Keith's Blueprint for Business, Beliefs and Backyard Dreams

Ever wondered how to pivot from a successful career in one field to conquering another? That's exactly what Keith from CSBK LLC did, trading the world of advertising for the crafting of custom sheds, decks, and tiny homes. With a YouTube channel in the works and a thriving business built post-retirement, Keith's story is one of inspiring reinvention and education. We're not just chatting about sheds today—prepare to learn about navigating HOA guidelines, city regulations, and how one man's faith and leadership have laid the foundation for a business that's about more than just constructing spaces, it's about creating dreams.

This episode isn't your average DIY tale; it's a peek behind the hammer and nails into the vibrant culture of custom shed building amidst challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic. Keith walks us through the surge in demand for backyard offices and the laughter behind a two-story cabin escapade. Plus, we'll uncover the transformation of customer needs and how 'Big Blue' became the emblem of Keith's ingenuity, turning heads and leaving an indelible mark on the local landscape.

Strap in for a ride that's as educational as it is entertaining, with a side of heartfelt reflection. We're exploring how Keith's personal faith influences his business, fostering a model of respect, gratitude, and the desire to give back in meaningful ways. From the synergy of marketing and leadership to the resonance of community spirit, this episode is a testament to the power of blending business savvy with personal values. Join us for a conversation that's sure to shed light on the art of transformation, and maybe even spark the builder within you.

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.

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This episodes Sponsors:
Studio Sponsor: Union Grove Lumber

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Transcript

Shed Geek: 0:36

Alright, welcome back to another episode of the shed geek podcast, and this is the first time I can say that I've done a podcast from a rolling shed. That's right. Been inside a shed before, done podcast in a shed, but never One that actually goes down the road right on wheels. That I can remember. Keith, you want to introduce yourself to the audience just who you are, your company and a little bit about what you do.

Keith From: 1:01

So my name is Keith From, I own CSB K LLC, and which comprises of Custom Sheds by Keith, Custom Decks by Keith, Custom Backyard Offices by Keith and Custom Tiny Homes by Keith. Okay, I like my name, Keith.

Shed Geek: 1:18

It's a good name.

Keith From: 1:19

It's a great, it's a strong name. We're located in the Dallas Fort Worth area. We service the entire Dallas Fort Worth area. We'll also. We also do projects beyond up in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Oh, building cabins, tiny houses, things like that, and that's that's what we do. Started the company 14 years ago after retiring from the advertising world and Haven't looked back since joy of a day of it.

Shed Geek: 1:51

So let's talk a little bit about your, your previous experience in advertising, to make the jump from that to the construction world. What did you do in advertising?

Keith From: 2:02

So I was. I was in charge of the of print media. So, okay, I can't draw a stick figure, but so. So an ad would go through all the departments of creation and copyright Storyboards and things like that and once it was complete it would come into my department and we would make sure that it was print ready to go into magazines and newspapers, Things like that. You know billboards. Make sure you would print properly.

Shed Geek: 2:30

Okay. And then you said this makes sense. I want to jump right into building tiny house.

Keith From: 2:36

So actually my running joke for the last three years during my tenure at the agency was I'm gonna quit and go build sheds, and you know, god's got a sense of humor, and and. So After I retired, I fished for a couple of years, named all the fish in the lake and and but. But I needed to get out there and do something. So I thought, well, I said I was gonna go build shed, so let's go build sheds. And so that's, that's what I did.

Shed Geek: 3:06

I feel like outside of the Lord having a sense of humor. I think he's blessed you with a really good sense of humor. We spent some time here this morning and I've picked up on just a little Sayings that you have that are stored somewhere in there through your experiences and they're just clever. They weren't good. I kind of feel like you have a a little bit of comedic history in there, like Do you, do you get that often from, from folks?

Keith From: 3:33

No, people just laugh at me.

Shed Geek: 3:37

Fair enough, okay when they see me, they laugh.

Keith From: 3:40

Maybe I look funny, I don't know exactly. I hope we're not videotaping this, because I've got a face for radio.

Shed Geek: 3:45

Well, I'll tell you what you also and those of you have probably noticed already you have a voice for, for radio too. I feel like you. You sound great on the microphone, but that's probably because you too are a fellow podcaster, or aspiring podcaster. I don't know how I would. I would Say that, but tell me a little bit about that adventure.

Keith From: 4:05

Well, so beginning of the year, I created making shed happen on YouTube. I basically I just wanted to. I want to make a podcast. I say I wanted to. I haven't actually started it yet. I've got the channel, so making making shed happen on YouTube. Please follow me, even though there's nothing there. But you know, I just, I just want to Educate, I want to educate people about.

Keith From: 4:31

About sheds now, not everybody's, you know it's gonna buy my shed and that's okay. But before you make a major purchase like that, you need to know what you're buying and the difference is between different manufacturers. And so just an educated customer is a great customer for me.

Shed Geek: 4:47

Absolutely. I think the more educated you are, the better decision you make. So we use the, the tagline education through entertainment, and you know we also talked about early on kind of partnering with other Just other shed companies or whatever, whatever area of business we were in like walking across the aisle and shaking a hand and saying you know, hey, you're, you're doing a great job and and I think we can learn from each other. And Tyler, may hand come on and he said a rising tide lifts all boats and that's.

Keith From: 5:22

Really man.

Shed Geek: 5:23

After that, it just stuck with me.

Shed Geek: 7:05

Yeah, and he's just here, north of us, well, quite a ways north, and Paul's Valley up, going up toward Oklahoma city, so, as you just go north out of Dallas, um, but you know, and that stuck, that stuck, that it was like, wow, you know, in a industry where we're also close knit and, uh, connected in some way, shape or form, it really is good to kind of just increase education communication for the B to B side, the B to C side, um, and and honestly, you know, uh, we've, we've just ran with that going up on, coming up on four years. In March now, uh, will be the start of our fourth season and it's just really amazing that God sort of blessed us to do this. So I want to, I want to encourage you and definitely if, if you have questions, anything, resources that you need, just pull on us for experiences we've had and if we can help, we want to do that.

Shed Geek: 8:02

I think you have such a unique idea here in the DFW area and what you do, um, so let's talk about what we're in today. Uh, how people know you whenever they see you at the DFW, how they could or will begin to see you as you not just podcast, but as you drive around.

Keith From: 8:24

So what we've done is, uh, back in August is when we started this project, I had a. I had a 16 foot, just a cargo craft white trailer, cargo trailer. And this had, you know, this had been a work trailer for us, you know, uh, with lumber and everything in it. Of course, uh, uh, I overutilize all of my tools and so I've broken the frame on it twice. And so, uh, you know, of course, I'd upgraded trailers we now work out at 24 foot cargo trailers but, uh, so this trailer had been sitting out, uh, you know, on my property for a couple of years and I always knew I wanted to do something with it and I kind of had an idea of what I wanted to do. But so, finally, one day, uh had my guys out there and we had a little off time, and so we, basically we ripped the cargo part off of the trailer, ripped it down to the frame, uh, fixed the frame where I'd broken it twice, and so, uh, and then rebuilt what we call big blue and basically it's a, uh, a 16 foot by eight foot.

Keith From: 9:27

Uh, I call it a rolling showroom and design studio. So we've got, uh, the outside of big blue is a LP lap siding. The inside has, uh, uh, a ship lap. It also has tongue and groove pine. On the ceiling, uh, on the back wall it's got the standard LP four by eight sheet siding. So I've got uh different, different kinds of siding on here that you can put on the inside or the outside of your building.

Keith From: 9:52

Um and of course, I've also got samples, sample boards of Cedar and Hardy Uh-huh, but big blue, it was built to be a spectacle. Okay, uh, I mean it's, it's a, it, I'm bragging, it's a beautiful trailer. I really think it's a, uh, a beautiful model, but uh, it, I built it to be a spectacle. I want people to point and look at it and of course I've got a big two foot by two foot QR codes on the outside.

Keith From: 10:19

So I'm driving down the road and people are hitting it with their phone and so how does that work?

Shed Geek: 10:23

They can they. They click on the QR code and it goes straight to the website. So then next thing, you know, they can uh inquire about a quote, fill out a quote request form right there on the website.

Keith From: 10:35

Hopefully not while they're driving, but uh, uh, if they're the passenger, they could. Uh, but, uh, yeah, at the website. Uh, we've got pricing. We've got how we build a building. Um, we build every building custom on site, uh, at better than house construction quality. Uh, plus, I employ skilled carpenters to build my building. So, uh, you don't have custom sheds by Keith builds custom buildings. You design it aesthetically and functionally to the way you want it. We've built triangle shaped sheds. We've built pentagon shaped, uh, lake houses. Uh, we, we had a customer one time. Their HOA would only allow them to build a 12 by 12 size, and so, uh, they said, okay, we can do that, and they made it two story.

Keith From: 11:30

So, uh 12 by 12, we call it the rocket ship.

Shed Geek: 11:34

No regulations on the height.

Keith From: 11:35

No regulations on the height. It could, just couldn't be any bigger than 12 by 12. Okay, so, uh, perfect, uh, so, yeah, so, again, everything's custom. You design it, you work with our director to, uh, to, uh, to. We can create renderings for you of your building, uh, we can. We work with your HOA's to get approval. We can pull all the permits, uh, and then go from there.

Shed Geek: 12:01

How I was going to ask how that process is, because you you service primarily in the DFW area, correct? Um, I would imagine with onsite builds you're in a lot, maybe a large percentage of HOA, correct?

Keith From: 12:15

Territory Probably about 50%.

Shed Geek: 12:17

Okay, and then, yeah, what is the approach? Uh, does the customer have to spend a lot of time, you know.

Keith From: 12:24

So what happens is is you know? Very, very first question we ask is are you in an HOA? Okay? So yes, we're in an HOA, Okay. Will you please send us a copy of your guidelines? So they'll email us a PDF of their HOA guidelines and then from there uh, we work with customer to make uh suggestions, uh about the the building style, because a lot of HOA's you know you have to match uh the the style of the house that you're at.

Keith From: 12:52

Yeah, you have to match the paint, you have to match the shingles, you have to. You know different things, so so from that information we'll take that and uh, and just do a rendering, a quick rendering of what the building would look like. You know, customer approves it and we mail it to the HOA and say will you approve this please?

Shed Geek: 13:10

Very nice. So you, you spend a little time on the customer acquisition, absolutely For sure For you guys. Um, how large will you build? Just whatever they'll allow, if, if that's what the customer wants. If that's what the customer wants, yeah, okay.

Keith From: 13:24

Uh, whatever. And of course, and there's also city. I mean it's not just the HOA, yeah. So you've got you know, you've got the city to consider also. You know if the HOA will allow it 12 by 24, but the city will only allow an eight by 10.

Shed Geek: 13:37

Now you jumped from the advertising into this. Did you start out building these yourself before I did so?

Keith From: 13:43

the first three years of uh Custom Sheds by Keith was just me out there building little eight by 10s, eight by 12s by myself Um and uh started out with a F 150 pickup and a four by eight flatbed trailer. That's all you need.

Keith From: 13:58

That's all you need and uh, yeah, out there. But the first time I had to lift an eight foot by 20 foot wall by myself, uh, I was like you know what, maybe I need to start getting some help, I feel like there's potential advertising opportunity here for a company that I'm thinking about.

Shed Geek: 14:14

I'm going to have to reach out to them whenever I think about lifting walls Right.

Keith From: 14:18

Um, well, and we, we, uh, uh. So we were actually we were building a two story cabin on Lake Whitney, uh, here in the area, and uh, 32 foot long walls and I actually bought some walljacks, yeah, Uh, and so that made life a lot easier. Now, what was funny on that quick joke on that was we had built the first story and, uh, we were all up on the second story building, building the walls. We had climbed up there on our ladder. We built our wall, stood the wall up. The very first wall up Our ladder was on the other side of that second story wall. So the smallest guy we all grabbed his arms and slid him down the wall and he moved the ladder over so we could all get down.

Shed Geek: 15:05

Very nice. Whatever, being small works to your advantage.

Keith From: 15:09

That's right, that's right.

Shed Geek: 15:11

So, uh, um, it just went well, and then you began to really see an opportunity to uh expand this program.

Keith From: 15:21

Well, correct, we, uh, I mean, up until, uh, covid, it was just sheds by Keith, I'm and, well, I'm sorry, sheds by Keith and decks by Keith. Okay, um, we had built some, you know, some tiny house, a couple of tiny houses, a couple of backyard offices, but when COVID hit, um, and nobody knew what was going on or what was going to happen or anything, uh, fortunately we fell into the construction category, so right, we didn't have to shut down.

Shed Geek: 15:56

Right.

Keith From: 15:57

Uh, of course you know, we were very careful to you know, even even outside talking to the customer, we all wore face masks. Uh, you know, we were testing the guys, making sure everybody was okay at all times. But uh, that's and everybody's working from home and I and I loved the videos on YouTube of uh you know uh, an executive sitting there working on his computer and the and the two year old comes walking in and in the diaper and nothing else on real life right there.

Shed Geek: 16:26

That's real life right there, yeah.

Keith From: 16:28

Uh, you know, but uh. So everybody was working from their kitchen table, from their bedroom, whatever, and. And the concept of backyard offices wasn't new, but it became more prevalent at when COVID came around, so that's when I started custom backyard office by Keith.

Shed Geek: 16:43

It was very, very necessary, yes, at that time, and I think it ushered in a lot of other things.

Shed Geek: 18:08

I mean, outside of the fact that sheds were already multifaceted, being used for multiple different things, oh, absolutely, it really sort of got people comfortable with the idea of like shopping around online because you had to, right, and I like to say that it increased the online presence by I don't know 10 years or more, who knows, but it really began to get people excited maybe not excited, but to support the idea of looking online, at least whenever they begin to shop for things. You couldn't just go to the market and just, in most cases, just look around, I guess.

Keith From: 18:49

Well, you can't. I mean, you had the, you had the mask and all that stuff. Your big box stores, you know, have them sitting out in the parking lot, yeah, but but even even before COVID, you know, people were taking their, their garden sheds and turning it, turning them into man caves. Yeah, and she sheds.

Shed Geek: 19:09

Yeah.

Keith From: 19:10

And so so things. Just when, when COVID came around, it just kind of opened everybody's eyes. Hey you know, I can't go anywhere. Let's do something with this shed and make our own escape.

Shed Geek: 19:19

So so what did you find? What's your experience been jumping in? Did you have a lot of experience in building sheds when you got started. What was that experience like? Or what are some of the the difficult points of like jumping into this industry that you found?

Keith From: 19:34

Well, it wasn't like I just said. I'm going to go build sheds and just started doing it. I, you know, before, during my corporate years, I, you know, I did have some rental properties and and so I did know how to build. I enjoyed building.

Keith From: 19:48

I enjoyed building things I'd build a couple of sheds of my own. But so those first few, those first three years was, you know, I knew how to build a shed, I knew how I wanted to build a shed my way. And so those first three years was me just honing my craft, honing my skills, honing how I wanted to build my buildings. Now that being said, if my very first customer is listening right now, your building is built just as well as we build them today. Yeah, yeah.

Keith From: 20:21

But. But what's changed a lot is our aesthetics. Ok, OK, so we we've come a long way with aesthetics of the buildings.

Shed Geek: 20:31

There's a lot of portable shed guys that will also offer on site Builds will send a crew out there, some companies that do that, some that don't. Do you feel like this is a direction the shed industries coming from or going to that will see more on site builds or less?

Keith From: 20:53

I'm not quite sure. Now there's there's there's a lot of situations, that's that that is the only way you can build. It is on site.

Shed Geek: 21:03

True.

Keith From: 21:04

But you know we we recently finished up a twenty six by twenty six. That was, you know, customers backyard, but the backyard was 30 feet lower than the front yard, so it was down the hill. There was no other access. So you can't, you can't, get a shed dolly back there.

Shed Geek: 21:25

Yeah.

Keith From: 21:26

So, and plus, you know, the biggest path he had was four feet because we had fence pool two feet on the other side of the house. So yeah, there was no way to get a portable building back there.

Shed Geek: 21:38

We have a good friend that listens over in Europe and they only build on site. You know, there's no hauling side and and transportation side, it's just, it's just on site only and we actually had him on early on in the episode, thankful to him because he's a avid listener. So I appreciate you, tom Buribitch, over there and England, but it's it's, it's unique and I almost wonder sometimes is it just kind of a and added benefit for the shed guys that do want to start doing on sites? Are there partnership opportunities for folks like yourself with those local companies who say, hey, we'll just, we'll just get shed sheds by Keith? Oh, absolutely Involved, I mean, would you welcome that?

Keith From: 22:29

I would absolutely welcome. Yeah, there's, and because building building on site is, I'm not going to say there's an art to it, yeah, there's. So you know you don't have a perfectly flat surface anywhere you go. We built a 16 foot long building where we had two inches off the ground on one side and we were four feet off the ground on the other side. Yeah, so obviously, the two inch side we're putting blocks. The four foot side, we're putting post and concrete, right, yeah, and then of course, we also skirt all of our buildings and we contour the ground of the skirting.

Shed Geek: 23:11

Yeah. So a lot of custom work hence custom, also in the name.

Shed Geek: 23:17

It's not just in the aesthetics and the design of the shed, but it's kind of that aftercare, if you will, you know, just just finishing up, button up everything on the shed and the ground around it. And that makes a lot of sense because you know there's an RTO, caliber, financing, caliber side and much of the shed industry and what we do. All of a sudden, if that's a rental month by month, can't get in there and take that thing away. So this is more of a permanent structure, right? The idea of being that.

Keith From: 23:47

So. So one of the things that that we do is is we create a solid, solid base for our buildings. We're we're burying in 16 inch by 16 inch house leveling blocks.

Shed Geek: 24:01

Okay.

Keith From: 24:01

Underneath the building. We are not building our buildings on skids. We bury those blocks. We build and level the building on concrete blocks, but then we also support every single floor joist down the middle with concrete blocks. So we're building a essentially a little pyramid house and then we're also putting 16 inch earth anchors Okay, for those in there and then and then cabling those to the building. Yeah, so, yes, you can move a building, but it's just and a funny story. You know any. Any business needs good reviews, right, and you know, fortunately we have plenty of them, but one in particular. There was a customer we built a shed for, and two years later he was selling his house, but he had to take his shed with him. He wanted to take a shed with him, so he called a shed mover. The shed mover actually wrote a review for sheds by Keith.

Shed Geek: 24:56

No way.

Keith From: 24:57

Because he said that he says I've never moved a building built this well before. That's awesome, it was pretty and I actually called him and I said man, I appreciate you. He says man he says I've never seen anything like it.

Shed Geek: 25:06

He said I thought I was moving a house. That's great, I'd be. I'd almost be curious to go back through the shed haulers page and see if we haven't seen that thing show up already. Because we, because we probably have.

Shed Geek: 26:05

A lot of great shed haulers down here in this neck of the woods, for sure, and just a lot of shed manufacturers in Texas. Of course, dfw is a growing area. You're a native, I think, to DFW and we kind of talked about what you're seeing in this area. That ultimately leads to a good reason to be in the area of building sheds.

Keith From: 26:25

Oh, absolutely so. The Dallas Forth area, all the cities in the Dallas Forth area have done such a great job of selling the Metroplex to corporations and and have lots of tax incentives for corporations moving to the Dallas Forth area, and so because of that, I mean we have a housing shortage. There's not enough houses for the people moving here in the next. We've got a million people moving here in the next five years.

Shed Geek: 26:57

Maybe a million one.

Keith From: 26:58

I don't know, I can dream. So yeah, dfw is just. I mean, if you find a patch of dirt, it won't be there. In six months it'll be a house. Yeah for sure. So yeah, it's just growing like crazy.

Shed Geek: 27:16

It's such a large city when you consider all you know. We came down here and we stayed in, and Waxahatchee at an RV park.

Keith From: 27:24

In Texas we call it Waxahatchee.

Shed Geek: 27:27

I've heard that once or twice now already. I've gotten all of them wrong. Keith, everywhere I go, I always, you know, I bring some kind of a different name to it.

Keith From: 27:36

My favorite was.

Shed Geek: 27:38

Corsicanna. What did I say?

Keith From: 27:40

Yeah, corsicanna, I would say Corsicanna, there you go.

Shed Geek: 27:44

Yeah, I don't know, making fun of the host. No, that's good. I get them wrong all the time, I get the name wrong all the time. But yeah, it's from Denton down to Waxahatchee. I mean you could drive for an hour and there's something in every direction.

Keith From: 28:02

Yeah, I mean? I mean every major highway in DFW. I mean you don't know when you're leaving one city and entering another.

Shed Geek: 28:08

I feel like what do they say? Like Los Angeles County has like 14 million people in it, but man, if DFW isn't the runner-up, I mean at New York, obviously, in the Boston, washington area, all that Philly, but if you take almost like that triangle between Houston, I think Houston's what? The fourth largest populated wise city in the United States. You know, new York, la, chicago, houston, and then you got DFW and all it has, and in San Antonio and everything between Austin, waco and then all the little towns between. Sometimes I feel like when I come down here and that in that system you could buy up anything in that triangle and it's gonna be very valuable.

Keith From: 28:49

Now, moving forward, and for a shed builder, though all these municipalities make it a real problem in that. So DFW, like I said, has about 200 municipalities and not a single one of them is the same when it comes to the code for building a shed or an accessory building.

Keith From: 29:10

You know, the city of Fort Worth, you have to have a permit for everything. City of Dallas, you don't have to have a permit until it gets bigger than 200 square feet. Okay, talking about the growth of the DFW area, weatherford, out west of DFW, weatherford, you know, used to be a population of about 2,000. Well, 10 years ago, when they started running out of room in the middle of Fort Worth to build houses, they started building executive homes in Weatherford to be, you know, housing for the people who work in Fort Worth. Well, the first thing Weatherford did was change their a lot of their codes, one of them being any shed over 8 by 10 had to be brick.

Keith From: 29:54

Interesting yeah, and so of course, of course, there was a big upheaval about that.

Shed Geek: 29:59

Yeah.

Keith From: 30:00

And they changed that code. But yeah, so there is no rhyme or reason to any code in the area as far as, as far as permitting.

Shed Geek: 30:11

Well, and you're being a native sort of here in Dallas, that's, that's your bread and butter, that's who you're wanting to reach. You know, through your, through your big blue adventures Uh huh, big blue Through your, your podcasting adventures, sort of become, you know, very valuable to that shed customer Right, right here in this area and and sort of like brand yourself in that way. We've got some other friends down here that that build sheds on site and then several that build sheds as far as, like, portable structures go, and I just I think it's interesting, I think you can't go wrong here being in in sheds right now.

Shed Geek: 30:53

I mean, people are always in need of storage Right, even the public storage units are going up all over the place down here Over the yeah, they're, they're, it's just a, it's an example and it's a testament to we won't get too deep on this, but probably how politics plays into the role of business in a state. You know, to some extent it. I can't help it but think people want to come to Texas for many reasons.

Keith From: 31:23

Right, right, right. You know, and, and you know, even though we've got the population, the cost of living here is is, you know, lower than than a lot of places in the country, for sure.

Shed Geek: 31:34

Yeah, absolutely yeah, it's, I don't know we always like it. I've I've been to Texas a handful of times now, five or six different times, and I've enjoyed it thoroughly. Every time the people down here are just as nice as can be. I know that whenever you live in an area you can always say we've had different experiences and you will. But as a general rule, it seems, whenever we come down here, everyone's so kind, everyone's so friendly, welcoming.

Keith From: 32:03

We try to welcome you northerners, yeah.

Shed Geek: 32:05

I know I'm a Yankee technically you know, always tell people where we set geographically is lower than the majority of the state of Kentucky, but somehow we're still Yankees because we cross that river in Illinois. It was actually the most, the lowest, most, let's see how do I say this? It was the lowest point of all the northern states. Okay, so people would funnel up through the Mississippi River where the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi would meet Gotcha, and that became just sort of they had you know, if anybody's ever been to to Kero, see we call it Kero Illinois.

Shed Geek: 32:47

It's little Egypt.

Keith From: 32:48

Okay.

Shed Geek: 32:49

Because a lot of people say Cairo and you got Thebes and Carnac, a lot of these other towns that Lewis and Clark named them after, but we call it Kero. So like I get to correct people whenever they're in the area because they always call it Cairo and and it's kind of interesting, but I love being right there where we are because I get to visit so many shut lots and I can be 10 hours to almost any of them right in most cases, so it works out really good.

Keith From: 33:12

Well, we welcome you down here to the great country of Texas, and it's just great down here, and my son my son loves it.

Shed Geek: 33:17

I'm afraid he's gonna. I'm afraid he's gonna try to move down here before we do. Yeah, he's like, yeah sure, he's 19 and he's got the world by the by the tail right now.

Speaker 3: 33:30

Yeah, it's been a bit ago.

Shed Geek: 34:56

What do you, what, what, what do you make of this, Whenever you're driving big blue around? You got these QR codes on the outside of this thing. What do people think?

Keith From: 35:04

Oh, I love it.

Shed Geek: 35:05

What do you?

Keith From: 35:05

experience. They're pointing and looking. I mean I'll be driving down.

Shed Geek: 35:10

You're talking about the Sheds, still right.

Keith From: 35:11

Right, okay, okay, watch it. Let's not make this personal. No, and I built, I built big blue to be a spectacle. I wanted people to point and look, and I mean it again. I'm proud of her. She's a beautiful bit, absolutely. But but yeah, I wanted her to be seen and like, and we've got banners on the outside of it, we got it lit up and when I'm driving down the road at night, I've got the generator running in the back of the truck, I've got all the lights on, I got the TV running, I got lights on the outside of the trailer and we showed up.

Shed Geek: 35:46

So we met in Arlington. We're sitting in a parking lot. We're sitting in a parking lot, yeah, and you said I felt like I kept looking over here, yeah, as you was waiting on us to show up.

Keith From: 35:56

Yeah, so I was, I was, I'd been here about 10 minutes, I was setting up, you know, lights and stuff, and and gentlemen had walked over and it was actually hitting on the QR code and so so I opened the door and said, hey, how you doing. He said Good, good, I said can I help you with anything? He says Well, he says I actually, you know, I see you on Facebook, I follow you on Facebook. He says I even got a quote from you one time. I said, well, that's awesome. And he says he says yeah, I've seen, I've seen the pictures of big blue on Facebook and your website. But I looked over here and I was like, is that really big blue?

Shed Geek: 36:30

So he, so is the.

Keith From: 36:31

Is the Facebook page custom sheds by Keith or Sheds by Keith. Okay.

Shed Geek: 36:36

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 36:36

Sheds by Keith Okay.

Shed Geek: 36:38

As you're saying this I think it's hilarious Like I'll see people creep by because we could see out the window.

Speaker 3: 36:44

Yeah.

Shed Geek: 36:45

And I'll see people creep by and they're smiling.

Speaker 3: 36:47

Yeah.

Shed Geek: 36:47

And they're pointing, and they're looking over here.

Shed Geek: 36:49

And I think I think it's great the way the guy come over and he recognized you and driving down the highway I get a lot of ways people waving- and talking and and, and my thought is, why would people not do that more Like, why, why, why have we become so dignified that we can't, you know, laugh at ourselves and and that's? It's actually a really great business idea. First time I started putting on the suspenders and bow tie, I was like, oh man, I don't know if I'm comfortable enough to do this.

Shed Geek: 37:20

You know, I must have thought I was cool or something and people would think something of me, if you know to see me in this weird geeky outfit and then begin to embrace it. At some point you started to realize that, like, if we just don't take ourselves so serious, it was kind of amazing how people responded to it and they were like hey, you're having fun, aren't you? You know, like this, like you're actually a guy having fun, absolutely, I am Like, if I can't make fun of myself and just have a little fun doing this, I got feedback.

Keith From: 37:50

I like making fun of you too, absolutely.

Shed Geek: 37:52

I'm glad you do. I definitely remember you know, like some people saying, oh shed, geek, we don't know, does that mean like you know? Geek means you know kind of a like you know all everything about this stuff and I was like, well, listen, I don't know all about it. I try to take a humble approach, I'm trying to learn about it. But shed geek meaning you know, we want to know about sheds, more about sheds. Talk to people about sheds but we don't have all the answers. I feel like that's, it's a similar approach. I kind of feel you know kindred spirits here in that sense that, like you said, hey, let's make this a spectral, let's make it fun, let's make people see it Right and it's created business, it's generated good business and you're selling fun.

Keith From: 38:32

Exactly, exactly, to your point switch, switch lanes here real quick. As I, as I've hired, as I've hired different carpenters over the years and I've talked about how the aesthetics of my buildings have changed, those changes have come from those carpenters that I've hired.

Keith From: 38:50

And again, you know, with me me being, you know, coming up in the advertising world, in the corporate world and not the construction world I hadn't seen a lot of construction, you know, per se, as I, as I was hiring different carpenters, they would bring ideas to the table and we would incorporate those ideas into the buildings and just take them. I mean, over the years, we've just been able to take things to the next level, I mean every year. Next level, next level, just by listening to my carpenters and my guys and listening to their ideas and incorporating them in.

Shed Geek: 39:21

Is that the difference in being a boss and a leader? You know like being a leader.

Keith From: 39:25

You're trying to go that deep, okay, well that's fine, I'll take it there. No, that's fine, no.

Shed Geek: 39:31

I feel like, I feel like well, I feel like there is a really good message there to um. You don't always get that. A lot of times it's like hey, you know, I know what I'm doing, you know listen and hush up and go to work.

Keith From: 39:43

Well, and and no, absolutely not, I mean there are, you know, certain things that we, you know that I do insist on Okay, as far as how we build our buildings.

Shed Geek: 39:53

Okay.

Keith From: 39:53

Okay, I bet that that that obviously will not change, because this is what we've built our business on the quality of how we build things, um, but, but even on the quality, I've incorporated some of my uh, my employees ideas. So if they, if they have an idea to make it better, I will absolutely listen and we'll, we'll try it. Yeah, um so, but but yeah, the my, my buildings have have have evolved over the years because of the input of my people.

Shed Geek: 40:24

Do you feel like even the customer's vision and creativity has kind of helped?

Keith From: 40:28

Oh, absolutely. I mean absolutely. I mean there's there's been some times when you know customer wanted to do something and of course I'm just sitting there shaking my head going, absolutely yeah, we can do that. Then I get back to the office and I go okay, how are we going to do this?

Shed Geek: 40:43

I love that you almost had a had the slip there where you said, shaking my shed yeah.

Speaker 3: 40:48

I feel.

Shed Geek: 40:48

I feel like there needs to be more vernacular. Yeah, more puns that we come up with like that. We, we love stuff like that. And you said, like one of yours is making shed happen. Making shed happen.

Keith From: 41:00

So I love that yeah.

Shed Geek: 41:01

That's the YouTube channel that you have. Go check out the YouTube channel for sure, guys, right now, just take the time to do it and go click on it.

Keith From: 41:08

I appreciate it.

Shed Geek: 41:09

Keith, what is your? What's your approach to a customer whenever they come in? What's your philosophy? What do you want people in the DFW area to take away from getting a custom shed by Keith?

Keith From: 41:22

So my approach and my philosophy is I am not a salesman, I don't want to be a salesman. If you know, obviously people will come to the website or call me up and say, hey, I'd like to get a quote. So we will, you know, get the specifics, what size you want, what style, whatever, and and work up a quote. Now, all of our quotes are itemized. I mean, I am, I am full transparency. Okay, there is no secrets behind what we do. So here's an itemized quote and then I'm going to flood you with a whole bunch of other information about, about the company, about how we build, pictures of similar buildings, things like that, and so. And you know, here's my quote, here's my price, here's the, here's the information. I would love to build this for you. If I can't build this for you, then I wish you the best of luck there, there isn't.

Shed Geek: 42:19

I'm not a salesman.

Keith From: 42:20

Yeah, just period.

Shed Geek: 42:23

Where do you want it to go? Ultimately, you've got all of these other adventures outside of of even sheds. It's kind of the, the bread and the butter, unless unless you have a deck that's sitting on a on a trailer somewhere that you drive around and all these other things.

Keith From: 42:40

Uh, you know, for now it's just, it's big blue driving around. Now I will. I will tell you one vision I do have for another trailer is I want to build and actually I had this vision for a trailer before big blue was I want to build a trailer that looks like a caboose?

Shed Geek: 42:59

Oh, the train caboose yeah.

Keith From: 43:01

I want to set up, you know, model trains on the inside and I want to take it around to children's hospitals.

Shed Geek: 43:08

Very nice and things like that Very nice Gosh, what a, what a cool idea.

Shed Geek: 43:12

But little mini cameras on the, on the, on the engines and and broadcast set up to the kids who can't come down and you know, uh, I, I think of, uh, you know that that being a very Faith driven uh uh adventure for you, and we've kind of talked about that and even how, um, addressing those things publicly in your business matter. Uh, the hat you have on today, we kind of talked about your hat. You know, real men pray every day, yep, um, and how that kind of and I wore my dirty hat today.

Keith From: 43:47

I've got. I've got it four or five feet.

Shed Geek: 43:48

That's a working man's hat.

Keith From: 43:50

This is the working hand I forgot to. I forgot to grab the new one, that, uh, that I usually wear in public and not on the job side but uh, it, it.

Shed Geek: 43:58

it's okay to kind of incorporate those things into your business model, not to push it down someone's throat, no, uh necessarily, but to be respectful and kind and and not forgetting your, your roots and your maker and and.

Keith From: 44:13

And if somebody wants to ask me about my faith, I'll be happy to talk to him about it.

Shed Geek: 44:17

Yeah, and it kind of uh it probably creates a bit of a just on that first time that you meet him, kind of uh, gives him a little bit of peace maybe. Well, most people.

Keith From: 44:28

And and, and I hope so, um, you know, I hope that you know before, obviously before. I meet them uh, hopefully they've been through my Facebook page and my website and they've, uh, they've seen my uh, uh, my faith on there.

Keith From: 44:43

Uh, you know if I there's been times when I'll be driving down the road at you know, six, 30 in the morning, on the way to the job site, and beautiful sunrise, and I'll just take a picture of it and post it, you know. Thank you, lord, for this beautiful day. Thank you for the ability to do what I do.

Shed Geek: 44:56

Yeah, no, I think that's great. I think that, uh, it's okay to incorporate that into our business, where a lot of people say it's, it's not like, it's just uh, I don't know. We had somebody on this trip even even say thank you for for praying on the show. A lot of people won't do that, they won't use a platform to do that, and I say, well, I just can't, I can't imagine not giving thanks for all that's been given to me.

Keith From: 45:20

So, absolutely, I mean we, uh, you know, I feel, I feel like much has been given to me, so much as as as I have to give back.

Shed Geek: 45:28

Yeah, that's right.

Keith From: 45:29

Which, uh, you know, I haven't even started to give back. I hope I can give back a lot more than than I have.

Shed Geek: 45:34

Well, let's, let's get into that.