Shed Industry Consulting - PART 2

Capital is tight, and that changes everything, from how we fund inventory and expansion to how we think about risk. We talk through what happens when borrowing a few million dollars suddenly comes with painful rates, low leverage, and a lot more “no” than “yes.” If you run a shed dealership, portable building manufacturing operation, or rent-to-own program, this conversation is about staying alive long enough to win: cash reserves, liquidity, and making sure you can cover payroll, rent, and overhead when the market gets weird.

We also dig into the rent-to-own side of the shed industry and why longer terms and lower money down can be both necessary for the consumer and challenging for investors. Deferred income changes your cash flow profile, and immature portfolios can bleed before the long-term yield shows up. That reality affects how investment funds view the whole space, and it influences whether your best next move is a financing portfolio, hard assets like land and a bigger plant, or a simpler plan that keeps dollars up front.

Then we bring it down to the ground level: shed marketing, CRMs, online buying behavior, and the fast shift toward AI search. Google’s AI Overview is already training customers to stop clicking, and that means your SEO, website content, and pay-per-click strategy must evolve. We also push back on the idea that AI can replace real work. Customers still want trust, clear answers, and a real person who delivers on time.

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This episodes Sponsors:
Studio Sponsor: Shed Geek Marketing

Velocity 360
RTO Smart
Shed Suite

Transcript

INTRO 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.

PART 2 0:00

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

Why Capital Feels Locked Up

Cord 1:50

I mean, it feels to me like there's going to be a ton of opportunity, but capital is tight. I mean, you know, it's it is that's the strain on the industry.

Richard Mashburn 1:59

That's the problem. There is no investment at the top. So, unless you are pure liquid at the top, the ability to go get money right now is I mean, it is impossible. And everybody's gotten afraid because there's no commoditized market on the backside and they're a little unsure on the costs as they come up and they're seeing it go over. And I think that's limiting the growth, you know. Now, me personally, you know, I hoard cash. My partner laughs at me all the time. You know, when St. Patty's days come, he goes, There's Richard dancing over a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. He thinks I bury it in the backyard. But, you know, I'm big on holding cash reserves inside the operating entity because there are some unknowns, and you really have to be prepared. You know, when we're sitting in a dynamic environment right now, you know, a dirty barn changes the market. You know, I was running a car dealership group that had just had their biggest August in the history of the entity. I'm talking about just unfathomable amounts of money. And I was standing there with the control over the organization looking at the closing of the August financials when somebody runs into the office and goes, two planes just hit the Pentagon. We didn't see a customer for 90 days. We were siphoning gas out of lot inventory to move inventory around. Are you prepared to survive that in your shed log? Now, we ended up having a huge year, 0% interest for 60 months, hit the car business, and all those things happened. And it survived and it moved on. But if you weren't in a position to be able to pay your salaries, cover your rents, and your overhead liquid. You had problems. You know, you can always cut your advertising back and do things on the short term and run a pause and move forward. But again, there's not a lot of memory. I know Tyler just said, you know, he talked to guys only a year and a half in the business. I feel for them that don't have that, but getting that information and that understanding of what it could be. And I think that's where it can, I think that's where the volatility of what you see right now creates that. I am I'm like everybody else. Now that I run a little business, nobody cares what my name is. When I walk into the bank and try to borrow a few million bucks to do inventory floor planning or something like that, you know, the interest rate's either in the teens or you know, they're wanting to loan you 30, 40 cents on the dollar, which is a waste of time. I can click two buttons online and alternative data and borrow that much money. You know, and it's you can't put a seismic package together. You're seeing it because most of the investment funds came out of the rent-to-owned companies and the different lenders on the backside, they're all now struggling to come up with their own money putting together packages and how they think about it. Their cost of funds have gotten high. I think they've also gotten a hard education on what their true yields really are. You know, let's face it, you know, I'm hearing the repo stories now. I just sit and smile. Um, you know, 30 to 40 percent of your contracts are going to come back over the lifetime. They can't come back inside the first six months, though. But nobody's seen where everybody, you know, the last time we saw a downturn, the average contract was 36 months with two payments down. Now the average contract's 60 months, one payment down. I think that's a great thing. It's got good RI, it's got good yield metrics to it. But that deferred income cycle and stream on the backside makes the front side losses greater. And you didn't prep for that long term. So until you get those contracts out, so if they're sitting on an immature less than three-year-old portfolio, they're going to hemorrhage money for the next 18 months before the extra profit of the longer term, less money down deal start yielding the additional revenue they were built for. You know, and that's where the slopes of those types of things start really driving the thought patterns on the investment side. I'm not trying to be overly technical to the consignment dealer, going, I don't know what you're talking about. It makes no sense to me. And I'm going, it may not, but to the people that are trying to borrow $10 million to start a rent-to-own portfolio or something like that, or buy a big piece of land to build a new plant, that's what's driving how hard it is to get money right now. You know, it's that deferred income, the additional loss cycle before it started relevantly flowing back in. And I disagree. I think the consumer is going to need that though. You know, everybody's talking about 72-month rent owned now, and they're talking about other ways and you know, waterfall installment lending to drive payments down to make the buildings more affordable. That's all very real and necessary to keep the consumer moving. But it also has an immediate impact on where most of the investment dollars come from for this industry.

Cord 6:32

And it's gotten so vertical that you're now choosing, just like you said, you said if you're if you're deciding to uh you know start a rent an own company or put 10 million into a portfolio, or you're looking at building a manufacturing facility. Well, how many companies out there, Richard, do we know now that are doing both? You know, it it's not just about it's not just about choosing a path now, it's about really looking at um, you know, like you're saying, what is what do we have to do in the short term to be sturdy, to be resilient, to be prepared. And then in long term, where's the actual yield at? Where's the actual margin at? And you know, you might be able to make a case that right now, as you're saying, as the market shakes out, the margin is probably in building the facility, right? It's probably in hard assets on the ground that produce things that can gobble up market share. I know we're getting like deep into a philosophical business.

Richard Mashburn 7:34

I don't do my rent-to-own.

Cord 7:36

Right.

Richard Mashburn 7:37

You know, Shannon's system does my rent-to-own. It's like I mean, I don't I don't I don't have the excess cash yet. I mean, we're not even three years old.

Cord 7:49

Right.

Richard Mashburn 7:49

And the cash drained, and then when I see these people taking on both at each time, I mean I'm in the same boat right now. I would probably invest in the real estate land facility. I'm gonna need a bigger plant soon myself. And it's one of those prepping me that if I have you know multiple million dollars tied up in an in a long-term high-yield ROI account, yes, and I'm not afraid of managing it, right? But I'm going the deferred nature of my income then gets so stretched out there. I need every dollar I can pull up front right now. And that's where like the premium conversations and stuff are getting more intense. Everybody's trying to suck every dollar to the front they can right now to front loaded to make hard acquisitions and carry no debt. Now, the big thing is you know, you also run a company that has no debt. One, you can't afford to borrow it, but

Cash Reserves And Surviving Shocks

Richard Mashburn 8:40

then two, you know, you need to be prepared.

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Shannon 9:58

I think the way one of our mutual friends says it, and we'll see if this makes the episode, but when the tide goes out, you see who's not wearing trunks. Uh you probably heard that a couple of times, you know. Uh, and that that happens unfortunately whenever you overcommit and you constantly chase that new business. Uh, Christopher likes to talk about strategy, but he's really helped us to coin the phrase or start using it in our everyday vocabulary of intentional growth. And that's one thing he talks about very specifically with the marketing clients. Chris, the everything we're gonna we're gonna bring it back down to earth just a little bit. Uh, if not, we'll get we'll get uh we'll get you know some of the average dealers that'll say, what is this guy talking about? He doesn't know about sheds um when he knows three times as much as the rest of us. Uh but the you know, all the stuff that you saw, you know, part of that that came out of that was the tech boom. And I think it was e impact that said, uh, you know, when I had James Charles on, he said, yes, 10 different marketers, what marketing is, you get 10 different answers. And we always kind of lump marketing into that software development phase, really that whole tech uh side of things. For I'm thinking about the whole conversation here and what Tyler mentioned earlier about pivoting in 08 and 09. Part of those things that were included were the way retail was moving and not even the way the shed industry was moving. I think we I hear people say all the time, like, well, if you know, if I see a website and it doesn't have pricing, I'm going somewhere else. Fine. Whether your philosophy is have pricing, don't have pricing. I think the distraction and the thing that happens is you get caught selling the way you buy, making the assumption that all people who buy sheds buy the way you buy, and they just don't. There's a retail market out there that has really embraced the onslaught of the digital landscape. And like that's really started hitting the industry hard with 3D configurators, you know, SEO at a at a at a granular level ads. I mean, we started talking about, and I know there were CRMs that were in the industry, and people were using CRMs before we were talking about it, but about three years ago, we intentionally started becoming very educational on CRMs specifically because of the bottleneck that we felt like we were hearing. What's your take on maybe not just marketing, but really technology and where that technology is going, maybe even over the next two or three years?

Christopher Sedlak 12:41

Yeah, so you know, first things first with it just because the technology's out there doesn't necessarily mean we should be using it. It has to be the right application for the strategy you've put out. If your goal is to deliver 100% wonderful in-person customer service, you have no business having a chatbot on your website. Just because the chatbot is out there and just because it's a great technology, uh, doesn't mean that it's going to be necessarily the right thing for you with your own unique selling proposition for your business. Uh so you know, I think that's the first thing to consider. The other thing I wanted to loop back to is uh, you know, we all have a lot of friends in the Anabaptist community. And typically they tend to be a little bit more on the low-tech side. And sometimes we have to think, you know, let we gotta take ourselves out of the seat that we're sitting in and think about what are our customers wanting. Now, personally, we've talked about this before, Shannon. I would never personally buy a shed that I cannot touch myself. I want to be able to open the door, shut the door, see the construction of the shed, see what quality materials are being used with it, talk to somebody in person. But there are very successful shed companies that have done a wonderful business doing nothing but selling online. And after the whole COVID situation, people are a lot more open to making a lot of big purchases online. So, how do we leverage that technology is going to depend upon what we're wanting to do with our strategy. But then the other aspect too is well, what do we do with the AI that's coming in? And you know, to answer the question about where things are going in the next two to three years, we already are seeing this with Google. If you do a Google search today, I'd be curious to know how many of you never even get past the area that gives the automated AI answer to you. You never bother clicking on another website. Or maybe you're clicking on the ads up on top and you're never even getting down to the organic listings. So, the question is how much of that space do you want to dominate uh in the digital, you know, tech space? Um you know, we've all had clients in the past that have said, well, I don't want to, you know, I don't want pay-per-click to be my long-term strategy. But these days you have to depend on pay-per-click to be part of that strategy if you want to play. As I often say, you know, Google is like the bully in the playground in the sandbox. If you want to play in that sandbox, you better bring your milk and cookies with you. So you know, we're where we're seeing things going.

Rent To Own Yields And Deferred Pain

Christopher Sedlak 15:40

Everything that Google has done with the pay-per-click with their organic search engine, you're going to start seeing Chat GPT and all of the other AI engines starting to roll out advertising services. You want to be part of that so that you can show up for those particular search results when people put in those long queries into those. You're going to want to make sure that the websites that you're building are able to answer the most common questions that people are going to be asking so that you can show up for those queries because they're not going to be going to your page on your website looking for those answers. They're going to be depending on the AI engines for it.

Shannon 16:21

I just enabled it yesterday. You know, Googled a question, would you like to enable Chat GPT? I can use it to get you this answer. Of course, the AI overview comes up, and I have begun to rely on it as opposed to the organic. But it was interesting that even Google is saying, hey, you know, let me check with chat on this. We were in Knoxville at last year's, you know, uh uh shed expo and went to Muya, got us a nice little burger and a and a shake, and we asked the guy the same thing we do everywhere we go. Um, hey, if I was going to get a shed or storage building, where would I go find one? And like 90% of the answers come back to Lowe's or Home Depot uh still. So, that's a separate branding conversation that we can have. But I thought it was interesting. He's like, I'm not sure. There's a guy down the road. Let me chat that for you, real quick. So like when that vernacular shows up, that it's no longer let me Google that for you, let me chat that for you. It's really interesting to see where the AI movement's going to continue to take, not just the shed industry, and I think the danger of people uh have is to start to think, well, how does it affect the shed industry? What it matters is how is it affecting retail? If you're a retail provider, put thinking about the shed industry and start thinking away about the way shoppers shop, not the way they just shop for sheds.

Christopher Sedlak 17:42

That's right. Yeah. So, at the end of the day, it is know your market, know your market, and know your market. Um, you have to understand the way that people are shopping. You have to understand the way people want to shop. Uh, it's not about trying to force somebody down a funnel that they don't feel comfortable going down. Um, so you know, think of Ben about the playground with the slide. But what can we do to grease that slide? What can we do to make that transition, you know, from two stories up to make that journey all the way down to the bottom as comfortable for people as possible? After all, they are giving you five, ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars for a building. That is painful for people to write those checks. It's painful to make those monthly payments. What can we do in the sales process? From the very beginning, when they first see your ad, they first see your website, they first encounter you with AI, what can we do to reset slide to make it less painful for them?

Shannon 18:47

Tyler, obviously, you've got the longest retail experience, you know, of all of us in terms of like selling sheds. When you just hear the whole conversation that's being broken down, I really miss, you know, Peter on this conversation to kind of discuss what they've been seeing with sales and the B2B market and the Shed Sales Summit and the things that they're trying to create from an educational piece, which goes right along with things we've been talking about from trade organizations to the original thought of Shed You and just trying to be like an educational. We even say education through entertainment. You know, we want to be funny, we want to laugh, we want to joke, but man, these episodes are heavy and fun because there's just some heady people out there who will love listening to these things as opposed to just a story about how you got started. Those things are still very valuable to me. We're six years in, and I'm just as happy to sit down with Richard and the 50,000-foot view and uh gentleman or a lady who's willing to tell us how they got started in the industry, what they're seeing, and what their experience is. Uh, if nothing else, we're helping to create some backlinks for them. But whenever you think about, you know, 19 years ago or whatever, what where does your mind take you? Do you start to focus on like getting back to what was or advancing to what will be? And how do you strategize? How do you recommend strategizing as a consultant? What other people should be looking at too? Who should they be going to for advice? Who should they be listening to? You know?

Tyler Mayhan 20:27

Well, obviously they should listen to the Shed Geek consulting team, right?

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Tyler Mayhan 21:34

You know, I I'm somewhat torn with some of these things, and I guess I'm just in that in that age where I'm getting closer to being the grumpy old man that shakes his fist at the teenagers. But I'm not old enough yet to be that, you know. Uh so I I'll give you my perspective for what it's worth. I think AI. Is extremely valuable. I use it frequently just to help me, you know, configure things and make things look nice and what have you.

Choosing Hard Assets Or Portfolios

Tyler Mayhan 22:10

I'm afraid that if everybody moves to that, uh you can tell. I get on Facebook like I'm sure a lot of you folks that listen do. And it is extremely obvious when somebody posts something that they just put their thoughts in Chat GPT and it spit out a Facebook post for them. Yeah. And you can tell, I mean, I do it. Some of the stuff we post on Facebook, uh, you know, I take a picture and stick it in chat GPT and tell it to make it look nicer for me, and it does it. And you can tell when people just rely on that, and that's all they have is this AI stuff. I'm not saying that that's wrong to do that. Obviously, I do it some. Uh, what I think you're going to see, what we have seen in the past few years, probably the past two to four years here in Oklahoma, is that a lot of people uh there was a fad, uh kind of a phase where it felt like there was no reason to have any physical inventory or actual dealer, that you could just do everything online and people would just text you and email you, and it would just uh but I think I see the pendulum swinging back that a lot of people they want to know that they're actually talking to Tyler when they call Better Barnes and not just AI when they're messaging me. We use AI, right? I hope I'm not being too confusing with what I'm saying, but I think uh what I have what I have seen in the past few years is if you rely too heavily on technology and you forget the core principles that built this business to start with, uh you know it doesn't matter how good your marketing is and how good your chat body is, if you don't do what you say you're gonna do, if you don't deliver the shed when you tell the customer you're gonna deliver the shed, if they call you and they can't get a hold of you, and you don't stand up and be a person of integrity, all these technologies are going to be of very little value. What I see the technology doing in the future is those people who have, you know, I like we had a podcast a while back with Charles Hutchins. Cord, you and I and Charles, and I love talking to Charles, he's a great guy. Uh and uh shout out Charles. Uh Charles Hutchins, when he when he talks at the Shed Expo in different places, I've heard him, he gives the same the same talk. It's the same core principles. It's like this is what you have to do to succeed. And he last I knew, last time I listened to him talk, he was still writing his customer's name down on a on a notepad, right? He doesn't use the CRM. Now, I hope you may have to edit this, Shannon, because I may have been so confusing in my talking in circles here. You may have to just cut all that out. Uh, but what I see is I'm afraid there's people who are just thinking, oh, this is easy. I can just get AI to do all this for me. And AI is not going to do it all for you. You're still going to have to do the work, you're still going to have to show up, you're still going to have to outwork the rest of your competition. You're still going to have to be smart in yourself and not just type in the right prompt and chat GPT every few minutes, if that makes sense. There's still the real world work to be done. You know, I like I like those things, but I got up this morning and went into work early and got started because I know we got to kill something and drag it in so we'll have money to pay the bills next week, right? And so it's still got to be done every week. And that's the part I like about working with business owners. You know, one of the guys I've been working with is a guy that's just building the sheds in people's backyards. Uh, and he's the guy that's doing the building, he's doing the marketing, he's doing all of it himself, and he's a great guy, and he's got a lot of motivation. And what

Tech, AI Search, And Modern Shed Marketing

Tyler Mayhan 26:20

I like about working with people is you get to see the actual boots on the ground, like the real-world problems that you can't type a question in the chat GPT and it spit the answer out because it doesn't know how to build. I mean, it might give you some idea how to build a shed or how to deal with this problem, but uh AI has not advanced, at least as best I can tell, to the place to actually replace human experience.

Christopher Sedlak 26:46

Discernment.

Shannon 26:47

Yeah, there's uh there's yeah, there's uh some questions you can ask ChatGPT that'll catch it up for that very reason. And there's a couple websites that I've like to visit uh to prompt chat GPT to Cord's word, you know, discernment, understanding the human psychology where it gets confused. Um it's still being perfected. And you know, I say it this way: if you if you're gonna take a risk and get on Amazon and buy a box of envelopes, you're pretty safe that even if they come to you and they're the wrong envelopes, uh, you're not concerned because you only spent $2.50. And you're just you're just completely comfortable with making that purchase. A $7,500 shed is still a little bit of a different beast. And I and that's why we still believe that the dealer network, I want to make sure and say this uh in the antithesis of some of the things I've been accused of and trying to eliminate the dealer network, completely false. It's absolutely necessary, and I don't have the power to do that anyway, uh, in case anybody wondered, but the dealer network is absolutely, but so is the technology and the social media aspect and other things. And I'm not saying that you can't make it as only a digital company, I'm also not saying you can't make it as a completely non-digital company. Uh, but I think it does depend on your appetite and where you're hoping to go and if you're gonna scale, and scaling means growth. And if you're not growing, you know, some people take the approach that you're dying, you know, that your company's going backwards. So, like, I guess it boils down to even if you do not want to be a $400 million a year uh company in sales and you're looking to harvest that type of environment, maybe you want to go from 2 million to at least 2.5. And like there are tools out there that are available, and there's people who do it. And I think we get so caught up, and I'm maybe getting on a soapbox, I have to edit my own stuff out here. I think we get so caught up on well, who are they in the industry to tell me what to do? Who are they to start a shed of a shed sales event? Who are they to start a marketing company, or who are they to start a this, that, or another? Well, let me tell you that the mother of invention is necessity. And most people in this industry, especially with whether it be products with that German engineering that they have that's so beautiful, where they just go fix a problem, they go solve it by creating something new altogether, or they or they solve something for their self and then they see a business proposition or a value prop where they can go and sell that to the industry. Maybe it's an RTL software because I'm an RTO company. Uh maybe I'm not going to be an RTO company anymore because I'm gonna start selling RTL software that fixes your solution. Uh, maybe I maybe I created a competition to the Cardinal Mule with the Shed Challenger. I think that machine's amazing. I think it's awesome. I think learning more about it is the educational piece that we're missing. I think that's why they're going to the events. The Cardinal Mule's done a fantastic job. But I just I just think that the inventive mindset of whether it be a marketing or whether it be a shed sales event, uh it's a natural thing for the industry to be the one to figure it out. Chris, how many times have we had people come to us and say, well, you know, we just want someone who understands shed marketing. Marketers are good, but we need someone who understands our very complicated industry.

Christopher Sedlak 30:13

Well, and that's the beauty of working with this team too, Shannon, is that you know, when you sometimes just work with a regular marketing agency, the focus is just marketing. So, I can't tell you number of times that I've you know entered into a marketing consultation to find out that the issue isn't just marketing, the issue is business. The issue is the way the CRM is set up or the sales process. And yes, while those things tie back into marketing, there are more fundamental issues sometimes that need to be dealt with first before we can ever touch marketing. I just want to circle back to something that the Tyler said too. You know, he was talking about you know, the AI can't take the place of you know, the expertise and the authoritativeness and the trustworthiness. And that's exactly the sort of thing that we tell people to put on websites, right? We have this concept of Eat uh with Google, with SEO. So EAT stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. If you don't have that as a shed seller in your core being, what are you doing selling sheds? You need to have that before you ever market anything. That's a core value that you need to have in this industry.

Shannon 31:28

If we're if we're not careful, we'll turn into a two-parter if we haven't already. But I just want to get some final thoughts, start with Richard on from a consultative perspective. Somebody's listening. Uh they're either on the edge of their seat, they're chomping at the bit on some of the things we've said, or they're completely asleep because they don't know what we're saying. Um what do you see? Who do you want to talk to? Who are the people that are listening that are in the industry that you want to talk to that you want to consult with?

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Richard Mashburn 33:12

That's probably the best way I would put it. I don't know that I have a target individual or business size. I do have a flair towards bigger just from an experience base. But I think you know, I used to teach a class years ago to developing execs because the difference between strategy and tactics. I am probably not the best tactics individuals. Not that I don't know them or understand them. That's not considered my area of expertise. I'm more of if you're trying to think through, I could go this path or this path. I could take this leap or that leap. Um I've built something out this way. And you know, because for me it's in theory, you have to regression test it against your previous model, apply it to your current implementation, and think about the future impact of it. You know, I think to me that's the greatest opportunity and it's also the greatest interest of mine. So um I would say it's not so much a definition of how long you've been doing what you're doing or how big you are. Like I said, it was a great conversation with the consignment dealer about just pattern of business. Um, I may very quickly need to hand you off to somebody once you get down to some other thing. And I and I gladly do that. You mentioned it repeatedly, Shannon. Sometimes the best advice is you probably need to tell somebody other than me. Um, I understand everything Christopher does. I am not good at doing what Christopher does. Um, that's just not my area. Um but I think that's probably the greatest value, is if you're thinking about things strategically and you're either trying to put together a plan or a vision, you know, like everybody keeps talking about marketing. I think most of the people's questions are about advertising. Advertising and marketing are not the same thing. And everybody wants to talk advertising, and they haven't really figured out their marketing before they start doing their advertising.

Shannon 35:17

That's a sound bite and a half right there, Richard. That's good stuff. Go ahead, go ahead.

Richard Mashburn 35:27

No, that that, you know, to keep it fairly concise, which is hard for me anyway, but yeah, I think I think it's more the strategic piece of it, how you how you think about it. And that's what I take great pleasure in. And I find I find great personal satisfaction in sitting down and going, wow, that's a great thing. You know, now be ready. I'm gonna poke holes in it a million ways because that's what you want to try to do. All of my mentors did it coming up. You brought them an idea, but you didn't bring them an idea with your about your best solution. Once you showed that solution, they would rip it to shreds

AI Limits, Integrity, And Human Service

Richard Mashburn 36:00

in front of you and then give it back to you.

Shannon 36:02

I've been accused of being pessimistic for not being agreeable. And I'm just I think that I think that I'm not agreeable for the sake of being disagreeable. Uh, it's because I disagree, because uh I came to my own thought, my own conclusion. The onus is then on you to change my opinion if you see something better. Mine is to be willing to change if I see something better or stand firm on what I believe is the best situation. So, while I love to live in a world of kumbaya, uh, I'm just unfortunately, you know, on just at least enough unhinged to say I disagree in a room of 10 people who agree, if I disagree. And it's like, wow, you're the trouble child. And it's like, I if you choose to see it that way, but this is you know, I may come, I may come into agreement with you. I need to understand why. I need to understand how, or else I'm gonna stand up.

Richard Mashburn 36:58

Then you get left slack jawed. And if you leave me slack jawed, I will personally walk in and help you find the people to back in, get you the money to run with what you just thought about. Because you've come up with something, you know. I sat in a room when a guy vented, you know, have you ever heard of the credit card processing company Stripe? You know, it was actually a competitor of Square. I sat in a room when that young man sold the investment to Wells Fargo for money for backing. He was 14. That was his third company. Wow. Sometimes you run into people that they ask the question and kind of go, What do you want? I who do you need? I can't help you. You are beyond me by leaps and bounds. And that that happens, and usually by people that you don't suspect, but people that don't understand what they're holding in their hand. It's just an idea of a completely better and different way of doing it. And it's just because they didn't know, they thought of something so far outside the norm that it was just better than anything everybody'd ever. I'm the first to admit when I see that I'm like, hallelujah, that is the greatest thing. It's the greatest opportunity, but it is more to me a strategy conversation.

Shannon 38:06

Well, well, just so you know, we have uh switched those clients back and forth between consulting partners. So, if you're interested in consultation, we are able to do that. Chris, uh, you know, as quickly, I suppose, as you can, who do you want to consult with?

Christopher Sedlak 38:22

Yeah, so three things that I wrote down as Richard was talking here. I am very much on board with the strategy first idea. We talked about that before. You can't have a plan unless you have the strategy. So, I love looking at people's big ideas and big plans that they have and condensing them and figuring out what we can actually accomplish. The other thing I'm gonna tell anybody that's listening to this is this is not about 100%, 200%, 300% growth. This is about managed growth. So, whether you want to grow 5% or 20% or 50%, I want to have that conversation with people. Um, that's really important. I marketing should not stress people out. So, if marketing stresses people out, let's have that conversation. The other, you know, things here too is I'm very much about evidence-based approaches. If you're type of person that just wants to go from your gut with everything, I'm probably not the right person to work with. I want to actually dig into your numbers, I want to dig into your financials, I want to figure out how much margin you actually have to go ahead and do marketing for each shed that you're selling. I want to dig into your pay-per-click, I want to dig into your SEO. So when we start looking at all that, then we can finally start saying, okay, this is really what's going on here with it. Um and then the third type of person I want to work with is somebody that sees marketing as an investment and not just spend. Uh, I want you to feel good that where we're putting the money is actually going to double, triple, quadruple your money. I don't want you to be looking at it as, oh, this is just something, it's a line item on my tax statement for advertising. Uh, because that's not what we're about. That's not what we're doing. This whole thing is about that managed growth and to continue to invest, to continue to grow that interest, uh, both monetarily as well as interest of your consumers in your market and continue to grow and expand that as time goes on.

Shannon 40:21

Very awesome, Tyler. Your thoughts, sir. Who is the idea of a consulting client? Who where do you where can you offer value?

Tyler Mayhan 40:32

Uh yeah, absolutely. One thing, Shannon, if I may, I do want to just shout out my friend Bison, Bison Transport out in Texas. Uh, yeah, great guy. I've been wearing my hat here on the whole time, and I forgot to mention something about it. Great guy. Uh, if you're in Texas and need to be able to move, call Bison. Uh you can cut that if you need to. Um the kind of people I'm looking for to help. Uh, you know, I grew up in Better Barnes. It's a small family company, like so many of your small to mid-sized shed manufacturers and businesses in our industry are family operated. Uh, I think I understand the dynamic of working with family. And that sometimes is messy, sometimes is sticky. Uh, it doesn't always follow the business handbook, right? I mean, there's things

Consulting Focus, Managed Growth, Closing

Tyler Mayhan 41:30

about that that can just get messy because uh the people I work with also I have Thanksgiving dinner with them as well. Uh, and so, you know, I think I understand how to navigate that, been doing it over 20 years, uh, and we all still love one another. And so uh, you know, there's a lot of value in that. And I think the kind of people I'm looking for typically are going to be your smaller businesses, your family businesses that are trying to get to the second level, you know, they've maintained, but they're wanting to grow another step. Uh, I don't have the expertise that these other guys offer on some of this high-end stuff, uh, but I have been in this family business for quite some time, and we've been at least reasonably successful. We've lasted, as Richard mentioned, through the 08-09 uh stuff. We went through the COVID thing, and I realized it was a boom time for us. Uh, you know, so we've been through a lot of these things. I've seen a lot of ups and downs, and uh, and I just like to help people. That's really uh I said it on the very first time I was ever on your podcast, way back in the beginning, but the rising tide lifts all boats, and it's been my philosophy that if I can help the people in this industry, it just makes everybody better.

Shannon 42:43

And it's something we've picked up that mantle and ran with it for five years that we've believed in that vision from I think maybe the third guest on the on the podcast, if I remember correctly. And uh when you said it, it kind of stuck with us. Josh Villa Lobas down there at uh Wolf Valley said, you know, something he said, Americans have so many opportunities, sometimes they don't even know how to just pick one and stick with it. And a couple of those early things early on just kind of stuck with me. So, I just appreciate you guys. I think all of our paths have crossed in some unique uh ways and continue to do so. And I do think that everybody's heart here is to do the right thing, help others, helping others helps yourself. Uh, it gives you the opportunity to do so. So, uh almost a Zig Ziggler mindset, if you will, uh to some extent. Poor, do you have any final thoughts?

Cord 43:33

I'm just this group is so great. Um, and being able to bounce back and forth with the packages that we offer, I think is one of the best benefits in the shed industry, no matter what size you are. The ability to talk to this group of guys who knows the history, uh, knows how we got to this point in the industry, understands the micro, as Richard says, understands the micro, the short term, what needs what needs to happen, what is working, uh, how to execute today to get results for now, and also understands where it's going. And I just don't know that there's a better room of people coming from all different sides. I just love being a part of it. Love doing this. I wish we could do it weekly and just chat it up because I think we come away from it. All of us, like, okay, let's, you know, fire it out of a cannon. So um I love it, guys.

Shannon 44:31

I gotta tell you, there's more conversations too with some others in the industry that we're having. So, who knows what round two of Shed Geek consultation uh podcast episodes or maybe even a regular series of them are gonna look like because we're just having some really awesome conversations with people, competitors, collaboration opportunities. It's just it's there's just really been so many like cool things. If I had to write, they say truth is stranger than fiction, Tyler, and I believe it because uh you just could make up some of this stuff if you guys know it. I'm no that sounds mysterious, I know, and I'm sorry for that, but it's just really cool. I wish you guys got to see behind the scenes. I felt like we need to be recording all this for a tell-all in 20 years when everybody won't sue us for all the secrets we're putting out. Uh I appreciate you guys, I really do. Uh enjoy talking to each and every one of you and have tremendous respect for you all. And I thank you for sharing this space with us. So, until next time, thank you guys so much for being on. Thank you, listener base. Go buy something from an advertiser. They keep us doing this stuff, so show them some love. We appreciate you guys so much for listening. Thanks, Richard. Thanks, Christopher, thanks, Tyler. Thanks, Shed. Thank you, guys. Thanks again, Shed Pro, for being the Shed Geeks studio sponsor. If you need any more information about ShedPro 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 ShedGeek Podcast. Thank you and have a blessed day.