How Graceland Is Rebuilding The Shed Business For A Tougher Market PART 2

The shed business can look fine on paper right up until the cash dries up and the lot turns into a museum of aging inventory. We get blunt about what is changing in the portable buildings world, why some companies are quietly heading toward a shakeout, and how a lack of audits, inventory controls, and real reporting creates problems that only show up when the market gets tight. If you run a shed company, manage a dealer network, or work with rent-to-own, this is the business side you cannot afford to ignore. 

We dig into inventory turns, accrual accounting, and why “profitable” is not the same as “cash flowing.” We talk about the warning signs behind constant 10% and 20% discounts, what it means when inventory sits too long, and how data visibility changes decision making. Then we shift into the dealer model and what it takes to succeed now: market capacity analysis, traffic counts, competitive positioning, and the reality that speed to lead and consistent follow up matter as much as the product. 

We also spend time on digital marketing in the real world: Facebook Marketplace behavior, longer lead pipelines, and the growing role of AI in how customers search and decide. Along the way, we share how Graceland is investing in dealer support, training, lead management, online selling, and automation tools, plus why consolidation and acquisitions are becoming a bigger part of the industry’s future. 

If you found this useful, subscribe, share it with a shed owner or dealer you respect, and leave a review so more people who need tighter numbers and better systems can find the show. What part of your operation needs the most attention right now?

For more information or to know more about the Shed Geek Podcast visit us at our website.

Would you like to receive our weekly newsletter?  Sign up on our website: shedgeek.com

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: Shed Pro

First Choice Metals
Shed Challenger
LuxGuard

Transcript

Shannon 0:00

Hello and welcome back to the Shed Geek Podcast. Here's a message from our studio sponsor. Let's be real. Running a shed business today isn't just about building great sheds. The industry is changing fast. We're all feeling the squeeze, competing for fewer buyers, while expectations keep climbing. And yet I hear from many of you that you are still juggling spreadsheets, clunky software, or disconnected systems. You're spending more time managing chaos than actually growing your business. That's why I want to talk to you about our studio sponsor, ShedPro. If you're not already using them, I really think you should check them out. ShedPro combines your 3D configurator, point of sale, RTO contracts, inventory, deliveries, and dealer tools all in one platform. They even integrate cleanly into our Shed Geek marketing solutions. From website leads, to final delivery, you can quote, contract, collect payment, and schedule delivery in one clean workflow. No more double entries, no more back and forth chaos. Quoting is faster, orders are cleaner. And instead of chasing down paperwork, you're actually running your business. And if you mention ShedGeek, you'll get 25% off all setup fees. Check it out at shedpro.co/ShedGeek. Thank you, ShedPro, for being our studio sponsor and honestly for building something that helps the industry.

Graceland Next Gen Dealer Pitch

GRACELAND PORTABLE BUILDINGS 1:37

Hi, this is Greg French, CEO of Graceland Portable Buildings. In celebration of our 20th anniversary, we're excited to announce the launch of our Next Gen Dealer program. The Next Gen program cements our commitment to the growth and solvency of the Shed Dealer Network. As part of the NextGen program, Graceland dealers can earn commissions over 17%, and through our new Flex Commission program, we can earn over 20% on Select Inventory. But this is just the beginning. We provide marketing reimbursements, zip code level paid marketing, access to our training programs through Graceland University where you can earn dealer certifications and grow your business. We provide free marketing materials and monthly trainings from our top performers. We have a dedicated leads department that provides leads and can even close them for you. That's right. You get the commission. We have an online commission sharing program. If a customer buys a building online, you get the commission. In addition to our Next Gen dealer program, we're excited to announce our recent acquisition of ShedSync, a state-of-the-art software system that not only provides each dealer a website, but a complete marketing solution with a built-in dealer website, CRM, lead manager, and it allows automatic post creation and submission for Facebook posts, Facebook Marketplace, Instagram, and a growing number of social media outlets. The investment our dealers doesn't end there though. We have the best dealer support program in the nation, a regional support team that's dedicated to you. This includes a dedicated business operations manager, customer support team, regional sales manager, dispatcher, customer service department, and more. If you want to learn more about our next gen dealer program, visit yesgraceland.com. We would love the opportunity to be your portable building supplier.

Shannon 3:33

Welcome

Hard Truths On Cash Risk

Shannon 3:34

back to part two of this episode. If you missed it, go back and check out part one that aired on Wednesday.

Greg French 3:41

And I'm basing some of this that I'm saying to you all because I and I kind of told Shannon, you know, I'd rather just hit this from a business perspective if you are going to have me on the podcast, you know. Because this is not to scare people off. I'm telling you, I have sat down with multiple companies over the past three years that are for sale, that I've looked at their PL, I've looked at their balance sheet, I've looked at rent-to-owned companies and their PL on their balance sheet. I'm not saying this to you from a just, here's what Greg, here and here's what I think. Yeah. I'm telling you I've seen the numbers. Yeah. And I've sat with a company that are going to get ready to file bankruptcy. And this is not easy. Running a shed company is very difficult because it because of the model being where you put inventory out at no cost, it is a high- pressure environment. And when those bad behaviors that, whether intentional or unintentional, eventually they bleed to the return of wherever the money is coming from.

Shannon 4:48

The Rent-to-own. The crux comes back to. Yeah.

Greg French 4:50

When they have it takes a long time. But when it does come back and they start to see an eroding profit margin, increased crime in this industry, organized crime in this industry, which I dealt with last week. So, I'll tell you that it's rampant. But as those erode, more attention gets paid to hey, why is nobody at this lot? Why is all this stuff aged? Is all the inventory that is supposed to be there? When you are operating somewhat smaller, you can bypass financial audits, you can bypass having inventory audits, you can bypass almost all the checks and balances. I mean, I've looked at companies that do $10, $15 million of revenue that don't do any internal auditing, don't have a single person looking at anything that they are doing, and nobody's, there's no checks and balances there, they don't have organized profit and loss statements, they don't have balance sheets in place. That's problematic. And so. what will that lead to? That will lead to a shakeout period. And so that doesn't mean shed companies go away. There's gonna be plenty of shed companies.

Shannon 6:02

It's just I think mergers and acquisitions.

Greg French 6:04

There's gonna be a consolidation period here, and I think we're in it, honestly, yeah, um, based on my behavior. I had mentioned to you that you had Richard on um a couple years ago and he was gonna go get into you know start a shed company, and he was talking about he had the opportunity, I think there were six or seven shed companies, he said, that he had looked at buying. Well, why are they selling? Why are they selling? If market cap is going up and everything's just rosy and everything's great, why are you selling it? It's hard because there's more competition, there's more planning and zoning issues. The I mean, even in a company like Graceland, you used to be able to sell just by being in the town. If you were just there, people stop by and get a shed, they word of mouth. Um, you could grow and you didn't know you don't have to have that great of closing skills. You didn't have to have a CRM in place to do follow-ups with those with those customers. You didn't you could just advertise in the newspapers that still existed.

Cord 7:05

You could and be on the highway.

Shannon 7:07

Typically, just hire a good old boy, uh good old girl that's like knows how to sell, they're community driven, uh, they're involved with the local chamber and all that's good. But now it's speed to lead, you know. Now it's like how quick can you get to them? Uh, what is your messaging? Um, how quick can you get that building out? Which is why like our thoughts kind of been, I agree with you on like the dealer model, and I think it's you know, it it's here to stay and it should stay. Don't get me wrong. There's just becomes like, and I don't know how you guys deal with this, and maybe this isn't appropriate for the podcast to ask this. I don't even know. But uh let's see what you asked. Oh yeah, yeah. Like, well, I guess, you know, like do you need more buildings constantly to sell? I mean, when you when you take a look at like how your sales managers are going out and like vetting these properties, whether it be Graceland or whether it be any other company, big, small, or in between, um, you know, it's like this shotgun, you know, blast approach, or at least it has been for so long. Like, let's find five acres. They, okay, they have a body shop, and like, and next thing you know, they're because they're good business- people, they like, hey, we make more money selling sheds than we did in body work where we went to school. So let's get into this, fool, because our why is that we're gonna be like uh Steve Jobs at Apple. We're gonna do a good job, doesn't matter what we sell. You know, it's gonna be like the CEO at John Deere, right? Like if we got out of selling tractors tomorrow, whatever we sold, we would take the same approach at Harley Davidson, at John Deere, at Bucky's, uh, you know, and like who is that in the shed industry? I don't really, I don't really know if any clear leader has like said, this is what I'm gonna be, but I don't know. I'm inspired by the conversation we're having today.

Greg French 8:47

I mean, look, it's an inventory play. So, the problem isn't the model. I think you could probably sit here all day long and you could wax poetic about should you just have is the is the model where you have 20 buildings out not gonna be able to be supported? Are you gonna have to go completely online? Are you gonna sell off of one bigger super lot? You know, I think you can have are you are you gonna have your inventory displayed across a thousand places but only have a few buildings? The problem is that all that has to have a strategy behind it. Yep. When the muffler shop has 20 buildings, that's a problem. So, you have a turns issue in most of this industry. So, when you look at these companies, when I look at companies that are for sale, so I'm just giving you like a look outside of Graceland where I've looked at other companies' profit and loss statements and their balance sheets. They are turning their inventory so extremely low that they are almost makes you walk away as a buyer. Okay, it's not supportive from a cash flow perspective. So,

Accrual Accounting And Inventory Turns

Greg French 10:00

anybody that gets in a business learns really quickly that your profit and loss statement isn't key, cash flow is. Cash flow is king in running any business. It can be profitable on paper, and you can have all your cash tied up and you can't pay anyone. If you can't pay people, it doesn't matter that the thing that you've done is gonna make money. Because if you are getting in a real serious business, you are gonna be doing accrual-based accounting. And when you start doing accrual-based accounting, it doesn't work like your checkbook. And so when somebody hasn't been in accrual-based accounting and they've just ran their checkbook, and then they come over and they start running a real deal company, maybe your CPA puts you on an accrual-based QuickBooks account, if you don't understand how that works, you get yourself in trouble really, really quickly. Because in accrual-based accounting, they completely separate cash from the from the income statement. Cash and the income statement are separate. They just assume you've got the cash to do the things you're gonna do.

Cord 11:01

Yeah.

Greg French 11:01

So, if you had a million dollars, you could go put all that million- dollars into buildings that you just built. That doesn't hit your profit and loss statement. That a million dollars of buildings goes onto your balance sheet, the million dollars is no longer in cash, it's in inventory. Yep. Now you go to sell it and you sell the building. At the point you sell the building, the building's cost releases, it's part of COGS, and when that building's cost releases, you're paying people, you're you paid people to build it, you paid people to do X, Y, and Z. All that takes cash that actually hits your PL to pay the people, to pay the commission. Well, if you spent your million dollars putting it into inventory and you don't have the other million dollars to pay the people that are doing it, you can get into tr into trouble. So let's say you start off healthy and you are putting all this inventory out, and you've got enough cash there to um manage your business, but then this plan is going to shut down if you don't get more to work. And so you put a little extra inventory out, just a little bit more to keep that plan afloat, but then it doesn't match sales. But then you do it again, and then all of a sudden, your turns are going from you're turning your inventory three times to two times to one time to a half time, and eventually you cannot cash flow your business. And the problem could be one of many. It could be sales, it could be the inventory.

Shannon 12:30

Is that, is that a is that an educational problem with the dealers, a support problem with the dealers, uh, or is it that we need to be doing the wholesale model more and not opening up so many dealer lots that are built on this confinement?

Greg French 12:46

I think it's all three. So, there's symptomatic in that why did they build the extra inventory, or did they even have enough cash getting generated? Because when you tie cash up, you got to release it. So, anytime I see uh somebody in the shed industry doing 10% off, 20% off, yeah, that would red flag for me a cash problem. Not always, but usually you're willing to sell that building and not even make any money at it to just get your cash back in the way. They'll start selling assets, they'll start selling things. That's a symptom of trouble. Trouble.

Cord 13:23

You know what's funny is that it's become like such a uh like cultural, it's almost like becomes the nature of these things, right? Because like it's exactly what you're saying. That is what you're doing. You're trying to release the cash, but it's almost like it's become so set in stone that this is the way things happen. It's like people almost take it for granted now, right? The 10 and 20 percent is now scheduled for October, November. Well, I mean, you know, practically you're releasing cash for operations over the winter for future investment for next selling season, right? But like I don't know how much of it is being actively managed. You know what I mean? How much of it is purposeful, how much of it is truly a cash play, we need cash, and how much of it is this is the time of year when you do this. Do you all keep? I'm just curious, you guys are also like uh metric oriented. Do you keep a um like do you know if a if a shed is probably like four months old, right? It's probably like maybe a rough number. If a shed gets to four months old, the likelihood that it gets to 18 months old.

Greg French 14:39

Yeah, we actually follow that. And it has a lot, you know, usually it has more to do about where the dealer it's sitting at than it does what you actually built. Right. But that's the in a in data's king. We did something called a data visibility project about eight years ago, and we wanted to make sure that all of our data was very, very visible. We implemented Power BI, which is a Microsoft product, but basically at our fingertips right now, I could tell you any building, it's a gross margin, how long it's been sitting there, its age, and then we even start writing that down. So, if that building goes over two years old, we're immediately starting the process of writing it down, saying that's a liability. Why can't we sell it? Did we build the wrong thing? Is it sitting at the wrong place?

Cord 15:24

Um has it discolored? Is it growing moss on the north side?

Greg French 15:28

That this will be consolidated, this will be a conservative approach to um to the inventory management. So that data is keen. That was that's what brings me back to your question early on is how we changed the dealer model. And you were talking about you know, putting buildings out at the muffler shop. It's all about how many you put out. So the problem I don't see is all these different ideas that I hear people talk about, they all can work. You have to do the right amount of inventory at the right thing. You have companies out there just looking to deploy their inventory somewhere. Um these deal, these dealers shut down, I just gotta take it somewhere, and you end up with hundreds of buildings. That's probably an exaggeration, 50 buildings at a location that certainly doesn't have the market cap to support that, and they're gonna age. And are they writing them down when they age on their books? I can tell you that most people are not. Um they are just letting them sit there and eventually they're discounting them, and that stuff can catch up with you, and it catches up with you in a saturated market. So, a lot of what we're gonna talk about with what we've done with our dealer model has been around all these things can work. So, there's not right or wrong way to do it. There is, do you know why you're doing it? Do you know the strategy behind it? And does the inventory support it in such a way that you can cash flow your business?

AD-FIRST CHOICE METALS 17:04

When it comes to building something that lasts, every detail matters. At First Choice Metals, we proudly support the shed, carport, and pole barn industries with durable, high-quality steel roof panels, siding, and trim accessories built to perform and made to last. Every product we offer is American-made, with craftsmanship and finish you can see in every panel. More builders and homeowners are choosing metal roofing and siding for a reason. It offers superior durability, a longer lifespan, and improved energy efficiency compared to traditional materials. At First Choice Metals, our mission is simple. We provide exceptional products for your building projects and deliver service you can get them. Because being your metal building component supplier means more than just making a sale, it means being there every step of the way. First choice metals. Built for strength, backed by service.

Choosing Dealers By Market Capacity

Cord 18:08

We talked about on this this on the way out to Oklahoma about how we don't have like at least you know, I'm sure that there are probably RTO companies, and it sounds like Graceland, frankly, are doing like these big data projects. But I was saying on the way out there, you should be judging your dealer based off of how well they perform against their market cap in their area, right? And you should probably even have that tiered to be like your actual local area, then how well are you actually covering the digital space, you know, into an expanded service area? But I don't even hear people talking about it. In fact, Greg just now is the first person I've heard say that outside of me just being like, other industries base, you know, are we going to put a hardware store in? Well, it's like how much hardware gets sold there? Right. And like, you know, this industry has always just sort of like followed the leader in a lot of ways. And if you're not making decisions and even performance decisions about that dealer, should that dealer be a 3% owner of effectively the approximate market cap in their area, or should there be 15? Is 15 what would what should be expected given competition? And I don't know that anybody's actually grading on that basis.

Shannon 19:22

Are you guys? Yeah, I mean Oh, absolutely. So go ahead, go ahead.

Greg French 19:27

So, I'll give you an example. We have um every Thursday we do a business development meeting, and if one of our regional sales managers out in the field is uh ready to present a potential dealer to come to come on with Graceland, they're gonna present to us um basically it's a market cap presentation. And our and I'll talk about our structure later, but basically that dealer, we're gonna know the profile of the person coming on. Have they had, do they have sales experience? Have they sold in the shed industry before? Have they sold in the metal industry before? Have they sold in, like have they done this something tied into this industry? And then we turn around and we look at their the traffic count. We look at the traffic count and say, okay, where is this located? We look at the competitive analysis, where are the competitors located in that town? How many of those competitors are manned? What is the inventory that's being carried right now in that particular town? Right. Then we say on that, based on those metrics, what should a Graceland dealer be able to do? And so we might set that and say, okay, that dealer, we think we can sell in that town $500,000 of buildings a year.

Cord 20:43

Based on data. A lot of people say that. Right. A lot of people arrive at looks to you know, looks like that, you know, this town, this place, whatever, is $500,000. I think what I mean, and you know, it's not like we're sitting in conference rooms every day, but we have a lot of these conversations. And I'm not hearing that level of let's really build the picture out. What we hear a lot more is the sort of eye test of like this location and that guy add up to $500,000. You know, just kind of as a you know, uh it's wishful, it's a wish.

Greg French 21:21

And we try to, we try to do more. Sometimes they don't work. Yeah. And so the question is, when they don't work out, what do you do? If you let them sit for two or three years, I can tell you that's a business that eventually is gonna have problems because their turns are gonna be driven down. Um so we look at that and we look and we look at the person too. So, we look at them and we say, what is their profile? Do they understand what it takes to be successful at selling sheds? Because it used to be, you know, you got to place a pulse uh, you know, on a place for to set these buildings, you can be a shed dealer. No cost to you. But that's not Way to evaluate anymore. Now the way to evaluate is do you know the work it's gonna take to respond to Facebook marketplace, you know, at night? Do you know and then and then also if it's let's say you think they're gonna sell four or five hundred thousand dollars of buildings, this is the problem that's not enough. Yep. And this especially at the kind of industry standard 10% that's out there, we'll talk about our commission program. That isn't enough anymore. They're gonna sell metal, they're gonna sell chicken coops, you know. We let them sell other product lines if they're if we're a supplier. We stick to what we do best, and we farm out the rest. We don't we let our dealers sell gazebos from other companies, chicken coops from other companies, metal from other companies. Um but we look at that and go, is their ecosystem of outdoor product sales going to let them support that business? And we try to make an educated decision.

Shannon 22:52

And we still have a high rate of folks that don't make it because it was more maybe work than despite all of your uh investigation and have you run into that where you had like a dynamite salesperson and the market just wasn't there. Uh what do you what do you do like in that situation?

Greg French 23:13

We've had less of that. We've had less of what we've had more of is they give it the old college try for like 30 days. Yeah. And that really doesn't work in today's web sphere. You've got to get the algorithms trusting your business. You can't just stop, especially

Winning Online Leads Takes Time

Greg French 23:30

digitally.

Shannon 23:31

Like people are overlooking the power of digital, and that that's where it becomes very complicated, is because you have to perfect two markets, the brick and mortar and the digital landscape. And you do that's very hard and it's a heavy lift, right? Initially, financially, there's a cost.

Cord 23:46

If you're reliant on that, the things that can like get the most immediate results, which is the Facebook, you know, leads and things like that. Well, I mean, you know, you've disrupt that person wasn't looking for a shed. So, like you're saying, if you're a college try type of person, I mean, we commonly in our conversations find those um 35, 45, 60, 90 day um pipelines, right? That person wasn't looking for a shed. Now you've put an idea in their head, you know, like now it's percolating, now it's whatever. But like some of these pipelines from start to, I'm not saying you can't get your first sales, but from start to actually hitting what should be a normal uh uh turn, a normal capacity uh within that pipeline could take 120 days, and people are discouraged by the time that 120 day comes, you know.

Greg French 24:42

There's no get rich quick scheme. You know, there I think this industry is fabulous. I would encourage dealers that are excited about the dream of business ownership. I still don't think there's probably a better opportunity in the United States if you want to get into something and you're willing to work hard than to join one of these shed companies. Um if not Graceland, another one. Um it's a it's a fab, it's a fabulous industry. So I, you know, I'm focused on Graceland today because I'm the CEO of Graceland. So but I would encourage, like if there was a town and somebody said, I want to get in this shed industry. I mean, we have people our become a dealer. I mean, we get so many people every day filling out on our webpage become a dealer. And, you know, we'll tell them there's other companies out there. When we say no, we'll say there's other companies out there, go research them. Um, we we're not gonna stop the people from going and doing what they're gonna do. We just wanna get the best vetted person that we possibly can.

Cord 25:45

And there is still tremendous opportunity to be, whatever that, to your point, whatever that model looks like, there is still, I mean, there is an obvious gap between the consumer understanding or knowing or having brand awareness of Graceland. I mean, we could rattle off the rest. It like this is this is everybody. This is Tough Shed, and they're everywhere, right? Um, you know, so like there's huge, huge opportunity to take that sort of um branding approach, right? And that top of mind awareness, mostly disruptive. Of course, these are all like, you know, I feel like we've landed in such a lead-based orientation on the marketing side that the companies are no longer because you get the ROI. You can literally be like, it cost me five dollars. Where like for the most part, the disruptive style of marketing, I mean, you can try to track attributions over long timescales, like you know, and I think that we're gonna arrive at in the next few years, AI has the potential to actually almost have like a graph score for each consumer where you can where it will actually approximate, well, actually 40% of the influence of this person's purchase decision comes from Instagram. You know, but uh but right now we're not there. No, so you can't put a dollar to it.

Greg French 27:11

I mean, full disclosure, I'm a behind-the-scenes person. I do not like to be out in front. It is not comfortable for me. I'm more of a if nobody knew who I was in the whole world, except for my family and friends, I'd be totally okay with it. Um, this is uncomfortable for me to even do a podcast. But you're talking about the changing ecosystem in AI. Part of the reason why I'm doing this podcast today, the reason why we're changing some of our marketing strategy is the way people search and find things now, because AI is going to drive so much of it, there's a piece of that has to be authority. And so here internally, we feel like, man, we've we actually have a lot of knowledge and authority in this industry that we sort of honestly would keep to ourselves. Um good time to be a little more present. I mean, people love people love to spread rumors about Graceland. I've heard so many times we're closing, going bankrupt. Well, one year was our most profitable year. Uh, it was the best year we'd ever had. We had people saying, We hear Graceland's closing. I'm like, oh, news to me. Um, I think it's a lack of insiders in our business. We don't have a lot of people.

Shannon 28:26

Well, and data, data's the natural enemy. I was gonna say this earlier, you know, like data's the natural enemy of creative types like myself. Like, because data is, you know, I I've said this on the podcast before is when data says one plus one, one plus one equals two, like my natural response is, could be. Because you know, the creative needs to allow for that opportunity. I'm not saying people are well, it's very creative to come up with like the idea that you're shutting down if you're you know setting on, you know, the some of the discussions you've had today. But I think that's just a natural thing in business, probably. There's probably a mixture of ego, there's a mixture of it just business. Uh, you know, it a thing doesn't have to be true, it has to be thought to be true. That's right.

Cord 29:10

Misunderstood strategy. I mean, Graceland's closing down because their manufacturing facilities have consolidated and they're not aware that there are hub locations.

Greg French 29:20

You know, I mean, there's no doubt. We went through a transition period there where early on, our advanced manufacturing, we were originally doing that into new areas that we were gonna go. But as some of our manufacturers decided to go do their own thing, it's like it's like a tipping point. And everybody understands this. Early on, we were totally happy to continue on like we were, but we said to go into these new territories, we're gonna do it differently. But the minute you start doing it differently, your core group thinks, well, it's just a matter of time before they change um and do this same new model and take us out. We're gonna get ahead of it and we're gonna go ahead and make the first move. Once that starts, that that snowball is hard to stop. And that is the downside of innovation. Our intentions didn't align with that. Our intentions were as we go north, we're gonna change our model a little bit because we want to be able to spread further. The minute we started dipping our toes into those areas, it gives sort of a hesitancy to everybody else. Yeah. And you actually cause, in some ways, an acceleration of a change that was probably gonna happen at some point. But we talk about that changing sales environment. If I go back to like 2017, 2018, 2019, we had you know a regional sales managers group, great group of people that had been here through the heyday when we were the only game in town, only one of two or three games in town. And as we started trying to introduce new things, guys, we've got to get these people on Facebook pages, get them on Facebook Marketplace. We were being fought by our own team every step of the way. And I have the receipts for that. Okay.

Shannon 31:09

Do you mean your internal team here or the dealer network or both?

Greg French 31:12

Both.

Shannon 31:12

Okay.

Greg French 31:13

The regional sales managers, the dealer network. I've got our you know, video team calls or I got the receipts of my dealers, don't need to do that. My dealers can just, you know, tell telling us, informing us how this push that we're making towards um, you know, everybody having Facebook, every hey, every dealer needs a Facebook buying, not crazy.

Shannon 31:36

Middle management stuff. I I've been there, trust me. And whenever you're catching it from both the executive side and your and your dealer network, here's the kicker.

Greg French 31:44

Those same groups, now that some of them have their own companies. Guess where they're at now? Oh, yeah. They're on Facebook Marketplace, they're on Facebook, all the things they resisted us on, of course, they're outdoing it. And it's just, and that's where change takes time, it takes necessity. And in their mind, when my sales go down because of these changes, yeah, you'll have my attention.

Cord 32:09

Yeah.

Greg French 32:10

Okay. When sales go down and things start going down, you'll have my attention. But right now, I don't need to do those things you're talking about because we're looking how successful we are. Well, when you do it when things are going downhill, you've already waited too long from the very beginning.

Shannon 32:26

People have a tendency to sell the way they buy because you only see your dynamic as a consumer, and a salesperson is the way you see yourself as a consumer. Unfortunately, people decide to purchase different than you do. They, they, you know, and if you're not meeting them where that need is, and that that's the whole digital push. I mean, it's really awesome to hire like a guy that everybody likes who's retired and sells a million or two million dollars a year, and he can do it naturally because he's just in the community. And but what do you what happens when you take a 23-year-old out of college who's maybe lacking a little bit in uh their speaking disposition or whatever? But you know what they know how to do? They know how to get in front of people and they're gonna figure out the other part because they're young, but they know I need a website, I know I need to rank, I know that I need to have some automation funnels, I know that I need to run ads, I know how to do a lot of these things if the company's not doing them for me. Well, I mean, next thing you know, the company hires them, right? You see that happen a lot of times because they work their way into a job. And then the person who's like, well, I'm retired, I'm kind of on my way out. I don't need to learn these things. I've been successful. I mean, like you're you could have, I'm not gonna say you will, but you could have a faster exit than you realize because you're not embracing the way that the it's not that the way that the industry's changing, it's the way that society is changing and people are changing and the retail market is changing. Amazon put us all on Front Street, you know, whenever they became successful. Like that changed everything digitally. I and I think that it's going to continue to go down that and you it's gonna go down that road, and you've got to figure out how to merge those two ideas.

AD-CHALLENGER 34:10

Introducing the Challenger, the revolutionary new shed mover that's taking the industry by storm. The Challenger features a touchless design, ensuring it only makes contact at the end of the skids and the bottom of the floor joists. So rest easy knowing your gable walls will remain pristine. Worried about reliability? Fear not, the challenger is always up for the challenge and will not overturn or scuff your shed. Harness the power of innovative wireless technology. Remotely control the Challenger via your smartphone. No sales service needed. And guess what? The cell phone remote comes standard with every Challenger at no extra costs. Featuring floating forks, a four-directional tilting mast, and sliding weight transfer, move the shed weight precisely where you need it to get ultimate traction. With self-loading capability, straight onto your truck, say goodbye to the need for a hydraulic carriage. The Challenger makes your job easy and more efficient. Choose from two machine sizes, 10,000 pounds and 15,000 pounds. Perfect for any job. Visit www.shedchallenger.com or email us at info at shedchallenger.com or call or text 828-220-3508 for more information. Experience the future of Shed Moving with the Challenger.

Greg French 35:51

You do,

Hope Is Not A Strategy

Greg French 35:52

and I think you're sitting on that merger of ideas is I think people get caught up in what the right or wrong way is going to be. I think there is understanding the strategy you have and why you're implementing it. It's when you're going and doing something with hope. You know, hopes and dreams, and I hope this works. Well, was that Vincent Lombardi? Hope's not a strategy. It you've got to have a little more behind that that says, here's why we're doing what we do. And then when it doesn't work, you adapt, you change, you really work at um you know modifying that business. So, that we talked about inventory driving it. Inventory drives this industry because of the rent-to-owned side. The rent-to-owned side is setting the price in many ways. There's a depressed earnings on the manufacturing side because the rent-to-owned drives down what should be a bigger margin on actually selling the building. Those the buildings' prices aren't set where they should be because the rental is so heavy. And I speak of that saying Graceland's a fully integrated company. We have our own rental company, we always have. And it was based on a few things. One was that changing ecosystem where your dealer had to have a hierarchy of salesmanship, closing skills, understanding technology to be really successful. And I think it's still hard.

Cord 38:00

Yeah.

Greg French 38:01

It is harder. And when people say, oh, it's still easy, you just set it up. I feel like that's not true. Maybe we're just missing the boat, but we see it as a bigger struggle, a lot more required in terms of education to help somebody be successful than it may have been 15 years ago, 10 years ago, and five years.

Shannon 38:20

But you're attempting to teach people the basics of you know technology in some areas and expecting them to be proficient in it in two weeks or two months or whatever. And that's not realistic either. So, the education side becomes a factor. And I don't just mean product education, but I mean sales education. Like, I mean, that was why we had talked about Shed University, you know, some years ago. I'm super happy to see like Peter Miller and the guys that have done the Shed Sales Summit and the Making Sales Simple trying to like, you know, just peek your head out to get to get walloped by the industry of like, who are you to tell me how to sell? And it's like, ah, I'm not saying I know it all. I'm saying I'm wanting to collaborate and share in ideas and thoughts that educates the industry better. Uh where does that line up with the CEO of a particular company like Graceland? Well, why do I want everybody to be educated? Well, typically speaking, we're as good as our weakest link. So, you still have an affinity for people just doing good business, having good business acumen in the industry, even your competitors. That's why people are like, why do you let your competitors come on the show? Why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I? Like, why wouldn't I let them compete? Well, what happens? I get this all the time. What happens if someone starts a podcast? Helps validate what we're doing. If I take that approach, as opposed to, you know, I I saved an article.

Compete With Character And Data

Shannon 39:40

So, so talking about competition, this is what I saw. And it was watching a NASCAR, you know, where they lost their tire, and they the tire just falls off. They full up, pull up to another pit, and then that pit takes care of their tire and gets them back on the road. And it says here, you can be a competitor and still have character in the middle of a race, a car loses a tire coming out of the pits, another team has competition, jumps in to help because real competitors don't just want to win. This is the key. They want to win against someone at their best. And I think that's the that's the key is like, why do you why do you collaborate even with competitors? Well, there needs to be some distinct features of like where we compete, but like I want to beat you at my best. I don't want to beat you because of. I want to beat you at my best. And if I've done that, uh then I feel more accomplished as opposed to some level of manipulation or whatever. I want to win because I'm improving myself daily too. And I think I do whenever I, you know, finally get a chance to talk with Greg on the podcast. That's why it's exciting to me is to I've talked to you several times, but it's cool here having this conversation that also does benefit the industry. So I'm sure you guys follow in line with some of those thoughts as far as competition goes as well.

Greg French 40:57

Yeah, I mean, ultimately, I well, I should you know, I should want Graceland to be as healthy as it possibly can be. I definitely, it was an adjustment for me in the shed industry because, you know, the Fair- Trade Commission comes out and they basically say we want everybody to compete with one another. That creates a healthy consumer dynamic. And that's what I have cut my teeth on in business. That's how every other business I've ever worked in works. You, your whole goal is to be the best and to, you know, especially if you're in the same industry as somebody, you're up against them for RFPs, you're up against them for every business you get. If you're a supplier of something, you know, you're trying to get them to choose your thing to supply. And you got these businesses, and they can choose whether to use, you know, sell your product or sell somebody else's product. The shed industry was a little unique to me in that there's sort of everybody was acting like that's not how it works in the shed industry, which is illegal, by the way. You can't, you can't, hey, let's agree to not compete with each other over here. You actually can't do that. Right. Uh but they kind of acted like everybody's, you know, all in the same industry. But really, I saw what I saw. I saw this company spun off of that company and that company spun off of that company, and these people don't talk to each other anymore. It took me like, well, 10 years now to figure out all the relationships of who, well, they used to sell for Dirks, and that person used this, and they spun off and they spun off. And now Graceland's got five or six spinoffs. I have zero ill will about that. Yeah. What we do have is the year 2026 with 2030 staring us in the face, coming fast, that we are concerned about how we're gonna do business in the future. Yeah, how we're gonna sell in the future. And if we focus on us and being the best that we could possibly can be, there'll be other people benefit from it. There'll be, and if you're coming in and you're maybe even disrupting the industry in some the way you're gonna do it, it will benefit others, and some people will fall by the wayside in that, but it mostly it'll be because they didn't change and adapt to the to the industry and to the system. And so, when a when a Graceland dealer has left and went somewhere else and or have changed what they were doing, we just look at ourselves and go, where did we fail in this? Where is it our offering? Was it our service level? Was it the education that we provided? What is it that we could have done differently? Or let's say that they went and supplied now we're getting another supplier, or they just went just to sell metal alone, or who knows? There's a whole bevy of things that that could have happened. We first self-reflect. And that doesn't mean that sometimes they're not enforcement of contracts or there's not other things that come into play, but mostly we look at ourselves in the mirror and we say, if it's gonna begin with me, I have to look at myself in the mirror. Um I always use that saying if it's gonna be, it starts with me. Um Jack O'Willinks book, you know, Extreme Ownership. Great book. We reference that a lot here. Is just, yes, we can go complain about it, but we probably should look in the mirror first on anything that goes wrong and start with what we could have done differently.

How Graceland Rebuilt Dealer Support

Greg French 44:08

And so that's what we did with our in the last five years with our dealer program is we looked in the mirror and said, what does our dealer program need to look like post-COVID economy going out into 2040? And we did a three-year plan, a five-year plan, a 10-year plan. 10-year plan is very high level. Five-year plan, still dreaming. Three-year plan really is about what can we execute and accomplish. And one of those things is we said, what do we want to be? Are we going to be one of these companies that shifts away from the dealer model? Are we going to lean into the dealer model? Are we going to be a hybrid? What are we going to do? Because people are buying different ways. Quit ignoring it. Quit pretending like every there's nobody's going to buy something online. They're already doing it now. We're going to lean into it. And we said, so what does that look like? We're going to double down on our dealer model while also providing them all of the newest in technology for the future. So, the first thing we did is we completely reorganized our internal support structure. So, we took our service level from what may have been more like an industry thing where you call into maybe a pool of customer service people and these bigger companies, you know, you can't get a hold of somebody. You may or may not know the person you get a hold of. We redesigned the entire company. And now inside of our company, we have structured teams. We have a divisional vice president that's out in the field. We have a regional sales manager that's out in the field that knows the dealers. And then inside, they have a dedicated team of people. They have a dedicated business operations manager that can get things done for them. They have a dedicated sales leadership team lead that just works with them on sales, pushing the sales through. We have a dispatcher. We have that same team has direct lines to the plant, to the independent drivers. So, all the dealers for Graceland, if they're active dealers, really participating, they intimately know their team here at Graceland.

Cord 46:14

Right.

Greg French 46:14

That's a big shift. And honestly, a lot of people who've joined us in the past, they've joined us because of that shift. Like, oh my gosh, you all offer so much support here. And you may have, maybe 10 years ago, you might not have said that. You'd have said, you know, we just got to do it on our own.

Cord 46:29

And separating those roles like you have also inherently allows those uh individuals to have more autonomy or more leeway to make decisions, I would presume. That's the whole point of having those type of people is to say, okay, you know, uh, if you are the, oh gosh, I'm gonna lose what you guys call it, the operations uh manager, operations manager for this area or whatever, you know, allows them to get something done. That is so frequently the dealer level.

Greg French 47:02

Yeah, it's an empowerment that we so we empowered them to make decisions. They don't have to go through these hierarchies of people. And look, we had a dealer that came to us from a competitor a couple years ago, and they were they had told us they were the support level was one of the reasons they had switched suppliers because they were told don't call into the office and borrow ball uh bother the ladies there. You know, that was the and this is a big company. Like, hey, don't bother them if you can help it. Like we're saying bother us.

Shannon 47:31

Yeah.

Greg French 47:32

We have we have real-time chat for our dealers. If they're having trouble with the sales order, they can chat with us immediately. They can call in here and get help. We can take over their machine. We redid our sales order um to make it more user-friendly for all the all of the of the dealers. But then we made huge investments in our education. We started Graceland University. We have an online learning management system for dealers with all the trainings. We have, you know, marketing level one, marketing level two, marketing level three. If you walk into Graceland dealer's office, they're gonna have their level one certification, level two certification. They've gone through all these trainings because we're trying to help them be successful business. I teach a class on running your business to all the dealers: how to run a business, how to run a profit and loss statement, how to manage money, how to manage cash flow. We brought in third-party financial analysts to help them with their with their business. That's great. Then we went and we invested in dealer engagement. So we hired a full-time dealer engagement and training team that their whole job is to make sure dealers are engaged in the business, that they're successful, and to give them the training that they need. We put on monthly and weekly trainings for our dealers. I will often be a guest on those. We have million-dollar mentors where our million-dollar dealers teach other dealers how to be successful. I mean, we've got so many things that I think if people knew what we had here, they would be salivating to be a part of it. That's what I believe, as I should. Uh, I keep qualifying that because I want people that watch us to know we should be proud. Yeah. We are proud and we should be proud. That's right. Well, you're doing a good job and it shows. And you should be proud of whatever you're doing, but I'm proud of what we're doing.

Shannon 49:14

Yeah.

Greg French 49:14

We have a dealer engagement team. We have an entire dedicated lead management team. So, that lead management team not only helps them set up their own CRM, but we also farm all of our leads out to those dealers. If the dealer is not there, they can't close it. We will even close the lead to them. 100% of the commission still goes to the dealer. We provide all those services for our dealers. Number two, we've invested in an entire online program. I've got three new developers that just started with Graceland to be able to sell online. We are doing a commission share with all of our dealers. If we sell that building, if let's say somebody buys purely online and they and they sell that building within uh the, we have a targeted range of that dealer's normal course of business. If they're a participating dealer, which means they're actively engaged with Graceland and a building gets sold through them, commission share to them. Nice. We so we're trying to do this in a way that we say we're gonna try to sell through every avenue in every way, but we need our dealer network to be healthy. Yep. The other thing I'm really excited about is that we just um we just signed a contract with a company that we are, it's a software company that we are buying. I can't say the name of it yet, but basically it is a 100% marketing platform for dealers where not only were our dealers have their own web pages with inventory, but they're gonna have their own dedicated CRM. This we have we invest in the API configuration so that we can auto uh post to Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Marketplace. Um we utilize a ton of AI in it to help generate different types of marketplace ads for them. So they have a lot of variety and they don't get flagged for using the same thing over and over. It does almost all of it for the dealer. Wow. Um it's kind of I can't think of a better word right now, it's a little bit dummy-proof in that you don't have to know a lot to do a lot. And so if somebody comes to be part of Graceland, you get all these tools. We don't charge you for any of those tools. We don't uh we provide marketing programs, marketing co-op. We don't charge our dealers for their banners. We don't charge our dealers for uh we give up to so many hundred dollars a month to co-op with them on their marketing. We're doing all this to say we want to be the most attractive place for a dealer to want to do business with. And so, the Graceland you may have known 10 years ago, or 15 years ago or even five years ago isn't the Graceland of today. We're very current. And so, we've kind of kept that secret, I guess is the point I'm making is from the outside, you may not notice that if you were here internally and spent much time, you're gonna see things are shifting very rapidly. We invested in a in in in a in a you know a 3D configurator that isn't just for configuring the buildings, but that building in real time creates a saw file that goes to our saws and builds that thing to spec and marks everything on it. We got the ability to customize windows and door replacements. We got the ability to lean into the accessory dwelling unit and R2 residential space. We've got a lot going on for the future, and a lot of it's not even deployed yet. That's going to get deployed in the next 12 months. And on top of that, we're entering into an acquisition phase. So,

Automation Tools And Acquisition Plans

Greg French 52:37

we are looking at potential acquisitions of other companies. And I referenced this earlier that we believe that the market's saturated, that there will be people who want to sell their businesses. And if they do, they should call me. And the worst you get out of it is that you had somebody evaluate your profit and loss and balance sheet and had a good conversation about it. That's the worst case scenario of letting somebody else take a look at selling it. Um, there's usually a long time, a long tell on people deciding to sell their business because at first they really don't know what it's worth. They typically overinflate what they think it's worth. Nobody wants to buy it, then they later come back. Yep. But we got market data on that, but there's, you know, it all depends on the company, the overlay, but we're open to those things as well. So, part of coming on here today was just making sure that people know who I am. So, we've had that if uh we've had that before.

Shannon 53:30

We've had that luck before where some of the CEOs have come on or different people have come on in the industry that are interested in acquisitions, you know. And I mean, I've gotten those phone calls. It's like, hey, you know, this guy called me because I did a podcast. And next thing you know, we bought their company. And I'm like, well, hey, it's good to know that we're adding some value in the industry out there with this free platform where you can just call in and listen to it or whatever. I like that that you're more front and center. I know you. I've had a couple breakfasts with you. Uh I know that you like uh uh uh tomatoes with uh cottage cheese. And Court has now picked this up and he's running with it. He's eating this. But, it's one of those things where it's like I get to know like some of the cool parts that the industry doesn't get to see. So, I I'm especially thankful that you came on you know today to talk about it and any way that we can help or spread information, spread communication, uh education. You know, we we've been calling ourselves infotainment a lot here lately, edutainment. We're trying to play with the different words of like I just think there's a place for people to come and talk about what's happening in the industry in real time. And uh I'm happy that you're here doing this. Well, I'm excited to be here. I've liked you in the conversations that we've had for a long time. We just haven't got to put a microphone.

Greg French 54:50

I told my wife last night, you know, hey, you know, Shannon Latham. Uh I just refer you to as the shade geek. Yeah, my wife. But uh, you know, Shannon has asked me over the years to, you know, you're trying to fill your spots, get people on your and I've always said, I'll think about it. Yeah, yeah, I'll think about it, a little emoji, you know.

Cord 55:09

Yeah.

Greg French 55:09

Uh but I'm happy to be on here. And again, I think I'm I've tried to be transparent today. You know, we're trying to get a little more out front and center. Yeah. I do more of these types of things so that people know a little more about Graceland. And I think of any better way than to be on the Shed Geek Podcast. You're the OG. The OJ.

AD-LUXGUARD 55:28

Hello, Shed Salers. Let's take a moment to discuss the shed customer and meeting their expectations. I remember growing up in the neighborhood where a certain percentage of the houses had well-manicured lawns and well-manicured homes. These were the type of individuals who felt it was important to purchase a well-constructed home or vehicle or maybe equipment to help maintain the quality of the item. As shed manufacturers, we seek to provide a well-built quality shed. We want the customer to feel satisfied that their hard-earned money has been well spent on a product that will last. At LuxGuard, we believe adding high-quality rubber flooring to your line of sheds makes sense to the customer and adds value the customer can appreciate. With each year, sheds are becoming more complex. The customizations we are seeing are virtually endless. LuxGuard not only gives a complimentary aesthetic appearance for their shed, but also protects the floor from spills and keeps cleanup simple. Offer your customer the customer service they seek with LuxGuard. At LuxGuard, we are committed to delivering exceptional customer service and innovative products to help our customers achieve their goals. We strive to meet the evolving needs of the customers. To speak with one of our ready-to-serve customer product specialists, simply call 336-468-4311. To see our product and view an installation video, just visit our website at LuxGuard.com. LuxGuard, the floor that lasts a lifetime.

Shannon 56:59

I'll tell you what, it's come full circle. You know, starting here, you know, it has allowed me the ability to come back and like set right here in the very room where I was interviewed, you know, 14, 15 years ago and kind of start to my shed journey, you know. And uh I don't know. I think Graceland holds a special spot, you know, obviously for me. And I mean, go to church with uh Jonathan. He's a childhood friend of ours, you know, he's associate pastor there. I mean, Bertus, you know, uh, I know Bertus has passed since then, but you know, he was uh I went on a couple of men's uh Christian missions with him down in uh Nashville with a bunch of guys from the church, and we had had some of the car time where we got to sit together. And Graceland's just always been just excellent out in at the different bashes and Oklahoma BBQ and seeing the guys out there.

Greg French 57:47

Yeah, we've been blessed to have really great people since the beginning. And they're still really great people. Some of them aren't not you know no longer part of Graceland, but they played a big role in Graceland being the company it is today. And I think we're all in a challenging environment. It's you know, I think that was kind of my point today was I can come on here and I could put the other hat on and say it's all sunshine and rainbows. I think it's I think it's tough. I think it's a tough market for them. And I think that's why they need to be on these podcasts and be listening in and making changes, and also um, you know, preparing for the future. But I think you know, we still believe in God's divine providence in our lives. That at the end of the day, we're trying to, you know, I think about the livelihoods of every single person that like touches the Graceland sphere. And I feel a sense of uh responsibility for them in terms of what we do. And so, my first responsibility to God and my family, but it's all it's to this organization. And then it's to the industry, then it's to the greater good, yeah, right.

Shannon 58:58

As it should be for others.

Greg French 59:00

An unhealthy Graceland, a Graceland that's not growing and prospering, you know, I'm not sitting here.

Cord 59:05

Yep.

Greg French 59:06

Every business has a life cycle, it's knowing in your business's life cycle when have I reached the end of it. And do I have the energy to do the thing it's gonna take to do it the next? So many businesses get sold because, hey, I see the way that it's going, I just don't want to do it. Right. I don't want to do that part of it. I want it to be the way it used to be, and I've come to this realization it's not. So I appreciate you having me on here and uh happy to join again sometime. I'm definitely way more technical in terms of what I like to talk about. I enjoy the business side of what makes it go and what makes it run and what makes people tick.

Cord 59:41

But it takes that vision, it takes that intentionality. Um, you know, people have been saying, Greg, he wears black mock neck long sleeve shirts. His hair's getting a little gray. I've heard talk of the Steve Jobs of the shed industry.

Greg French 59:58

Uh I don't know.

Cord 1:00:02

People are saying it.

Greg French 1:00:02

I do not believe anything you've said. Well, and I usually wear a jacket at work.

Shannon 1:00:08

So you know, I know you're pulling my leg. Sounds like a couple guys that eat cottage cheese, if you ask me.

Greg French 1:00:14

But what I'll close with saying the shed industry is awesome. Yeah, it is, it's got great people and some great companies, but you better be willing to compete in the market. Uh, it's not gonna be easy. You need to get out there and compete, and you need to know your business, you need to know your numbers, you need to know your data, and you got to be forthright with your investors that are behind that because you don't want to surprise them because it can come a big crash.

Shannon 1:00:38

Yeah, man, what a great, what a great just episode in general. Um, any final thoughts? I mean, I feel like you wrapped it up there, Clean. Anything else that you want?

Greg French 1:00:46

Any shout outs, any uh anything that you just told my family I kind of had a job there that everybody knows that company where I was at.

Faith Driven Leadership And Prayer

Greg French 1:01:03

Everybody knew me in the community. I guess you would say I was in some ways a public figure. I had been in the school systems, I had been, and we knew we had a lot of connections. And I came to my family, I came to my wife and said, Man, this company out in western Kentucky. I've met their board of directors. The way that I met them was kind of Christ-centered in itself through a the Commonwealth Policy Center, and they're looking for a CEO. I feel like I'm I feel like I'm fit for it. I don't know whether they'll choose me, but I'd like to go to an interview. And my wife gave me that blessing, which was a big change for her. She was getting interviewed a professor at the University of Kentucky. Um, you know, she had her own career, her own life. We have three beautiful kids, and uh my son's getting ready to go be a worship in the worship ministry. I've got a daughter at the University of Kentucky, I've got a 12-year-old daughter that's in the horses, but they supported me. But I remember I remember the day that I accepted the job, and only my wife and I know. And I sat my teenage daughter down, she was just turning 13, 12, and I said, Hey, we're gonna move. Or, you know, I gave the big talk about things changing your life. You've had a lot of consistency, but that sometimes we parents have to do what's best for the family to follow what's best. It's not just career-driven, it's about our life, our family. And we feel like that God's leading me to accept this job and that I've accepted it. And my daughter at the time said, and I've told this story a lot, what's so bad about your life that you want to ruin mine? And that was really hard, and it made me second guess the decision. It's tougher, dad. Like in that moment. And always say I always lean on Proverbs and like talk about trust. Don't lean on my own understanding. And I told my daughter that that day. I forgot Proverbs 3, verse 5 and 6, you know, trust the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. And I and we moved here, and she told me, I would rather live in a ditch where I came from than the nicest house around here. And it took, it took that time, and so you're coming somewhere new, you're super excited about it, but maybe your family isn't following. And I will I will just say that when you follow the providential steps that God puts in front of you, that I've looked at that 10 years later and see a happy and healthy daughter that has a wonderful friend network and support network. I see myself and my family with a fantastic church, a church where my son was able to let his musical ability shine. And now he's going to college for music and ministry, music ministry. I've got well-adjusted, you know, daughter who's got a pastime that she may not have got where we lived before. And you just look at that and you just you almost stand amazed that when we submit ourselves and submit our control to the king of kings, the prince of peace, that we will make the right steps. And I still got to compete in business because God, He protects us in our in our in our steps, but I don't know that He's showing favoritism out there. He doesn't get involved, he's not a puppet master of our lives. We still have to run things well, make good decisions and wise decisions in business. And uh, and that's what I hope to do for Graceland.

Shannon 1:04:43

He doesn't always give you the bench, he gives you the tree. That's right. You know, and uh I'm gonna I'm gonna share this story real quick. We're gonna go. And I don't I promise not to one up your beautiful story there. But Graceland and not just Graceland, but even the shed industry in general means so much to me because uh we were coming down here and we went through uh gosh, I'm struggling in Lovelaceville.

Cord 1:05:03

Lovelaceville.

Shannon 1:05:04

And uh what a lot of people don't realize is like when I called Jonathan looking for that job whenever I'd left the casino, I just felt my life was in a mess. You know, I didn't feel good in my career, I didn't feel good in in anything. And I landed here in this very room where I interviewed with Curtis Creeson and Bruce Morrison. And uh still, man, I still love Curtis so much. He doesn't even realize the impact he had in my life during that precious year to spend here with Heidi and Russ and in the in the office over here. And it was just a great time. But I remember um it wasn't quite your story as far as like finding my home, you know, as a as a CEO, especially. You wouldn't have wanted that, nor would you now. Uh, but I pulled over at in Lovelaceville, the little gas station that sits right there when you turn right on 305, and I cried my eyes out. Like you guys don't know that because I was so happy to get that job that day because I felt so Lost and I was starting to feel this call to ministry and to God. And I did ultimately worked in faith-based drug and alcohol ministry, same Lovelaceville place, uh, now owns uh a big ranch out there where you guys actually send people there to do work. You don't know how God's working in all of these different mysterious ways. Me and Cord even stopped by and got to see some of those guys and talked to them. And Cord told me a beautiful story about selling a trailer, uh tractor on the way down here whenever he was working. And he said, This Lovelaceville place has a special place in my heart. So, I sold my first big tractor growing up as a farmer.

Cord 1:06:36

Yeah. Right.

Shannon 1:06:37

You know, and uh and so we all kind of have share that. And uh yeah, I don't want to one up your beautiful story. I think it's awesome, but man, it made it meant the world to me because I cried all the way home because I was like, not only did I find a home, but I just felt so lost and I really needed people around me who were gonna speak into my life and speak good things. And Graceland did that. The employees here did that, right? And it led me on this path where 15 years later, I'm back here in the same room interviewing. You can't write a story like that if you were just a fiction writer. Like true, the truth truly is more unusual than fiction. And uh, it's been a great, a great opportunity to know you, know the company, know the industry. Uh I love what you guys are doing. I always enjoy breakfast. And you know what? I hope to be a bigger part of your story and Graceland's story, you know, where we find areas that we connect to move each other forward and the industry forward. I do want to ask a very brave thing, uh, because I didn't propose this in the beginning, but I know that you're a person of faith, and we always believe in wanting to keep prayer front and center here. I always fear the outside influence of not uh talking about your faith. And part of that is the imperfection in who we are, you know. And so, I'm not pretending here pretending to be uh perfect. I'm not here pretending to be all the things to all people, but God has put me on this, this, this, this unusual journey that led back to this moment, even. Uh, do you care to pray? Like just over the industry in general, because it would mean a lot to us.

Greg French 1:08:08

So, let's go into prayer. God, we just thank you for uh your divine providence um in our lives. And most mostly, God, we ask you to just not only bless our families and everybody's family in this industry, but God, just put prayers over the people in this industry, their families, um, their businesses, their livelihoods. God, that you just continue to put a path in front of us that we can follow, Lord. We thank you so much for your son and for uh your providence again in our lives. We submit all these things to you in your name we pray.

Shannon 1:08:40

Amen.

Cord 1:08:41

Amen.

Shannon 1:08:43

Thanks again, Shed Pro, for being the Shed Geek's studio sponsor. If you need any more information about Shed Pro or about Shed Geek, just reach out. You can reach us by email at info@shedgeek.com, or just go to our website, www.shedgeek.com, and submit a form with your information, and we'll be in contact right away. Thank you again for listening, as always, to today's episode of the Shed Geek Podcast. Thank you and have a blessed day.