Ever wondered how a man with international roots finds his heartbeat hammering away in the Central Texas shed industry? Mark Miller's tale is one of true grit, sawdust dreams, and the entrepreneurial spirit. Joined by the sales savant, Travis Beachy of Farm + Yard, this episode of Shed Geek Podcast is a melting pot of professional evolution stories, strategies for conquering the social media landscape, and the intricate dance of business and family life that entrepreneurs know all too well. We're not just sharing anecdotes; we're handing you the blueprint to thriving in the dynamic world of shed manufacturing.
As we venture south, the conversation takes a turn towards the challenges of expanding horizons to El Salvador. Setting up shop amidst language barriers and cultural nuances, we dissect the art of sales in unfamiliar waters. But it's not all business talk – we get into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to make a product as simple as a shed a cornerstone of a customer's contentment. Our discussion pivots around the sort of product knowledge that could either seal the deal or leave it hanging in the balance, along with the delicate art of fostering relationships with dealers who are the lifeblood of any thriving manufacturing enterprise.
Wrapping things up, we're casting an eye towards the horizon, contemplating the future of the shed industry and our own business ventures. Growth, saturation, and the relentless push to excel, don't just pepper our conversation; they're the main course. It's about recognizing choice, embracing prayer, and the camaraderie that only comes from breaking bread together. So, if you've got a minute to sit back and listen, we've got stories that are sure to resonate with the craftsman, the visionary, and the entrepreneur in you. Join me, Mark, and Travis, for an exploration of choice, prayer, and the shared journey towards success one shed at a time.
Also, find out how the podcast can be heard throughout the plain communities by dialing the number 330-997-3055. If the number is busy, just dial again!
For more information or to know more about the Shed Geek Podcast visit us at our website.
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube at the handle @shedgeekpodcast.
To be a guest on the Shed Geek Podcast visit our website and fill out the "Contact Us" form.
To suggest show topics or ask questions you want answered email us at info@shedgeek.com.
This episodes Sponsors:
Studio Sponsor: Union Grove Lumber
Shed Hub
Luxguard
CAL
Digital Shed Builder
Ever wondered how a man with international roots finds his heartbeat hammering away in the Central Texas shed industry? Mark Miller's tale is one of true grit, sawdust dreams, and the entrepreneurial spirit. Joined by the sales savant, Travis Beachy of Farm + Yard, this episode of Shed Geek Podcast is a melting pot of professional evolution stories, strategies for conquering the social media landscape, and the intricate dance of business and family life that entrepreneurs know all too well. We're not just sharing anecdotes; we're handing you the blueprint to thriving in the dynamic world of shed manufacturing.
As we venture south, the conversation takes a turn towards the challenges of expanding horizons to El Salvador. Setting up shop amidst language barriers and cultural nuances, we dissect the art of sales in unfamiliar waters. But it's not all business talk – we get into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to make a product as simple as a shed a cornerstone of a customer's contentment. Our discussion pivots around the sort of product knowledge that could either seal the deal or leave it hanging in the balance, along with the delicate art of fostering relationships with dealers who are the lifeblood of any thriving manufacturing enterprise.
Wrapping things up, we're casting an eye towards the horizon, contemplating the future of the shed industry and our own business ventures. Growth, saturation, and the relentless push to excel, don't just pepper our conversation; they're the main course. It's about recognizing choice, embracing prayer, and the camaraderie that only comes from breaking bread together. So, if you've got a minute to sit back and listen, we've got stories that are sure to resonate with the craftsman, the visionary, and the entrepreneur in you. Join me, Mark, and Travis, for an exploration of choice, prayer, and the shared journey towards success one shed at a time.
Also, find out how the podcast can be heard throughout the plain communities by dialing the number 330-997-3055. If the number is busy, just dial again!
For more information or to know more about the Shed Geek Podcast visit us at our website.
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube at the handle @shedgeekpodcast.
To be a guest on the Shed Geek Podcast visit our website and fill out the "Contact Us" form.
To suggest show topics or ask questions you want answered email us at info@shedgeek.com.
This episodes Sponsors:
Studio Sponsor: Union Grove Lumber
Shed Hub
Luxguard
CAL
Digital Shed Builder
All right, welcome back to another episode of the shed geek podcast here in deep Texas. Hey, I asked somebody else to do a yeehaw, is that? It Is that appropriate? You guys? Yeehaw guys.
TRAVIS BEACHY:I mean we don't, but you know, people, that people from outside of Texas come in and make some feel good, so go ahead and let her rip, Shannon, I think.
SHED GEEK:I love your spin, I love what you did there.
TRAVIS BEACHY:You're a pretty good sales guy, you know, we in Mark, we in mark probably would say yeehaw.
SHED GEEK:I will do a yeehaw because it's a really good suggestion, Travis, but I got to tell you, as an out of stator, I'm not really familiar with how they sound, but if you'll give me some guides to go off of, oh, I see what you're doing there.
TRAVIS BEACHY:All right, baby Three, two, one, yeehaw.
SHED GEEK:I like it. Well, I imagine Texans are like all these silly Northerners coming down here, Always wanting us to do these Texas things like yeehaw gets owed, but I guess it's just the status quo.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Well, your plates aren't from California, right, Mark? As long as their plates aren't from California, we're fine, okay, I got you.
SHED GEEK:I bet you're getting a lot of transplants coming in.
MARK MILLER:How we do get a good number of those, yeah, so let's, let's start over here.
SHED GEEK:Mark, you want to introduce yourself, your business a little bit about who you are and what you do, sir.
MARK MILLER:Yes, I'm Mark Miller from here Lott, Texas, owner of Sunview Builders. We build mostly metal siting storage buildings, greenhouses, horse barns, chicken coops, that kind of thing, and you know we deliver throughout all of central Texas, perfect.
SHED GEEK:Yeah, lot, texas, I love it down here. It's a I don't know, it's my third or fourth time, I think, being down here. The other voice on here you guys may recognize for those of you who are watching.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Sorry about your luck today, guys. Me again, Margaret.
SHED GEEK:But for those of you who are listening, this is the, the trustee. I don't even know what we would say like co-host, occasional co-host, what you do here, but it's, it's a much appreciated and you always add value to the show. And when we're in Texas, why would I not reach out to Travis Beachy and have him on the show? But you can still do a formality. If you want Introduce yourself, it's always fun to be on the show.
TRAVIS BEACHY:It's always fun to chat it up, you know. I mean we literally just got done talking for like two hours before we got on here. So sometimes me and Shannon get on the phone and we're like man, we should have threw a mic on that conversation. But you know, you're all just oh, it's always great conversation. Excited to chat with Mark today. Mark builds the metal. We sell the metal sheds that Mark builds. We're one of their retail partners the greenhouses, the loafing sheds our clients love. So Mark's are awesome dude to work with and love what he's done here with Sunview. You know he's really poured his heart and soul into it. So excited for you guys to hear his story a little bit more. But yeah, we I own Farman Yard, my wife and I own Farman Yard just up the road from here in Robinson been doing that since 2016 and we're a we're a sales and retail outlet, so we don't manufacture anything. We work with some great partners and we are. All we do all day, every day, is sales, marketing and design.
SHED GEEK:Yeah, that's awesome. Retail Do a great job too. Like you've got like a really strong social media presence and like I don't know. I just feel like that's awesome and it's just almost necessary in today's landscape.
TRAVIS BEACHY:It is, it is so yeah, thankfully for me, I enjoy it there's. You know, not everybody enjoys it. Other people are stronger in other parts of the business and I guess I got lucky that I enjoy that part. You know, I have been in the, you know, delivery side of things, a manufacturing side of things, the delivery side of things. Man and Mark, I know you you've delivered sheds before and I'm curious. I want to ask you then how you, how you're liking this role compared to delivery. But, man, delivery is not for me.
TRAVIS BEACHY:The delivery side of the things is not for me. Manufacturing would probably be second on my list, but the sales and marketing side of the industry is definitely number one for me. I enjoy that part of the industry the most.
SHED GEEK:Yeah, those shed holders work just every day, all day. So, mark, let's, let's start from the beginning. Tell me your story, man. How did you come across sheds where you just a starry eyed, a 10 year old saying I want to build sheds when I grow up for for living, or how did it happen?
MARK MILLER:Now I, for the most part I mean many, many years I knew nothing about the shed industry. I was born in Honduras, spent my first eight years of my life there, then we lived for four years in Tennessee before moving back down to Nicaragua and I lived 13 years there. That's where I got married. My wife is from there and I moved back here to Lot, texas, when I was 25 years old and came here working at Sunview Builders working for my brother-in-law building sheds, and so that that's kind of where where I got into it, and since 2011, for the most part, I've been.
MARK MILLER:I've been in the shed industry. I've I've dabbled in about every aspect of it. I built here for a while. I did some deliveries, then went to work for another company where I worked in the office. I did purchasing, I did driver management and learned a lot more of the administration part of of the shed business. During that time, I also owned two of the delivery trucks working for that same company, and so I didn't do as many of the deliveries myself, but I owned trucks that were doing the deliveries and I had two drivers working for me. So you know, it's just been involved in almost every aspect. So when I came back here to work for my brother-in-law again, you know, I felt a little bit more equipped to look at the whole, you know, manage the whole thing, because I had gotten a lot of experience in basic, every aspect of it.
SHED GEEK:A purchasing side man. That is a. That's a beast. That's where I started and yeah, there's a lot to it. There's a lot that people don't realize, I think, especially at the larger the company gets, the more, the more intense it gets. Ironically, one of my friends is over. You know transportation so I was looking to move into that department. Back when I got started, you know I said that was my introduction to the shed industry. We always saw them growing up. You know they were around. But to know the details and the inner details and like how to operate, it becomes a whole new beast. Yeah, and and yeah, you learn a lot just sitting there purchasing and doing like the transportation stuff. There's a lot to it. So now you guys do metal buildings. You got this beautiful shop here. Yeah, I'm kind of curious that, like what's it? What's it been like? What's the experience been like? If you had to, if you had to explain to somebody on a podcast that was listening, what would you tell them? Your experience has been jumping into the shed business.
MARK MILLER:So for me, you know, right here, building just metal siting sheds, it's been a little bit simpler, you know, sticking to one line like that, not having to deal with, you know, the paint bay and then roofing. You know more, more a three step process of it. So that that has been we. We initially we we had a lot smaller shop and so it was, we didn't have much room to move around, and so that that that was what we did and and I've kind of stuck with that up till now and I really I've been blessed to have this opportunity because, you know, some things happened through the years and we had been on the mission field for two years, from 2018 to 2020, in El Salvador, and so, coming back from then there, I ended up over COVID, some things that happened with the business I had going, and so I ended up having to start over and my brother-in-law gave me the opportunity to start here with him back in the beginning of 21. And it's it's been, it's been a very, very good opportunity I've had so far. Nice.
TRAVIS BEACHY:What I gotta say. I mean, you know, opportunities are all what we make of them. You know, and I you know we had been working with your brother-in-law before you came on board and I mean you really, you really just dug in and and I feel like you're doing a good job, making the most of the opportunity. So cheers to you on that. Appreciate that.
SHED GEEK:But you know he mentioned something too. You know, if you really think about the dynamic of it, he's not like not doing wood buildings. So the process is could be a little simpler. But then when you think about all the things that surround itself with that, the shed industry has gotten big right. So it's like painted buildings, wood buildings, but then post frame and then how they almost cross path with like carports and like how does the public view a steel square tube garage that's on site built versus a platform that's movable and supportable? But the public doesn't really notice a lot of that as much. They just kind of see buildings. You know we internalize that in the shed industry, but I've heard people call like po-barn sheds.
MARK MILLER:Yeah.
SHED GEEK:So, like, sometimes we'll limit ourselves in our, in our terminology or whatever. But like, how does that give you, like, different growth opportunity If you're doing metal? Like maybe you have one here. But like, do you, do you bend the metal, do you bring the coils in? Are you interested in like going to that level? What? What's your thoughts for future growth?
MARK MILLER:So right now our volume doesn't support going into that part of it as much, so we buy all our metal from a local supplier, gotcha. One of the things I have noticed here in Texas you have a lot of people go with steel structures and so Steel's big here. Steel is big and so I see an opportunity there. Most other manufacturers. They build wooden buildings and then on the side they do a- Add-on.
TRAVIS BEACHY:It's an add-on product. It's an add-on product.
MARK MILLER:They have a couple not as much of their main offering, and so it's mostly just and if you look at most of the manufacturers, it's the economy, metal shed, that's what most companies offer, and so for us, we're offering that as our main product and trying to target that market of people that want it to match their steel structure shed and you know barn dominiums and stuff like that that people are doing. A metal shed goes right along with that.
SHED GEEK:For sure. It seems big, doesn't it anymore? The barn does like. You just hear it more and more often, and I bet in Texas, where everything's bigger, you probably got guys down here that want to do that. So what do you do with the metal buildings? You guys go up to large sizes like are they odd sizes compared to much of the country?
MARK MILLER:No, we go our largest that we have done right now is up to a 16 by 52. So we go 8 by 8 all the way up to 16 by 52, you know any size in between there.
TRAVIS BEACHY:What are some challenges with that market building. You know a metal building that big with loading, unloading off the trucks you got to worry about the metal crinkling. You have to reinforce a building differently than the wood painted shed guys.
MARK MILLER:Yeah, we do so. There is a little bit more to where the, as you pick it up from one end it will want to crinkle the metal a little bit. We combat that by, on the larger buildings we go and we put a strip of just well, we use our flooring. So we don't normally have OSB because we don't use it in any of our building product.
MARK MILLER:You know we're not- Just doing a Perlin Perlin's on the rafters, perlin's on the rafters, so we're not using OSB, so we just use our flooring, prostruct flooring, and we cut a two foot strip of that and we put that on the wall on the bottom side. Since we have Perlin's going horizontally, it fits right in between there and that gives us the added strength on the bigger building to prevent that crinkling like that.
SHED GEEK:Very neat. How do you negotiate that as a manufacturer, figuring out your builds Like do you work with engineers? Is this something that you do internally? Is this something you just learned over time how to do? How does that process come about on like creating the actual design?
MARK MILLER:Mostly that is just we've learned and we've done, and trial and error more than anything.
TRAVIS BEACHY:One day you take a building out and that sucker's crinkling up the metal and you gotta do a repair and you're said, boy, we're gonna do something different, we're gonna do something different, we're gonna do something different.
SHED GEEK:We're gonna figure something out. Yeah that makes a lot of sense. Yeah Well, I think trial and error is the. It's the best teacher, isn't it Like that experience that you get in any capacity?
MARK MILLER:that's the way you learn, and it can be costly unfortunately I don't know if it's a Mennonite or whatever, but if at first you don't succeed, then get out the instruction manual, right, yeah? So you try everything first, before you go to anything like that.
TRAVIS BEACHY:It might just be a guy thing here.
SHED GEEK:Whatcha do sitting around here. I think that's a guy thing.
TRAVIS BEACHY:All the ladies that are listening are like yeah, you know, if you guys just read the instructions.
SHED GEEK:Well, that's what we do at my house. If we get something that has instructions, I immediately am like just let me just stay here until she starts reading it. Yeah, because it's like foreign language for me. I'm like I'm just gonna start look, there's enough things here to screw together. I'm gonna start putting stuff together. Yeah, We'll figure it out. Yeah, Mark, what's?
TRAVIS BEACHY:been the did you have another talk.
TRAVIS BEACHY:No, no no, go ahead, Go for it. You know, talk to there's a segment of people out there that might be listening that might be where you were a couple years ago where they have some other experiences in the industry. Maybe they've sold sheds before, they've hauled before and they're really contemplating making that jump into manufacturing. They wanna manufacture their own line of sheds. It's a scary thing, yeah, scary thing big investment, lot of risk. What's some tips? What's one thing that you look back and you're like man that really helped me go for it, or what's some things that you could share with that person?
MARK MILLER:It is a big step. You know, when you deliver a shed, you have one job you deliver that shed. When you're in charge of purchasing, you're in charge of purchasing, but I'm a one man shop. I've, for the most part, here in the office, I do have someone that helps me now with marketing and doing sales here in the office and I do have a separate sales team apart from that. But everything else I'm in charge of everything. So I'm in charge of purchasing, I'm in charge of sales, you know handling customer complaints, handling repairs, all of that and you get into it and you find out there's a lot of moving parts to it, and so that's one thing to keep in mind. You know if you're, if you've done one part of it, and I've heard it recently, I think, on another episode of this about somebody saying oh well, you know the salespeople, they just sit at the lot all day, and you know they're making the big bucks.
MARK MILLER:And so you know, travis, here he's making the big bucks and the delivery guy, like he's, he's out there you know, the drivers are always showing off how much money they're making with their trucks.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Well, yeah, they're making it in, they're making all the money.
MARK MILLER:Maybe I can get out there to truck, but you're only looking at one aspect of it. Now, as as an, as an owner, you have to kind of pull everything, and so it does. It does take a little bit. So I mean one thing I will say you know, my wife has supported me in this and you know, having someone behind you say, you know, I support you, let's do this. This is for the family, this is for the dreams we have.
MARK MILLER:This is for you know it takes a lot of dedication. You know, when I work for somebody else, my hours were eight to five.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Yeah, say goodbye to that when you're in your own business. Oh, man. These are over.
MARK MILLER:Now, you know I'll show up, sometimes at five o'clock and I've got things I've got to do, I got. I've got taxes to file, I've got a payroll to run, I've got. You know all all that and so, and then you know my wife's waiting for me for dinner at six 30, like why haven't you showed up yet? You know, there's, there's, there's a lot of that that goes into it that you don't think about when you're just paid to do one job.
SHED GEEK:Yeah, man, that's, that's really good word. Anybody who's ever worked a job is like hey, I clocked out, I'm going for the weekend. We're like I don't know when I'm working and not working.
SHED GEEK:Like a lot of times it can become a bit of a conflict because you're like man, am I? A lot of times I feel like I'm just socializing or being friends with someone and then I realized maybe I am working or there's an aspect of work that I'm I'm doing here and I don't know how you break that down. But you wear a lot of hats as a business owner and if you're trying to, if you're trying to scale, you have to start putting your trust into others to do that work. And let's just be honest, they may get away from your vision, they may not do things like you do things and the vision you know gets, gets lost a little bit as you grow and hire those people into those different positions. So there's a lot to consider.
MARK MILLER:Yeah, you know, I don't consider myself a salesperson. I. I would say I would say I hate sales, but I I have to sell sheds in order to build them. So that that was one of the first things here. You know, at first I was doing all the selling. We had some, some dealer locations, but doing that and you need to do marketing, of which I knew nothing.
MARK MILLER:Well, I thought I knew something, but find out how little you actually know, and so so I've had to work through a lot of that and learn a lot of that, and you know that's taken, that's taken a lot. You know getting into that and and learning what it takes, learning different systems, learning, learning how, how to motivate other people. So at this point I've we've narrowed it down to mostly just farm and yard as an outside sales location. I do have some others that we build wholesale for and they buy them wholesale. They, they take care of the sales, the delivery and all that on their own. Um, but other than that we've been doing. We've been doing it, uh, in a different way. I've started a second company called Sheds marketplace and that is for the online sales, and so for that, um, I've, I've, actually I have, I have a team of people helping me with that.
SHED GEEK:Tell us more about that, mark.
MARK MILLER:So this goes back to you know, when we were on the mission field in El Salvador in 2018-2020, and kind of where some of this started. I have family there as well. My oldest brother lives there. He's been living in El Salvador for the last 20-20 some years, and so my oldest nephew is there, and when we started this, I looked at him and said, hey, do you want to learn how to sell sheds? Like, I don't know, but we can learn together. And so we started that, and so part of what we've done, beginning of last year, we were right out of the year now that we opened up an office in El Salvador, and so I have hired. Now we're going to have one, two, three, four people working for me in El Salvador.
MARK MILLER:Very neat All English-speaking people, that's. You know, there was some trial and error there with some people that I had hired initially that ended up figuring out that, you know, the level of English is very important when speaking to customers, and so that's something we've worked on and I feel very good with the team we have now and so growing that is a big part of where it's going to be the future for our company here is growing that aspect of the sales, the online sales that's awesome.
SHED GEEK:And you said trial and error, you know I mean yet again it becomes a real process as you're setting up processes and systems to try and figure it out Absolutely. And I appreciate some of the things you said there. You said you know, as Travis said, to have the self-awareness to say wait a minute, maybe I'm not the sales guy for the company and I recognize my deficiencies there, so am I going to work on those? Or am I going to bring someone in to establish how important has that process played for you as it been more beneficial? And if you're not the sales guy but you own the company, how do you, how do you negotiate that with a sales guy, like, does he come in and say, hey, I'm calling the shots, and you're like, no, you're not, but you are, but you are here to help me with sales? Like, how do you, how do you work that relationship?
MARK MILLER:So that that has taken some. We've gotten some, some sales training and sales coaching and I am on those calls with with my team almost every week. And since I'm not selling as much, you know I'm not practicing what we're learning every day, but yet I'm, I'm taking in most of the same content that they are. So, you know, I say I don't know how to do it, but I know how to tell you how to do it.
TRAVIS BEACHY:I know how to hold you accountable.
MARK MILLER:And so that I just spent all of last week in El Salvador with my, with my team down there. You know going over certain processes, correcting some things, you know motivating them and looking at how certain things are done, and and you know, hey, I think here you need to make a make, a change. You know tweaking some of that Because, yeah, I mean, they get, they'll get carried away on on their own way of doing things and stuff like that. And I'm like I'm not going to. If I start trying to role play with you, you're going to beat me because I'm I'm going to be at loss because I'm not doing it every day, but yet when I'm listening to you do it, then you know I like, hey, you should have done a little bit different here, you should have asked a different question here. So those, those are kind of things that that you learn even if you don't practice them every day. So you know, I can still tell them what to do. Well, you are son of their chef, right? Yeah?
TRAVIS BEACHY:I do so tell me about how that, you know. Just let's go into a little bit of sales talk here for the salespeople that are listening. Tell me how that goes. How are these people? I mean, they're in El Salvador, obviously. They're not taking walk-in customers, it's all online leads. What does that? What does that flow look like? How are you getting the leads? What are they? How are they contacting the customer? Are they? Is it all? Text message, email, phone call? You know what are they doing with. The customer says hey, can you come out and look at my property? Hey, can I come by and look at some sheds where you located? Walk us through that.
MARK MILLER:Yeah, so so there, there's some challenges with that. Absolutely, because it's not like when you have the customer right in front of you. So the one thing is the processes to make sure that you can get a quote to the customer easily, you can get them to sign the document easily, you can collect their down payment easily. Those are all things that that you have to ensure you have a good flow to it to not make it too difficult for the customer on that part. But for you know, as far as getting leads, we do Google ads, facebook ads, and we collect a lot of those leads both on on Facebook directly or through our website, and so that's how most of that comes in. And then we do.
MARK MILLER:We do texting, calling, email. You know that has been one of the things trying to figure out a phone service that texts well, where you can share images easily, a lot of that, trying to integrate it with the CRM and trying to find something that works all together. I mean, I've, I've, I spent too many hours working on on that and it's still not exactly where I want it to be as far as integrating and having all that information everywhere. But yeah, texting has been one of the number one things that you have to have, because there are customers that have never answered the phone right but they purchased shed. Yeah, oh yeah, you, you have those kind of customers, and so there's just a lot of. You know, you do have to have certain things available. You can't. You have to be able to meet the customer where they want to be met.
TRAVIS BEACHY:That's a word right there, that's a hundred percent.
SHED GEEK:Yeah, it's just just getting ready to ask the question. Do you think that sometimes it's hard for some folks to overcome? I find it to be twofold. I'd be curious to you guys's thoughts. I find, like, when we've discussed these topics sales and marketing with people, I think that one approach that we've taken is to become educators. To say, spend more time on a customer acquisition, because it's worth it to educate, because some people just aren't comfortable asking questions or don't want to feel dumb, are they?
TRAVIS BEACHY:Because, if they don't know About a shed customer. Yeah, yeah.
SHED GEEK:Yeah, and for me it's more B2B, so like if we're, if we're talking, I'll use marketing.
TRAVIS BEACHY:I mean, I hate to do plugs all the time in every episode, but yeah, do not plug your own business on your own show, shannon, let's not do that. I just don't want to.
SHED GEEK:I just don't want to overwhelm people with it constantly. But my thoughts is like yeah, we want to spend the time to educate Because I think you have to meet people where they are and, like you said, Mark you might not.
SHED GEEK:you might not know what to ask sometimes. So we just want to create environment where somebody says you know, ask how you know to say it. Yeah, you know. I like to use a biblical analogy here. I heard my pastor one time say sometimes I don't know what to say to the Lord and he said I said all I can do is cry. And he said it's good because the Holy Spirit could discern your tears.
TRAVIS BEACHY:And I was like whoa that changed my life.
SHED GEEK:Yeah, Cause I was like I don't know what to say, Like with my words that they're not enough. Well, sometimes it's that way. Just in not understanding something I don't know about mechanics, my dad can take a transmission apart and put it together, but if I had to explain it I'd be like the do Hickey on the thing of a jig. Where does it? How does?
MARK MILLER:that go.
SHED GEEK:Yeah, yeah. So like I have to meet him where I am on, his understanding of it is far superior, and I think it's that way with shed sales, marketing, you name it, whatever it is.
MARK MILLER:I mean I think you just kind of meet the person where they are, yeah, and that creates it and going to the rest of your question, you know some customers are not comfortable just completely over the phone, and so they want some documentation of the conversation in Texas what you're talking about or no, they want to see the sheds.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Oh, I see.
MARK MILLER:I see what you said they want to see the sheds. So we we do have that where the guys say, hey, I've got a customer, but they really want to see the sheds. I've given them the address they're going to show up, and so we have that collaboration between the sales team and us here at the shop to where they'll send a customer. And sometimes all the customer needs is to come here, oh, look around. They're like oh, yeah, you know, I'm ready to. Here's my card, you know, and sometimes it's just a little bit of that they, they, they're, you know, with all the scams, comfort level scams and stuff going going on over the phone, they want to be sure that they're speaking to, to somebody that's not going to scam them.
TRAVIS BEACHY:That is an actual business.
MARK MILLER:So some of that we do have to work. People will come here see the sheds and finish their transaction here, or even sometimes recently I had to be an Austin customer just absolutely talked with him many times but he just wasn't sure about pulling the trigger. He knew he could probably fit a certain size in, but he really wanted another size, and how could we do it, and and all that kind of stuff. And all it took was for me to show up To his house and measure and say, okay, you can do this and this here. And he's like Okay, well, actually he did say he wanted to see the Sheds yet, so then he drove here after I showed him what yeah what he could get down there.
MARK MILLER:Then he drove up here. He's like here's my check.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Yeah, you know, yeah, like I really see those people out there. Austin's an hour and a half away from where mark is right now.
SHED GEEK:Don't be afraid to get in that truck and go close the deal if you need to yeah, absolutely yeah, a lot, of, a lot of value there and go and meet the customer. And not only that. Sometimes you kill a couple birds with one stone, right like you can see that they didn't consider that 14 wide won't fit there, yeah, you know, or you can't get it in with the mule or something. So a lot of times there's a lot of value that you save a lot of struggle for your driver well, and we ended up upselling the customer because I went there, right I?
MARK MILLER:was gonna say yeah because, you know, I went there and he was like I think I'm gonna be able to get an 8 by 20 in here. And then I start measuring and I'm like let's measure here from your, your overhang of Europe. Oh, I hadn't thought about that. He was measuring here. And then he was. He was worried about his air conditioner, but his overhang was actually creating a bigger problem than that. So we ended up selling him an onsite build A 10 by 20 instead of an 8 by 20 Beautiful and so you able to.
MARK MILLER:It was. It was more in line with what he wanted, but he wasn't sure that everything would work out. And so by it, by going there and measuring and showing him where and how, and everything then larger ticket item, larger ticket Guys, and he was happier. He was happier.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Absolutely. Yeah, it's beautiful. What's?
SHED GEEK:your advice to a?
TRAVIS BEACHY:dealer who says I don't know.
SHED GEEK:I was approached to sell these sheds. They brought me a bunch of sheds. I got some Marginal training, some some minimalistic training. No, we could say probably go further on that. I'm just trying to be.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Experience here, baby.
SHED GEEK:Assuming that they don't receive much and they say, hey, I'm just gonna sell what walks in the door, I'm not super excited about Learning more. What would you say to that dealer?
MARK MILLER:You know You're supposed to be the expert. You need to know all there is to know about Sheds. And I'll tell customers I don't think my product is a good fit for you, because I know you're needing something else. And and and I'll be blunt and I'll Know I'd rather tell the customer that, because I know what they're looking for and I know my product is not gonna fit that and I'd rather do that. But you're the expert, you're the one that that can figure that out for the customer. You have to ask good questions so that you can give good answers. And then when you, when you know, but you need to know your product and and so much of it, and and this going back a number of years If you're competing, if you have a dealer that's competing against another dealer just up the street, chances is, the other dealer is not educated.
MARK MILLER:He might know About his sheds maybe, but when, when the customer shows up and you explain to them, you know we use this specific type of runners and this is why we use them. We use the specific floor, joist, and this is why we use them and we use this flooring because of it having this warranty. And you know, and you start explaining all of that you said, but up the road they didn't even explain me any of this. Now you just create a whole bunch of value. That price doesn't matter anymore. Oh, because you created value in your product by explaining what it actually is.
MARK MILLER:Yeah, education the education and and now they're more likely to buy from you because you knew what your product actually is, instead of just saying, well, it's a shed, it's a 10 by 20 and I don't know what warranted does that? Oh, I think the company offers three year warranty. Five year warranty? Oh, what about this material? It looks solid. I stomped on it and my foot didn't go through. You know. You know that does not create any value. That's right. But when you know everything about your product, your customer is going to get a lot there in their mind it's going to be a lot more valuable Because you know what you're selling.
SHED GEEK:We had a sales guy that worked for us one time. He was a young guy and I thought it was very clever. His line was the same thing every time whenever somebody showed up, he would just go out to greet him and he would say, looking for a shed? And they would be like, yeah, and he'd be like well. So let me ask you a question right off the bat Are you looking for just any of shed or are you looking for something that really stand up over time? This is real simple, yeah, really simple, because it started. It started like Creating the emotion in them to begin to think about budget without you asking a question even about budget, yeah it was like you just want to see just any old thing.
SHED GEEK:I mean, you're just looking for just any old thing or you want something that's you know that'll stand up a little bit more over time. They're always going to answer I want something that's going to stand up more over time. I always want quality. They also want lower price. Right, they always want lower price. But you'll never have anybody say charge me more and take some of those two by fours out of there, if you would, because I don't need all that.
SHED GEEK:It's a natural thing for people. So it's just in the questions that you asked to get them prepared.
MARK MILLER:Absolutely.
SHED GEEK:I'm curious in your, in your, like, the way that you're doing things with your, the folks that you've employed, is that? Is that scalable? Is that something you want to scale? Is that something that you want to do more of? You want you want people calling you and saying hey, mark, we want to talk with you about this idea, are. Do you welcome that?
MARK MILLER:Absolutely, absolutely. You know that that's one thing that's kind of the long-term vision on that is, you know, being able to provide that service to other companies. You know, when, when I started here in 22 well, would have been back in 21 when it, when it, when I started managing the company here and Looking at trying to figure out the marketing aspect and how to grow and and how to do these online sales, I Struggle so much I not knowing how and the processes and and it's it's taken me, it's taking me so much and and I would, we had a small company and so it was just, it was difficult. I didn't have somebody to handle marketing, I didn't have somebody to that, that a sales director, you know. And so that to me, for a small company, is extremely difficult to get started and to set up that team, whether it's the training, whether any it the whole process that goes through there.
MARK MILLER:It's very difficult for a small one-man shop to get started, you know, and so that is something that that's kind of kind of stuck with me. And you know if there are other companies out there that are like you know, we would like to have some more sales but don't necessarily want to go out and just set up a whole bunch of lots, but we, we, we want to stick to manufacturing, because handling dealers is a whole other, that's a whole other thing, and so that that is something that that we would like to to grow with time is grow with with other manufacturers as well so if somebody does want to know how to get out of you, you want to throw some an email out, or owner, whatever, I mean.
MARK MILLER:I hope they give you a call, man yeah, yeah, my phone number is a two, five, four, four, zero, one, zero, zero, two, zero. That's my direct number. You can shoot me a text or or call me, and my email is Marcos M-A-R-C-O-S at Sheds marketplace dot com.
SHED GEEK:Perfect, nice. Maybe we can throw some of that stuff in somewhere, but for sure figure it out.
TRAVIS BEACHY:I think it's an interesting proposition when you think about wanting to start manufacturing your own Sheds and and you can you could potentially hire someone for X amount of percentage to take care of your sales versus, you know, building 100 Sheds and putting them on five different lots. I know within a hundred mile radius.
SHED GEEK:You can save a lot of money and put it into your online leads and capturing those leads, versus putting it into hard inventory. Yeah, especially if you're selling mostly custom built Sheds, which you know what, that keeps your shop rolling too.
MARK MILLER:Yeah.
SHED GEEK:You know the more work you got coming in and start just inventory, so you kind of minimize your risk, I think to some extent. I feel like we've talked about this before, so we're not letting the cat out of the bag on this, but it seems very common. I mean to see this across. I've talked with so many Shed manufacturers and and none of them would would maybe say this to to hurt their base or their, their dealer network, but I think it's a very common statement. Maybe not with all. I've seen some exceptions to the rule, but to be like, hey say we got 15 dealers, 15 dealer network, or 30 or 45.
SHED GEEK:It seems pretty common that you always have like number one and two competing. You know, if you've got 15 of almost the there, there's some go getters and number one and number two is always in in competition. Or maybe this guy wins seven out of ten times, or this gal wins seven out of ten times and then you usually have, you know, the third through tenth dealer. They're always fairly interchangeable. Sell probably about the same amount. It's fairly interchangeable. Create about the same amount of energy, take up about the same amount of energy, require about the same amount of like work.
SHED GEEK:And then those last five are always kind of like hmm, we always need to be working on those.
SHED GEEK:They're underperforming, they're not bought into the vision, they don't see the value or whatever it is, and, and of those five, there's probably one or two. You you might, even should let go a long time ago that you just refuse to, because definitely I've noticed in the, in the, in a Baptist community this is something that I think is amazing. But they'll hold on longer, trying to see it as something more than business, that there's a, there's a relationship attached to it, and it's hard to to just in that relationship. So what they'll do is is hold on to it to the point where it costs them money or cost them patience or peace or whatever it is. So some of those guys will also fit this same mold where, say, seven out of those 15 sort of embrace the idea of online sales, whatever you want to call that e-commerce, online sales, marketing, all of these different things and maybe there's like six or seven of them that are like I, I do well without it.
MARK MILLER:Yeah, that's where this is a service that could come in and say I can serve that, radius, let's don't disrupt your seven that that do this, but but I can service the seven who don't maybe is that fair to say yeah, it can when, when you're working with, with dealers what one of the things that that has been my experience having dealers that that are very territorial and it can be, you know, oh, you know, travis and I, our locations are what? 15, 20 miles?
TRAVIS BEACHY:20 minutes apart. 20 minutes apart.
MARK MILLER:Yeah, travis has sold a shed right down here like a mile this way, a mile this way and a mile over this way yep and market.
TRAVIS BEACHY:So the market sold a shed to the fire station right beside. So but I love it, man, I mean it's. You know, yeah, you're like, I'm sure when Mark saw that he was like oh man, I wish we'd have gotten that. When we saw that he sold to the fire station, oh man, I wish we'd have gotten that one. But you know what merit, merit and actual sales, skill and talent. Let the chips fall where they may, let everybody play, put everybody on the field and let's see who the winners are yeah is a you know.
TRAVIS BEACHY:I think is a better way to run a business in this industry than to have everybody block off territory.
MARK MILLER:And then now you've got a territory blocked off to a guy who's selling $15,000 a month yeah, and you know the interesting part of it, most of those customers that you sold to right close, within a mile here, never stopped in to get a quote. Never stopped in. Yeah, and so you know, I know, I know, with the one right beside you, they had to get three quotes and they ended up I had sold them the first one that's right already a year or two prior, and so they came here first and then Lori.
SHED GEEK:Lori called me like hey, did you give them a?
MARK MILLER:good yeah, I didn't give them a quote, so we competed on that last one, but but honestly, you know it, it sometimes there's a customer that he might work in Waco, so for all I know, he's leaving here at six o'clock and I'm never open when he come by, yeah, and so he gets off on his lunchtime and he goes to see, see these guys. So you know, I don't know, was that maybe an online lead that that happened to see their social media and didn't see mine? You know a lot of that and we're not competing. No, we're not competing because I know there's sales out there for everybody and if we take that scenario and you know like, oh, you're gonna sell into my territory, man.
SHED GEEK:I feel like I see that a lot with like, with like companies, who there's almost not a synergy among their dealer network mm-hmm because they see themselves as competing with each other because of the territory yes but then, but then they almost are maybe more aggressive internally mm-hmm then they are with even other competitors of other buildings, which I would even go far beyond that and say you're selling storage. So arguably you're somewhat competing with, like the traditional like storage unit, oh yeah, many storage, you're not even really competing.
SHED GEEK:You know that's, that's the business you're trying to get.
MARK MILLER:But if you don't, if you don't get paid on that account, that seems to be the draw breaker, right or where, all of a sudden, it's like that's the line in the sand well, and and it comes back to you know, talking about knowing the value that you provide to the customer. So, even when you have, whether it's within the company or whether it's with your competition down the street, you know you have to. You have to differentiate yourself, yeah, and and you have to provide a service, and so you may not fit you, whether it's your personality. You came in, you talked to somebody and they did not like it. As simple as that sometimes.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Sometimes, I just didn't vibe with that salesperson as much as I did with the salesperson down there. It's literally that's what I like about, because God created us all unique and different. Yeah, and that is that's your edge, and I think we forget that in this industry a lot. We think, oh well, you know, I'm gonna start offering this, I'm gonna start off on that, I'm gonna do RTO with this company, I'm gonna do software with this company. That's gonna give me an edge. Or I'm gonna give discounts. I'm gonna give discounts, I'm gonna do, you know, three-day deliveries or whatever. Yeah, yeah, those things are all pieces of the pie, maybe, but man, it's you and it may be one thing that convinces that that customer to purchase.
SHED GEEK:But generally speaking, it's like you said, it's it's you like. By and large, you're gonna see more success on a large scale by just continuing effort, staying consistent you know, embracing, challenging yourself to be better, not, not, not challenging. You know the competition? Oh, I lost it because they offer financing. We don't offer financing, yeah, oh, I lost it because they've got we're going to be metal buildings.
SHED GEEK:I lost it because we're too expensive. I lost it because I don't have the support from my network, you know, but but ultimately it's you, it's you and that that customer, and if you're hungry, you'll find a way to close. It's an interesting dynamic. It really is. I mean, these companies could invest all of their time, effort and maybe even money mark into a system where they capture all the online sales and the dealer network only becomes for walk-ins, right, and they and I noticed that a lot of them don't do that, they really appreciate their dealer network and they say, hey, we're not. We will even take the leads that we get you and we'll disperse them to the appropriate location. And I've noticed even some dealers still yet don't embrace that because maybe it's not a primary income forum or yeah, I don't know.
SHED GEEK:I feel like this conversation could go on for a long time and we're probably going to have to wrap up pretty soon, but we should do a part two on that specific. We need to really dive into that a little bit deeper. Why do some companies? What are they supposed to do when they get these leads and they send those leads over to a dealer and the dealer is uninterested in nurturing them? What are you supposed to do as a manufacturer if they don't embrace?
MARK MILLER:How do you hold them responsible to do the follow-up? How do you teach them to your sales process and to do it in a certain way? When it's just a dealer, it's not an employee my employees I can tell them look, you have to train this much. You're going to do it this way. This is your script. This is how you're going to present the product. This is how we do it with the dealers. It's a lot more difficult.
MARK MILLER:Recently I spoke with a manufacturer in Indiana and I asked him because this is one of the conversations I have when I speak with a manufacturer is what's your contract with your dealers? Because that's the first thing, because I've had some manufacturers like we can't because we have exclusive, so you're not going to be able to sell into within 15 miles of wherever we have a dealer location. And I'm like, well, that's kind of difficult because I never know where my lead's going to come from and so I don't want to be spending ad money to get these leads. And then I end up having to give the commission to that dealer just because it has a location there. And so he said I don't play favorites with anybody. Whoever puts in the work gets the commission. He might talk to three of my dealers and whoever is the one that's able to convince them to buy it, that's the person that gets the commission.
SHED GEEK:Very capitalistic approach. Very, you put in the work, you get the reward.
MARK MILLER:And so it doesn't matter whether it's in one territory or the other. If we can partner with someone like that, we're not out there to compete. This scenario with Travis. We don't compete with each other, our pricing sometimes. Sometimes he might sell it more expensive. Recently I've done some to where I think he's gotten some quotes out cheaper than what we have. But we're not competing, we're just selling a product to whoever we can.
SHED GEEK:I want to interject there and even add Even if you are competing, I know there's a lot of talk of collaboration and we should do those things. We've done those, some of those things ourselves. But if Travis was competing with you and doing a better job, it does make you internally reflect your own systems and processes and get better.
MARK MILLER:And.
SHED GEEK:I've noticed that there's. I'll go this far to say this and don't think I'll get in too much trouble but I've noticed there's some established, there's almost a gatekeepers I've heard I've heard that term used. There's gatekeepers, right, there's like there's the establishment who says this is the way it is, we built a business off of this. You're interrupting that up. I've even gotten some pretty I don't know interesting comebacks for just creating conversation about education on the podcast. I've even had people you know to me personally, either email or or, or through the room or mail whatever you want to look at it and say, say you know, like you know, just talking about that, just the fact that you talk about it, creates conflict.
SHED GEEK:Yeah Right, because if people aren't taking the time to educate themselves, you're, you're taking the time to do it. And I'm like, man, we're just having a conversation, you know, like that's it, we're. And if people benefit from that, I think a more educated person makes a better decision. So there is an, always will be. You know the aspect of trying to educate through conversation. I'm like no one can stop that. Like you, you should be able to sit down and have conversation. I mean, I tell them, like what did you know?
SHED GEEK:it sounds like book burning to me, like I'm going to sit down and have a conversation with whoever if they're willing to, because it creates in, in, in the spirit of cooperation and goodwill, it creates good thought and it makes us better. If you work, if you were, if you were competing with Travis and you're like man, he won that fire station contract because of some particular thing he did is tick tock, presence or whatever it is, or like he said.
MARK MILLER:He just I still get to build it though.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Yeah, mark wins either way. Mark wins either way.
SHED GEEK:You know, it's just one of those things that makes you, it makes you go back to the draw on board and and and sharpen your own skills. Yeah, and that's a good thing, yeah.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Yeah, I mean I would, I would say that, um, uh, I would say that you, uh, you know, try to treat other people the way you want to be treated in terms of like, if you have a relationship like me and Mark have, uh, you should do that anyway.
TRAVIS BEACHY:But I'm talking about, just specifically here, um and um. And yeah, there's, there's, just there's, there's plenty out there. And if you find, if you're listening to this, and you find yourself, um, trying to protect and put boundaries around and keep information and not wanting to have conversations, come out, just you know, ask yourself some questions about how effective that's been for you and how's that going, you know, and is that a good strategy, uh, for the next uh, five to 10 years? Because, uh, you know, the thing that I find the the most fascinating and the most comical about this industry is um, is when we don't have uh, or is, is when we, when we, when we think this one thing that we're not going to tell anybody- is our secret sauce to a $50 million company.
TRAVIS BEACHY:You know, there's just no secrets out there. There's no secrets really. I mean, we have the worldwide web at our fingertips. Um, if there's any secret in this industry, it's execution. How good can you execute on every day, showing up, day after day, whether the weather is nice, whether sales are good or sales are not good? How well can you execute in that? That's the secret sauce, if there is any secret sauce in this industry no way to improve on that man.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Side note, if you're. I don't know if this, I don't know if this sounds coming through, but I think we're loading up a shed out here. I don't know if you hear the mule in the background or the truck, but if you hear that, that's what's happening.
SHED GEEK:Come on, Mark, Are you really going to do business while we're doing a podcast? Gosh, I can't even believe it. How, how, how thoughtful. I'm just kidding. I think Mark took me serious. For a minute I was like I'm just kidding.
MARK MILLER:Don't tell him to stop working. I'm just looking to see which of our awesome drivers are out there. See who's out there. Yeah, yeah, I got you.
TRAVIS BEACHY:One thing, um, this comes up on the shed sales professional page, since we're, I mean, talking about sales here. Um, a lot of people get asked. A lot of people ask how you know, how are you paying your salespeople, or what's the best way to pay salespeople. What's your thoughts on that, mark? How do you pay your salespeople? Do you have any? Uh, have you tried different models? What's your preference? What are your thoughts on how salespeople should get paid in this industry?
MARK MILLER:Ooh, that's a that's a difficult one. So you know, here we're I'm I'm dealing with with the complete different, um, maybe a complete different problem than a lot of people here. Uh, because most of my sales guys are in a third world country. So you know I'm.
SHED GEEK:I'm.
MARK MILLER:I have salespeople that live in a country where the minimum wages $330 a month Wow, us dollars, us dollars. Wow, I'm not paying them that, you know I'm, I'm. I'm paying them quite a bit more. You know, el Salvador has a lot of call centers, and so that is a a big Interesting and it is, it is a big industry there and they do pay their. I lost a salesperson last week that he was going to come work for me and he's like man, my commissions are just too good over where, where, where.
MARK MILLER:I'm at because he's consistently, he's already doing fairly well with his commission. He's making over 1500 bucks a month and so he's like I don't want to go and startle. And so you know, I've had I've had guys uh making quite a bit more than that already. But there's that learning curve. He knows he's not going to come in and be making that first first month in and so he's like I got a family. So you know I'm working with with a base salary plus commission yet but it's, it's. It's a little bit different than what I would have to pay here, Gotcha.
SHED GEEK:That's awesome.
TRAVIS BEACHY:How do you feel like that's uh, uh, you know still that base salary plus commission. Do you deal with any kind of lack of motivation If it's not straight commission? Do you feel like that? Do you feel like that helps the team because it gives them some base and some some comfort as their, you know, comfort, if you want to use that word? How do you feel about that?
MARK MILLER:Yeah, for me, um, people, people and El Salvador, I couldn't. I could maybe get one every once in a while by going just straight commission, but for the most part the people, they've been grown up very poor, so they want that security Makes sense. And so at first I had set a base salary that was fairly decent, but it was still. I had a hard time hiring with that base salary because I thought you know, with commission we're going to still blow it out of the water, so I had to adjust that I had to adjust it, bring it up a little bit.
MARK MILLER:Bring it up a little bit more, just to bring it more in line to what people my living expenses are paid. Got you what you know. What I'm going to make on commission is going to help me buy a house, it's going to help me buy a vehicle, that kind of stuff, because because you know, they want that security.
SHED GEEK:There's almost a honeymoon period there. I think. A lot of times, even outside, even in the U S, with that base and commission, I think a lot of people like advocate for commission only and some people even want that only as they begin to do well. But I think sometimes there's a honeymoon period where you're learning the product, learning how to sell the product, and it just you just have to have a little bit of security, because if you went straight for commission, right out of the gate, well it's kind of like getting thrown to the sharks faster. Yeah, you just you just almost need some time to learn that product and if you're leaving a job and coming over, you definitely struggle with that. We found that to be very successful, offering a base plus salary. Yeah, it works really good. Guys, we're an hour in. We could have another hour conversation. Everybody always says how on earth can you talk for an hour? And I'm like man, how could we not talk for two or three?
MARK MILLER:We've already spent three hours talking.
SHED GEEK:It's crazy, isn't it so quick? I, because I'm doing this with everyone else before we get out of here do you have any questions for Travis or myself? Podcast questions, faith questions, shed questions, family questions, marketing questions, I don't care. Whatever comes to mind that that that you might be curious about in full disclosure that you would want to ask. Since, since Travis is cohosted with me, I feel obligated to include him in this open game season.
SHED GEEK:What questions? And if you don't have any, that's fine. We didn't prepare you for this. I was curious. Do you have any?
MARK MILLER:What's your next venture?
SHED GEEK:Edit time.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Are you talking to me or Travis? Yeah, you Well like I uh you get Diana in here to answer this question.
MARK MILLER:Got a little bit too deep on that one. No, no you didn't.
SHED GEEK:I'm, I'm transparent, so like I want to keep it that I'm really starting to eyeball the idea of consultation. There's a lot of guys who do good consultation, but I'm almost wondering can we organize that in a way that creates more structure and more Valubleness? So like there's certain people in this industry that offer a lot of value, whether it be sales, marketing, manufacturing, hauling, um, you know, just just you name it. They have specific expertise in particular areas and it would be really good to be able to tap into that in a collaborative effort. For whenever someone's coming on and they're like I'm starting a shed company, but I'm really weak in this area, oh, we've got a person who's really strong in that area. So like we want to collaborate for success, absolutely, uh, and let's bring them in.
SHED GEEK:So I've really, really been thinking about that, but I'm so busy I feel like there's only so many legs to the table of the shed geek brand that we can really create yeah, and, and the podcast sort of stands on its own. It's my passion, it's what I love to do, but in venturing into the marketing and RTO side, I feel like consultations left and then I feel like I don't know if I want to go further than that. It just it takes a lot of your time in your day and I want to make sure I'm effective in everything I'm doing.
MARK MILLER:Yeah, Travis and I had a discussion a little bit about this here a couple of weeks ago and we touched about some on some of this earlier, earlier on the podcast. But when you're starting, when you're starting, um, I I felt this back when I started hauling Okay, what do I need to do to legally haul sheds? Well, I need a DOT number. You need this number.
MARK MILLER:You need that you need this insurance. What do you need? And and man, you can you can get faced with whether, well, go talk to another hauler. Well, the other haulers that I know are working for the same company and they feel that I'm going to take over, so they don't want to share much with me, and so I faced some of that in, in that aspect, and whether it's it's a running a shed business or how do you market or how do you sell, like trying to get some of that collaboration. Sometimes I'll oh, but you're going to be my competition, I can't. I can't tell you because that's my secret sauce or whatever and so I thought I would find something like that very beneficial for somebody getting started on. Like you said, there's certain aspects where you need somebody's input. That that has done this or can at least point you in the right direction, because that's something that that I have struggled with over the last three years is is, in certain aspects, how, how and where, and I ended up having to figure it out on my own.
SHED GEEK:Yeah, yeah, it would be nice to have that available. You have some tools available. We like to think that the podcast is adds value to the industry through having conversation. I mean, obviously you have the shed builder magazine garage shed, carport builder. You have the trade shows to go to. You have the, the shed hauler events to go to. It would be nice to see you know the the.
SHED GEEK:I don't want to take anything away from it here because I think it's great to go to, but like going to the, the expo, you know what I mean. Like we've said for years, it's like a family reunion, right, and it's really cool, but but it's you know, you're, you're, you're capturing more. Oh, how do I say this? The vendors are there to kind of like show you their products and services. But I wonder if a more informal event for like manufacturers, that that would exist, that did specific trainings.
SHED GEEK:Or I think about my buddy, john Feely, and he's got like this masterclass up there with shed Academy, where he brings new people into the industry off the street, teaches them how to build on site and he does a masterclass through videos and it's really cool. But would it, would things like that be necessary? I guess is what I'm saying. There's just there's a lot that I think it still has to mature and I do think some of the shed industry is probably going to be. I think that's where we're going to see like some saturation of like people selling because they don't want to go to that next level and it's easier to just get out you know and not not embrace that.
SHED GEEK:And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just they don't want to learn about all these different details like CRMs and SEO and all that. They're like what. That's not what I tried to do. I tried to build a shed, or?
MARK MILLER:haul a shed. You know, sell a shed I didn't.
SHED GEEK:I didn't know. All that was going to be part of the business and I don't want to embrace it, so maybe they'll just get out. I don't know, we'll see. I hope I answered your question and yeah, that's. That's kind of what about you? You got anything going in particular, like in next adventure?
TRAVIS BEACHY:Yeah, you know, right, right now, honestly just trying to navigate the slow period in sales right now, and you know I I want to continue there. I haven't squeezed and I'm a little bit of a perfectionist like this, which to my detriment but I haven't squeezed all the juice I want to squeeze out of the one location we're at right now.
TRAVIS BEACHY:I do want to open up more locations. You know, just continue to grow our online presence, grow our social media. And you know, I would love to do a. I'd love to do a podcast with customers to tell their stories, especially people that we sell buildings to, that are business owners, and that's that's kind of on the dream board wish list. I just, you know, that's probably down the road a little ways, but I always enjoy co-hosting this with you and chatting it up.
SHED GEEK:But I wish you'd do more B2B man, Like I would love to have you on here more.
TRAVIS BEACHY:What do you mean?
SHED GEEK:I like doing one with pot like a podcast with customers would be great, but I would I'd love to have you on here more. I think you had a lot of value and you just you mimic a lot of the characteristics that I see in myself and I feel like you'd be just a great fit to us. Super kind of you.
TRAVIS BEACHY:I always, I mean, I always enjoy it. So, yeah, I mean, um, yeah, that's really, that's really it, just just um. Uh, you know, right now I don't feel like. I feel like I don't feel like the Lord's got anything else for us. Right now, I feel like where we're supposed to be. I feel like, um, in this season, this is, this is, continue to grow farm and yard Um and um and continue to do that is, you know, I'm, I'm, you know I. I've got a little bit of that entrepreneurial spirit in me. I, I look around, I see man, what if I do this, or what if I did that, or?
TRAVIS BEACHY:go here go there, you know, and um, like you know you guys, you guys have that too, and um, um, I just haven't.
TRAVIS BEACHY:I haven't had anything come into my life or haven't had the Lord say anything like man, I want you to go over here right now, or I want you to go over here and I feel like, right now, um, right now, it's, it's uh, it provides for our family, it's a great service to the, to the community, and um, and that's what it's doing right now. That's that's where we're at right now. So nothing, nothing, uh, monumental on the horizon, um, just uh. This is going to be the year of kind of back to the basics for us grinding it out, trying to grow it, um and um, um, and, and you know this, this slow period, it's really um, brought on another level of like, gratitude of of every day that you get to be in business is a beautiful thing.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Uh if you enjoy, if you enjoy the business that you're doing, and it's not, it's not um, you know, don't take it for granted either. You know, you, you, you. You don't wake up and, um, there's no expectation, you don't deserve any of the sales. You don't wake up and say I deserve X amount of sales. Today, every sale you make is, um, you're grateful for it, you're thankful for it and um, now you can work for whatever you want. But um, I, I. I heard someone say last night that if you can have a mindset of, um, uh, you don't deserve anything, just because you're in business doesn't mean you deserve to have a successful business. Just because you do marketing doesn't mean that you deserve a bunch of leads to come from that.
TRAVIS BEACHY:Just because you open the door every morning doesn't mean that you deserve people to walk in and put their credit card down on the table. Now you can work for all those things, you can get better to create the, those opportunities. But, uh, basically coming from that mindset of, um, you know, gratitude and um, uh, a level of high service, low expectations, high service, um, and really you know serving your fellow man.
SHED GEEK:So that's it, I like it, I think it's great man and I, I, you know, to mimic what you said, I heard somebody say one time being offended is a choice. It's always a choice. So if you're offended that things aren't working, offended something's not happening, it's a choice that you're making, because it's not. It's not standalone, it's always a choice you're making. I'm offended he did that, fended this happened. You know that's your choice always. But I'll tell you what man you want to pray us out of here.
SHED GEEK:Travis, We'll go get us a bite to eat or something let's do it, let's do it.
TRAVIS BEACHY:God, thanks for this opportunity to sit down with Mark, with Shannon, thanks for each one that's listening. I pray that you would uh bless them. I'd say pray that they would um have a lot of joy in their heart as they uh work and serve their clients. I pray that you grant safety to the drivers, safety to the builders. I pray that you would give the salespeople a great question to ask consumers and give them a hunger to know the product, to um to to solve people's problems. I pray that you would be with the RTO providers, that they would do right by their uh dealers, do right by their customers. Thanks for all that they do for the industry. Um and pray that you would bless their businesses as well. Um and just thanks for the opportunity um to to to be in this industry and to provide solutions for people's storage needs. Um and bless Shannon with the podcast and bless Mark with his business here. Your name be pray, amen.