it’s like, hey, let me tell you how this thing was made.

Lynn
Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Logan Shinholser
So I guess when you’re like in the sales process, like how much are you balancing like what are you looking for with like in your head? Okay, process wise, can we still hit all that in seven days? Like are they trying to go for a triple island and that’s a pain in the butt to do? Like, I guess like.

Barry Gant
Yeah, we get those, we get some really ambitious projects. Some of them we say no to. A lot of them we say yes to. So not every single project we do is a seven day kitchen. Sure. Some can be longer and when you say longer, we’re talking about like maybe two weeks.

Logan Shinholser
Okay, it’s like two weeks total, right? Yeah, yeah.

Barry Gant
Our longest job is start Monday and by the second Friday we’re done.

Logan Shinholser
Okay, so same thing like in the pond world where it’s like. Yeah, okay. And that would be like a big project for you guys. So if somebody wants you to come in and, and blow everything out and do like master bath kitchen, usually.

Barry Gant
It’s an add on. Yes, it’s usually it’s an add on. So we’re doing a kitchen and a master, a kitchen and a laundry room. A Kitchen and a master and two guests bathrooms. I mean, sometimes it turns into almost a whole house remodel. Those are going to take us a little bit longer.

Logan Shinholser
And when you have somebody that wants to add in a couple bathrooms, same process, same everything. Now it’s just, hey, we have another space to do, but we’re still doing the whole. Remove the gaps, stack it, plan out everything ahead of time really well.

Barry Gant
Yep, Yep. Bathrooms are a little bit more difficult because it’s just limited space.

Logan Shinholser
Sure.

Barry Gant
There’s only so many grown men you can put into a. Put into a bath. Yeah. Especially a guest bathroom. You know, there’s. There’s only so much they’ll take. Sure. Before, you know, it just gets. It just gets hard to manage. So we do allow a little bit more flex time on bathrooms, but not on kitchens. Sure. There’s not a, there’s not a minute that goes by that work’s not getting done in the kitchen. Got it. Because there’s plenty of space. We can have three, four, five, six guys in there working.

Logan Shinholser
What do you do if somebody’s like, they have the flu? Like, do you then just say, hey, we gotta stop? Like, I guess, like, what happens? Yeah.

Lynn
Okay. We’ve got people who are prepared. Also, our project manager is very skilled. He did kitchens for how long before he.

Barry Gant
20 years.

Lynn
20 years.

Logan Shinholser
Okay. So if there’s not some kid out of college that like, has a construction management degree.

Barry Gant
I got one of those.

Lynn
He’s the assistant. Yeah.

Barry Gant
We got a real world experience.

Lynn
Yeah, yeah, sure.

Barry Gant
And so that’s kind of our backup. Like on mentioned. That is our backup. The, the project manager himself, there’s nothing that he can’t physically do himself if he needed to.

Logan Shinholser
Sure. And then he is the assistant that, like, something happens. You got to go back to Lowe’s. That way he’s not getting pulled off the job. I see. Okay.

Barry Gant
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Now, from like a brand positioning standpoint, how, I guess, how many kitchens had you done until you said, we’re gonna go all in this and make you call it seven day kitchens?

Barry Gant
That’s a good question. How many kitchens was that? It wasn’t a lot. Probably seven kitchens. And then we’re like, we got something here. Sure. And then that’s when we. That’s when we took that concept. We shut down the exterior modeling business and went all in on. On kitchens. So brand new company. Brand new brand. We focused just on kitchens. That’s it. Sure. We do some bathrooms.

Lynn
Sure.

Barry Gant
Yeah. We’re kitchen specialists. Right. And so we niche down to that. And then having our unique selling proposition as part of our name really gets a lot of attention for us. And I would say for young contractors who are trying to start their own business, consider something name their company. Something different than last name construction company.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
You know. Yeah, Take your ego out of it. Yeah, take your ego out of it. You’re not going to. Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
It doesn’t mean anything to anybody. No, it doesn’t.

Barry Gant
Yeah.

Lynn
If you love your dms, nobody else does. Yeah.

Barry Gant
Yeah.

Lynn
Maybe your wife does, maybe she doesn’t, you know.

Logan Shinholser
Well, I know that’s the thing that we used to deal with, like on the branding side. So we used to like branding at cgm. We tried it out for like an eight month period and we realized, like, basically if you go into somebody’s brand and unless they’re the ones with the idea that says, this is what I want, this is kind of what I’m thinking, and then it’s your job to basically just visualize it. Otherwise we’re coming in going, hey, Gant, design build. First off, Gant, like the chart Gantt liked the last day. What does that mean? Design build of what is it remodeling? Is it software? And then. But I’m coming and going, that’s not a good name. And I’m basically telling you that your child is ugly. And nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to hear it.

Logan Shinholser
So they’re going, fine, if you want to rename my child, you do it. But unless we come up with like the most perfect name in their head, it is a pain. So for you, coming in, going seven day kitchens, I mean, that’s so easy to understand, it’s easy to market. Because if somebody goes, well, what do you do and how do you do it? It’s basically, we do kitchens in seven days. You’re in, you’re out, and that’s it.

Barry Gant
Yeah, People will call us just because they saw the name. They’re like, we couldn’t even believe it. We just had to call you, invite you over, just because we’re interested in the kitchen. And if this is true, we’re interested in working with you. We’ve had some homeowners say it’s either you guys or nobody. There’s no way we’re going through an 8 to 12 week project and having to leave the house at the same time. So I think what’s really infuriating for homeowners is when they have to leave the home. But they have what you experienced three or Four days, nothing happened. But they’re out of the house and they’re gone somewhere. You know, you think about where would you rather be? You’d rather be in a hotel room somewhere or would you rather be at home in your own bed?

Barry Gant
Well, GCs are still in that time away from customers too, you know.

Logan Shinholser
Well, that was because I know we kind of got linked up in my, Kyle Hunt’s group. But like, I did like a whole, I did a presentation for them when they were here, I don’t know, last year. And I was basically explaining like your weekend when you’re at home with your family. We’re still in the construction zone. Like, we are still living it. So, like, you know, you look at this as like, yeah, this project is eight weeks long, but for us it is now 56 days. So it is consecutive back to back. Where, yes, there’s no banging today. But you know, like, and I have a two year old and a five month old at home. And like our two year old halfway through this edition. And at first he loved the workers, now he is petrified of the worker.

Logan Shinholser
I think he saw somebody on stilts doing drywall. And now if we go anywhere, it is workers. Stilts. No stilts. No stilts. Jump out. Boo. So like now we’re like sequestering our two year old away from the workers and like, RPM’s like traumatized.

Lynn
He is.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, he’s like. And RPM’s like, what do I do? Like, should I like, you know, and we’re like, you just got to get through it. Like, just give us a heads up. Like if they’re going to be, you know, invasive in the house today, but otherwise, like, that’s what’s happening. And like if you do this thing in seven days, you don’t have that because they’re leaving or, you know, they only deal with it for seven days. Maybe they bring it back up in therapy later. But.

Lynn
Well, I mean, you can handle almost anything with a week. You can go on a bad vacation with somebody or you can go on vacation with somebody maybe you didn’t really know and you thought was cool and you go on vacation with them and all of a sudden you get to know them and you’re like, oh my God, I got to spend seven days with this. You can do seven days? Sure. Right? People can put up with pain for a small amount of time, but when you start to stretch that time out, it’s hard. It’s extremely difficult. We’ve all gone through it. And why would we want to put somebody in that position.

Barry Gant
Sure.

Logan Shinholser
From a. From, like, a business perspective, I’d imagine just like, a big shift in the business model, especially from exterior to interior. I mean, that’s a big shift. Let alone now, you know, outside you have a week of snow, like what we had, you know, a couple weeks ago, that would have totally derailed everything. And then you got to call all your clients back up, and if you give them a hard deadline now, you’re very dialed in. So, like, can you talk about, I guess just from a. What you had to unlearn and relearn operationally to make this thing happen.

Barry Gant
And that’s a lot to unpack for sure right there. It took us a while. We had to be committed to the idea. It was easy to say, this is impossible, but we had to be committed to the idea. We knew it could be done, and I think that’s what it takes when you come up with a unique product or a unique service. Someone had a commitment to an idea to see that through. Everybody on that side of the business changed. None of the subs came over. I rebranded. Everything was brand new, so I had to learn new subs. We had to learn how they worked. We had to get them on board. We’re still developing our process, so there’s a lot. I mean, we’re still going through now, building foundational pieces like CRM systems and things like that to. To make sure it’s.

Barry Gant
It’s all working.

Logan Shinholser
Is that scary?

Barry Gant
It is scary. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I had 10 years in Gant Design and build, and here I am. I was on the cusp of just shutting that down and starting something brand new. And, yeah, that’s scary as hell, but it’s the single best business decision I’ve ever made. Without a doubt.

Lynn
The second one was higher.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a one two. Yeah, it was a one two punch. Because I see it, like, in some of these, like, Facebook groups where somebody’s like, screw it. I had it. I quit my job. I’m gonna start my own construction company. How do I get leads? How do I get work? By the way, I’ve got four young kids at home, and I need to make this thing work. And I’m like, oh, man. Like, that is. I would not have done that. Like, I would have a lot. You know, I would have had side. I would have something that at least set you up with, like, some savings at least to start that. So, like, you know, I know for me, I started this company. I had a Long distance girlfriend, and that was it. You know, I had no responsibilities, so.

Logan Shinholser
And I knew I had like six months of savings and if it didn’t work out, I at least can live on that and then go. I gave it a good try. It just didn’t work. So, like, I went into it with a very different mindset of like 25, 26. I can basically work as much as I want to make this thing work. I didn’t have to be home at five to go to like a kid’s soccer game and stuff like that. So I’d imagine from like a fear perspective because you’re also along for the ride as well. Because if this doesn’t work out, it’s not just Barry that is, you know, dealing with it on now also is in the same scenario. So, like, when he comes to you, how are you feeling about this? Freaked out. Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
I mean, at the time, you have.

Lynn
A lot of faith.

Logan Shinholser
Sure.

Lynn
Okay, I do. I’ve known him. I was best man at his wedding. I have a lot of faith in him. He’s a smart guy. Do I think all his decisions are right? No. Sure. But we talk a lot. He’s open to hearing. Right. A lot of people aren’t. He will listen to what you have to say. He’ll consider it and then have a conversation about it. He’s open to being wrong. He’s open to doing. To do whatever he needs to do to move to that next level. And I see that dedication in him. And I’m not worried at all. I worry more honestly about when people see seven day kitchens. They just don’t believe it could happen. So they just skip over us. That’s my biggest concern, honestly.

Logan Shinholser
And let’s talk about that. So I know we adjust to how. But like, you’ve also got bath fitters and like companies like that where it’s like in a day. I remember growing up watching those commercials, basically just relying in the bathtub.

Barry Gant
And that’s about it.

Logan Shinholser
You know, my grandma would get that. I wouldn’t get that. But the kitchens that you guys do, they’re great. Like, that was like one of the first things was like, we got to prove that this stuff is. This is legit. This is not, you know, a small cosmetic update. We’re going from, you know, ugly to less ugly. Like, these are.

Lynn
These are not a bunch of just cheap. You got a choice between A and B cabinets and A and B handles, and we just, we prepackage it. It’s nothing like that.

Barry Gant
Sure. Yeah. And it’s Completely custom.

Lynn
Completely custom. And if that’s one thing that we can get across to people, that, yes, we curate things. Right. Because if you don’t, people will just go off and they’ll just take forever.

Barry Gant
Right.

Lynn
We’ve found some things that work for a lot of people just like anybody else does. Every kitchen remodel does this because you have to drive people through the process. Sure. But if they don’t want to use a sink, say that we have, they can choose another sink.

Barry Gant
That’s.

Lynn
That’s quite okay. So it is a custom kitchen. They’re really, really nice. They look really good. And it’s not just prefab crap. Right. If we do it in seven days, like we talked about earlier, just taking all the gaps out. Anybody that’s ever done construction or remodel a house or done anything like that, and I’ve remodeled a bunch of houses, I really want to try to apply what he’s doing here to full gut remodels. We’ve discussed that. Because now that I’ve seen this done, I’m like, why can’t that be done? That’s how much I believe in this.

Logan Shinholser
How would you do that? Because, like, to me, I mean, my house is 1946. So, like, it is as we’re, as we’ve now gone through two remodels, you know, both additions, but you know, two remodels. There’s been a lot of like, hey, we didn’t necessarily account for. This is behind this wall. Or like, the joists are like, this is now we have to like, redo this one section. So, like, do you think. I mean, I’m sure you’d have a little bit more wiggle room on, like, you know, what the timeline would be on stuff. But like, do you think you could go into like a 2500 square foot house and basically within 10%, get a deadline in of like, I think we can knock this whole thing out in 25 days.

Barry Gant
Absolutely.

Lynn
I think so.

Barry Gant
Yeah.

Lynn
Yeah.

Barry Gant
We just did it.

Lynn
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
Really?

Barry Gant
Yeah, we just did. Was basically a whole house remodel. All new flooring, hardwood flooring throughout, a new stair system, all fresh paint, brand new kitchen, brand new mud room, brand new master, brand new powder. I mean, the whole house, they were getting. They were getting quotes of six months.

Logan Shinholser
How long did it take you?

Barry Gant
It took us three weeks.

Logan Shinholser
That’s crazy. And how do you. Because, like, okay, in my edition, they just had to stain the floors. There’s dry time that, like, you know, unless you’re in there with, like, leaf blowers just constantly, like, doing that. I mean, like, is that something. I’m guessing you bake that in your process of knowing paint’s got to dry. We can’t force it.

Barry Gant
Yeah. We know the hardwoods are going to take an extra five days.

Lynn
Sure.

Logan Shinholser
So do you then plan around, like, I guess if you go into that project, are you going, all right, what are the big constraints? Okay, we know hardwood is going to take five days, so let’s knock that out and then get everything around it, I guess. Like, how do you approach.

Barry Gant
Well, we’ve done so right now, we’ve done. We’ve done so many kitchens that we already know what the potential possibilities are for a problem, and we’re already prepared for it. So, for example, oftentimes the plumbing for a sink needs to be lowered to accommodate the new deep sink plus a disposal. So you got to lower that plumbing in a wall. We just factor that in. There’s no problem that we haven’t ever seen that we haven’t already overcome 100 times. So anything we run into, because we’re specialists, anything we run into in a kitchen, we’ve already overcome it. We don’t have to sit there and scratch our heads and think about this way or that way. The. The trades person will do it the way it needs to be done.

Lynn
Sure.

Barry Gant
And it’s. There’s very few hiccups in kitchens.

Logan Shinholser
It’s so funny because, like, a kitchen is a. It’s a. If. I mean, as a remodeler, if you listen to this, like, you know, it’s intricate. But if, like, I mean, this. If you’re not, like, we never, like, it is intricate. There’s so much stuff that can go wrong. It almost sounds like your. Your brain is just a bunch of, like, if. Then statements of, like, if they want a lower sink, then we need to drop the plumbing down. If they want this, then this needs to happen. Like, what is. What is. Like, you know, you had an exterior remodeling company. What is your background before that? Like, how do you then go from I’m going to be this basically exterior, you know, contractor, to now going to create the assembly line, custom assembly line, if you will, for this interior project.

Logan Shinholser
Because that’s like a different mindset to frame is.

Barry Gant
But it’s not. It’s. It’s just about a process.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
No matter what you apply it to the. The. You’re just focused on how to do whatever that project is in the least amount of time or Bake in enough time to overcome any potential problems. And that’s no different than even on the exterior side. But no matter what you do on the exterior side, you can overcome mother nature. Sure. Period. So that’s why on the interior side for us it was a no brainer to go full in because we knew we could control a schedule.

Lynn
Sure.

Barry Gant
And that just being able to do that has been. Has impacted my life in a way that’s like hard to describe. Was. Now I’m not worrying about when are we going to be able to get back to a job.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
I’m just, I’m just counting down the five to seven days it takes to get one done. Sure. And it’s the mindset I think is the same for anybody in this industry should be to focus in on a process and how to make that process better no matter what it is. And then of course, you know, I think if you are in remodeling, but you can specialize in something. Be the best at the kitchen or the bathroom or maybe it’s basements or whatever. Adus which is an interior. But I think construction companies often look at these projects and don’t think about how they could be the best at the one thing.

Lynn
Sure.

Barry Gant
And that’s what we’re trying to do. How can we be the best kitchen remodeler, period? Not the best general contractor. Right. Not the best commercial construction guy. Because for them every job they run into is something new and different and they’re learning. For us, it’s the same job every time. We’ve already learned it. Sure. We’ve already learned it. We’ve already done it. And that’s the benefit from profit efficiency, from management efficiency. Is that if you have a system that you can follow every time, it’s hard to mess it up.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
It really is. However, if you’re doing a custom build every time you go do a project you’re going to run into things you didn’t think about.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. And that’s something I know like here at cgm like we like niche down into just going, we’re just doing remodeling. I’m very much. I’ve learned over the years that unlike the visionary and I’m a typical one where I’m like we could solve all these problems with all these service. You know, I used like four years ago. If you came to us, it was like we could basically do. As long as you’re a home service provider, we could do it and then we have full service. Whether it’s Facebook ads, Google Ads, SEO, email, brand, like, all the direct mail, you name it. It was like, we could do it all. And the whole premise was basically like, if we do all these things, something has to work, so we’re going to do that. And at the time, it made total sense. I just didn’t.

Logan Shinholser
I didn’t realize it. And now it’s like, great. We’re just really going to go in on two main things, website and SEO. And now with the AI search stuff, it makes it much. You know, basically SEO and AI search piggybacks off of each other. But, like, I was just thinking about this morning before you guys came in, like, the amount of, like, how deep we’re able to go with a lot of this SEO stuff now is like, can we test this? Can we try this? Hey, can we automate this one thing? There’s no way we could do it if we did that for multiple industries. And there’s definitely no way we could do that if we did it for multiple product offerings. And it sucks from a sales perspective because we do get that of like, well, I’m looking for full service.

Logan Shinholser
And we basically had to relearn, how do you sell against that? And go, well, you could do that. Here’s the plus side of us. Here’s the plus side of them, here’s the downside of us, but here’s also the downside of them. You got to kind of pick your pros and cons here. So are you guys getting people that come into you that are like, I want this, this, and this, and you realize that, hey, this is just too custom, too unique, too much that you’re just kind of going like something you brought before. Not everybody’s our client. Like, I guess. I guess who is not a client that, like, they want to quadruple Waterfall island from, you know, Indonesia.

Barry Gant
We get those. And it truly comes down to a gut feeling.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
It’s more about. It’s not whether or not we can accomplish the job, because I know we can. It’s can we accomplish the job and have a happy customer and will we all be happy at the end? Because not every customer is a customer that you want. Sure. But kind of going back to something you said before when you were, you know, just building up CGN and you guys decided to niche down. I had the same problem. I had a mentor that says, just. Just say yes to everything. And so I did. Customer asked me for something, I said, yeah, we’ll do it, whatever it is. But that just made us Just like handyman. We weren’t. We weren’t the best at any one thing.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
And so it takes a lot of commitment to do what you did.

Lynn
And.

Barry Gant
Niche it down and say no to people.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
It’s hard to do because as business owners, salespeople, we want to make that sell. We want to make that sell. But at the end of the day, once you realize that a sale can hurt you on the next three sales, then you start to get it, like, okay, I just stay focused. It’s all going to work out.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. Once it finally clicked for me, it also was, yes, from a sales and marketing perspective, made it easier. But it was also like, okay, now the team just has to get trained one thing. That’s it. They don’t have to know, you know, like, James Hardy. Don’t even think about that. Get that name out of your head. You know, like, we don’t need. Like, there’s none of that. So now just. If they say chief architect, this is what it is. So it just makes it so much easier to get everybody growing in the same direction. It’s one training model. It allows you to deeper and be more of the experts. The same way that if they go, hey, I now want to, you know, drop my sink down.

Logan Shinholser
You have a full understanding of, like, great, here’s the four other things that will have to happen if that thing happens, versus you may not be thinking about that. So, like, from a training perspective, I’d imagine it’s so dialed in that, like, if something happens to the PM now you have your stuff so well laid out that it’s easy to bring somebody else in. And it’s not like a. You guys spend five years learning all about how construction works in every single type of house, with every type of project. So from a training perspective, I’d imagine it makes it way easier.

Barry Gant
Yes, it does. It does well. And part of it, too, is we only use a tradesperson for their trade. For example, my tile guy, he does tile 24, 7, 365. That’s all he does. He doesn’t do tile and electrical work, doesn’t do tile, and plumbing does do, you know, so all of our. All of our tradespeople, they come in and they execute their specialty, which is, again, it’s more efficient. It compresses that timeline. And if you let them do what they’re really good at, you don’t have to train them so much. And then, you know, getting the rest of the team on board with. With what we’re doing, it’s usually just like with on. It’s just overcoming some disbelief. Even. Even our designer, Michelle McHenry, she does an amazing job. But even when I approached her, she was like, you say so?

Logan Shinholser
Yeah, yeah.

Barry Gant
If you say you can do jobs in seven. Seven days, sure, whatever. Yeah. You know, as long as you. As long as you’re paying me to do design work, I’m. I’m good. She didn’t matter. She didn’t really care. But now. Now she’s been with us. Yeah. Now she, like, she buys in fully and. And now she’s a committed leader on our team. Like, she buys into whole system chart.

Logan Shinholser
And I bet it.

Barry Gant
It’s easy to do when you see everybody so happy with.

Logan Shinholser
I was gonna say, yeah, it’s cool. Like the subs probably now because, like, they’re used to then seeing the same crew back to back that, like, they probably have their own, like, you know, friendships there. So it’s. They say karaoke.

Lynn
We’ve had a couple comments about that. I think somebody even put it in a Google review. Yeah.

Barry Gant
Yeah. These guys, they’ll turn on the radio, they’ll start singing.

Lynn
They have a good chart.

Barry Gant
They have. They have a good time. Yeah. For them, you know, it’s a. Being in the construction industry and being a trades person, it’s got to be one of the hardest jobs in the world. Yeah. And being able to see these guys flourish, these men and women flourish under. What we’re doing is really. I mean, just the feel goods are all around. Yeah. You know?

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
So we’re hoping to. Hoping to build this into a franchise and we can help other young trades people build a business that they can. They can support their family with.

Logan Shinholser
How. Who would be like, let’s say somebody comes in, they want to franchise this thing. Do you think you could take somebody who’s a normal GC or remodeler or they have 20 years of doing it the way that everybody does it, and they could come in and go, all right, I’m going to remove all those beliefs and. And now buy into this. Or do you feel like. Which is basically what you did, or do you think it’s easier to take somebody that is younger? You know, I’ve been approached by a couple of people coming out of, like, business school that say, hey, I know this is what you do. Do you have anybody that wants to sell? I know that remodeling is a tougher.

Logan Shinholser
Not as scalable as, like, H Vac, but I want to buy one of these businesses, which I’M like, you’re crazy if you want to buy into this. Like, if your goal is really scalability, it is not in this industry. So who in your mind, like, is it anybody could do it or is it more like you gotta have like a.

Barry Gant
Anybody can do it. Yeah. I’m not a tradesperson and it’s my concept, but I think ultimately a carpenter is the right person. Sure. Someone who has some cabinet installation experience, they’ll be the right person to take this and with our assistance, we can build it up for them families.

Logan Shinholser
That’s awesome.

Barry Gant
Yeah. So when we’re looking at the market here in Charlotte, how many kitchen remodels do you think happen in Charlotte in a given year?

Logan Shinholser
A couple hundred.

Barry Gant
About 7,000.

Logan Shinholser
Is that what it is?

Barry Gant
Yep.

Logan Shinholser
It’s a lot.

Barry Gant
It’s a lot of remodels. And if that happens here in Charlotte, that’s happening all across the country. Sure. And there’s lots of cities where a seven day kitchen franchise could be with someone who has some carpentry skills. For sure. Nice. That’s cool. Yeah.

Lynn
I really think, me personally, I think it’d be super helpful if they did have carpentry skills. They definitely have to be bright and be ready to jump in and learn. But I think you could take somebody with a two year degree.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Lynn
Some of this mechanically minded. Right. Even if they haven’t done this, I really think you could take them. If you help them develop the right team, I think they could be successful too. Because it really isn’t just about that one individual. It’s about the team that Barry’s put together. And now we know the characteristics of.

Logan Shinholser
Each one, each one of those people.

Lynn
We know what to look for and we know what to avoid. And that’s 99% of the problem. It’s like you said earlier, it’s people.

Logan Shinholser
Right.

Lynn
It’s all people. You get the right people in place, you’re going to have a successful business.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah.

Barry Gant
It’s the same way as the ICP works, right? Yeah.

Lynn
Yeah.

Barry Gant
There’s going to. We, we know what our sub characteristics should look like. Like what kind of personality they should have, what their morals, ethics and values are. If those align, then, you know, they work for us.

Lynn
Like, we don’t. People who smoke.

Barry Gant
Right.

Lynn
I don’t care if you smoke. I’m not against smoking. Smoke all you want, but we’re not going to hire somebody that smokes.

Barry Gant
Sure. Right.

Lynn
Because we know we don’t want somebody smoking on a job throwing butts on the job.

Logan Shinholser
Right.

Lynn
That’s just one little thing. Right. But you. When you pile those things up, you can say, yeah, these are the things that we are looking for, and these are the things that we’re not looking for.

Barry Gant
Yeah.

Lynn
And if you’ve been in construction, you’ve worked with a bunch of subs, and you’ve remodeled house or whatever you’ve done, you’ve worked with the worst people too. Right. You’ve worked with some of those people that are. They’re going to call in, they’re unreliable, they say they’re going to be there at whenever and they’re not there. Right. There’s a lot of those people in the construction business because anybody can. Can go buy a belt at Lowe’s, put a hammer in it and call themselves a car. Right. It’s pretty much all you have to do is look the part and talk the part sometimes. Right now, we’ve done it enough. We can see through all of that to the real individual behind it. That’s why I think putting together the right team with the right owner, that’s. That’s the magic.

Barry Gant
Yeah.

Lynn
Personally, the rest of it’s just process.

Barry Gant
Yeah.

Logan Shinholser
That’s cool. Because I feel like, you know, if you’re gonna take this franchise, a lot of it happens, like, recruit the right people. Like, you’re gonna have to know your ideal client profile. Same way you talk about with the subs. Like, you’re going after these types of homeowners, but then you’re also going after these types of subcontractors. Like what you said. You know, there’s like a running joke on Instagram where it’s like TaskRabbit, which is they’ll come out and do small projects for you. And it’s like, basically, they’re saying, like, you didn’t hire us because we’re an expert at hanging your tv. You hired us because we said we’d Will be willing to come out and do it at an hourly rate, you know, like, so big difference there. Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool. Well, this is great.

Logan Shinholser
Is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you feel like you would be remiss if I didn’t bring it up?

Lynn
No, there is. I want to just reinforce the fine point because I. I feel like. And Barry and I’ve had these conversations over and over again. I feel like that what Barry has come up with is such a giant paradigm shift that it’s not just hard for other remodelers to. To wrap their brain around. It’s really Hard for the rest of the world to wrap their brain around because it’s been done one way for so long and now it’s just not done that way. And people are like, that just can’t be real. Right? It’s. I just want to get that point across that it’s real. They’re beautiful, custom kitchens. The people who go with us end up extremely happy. That’s. I just won’t get that point across because I feel like there’s a lot of people out there who just don’t believe it’s real.

Lynn
That it can really happen. That we’re going to do a bait and switch. Oh, it’s seven days now. We didn’t mean that. It’s actually four weeks. When we say seven days, it’s seven days. Look at our Google reviews. They’re five star reviews. We’re going to come in if we think you will not give us a five star Google review. We haven’t done our job. We need to do something else. Right. That’s the kind of work and commitment we have. The kind of working commitment the team has. That’s what everybody’s working towards. So that’s all I want to say.

Logan Shinholser
That’s cool. It’s probably the first time that like, you know, Henry Ford goes, we can make this assembly line thing a real thing. We could build a car where it’s not custom every time. Or like the bath fitters, you know, when they first came out. Now, different demographic, different model, of course, but. Yeah, but same premise is that. And that was the big thing of like when you guys first came to us, it was always this sounds great. Assume that we can do it. We still gotta show people like what you’re gonna get, you know, so it’s not like this grandma’s aging in place kitchen. It’s a great kitchen. But it’s also, these are some of the mechanisms, if you will, to then be able to prove, look, we will do these things along the way.

Logan Shinholser
We have a project manager that is gonna camp out at your job site, you know, like, know. So it’s like, it’s basically just dispelling all of this stuff. Because when you, when I think of Kitchen Seven Days, I think cheap, not custom, right? Cosmetic lolium, you know, like I’m hitting all like the negative buzzwords when that’s not what you do at all. So a lot of it’s just, let’s prove it. It’s, it’s, you know, you could lose weight, you lose 30 pounds in a week and you’re like, okay, well, I just gotta, you know, I gotta get a stomach flu, and that’s how I do. That’s not what you want, so.

Lynn
Right, right.

Logan Shinholser
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Barry Gant
Well, cool.

Logan Shinholser
Well, gentlemen, I appreciate you guys coming in. This is really cool. Yeah, this is awesome. Thank you, guys.