00;00;05;05 - 00;00;17;05
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Real Growth podcast. I'm excited today. We have the Miller brothers with us and we're going to learn about their story in business. We're going to learn about their construction company. Let's kick it off. Go ahead and introduce you guys and share about your company that y'all.

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Speaker 2
I'm Gary Miller. I'm the President of Peak Remodeling Design. We're a full service for design, for management or build firm.

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Speaker 3
And I'm Brandon Miller. I'm vice president. I handle more of the exteriors, roofing, siding, windows, gutters, decks. We do it all.

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Speaker 1
And how many times in your life have you been asked, are you guys twins?

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Speaker 2
How many times a day? Yeah.

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Speaker 3
That's what it is. When we're away from here, it's like two or three times a day. Is it really? It's ridiculous.

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Speaker 2
No, no exaggeration.

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Speaker 3
Yeah. It's crazy. Like, if we're on vacation somewhere else two or three times a day here, not so much.

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Speaker 1
Go with it. But I guess we are.

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Speaker 3
We have not. No, we play the age game sometimes, and that's what we do. Yeah.

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Speaker 2
We ask them, who do you think's older?

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Speaker 1
You know, and I don't know.

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Speaker 3
The answer goes back and forth.

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Speaker 1
I would say Brandon's older.

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Speaker 3
Say he goes 50%. Gary's older.

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Speaker 1
I'm really. Oh, okay. How far apart are you guys in age?

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Speaker 3
Six years.

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Speaker 1
Years? What was it like growing up together? And now being in business together? Has anything changed?

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Speaker 3
It's I would say it's changed quite a bit. Honestly, when we were younger, we did not get along, so we hardly ever hung out Now we get along great. I mean, there's feuds in the office, and when that happens, we've just learned to just walk away. There's nothing good comes from us, and cooler heads prevail, for sure.

00;01;39;28 - 00;01;57;00
Speaker 2
Yeah. You know, the one thing we've learned is if we both don't agree, we don't do it now. You know, there's no split us up. You know, there's no one trumps the other. It's, hey, either we're both on board or we're both out. No, and I think that's why we have the most respect for each other. And I think that's why we work as well as we do.

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Speaker 1
And when did that start to shift? At what age or what moment? When would you say that started to shift in your journey of business, in life.

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Speaker 3
That's a really good question. Yeah, go ahead.

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Speaker 2
I would say a few years after our first business, you know, we realized that, okay, we're not winning by somebody having the more superiority or somebody taking charge. It's just somebody feels bad. At the end of the day, someone might win that battle, but nobody's winning the war. And we realized very quickly that if we would align and work together and put our heads together and agree, we would get a lot further.

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Speaker 3
You know, it's just that cooler heads prevail thing again, man. You can't win them. All right? So sometimes he wins, sometimes I lose. Together we win or lose.

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Speaker 1
So and that's I feel like this a great place to kick it off of in your first business. And so you guys have been in business now together for how long? Where did it start?

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Speaker 2
We've actually been in business together for about 15 years. We've worked together in construction combined. 40 years. I started when I was 16. He actually started when he was 16. When I started Ice, I started in the summer of my 10th grade year in high school. And, you know, I just wasn't really in enjoying high school much. I didn't really see the academics doing much for me, and I always liked even going way back to elementary school.

00;03;26;00 - 00;03;43;05
Speaker 2
When I was around 12 years old, my grandpa would come pick me up, you know that for four 30 I get home from school, my grandpa would come pick me up in his old pickup truck and all we had besides all hand-built so we could load it up with scrap metal and we go around the local scrap yards like the auto body shops and scrap and metal.

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Speaker 2
He was retired. You know, he was a like a concrete wall builder. He did a lot of limestone walls and like Wabash, our red Redwing and the river towns and stuff. And I really admired that he still worked, even though he was retired. And I was excited to get that one on one time with Grandpa. But I really liked providing a service by helping the businesses take care of, you know, getting their garbage out of the out of the facility.

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Speaker 2
And then, you know, I also felt good when Grandpa gave me a couple of bucks at the end of the day for helping him. So, you know, once I did that, I knew that that's what I like doing. I enjoyed working with my hands. I enjoyed working in the elements. So, you know, fast forward back again to to 10th grade frame and house is rough in houses.

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Speaker 2
I decided I was going to try the night school thing I did that my my supervisor came to me and said, hey, you know, you're leaving too early. We have to figure something out. Or we might have to make a change. So, you know, I made the choice to quit school and and jump full two feet in like I'm going I'm doing construction and I did that for about ten years.

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Speaker 2
And then Brandon came on and and he started doing his construction thing out. You.

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Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah, I know. For me, you know, I remember scrapping with Grandpa a little bit, but those are Gary's special memories. I was a little too young. Grandpa died when I was eight. For me, it started with my parents. So I remember being in kindergarten. They bought their first rental property. They bought some apartments around Rochester, and I drew a picture of them in front of it.

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Speaker 3
I mean, it's crazy that I remember that, but I do. So for me, you know, it was dad work 60, 70 hours during the week, and then he had these rental properties and we'd work on those, you know, during the day because he was a night shift worker. We'd work on those during the day sometimes and other times on the weekends.

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Speaker 3
And, you know, we, we saw what hard work and re-investing looked like through our parents because he was actually able to retire at like 40 and my mom was able to leave the Mayo Clinic and they just lived off their passive income from the real estate for many, many years. Wow. Yeah. So that's what got us into business.

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Speaker 3
You know, we both started construction. I dropped out in 10th grade as well. It's crazy how similar our stories are. Like, seriously, the first person I wrote for he wrote was when he was starting, but I dropped out. I started rough in houses. I went got my GED, you know, and kind of went that route. I learned, you know, back then I felt like I wasn't really a good student.

00;06;06;12 - 00;06;29;23
Speaker 3
I was more of a worker. What we've come to learn as we just were learning the right things not things that interest us. So now pursuing further education, you know, him and I are actually really good students when we put our mind to it. But anyways, fast forward, you asked about the first business after a commercial roofing company that him and I worked for for many years.

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Speaker 3
We started our own roofing company and you know, every successful person has failures. And with that company, we can go out, we can sell a house like I knock doors all the time to sell us. It was then there was no storm, right? Like now people knock for storm and knock doors to get people to pay for their roofs.

00;06;47;00 - 00;07;01;07
Speaker 3
Nobody had ever heard of us. You know, that's how we started the business. And then Gary would like substance tracked work from other bigger contractors. Well, I'm out doing this. And so we built our book of business. We had no problem selling roofs. What we didn't know how to do as how to run books and how to operate a business.

00;07;01;28 - 00;07;08;11
Speaker 3
And so ultimately, after five years, that business did fail. And Gary can kind of tell you what we did from there or that led us.

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Speaker 1
And I think one important piece of that is like these are the things if you did stay all the way through high school, they wouldn't have taught you any ways of how to run the books and how to really operate a company you were good at selling. That probably came somewhat naturally.

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Speaker 3
Kind of. So when we worked at commercial doing commercial roofing and Night, I knock doors for Campbell Company and I sold cable and Internet door to door. So that's where I learned my salesmanship from.

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Speaker 1
Got it. Yeah. So so you didn't necessarily know how to run that. I'll call it the internal pieces of a company, but that was it. No one's fault but your own because where was education? And at that point, was there YouTube that you could dove in and be like, how to run QuickBooks?

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Speaker 3
Right. There was not. You know, even QuickBooks was kind of relatively it wasn't user friendly at the time. So it's pretty hard to use now. It's super user friendly, but back then, it was it.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We didn't really even have any business mentors at that time. You know, we were just kind of a couple of young guys that knew we wanted to do something and we didn't want to do it for other people, and we were going to figure it out our own way.

00;08;13;16 - 00;08;26;28
Speaker 1
So when you decided that that company didn't have a life going on past five years, what were some just major moments that were like, This isn't working, we need to shift. How did you determine what to shift into from from that company?

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Speaker 2
Well, you know, both of us were kind of one foot out the door. Turns out last year we were stressed out. We we were really passionate about the business and the clients, but we didn't have a good team behind us to help us. And that was you know, it was breaking us down. We didn't we didn't see any growth potential.

00;08;48;10 - 00;09;11;14
Speaker 2
And we were like, man, this is tearing us down. What do we do? We got to figure something out. So, you know, we slowly liquidated. And then I did some more subcontract work, and he went on to do a sales job. Yeah. And when I got done doing the subcontract work and kind of closed out the business completely, then I actually interviewed for a job as a project manager up in the cities for a large residential remodeling firm up there.

00;09;12;14 - 00;09;33;21
Speaker 2
And that's where I took on the business side of things. That's where I saw remodeling done in a whole different way that they don't do locally here. They didn't do locally here at that time. You know, the full self service for the zine full management side of remodeling and I was so impressed by my boss and the firm that I actually convinced Brandon to come work with us again.

00;09;34;17 - 00;09;58;11
Speaker 3
Wow. Yeah, I actually, I left a position in my twenties making six figures and I had like the winters off. It was so easy. It was just more management. I left that job from my salary company, vehicle, phone infill and a few other great benefits to go work commission on there with the boss that he's talking about because again and my brother again, you know.

00;09;58;23 - 00;10;22;15
Speaker 3
Yeah, it was from this exact. Yeah, right. I know. Yeah. We were away for about two years. That's about it. But yeah, I mean, I wouldn't interviewed with Mike and I just saw so much more value and being around him because he had processes and procedures and he was just so sharp that you know, at the end he's like, well, yeah, I offer you a job, but I know, you know, Gary told him what to make and what I'm doing.

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Speaker 3
He's like, I can't match that. I can't even guarantee you a salary. And I don't have a vehicle for you. And I told him, I said, Hey, man, in 25 minutes, I can tell you're so sharp, I'll get so much more value out of you than this job that's paying me money because you're just you're a better businessman. There's a lot to learn here.

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Speaker 3
And I told him that, and and I was right. I mean, we learned a lot from him.

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Speaker 1
And I think that's so cool that you're learning. And like you said, you're really good students if you're being taught something that you're interested in. Correct. And it just goes to show, like, even in the trades or like wherever your passion might lie, that could be business. There's people out there willing to teach as long as you find them through your three year journey.

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Speaker 3
Yeah, I think you find the right person. It's the things you you can't teach, right? Like showing up, keep, you know, try hard when you find those people, even if they don't have any experience in what you're doing, you find those loyal people, the people that show up, the people they keep trying. I mean, you can teach them everything else.

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Speaker 3
Those are things you can't teach them.

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Speaker 1
So you so you guys then are learning from this business person that has processes, procedures, things are going great. At what point did you decide to get back into your own business again and what kind of led you to that through your journey?

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Speaker 2
So we actually worked there for a little over three years. And what happened is, you know, he had a major family crisis go on and he decided that it was time for him to move on from his business. And he ended up selling his business to some silent investors. And when we met the new owners, we just in the line, they weren't going to run the business the same way it was being around before.

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Speaker 2
They they looked at us as as more of the paycheck than the actual business, because at that time we were the ones producing all the revenue for the company. And we just didn't feel like there was a good fit and didn't feel like, again, like we had a future there. So we made another decision. We talked, and we're like, okay, well, there's a lot of things we're doing here that we like, but there's some things that won't work where in our marketplace.

00;12;26;00 - 00;12;45;20
Speaker 2
So we're going to have to strategize. And we decided to come back to Rochester and start pick criminal and design. And that started with three people. We had a single suite myself, my brother and one other labor that worked with me and my brother again, was, was doing the retail sales side and I was in the field working with one other guy.

00;12;46;19 - 00;13;03;29
Speaker 2
You know, we were able to pick up a few decent jobs. And then as we were working he was continuing to sell jobs. And, you know, within a year we were from our single suite and three people to a double suite in that same building with about six people and we were able to start a decking department that year as well.

00;13;04;08 - 00;13;14;08
Speaker 2
And that's kind of been our strategy. Every year we look at what's working and what what might not be working and what our growth potential is for the upcoming year and how we're going to strategize that.

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Speaker 1
And you're taking from that experience of a company that was a well-oiled machine and then applying it to this new ambition of Building Peak.

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Speaker 2
Right, right. Exactly.

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Speaker 1
How did the idea of Peak the name come to be?

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Speaker 3
Well, to be honest with you, what I did is I just did market research. I thought of, okay, what's another market that's similar to our market and what's a successful name down there? And I went to Denver, Colorado is where where I went to. And you can imagine with mountains, that's where Peak came from. I just felt like it marketed well.

00;13;50;21 - 00;14;05;29
Speaker 3
You know, one of the things we're not looking for anytime soon, but we knew we didn't want to involve our name in it. We wanted it to be a sellable name, but we wanted it to mean something. So we always talked about, you know, the pronoun of Peak in the beginning, it's your highest point. You know your best.

00;14;05;29 - 00;14;16;08
Speaker 3
And that's what that stands for. And that's that's our vision. I mean, that's what Peak is about. We want to be the best. We don't just want to be the biggest, you know, we want to be the best.

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Speaker 1
And I think it's neat how you share. That's the vision. But then also living through the experience of building a business, having to close a business, liquidate, starting again from the ground level, relatively speaking, this is where our paths crossed. Let's talk about this luxurious luxury office that you ended up starting in. Where was this really beautiful office?

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Speaker 1
You know, you had views of the city and you know where where it was that.

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Speaker 3
There wasn't even a window in there was an interior office I remember taking that jump from that office. Gary, Gary. I mean, he couldn't get out of there quick enough. And I'm sitting there like do I don't know how we're going to afford $900 a month for this office windows. And it's crazy to think about, but I do I'm sure you remember it.

00;15;05;24 - 00;15;12;05
Speaker 3
He's like, you should move into this office. It's $900 a month. I'm like, Dude, how are we going to afford that? I don't want to do that. You know, I can.

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Speaker 1
Work from home to work out of our truck. Why do we need an office? So this was the second level of North Gate shopping center where the affordable office space is, but there are no windows. That's extra.

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Speaker 2
Not in the first or. No.

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Speaker 3
No, no. The first one had no windows. Second one we got windows you can really.

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Speaker 2
See out of.

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Speaker 3
Their.

00;15;31;25 - 00;15;38;11
Speaker 2
Privacy, glass and their office. So but we still had some some sun coming in. So, you know, there was hope. There was hope, you.

00;15;38;12 - 00;15;55;25
Speaker 1
Know, and I think that just goes to show that you are starting even though you recognize that you need an office, you probably felt the teamwork aspect of getting people around one another was such needed but you weren't going to go spend this money on a fancy office because even at $900 a month, it feels like sunk in costs.

00;15;55;25 - 00;16;04;12
Speaker 1
Why? Why are we spending this money that's not gaining US business, right? That could be spent on marketing. We're spending it essentially for four walls in a door, you know.

00;16;04;23 - 00;16;07;02
Speaker 3
Essentially. But you and some windows.

00;16;09;00 - 00;16;30;00
Speaker 1
As you've grown from that office, what would be some of the things that you would give credit to that growth in just your own personal mindset, whether it be people or just things that you really would give credit to that others can learn from, of how to take that step from no office to a $900 a month office to the continued growth that you've had.

00;16;30;21 - 00;17;00;14
Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, a lot of our a lot of the credit for what we've done so far on the building side goes to our commercial realtor. I mean, he's the one who really taught us how to make a deal happen and get space. And I mean, we've moved, we've we moved from like three buildings already. And so we went from that $900 a month office to what was it, a 3000 square four building that cost us, I don't know, 3000 a month.

00;17;00;23 - 00;17;08;06
Speaker 3
So, you know, we're three acts in there. But he taught us like, hey, when you're done with this, when this isn't working for you, it'll pay you back.

00;17;08;19 - 00;17;14;24
Speaker 1
And so let's talk about that because that's the world that I play in. And you're talking about Jay Christianson, who's the broker that's helped.

00;17;14;24 - 00;17;15;23
Speaker 3
You have seen.

00;17;16;06 - 00;17;33;19
Speaker 1
And not often you recognize how buildings and spaces can help your business grow. When people look into growing, it looks like this huge number every single month. Where did what did it unlock for you moving from a small office space to that next building?

00;17;34;10 - 00;17;59;21
Speaker 2
So, I mean, the big thing for us is we always have huge dreams and huge visions. And like you had mentioned earlier, pre, pre, pre the show, your visions have to match your ambitions and you know, we can't grow if we're in a small little $900 a month office. You know, we wanted more sales guys because we knew that we had a good business model and we could just replicate that business model and we knew what we needed to do it well.

00;17;59;21 - 00;18;22;22
Speaker 2
We needed the space. We needed a space for equipment, we needed a space for a sales guy. You know, we had to have a team and we can't have a team working from home and being aligned and being on the same page, you know, and like, like Brandon said for us, GE opened our eyes to see to see that, okay, we didn't think we could do it, you know, it's nothing that we thought we would ever do.

00;18;22;23 - 00;18;39;20
Speaker 2
We wanted something smaller. And he kind of pushed us to say, Hey, what? I believe in you guys. This is I see what you're doing. I see how you're doing it. I know you can do it, you know? And when you grow out of it, then it'll make you money back. You can use it to somebody else. You can help somebody else with an opportunity, like they're helping you.

00;18;40;06 - 00;18;55;26
Speaker 2
And, you know, and that's exactly what we've done. We've grown and then we've had to move so that we were able to offer that that building to somebody else. And now they are starting a fresh business, and they're and they're on their journey and they're doing what they what they love in their passions, which is exciting for us.

00;18;56;15 - 00;19;08;18
Speaker 2
And that kind of gave us another idea of, okay, let's do another business. So now that, you know, now we're doing commercial investing in commercial buy in and hold and operate buildings as well.

00;19;08;28 - 00;19;09;16
Speaker 1
Very cool.

00;19;09;24 - 00;19;11;11
Speaker 3
But you have to grow evenly.

00;19;11;16 - 00;19;13;13
Speaker 1
Not adding too many team members at.

00;19;13;13 - 00;19;34;12
Speaker 3
Once. Exact. That's something him and I agreed with right away was if we add another salesperson, we need to add in our truck trailer in two days. And that's, that's what we've replicated as we've built this. It's changed a little bit. You get to a breaking point where you have to add in another another seat because it doesn't work at that level anymore.

00;19;34;26 - 00;19;49;14
Speaker 3
And I thought we had it all figured out in the beginning. We're like, we have the science. It's so simple too. And then we just started analyzing things and like automation comes into play at some point in your business, I mean that you need automation, which I mean, you do that all the time. You know how that goes.

00;19;49;27 - 00;20;03;05
Speaker 1
With the bookkeeping side. If that was one of your pain points in your first business, how has that changed in your next business and how have you found ways to improve it and just make it easier for you to do.

00;20;04;08 - 00;20;12;28
Speaker 3
We don't do it. That's that's the easiest way to do it. We read up on it a lot. He did a lot of studying. I think he took some books.

00;20;12;28 - 00;20;31;10
Speaker 2
I took some QuickBooks classes. I mean, the big thing is you have to do it quite often. I mean, we job costs everything. Oh, yeah. And we create a lot of systems for everything. I mean, as you grow, you have more hands touching things. You have more people talking in all these hands, touching things, always people talking and have to be on the same page.

00;20;31;16 - 00;20;52;22
Speaker 2
Yeah. So we have a software that we can internally talk to each other by messaging the board and everybody can see it versus having to text and call. And, you know, to all that we have processes, you know, where people are, they have credit cards, but they have limits and they have requirements that they have to, you know, document every every purchase a certain way by a certain time.

00;20;53;23 - 00;21;18;06
Speaker 2
You know, I go through at least twice a quarter and job cost any production jobs and just check budgets on them. And I look every quarter to see where our strengths and weaknesses were that quarter, why they were there. We build budgets. Those budgets constantly change based off of our goals and you know, it's just it's before you're you're just we were just working we were just collecting checks.

00;21;18;06 - 00;21;40;06
Speaker 2
We were just spending money. Now it's okay. We bring in the money. How much do we have to spend this month? And then what what are we hoping that we can spend other things on and what do we need for liquid to do that? Plus get into the next month in the following. In the following and then the other sciences, your progress payments, you know, making sure your cash flow is consistent, keeping your customers happy and doing the right amount of work to get those progress payments.

00;21;40;06 - 00;21;43;06
Speaker 2
But keeping those progress payments consistent, keeping that cash flow.

00;21;44;07 - 00;21;48;13
Speaker 1
It's definitely many more moving parts than it had been in the past. Yeah.

00;21;48;21 - 00;21;49;09
Speaker 3
Absolutely.

00;21;49;19 - 00;22;08;29
Speaker 1
But you found ways one is the advancement of technology. And then it sounds like, too, is being able to get people into places where their strength lies, let's say doing the work, where you're able to measure the work and make sure that it's being done in a profitable manner. And that time you're dedicating, you probably did not dedicate in your first business at all.

00;22;09;00 - 00;22;10;10
Speaker 2
Absolutely not. No.

00;22;10;19 - 00;22;13;00
Speaker 3
Give me a day when the work's done.

00;22;13;11 - 00;22;14;28
Speaker 1
Then. We hopefully are making money.

00;22;15;02 - 00;22;34;25
Speaker 3
Now, as you know, I've heard a lot of builders do it. It was just what's in the checking account. That's I mean, that's how the first business, right? We're now like you said, we have a software in-house and we job costs everything. We track everything. My wife, she works, you know, 40 hours a week doing straight accounting. So I mean, we're we always have our finger on it.

00;22;34;25 - 00;22;40;06
Speaker 3
We're always watching. You know, I think that's really important is to not let that get away from you in business.

00;22;40;19 - 00;22;48;12
Speaker 1
You know, on one thing I have loved so far in this podcast that we have not talked to at all, but what type of services you guys even do. I love it.

00;22;48;12 - 00;22;54;27
Speaker 3
So I I'm sure you're this podcast is more for entrepreneurs. So we're kind of given more of the business side than you pitch in the business.

00;22;54;27 - 00;23;10;00
Speaker 1
So it absolutely is real growth is really those stories and you're helping share what has led you to that real growth for yourself personally and in business. And I think that there's so many people out there in the world that can learn from people just like you that are living through it. And so that's that's why we're here.

00;23;10;00 - 00;23;16;24
Speaker 1
But let's share for those that are interested, what does remodeling do? What are some of the services you provide? What projects are you working on right now?

00;23;17;15 - 00;23;38;03
Speaker 2
So on my end, I run all the interiors, the interiors pieces. We do everything in the interiors. We do, you know, anything from small bathrooms to full basements, major reconfigured multifamily homes and in large additions, you know, we do anything from just designs to you can hire us as just to manage your jobs or you can hire us as a full service contractor.

00;23;38;03 - 00;23;50;03
Speaker 2
To design, manage and produce your jobs. We have a full list of vendors that, you know, we've vetted that we feel are good quality products with good quality warranties, just like our installers and our subcontractor relationships.

00;23;50;19 - 00;24;23;28
Speaker 3
So and on the exterior side, we do roofing siding, windows, decks, sun rooms and for us, it's you hire us, we take care of getting the work done and managing it. You know, on his end, there's a lot more selections, coordinating a bunch of subcontractors on my end. It's more about, I would say what we do differently than some of the local is when when we're on the job, if we're putting a windows or putting siding on the house, or roofing on the house or back on the house, an actual employee of peak remodel is there every day, every single day.

00;24;24;10 - 00;24;49;20
Speaker 3
And we take care of any job site secure ment, you know, clean up anything like that. For me, that's what what I found would set us apart from some of the competitors as we were going to have an employee there every day. To make sure those things got done. And that's the big thing. And then also something Gary that mentioned is now we do a lifetime labor warranty because him and I I know if we touch something, we feel like it's our responsibility anyway.

00;24;50;02 - 00;24;57;16
Speaker 3
So we were of like, well, let's just put it on paper and be done with it because if someone calls and something's wrong, we're not going to ignore it or go in there.

00;24;57;20 - 00;25;01;19
Speaker 1
Your name's attached to you and your name is, you know, is everything with the reputation.

00;25;01;19 - 00;25;14;23
Speaker 3
Exactly, exactly. So we just said might as well put it on paper and be done with it. You know, there's obviously your exceptions like drywall cracking and concrete because what, what can you do? But most everything else is covered so.

00;25;15;05 - 00;25;28;27
Speaker 2
Well, like Brandon said earlier, we want to be the best. And that's not just a title you get, you know, that's a lot of work. We're definitely not there yet, but I think we're on a great path to be in there and we care we care about our clients, we care about our team, we care about our product.

00;25;29;14 - 00;25;46;06
Speaker 1
One thing that I appreciated about your recent marketing campaign is the humor that you're incorporating so let's talk about ways that you know from your first business to your new business that you're now marketing to let people know about your brand, about your company, that you weren't doing back in the day.

00;25;47;00 - 00;26;07;19
Speaker 3
Yeah, I mean, we're just we don't want to get lost in the crowd. And I don't know if you've noticed, but you drive through Rochester, Minnesota, and see their Chris Lynn dollar roughing, I mean, every billboard, right? So we incorporated a UFO because we want people to go, Wait, what did I just see? You know, because ultimately we're going to we're going to provide a great service.

00;26;07;21 - 00;26;25;09
Speaker 3
We just need to get them on the phone. And we just want to catch their eyes, see that peak exists, what it's doing and then, you know, ultimately they'll go to our website, they'll be able to see our work and go look at our Facebook page. We always see our work and we'll get the phone call. You know, so we just don't want to get lost in the crowd.

00;26;25;09 - 00;26;33;18
Speaker 3
That was the big thing. We actually have a quite interesting commercial coming out in the next couple of months that I think we'll be getting phone calls.

00;26;33;26 - 00;26;37;26
Speaker 1
Can we get just a little sneak peak? We don't need to share the whole thing. What will it have?

00;26;37;26 - 00;26;43;24
Speaker 3
A UFO will have a year or so. It will not have a UFO. And it'll be talking about decks all right.

00;26;43;24 - 00;27;06;00
Speaker 1
Sounds good. Well, with the UFO, like the idea generation of that. So first, explain what the billboard is for those that haven't seen it, but then the idea generation, because that becomes a whole nother conversation and time you have to spend it trying to come up with how do I get customers to come to me, you know, and not just go knock on their doors?

00;27;06;16 - 00;27;09;20
Speaker 1
So what is the billboard? And then how do you come up with strategies like that?

00;27;09;27 - 00;27;34;00
Speaker 3
Yeah, so the billboard is that our roofs block alien abduction scores. Aliens have been talked about a lot in the last couple of years. It's it's a ridiculous statement. That's why we did it. Obviously, we don't want to put something that isn't true and is a lie and can be proven a lie where it was alien abductions. I mean, I want to know if someone gets abducted from a house we roughed.

00;27;34;12 - 00;27;38;15
Speaker 3
I'll pay that. That cost. Oh, no, I'll pay for the disclaimer.

00;27;38;19 - 00;27;38;25
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00;27;39;10 - 00;27;40;09
Speaker 3
But they have to prove.

00;27;40;18 - 00;27;40;20
Speaker 1
To.

00;27;40;20 - 00;27;44;15
Speaker 3
Me they got to prove it. Yeah, they got to have evidence.

00;27;45;13 - 00;27;52;23
Speaker 1
So it reminds me of I just watched this documentary on the Pepsi commercial where they said they were going to give away a fighter jet you watched that?

00;27;52;23 - 00;27;54;08
Speaker 3
Yeah. That's a good right. That was.

00;27;54;08 - 00;27;59;14
Speaker 1
Really good. And it's like the guy went to bat to try to get his money or his fighter jet. I bought a business. He got it.

00;27;59;14 - 00;28;11;27
Speaker 3
But, yeah, no, ultimately, he didn't. I can't believe Pepsi didn't do the math on that, to be honest with you. Right. That's the crazy thing to me. But it was a larger lesson for companies like that. I mean, I bet you that mistakes never made again All right.

00;28;13;01 - 00;28;23;27
Speaker 1
All right. So the idea generation that got to that. So are you sitting around? Are you dedicating time towards marketing? How is that different than what marketing was when you were knocking on doors right back in the day?

00;28;24;00 - 00;28;45;00
Speaker 3
Yeah. So now I meet with my marketing rep and we sit down and we just we go through ideas, man. We go back and forth you know, we look at focus marketing. You know, what can we do to reach the few people around the job we're doing? You know, how can we meet the mass? How can we turn the heads and that's what it comes down to is Nick is our marketing rep, man.

00;28;45;00 - 00;28;58;14
Speaker 3
He thinks outside of the box and he's just like us is my what is like useless? Yeah, I'm like, I'm listening. Let's hear it. And he's like, I'll make something. I'll send it to you and you send it to me. And I was like, Yeah.

00;28;58;22 - 00;28;59;16
Speaker 1
That's perfect.

00;28;59;17 - 00;29;13;10
Speaker 3
That's good. Yeah, we got similar things we were trying to do, but local media shut us down on it. So those would have been more head turners, but I guess you could say it's it's kind of conservative around here, right?

00;29;13;24 - 00;29;15;13
Speaker 1
So yeah, it's a balance.

00;29;15;13 - 00;29;25;20
Speaker 3
And it's a balance. I mean, it's a battle. You know, that's what marketing's about, though, is like making the rubber neck, right? Make them turn. They're, you know, as they're driving one of that, say, on the billboard.

00;29;26;01 - 00;29;26;24
Speaker 1
They're talking about it.

00;29;26;24 - 00;29;38;00
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah. And catch your eye, right? I mean, if you just see a roof in Rochester, I mean, that's everywhere. But who else has a UFO on their billboard, right? Nobody else.

00;29;38;28 - 00;29;55;03
Speaker 1
One thing I'd like to dove into is as you've gone through this growth and you have got to where you're at today and now your company's much larger than it's ever been, what are some of the struggles that you have in today's operations that you're working through, and how are you working through them to overcome them?

00;29;56;11 - 00;30;14;29
Speaker 2
I mean, obviously, the biggest one is people you know, whether it be trusting people, getting people, keeping people, it's people, you know, but at the end of the day, good people don't work for horrible bosses. So that's a piece where we had to get real humble and say, okay, is are we the problem or the people the problem?

00;30;15;07 - 00;30;33;24
Speaker 2
And we realized, well, maybe, maybe we're the problem. And what can we do to, you know, be part of the solution? And that's where we started asking our people, what do you want? Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? And you'd be surprised how their eyes just kind of glazed over, like what you're asking me, you know?

00;30;33;24 - 00;30;55;03
Speaker 2
And when we started doing that, we started to see the real loyalty in people we started to realize that, oh, maybe you're doing the wrong thing, you know, and we're upset because you're not producing what you said you can produce, but you're not passionate. You're even doing so pivoting, you know, trying on different hats. We move hats around people all the time, trying to find good fits.

00;30;56;02 - 00;31;06;00
Speaker 2
And then I guess it's just being able again to pivot. What worked yesterday isn't going to work for tomorrow. You know, our goals today are going to be different tomorrow.

00;31;06;26 - 00;31;21;11
Speaker 3
So and I mean, the same same rules that gets it. You know, 10 million aren't going to get in a 50 million in business. I mean, it's all it all changes. I'm sure you're familiar with breaking points in business. You know, for us on through.

00;31;21;11 - 00;31;22;15
Speaker 1
That, I'm not as familiar.

00;31;22;15 - 00;31;41;11
Speaker 3
As. Okay, so I mean, every dollar mark has has a breaking point, right? And every breaking point is a little different, whether it's a who or what or who won or why. You know, give credit to that to Brandon Dawson. I don't know if you listened to him at all. Okay. So the breaking points are his way of teaching.

00;31;41;11 - 00;32;11;00
Speaker 3
You know, what you have to do in a business kind of part of the science. And we hit a breaking point where it was the who where it was the people. And once again, though, when it's people, is it the people or is it how you're handling the people? And for him and I after we learned that we came back, like you said, and we actually I don't put it on paper, you know, like, hey, what is your personal professional financial goal for the next one, three and ten years and what we found is a lot of people want to own peak and they can't own it.

00;32;11;00 - 00;32;28;14
Speaker 3
Right. But no, honestly, we started to see this person, you know, there's only going to be here for a couple of years, and that's fine. They want to open a gym and then you have other people who like their passion is the construction piece certain people don't it don't want to move from their position. They just want to stay right where they're at.

00;32;28;14 - 00;32;44;10
Speaker 3
They don't want to move, you know, and that's okay. We need we need everybody in every hat that they enjoy. And that's part of going to work everyday. You got to enjoy it, right? So, yeah, once him and I realize that we just we just, you know, we're like, okay, we got to get the right people in the right places.

00;32;44;20 - 00;33;01;21
Speaker 3
And if it doesn't work and doesn't work, you know, you shake hands, say, hey, you know, give me a call after hours, we're still friends. It is what it is, right? Because the same people in the same places aren't going to get you from one, you know, from 10 million to 50 million. That's the big thing. Yeah, I would say.

00;33;01;29 - 00;33;17;29
Speaker 1
And I think that struggle of people is something that every business in today's market struggled with for the fact that there's so many opportunities for people that it can be trying to make money on the Internet that didn't exist many years ago.

00;33;18;00 - 00;33;19;00
Speaker 3
Yeah, that's a big one.

00;33;19;00 - 00;33;20;21
Speaker 1
It can be working remotely.

00;33;20;21 - 00;33;21;20
Speaker 3
That didn't exist.

00;33;22;03 - 00;33;35;25
Speaker 1
Very many years ago. So there's so many options. So like you said, diving into really what people's ambitions are and trying to figure out how you can help them reach their ambitions, their then in turn going to give you the best version of themself through that.

00;33;35;26 - 00;34;02;02
Speaker 3
Exactly. And that's what him and I figured out. Like if if this what we think happened, you know, any time we lost somebody else because we weren't big enough, they saw they weren't going to reach their goals. With us at that time. And so they decided to go pursue them on their own. I mean, that's that's what him and I kind of finally the realization we reached, like you have to see what that person wants and are you going to be bigger and are you going to be able to give them that or do they need to go find it elsewhere?

00;34;02;17 - 00;34;19;26
Speaker 3
And I mean, at the end of the day, that's where you have to figure out if they want something more and you're less. They're just in the end, they're going to sabotage. They're going to leave. So it's not worth the time, in my opinion, at that point. But we have some really great people who want growth and want to grow as a company.

00;34;20;08 - 00;34;31;17
Speaker 3
And so that's that's the stuff we're on. We actually we're doing something pretty big right now. We won't get into it much, but we're going to leave our mark on the industry and national level. So, yeah, really, it's fun.

00;34;32;01 - 00;34;51;26
Speaker 1
And before we wrap up, I just want to talk about just in ways that you have personally grown business aside as you've gone through this journey of business, how have you found yourself becoming just we'll call it a better person? And I ask that from a place of like I've discovered it through my journey of its business isn't easy.

00;34;51;27 - 00;35;08;05
Speaker 1
No matter what business you're in and you find that you become more mature and your decision making process around your family, around your friends, like waterways, that you've grown just personally through this journey as brothers. I mean, that's something you described a little bit in the beginning, but how additionally have you grow?

00;35;08;12 - 00;35;31;01
Speaker 3
It's great question. Friends wise, I would say friends change at that point. You know, when you're in business, you have a different mindset. You have you're not doing like, I don't know what I'm supposed to say or but dumb crap, right? You're not doing that type of stuff anymore. Are you really careful with how you're thinking outside of work because it could affect your your work life, right?

00;35;32;13 - 00;35;52;21
Speaker 3
I would say I'm more motivated in a lot of things. Too. After being a business owner and growing in my personal life, I have more motivation to do things as well. I would say I'm more patient with my kids than if I was just in a sales position or something like that because I deal with people all the time and not everybody is the same.

00;35;53;01 - 00;36;10;20
Speaker 3
And I think I think that's something you really learn from being in business that you take into your personal life is how different people are and how you have to I don't know how you work with them, how you relay messages to them. You know, you really start to understand your relationship at home. I think that's a big one, too.

00;36;11;02 - 00;36;36;01
Speaker 3
I think business helps with your marriage, even though it doesn't, but it does it could strain it, but it also helps you like how do we work through this? To me, that's something I find when when something's struggling in my marriage, I look at it and I if she didn't want to hear this, but I look at it like a business, like, all right, if this was a business, what do I need to do to reach this next goal or, you know, that type of thing?

00;36;36;01 - 00;36;40;11
Speaker 3
And that's that's what I've learned from having a business deal with people.

00;36;40;24 - 00;37;06;14
Speaker 2
Yeah. For me, it's been confidence. I mean, starting out, you don't think you can do certain things. You don't think you're going to have certain things, you don't think you're going to go to certain places. And as you go, you you're like, okay, wait a cross that milestone. No, it's the next one. And what's the next when you keep getting bigger and bigger goals, motivation for my family, you know, they have a good quality of life to have opportunities.

00;37;06;27 - 00;37;28;08
Speaker 2
You know, I'm I'm fearful of the different generations. I'm sure my parents were fearful when I was this age or when they were this age, but I'm fearful of the different generations for my kids. So being able to have that structure and I mean, my biggest goal would be generational wealth for my family so they don't have to worry about that stress, but at the same time to work for it, to earn it, communicating.

00;37;28;08 - 00;37;46;21
Speaker 2
You know, I said that to and checking out huge you know, as a boss, do you think you're the boss but you're really not the boss. You're a leader, you're a guide or you're a resource, you know, and the sooner you figure that out, that, hey, I'm not up here, I'm here with my team, it's going to be a lot easier.

00;37;46;21 - 00;38;07;06
Speaker 2
And that's when we figured that out. That was a lot easier for us when we started hearing people talk you know, actually hearing what they were saying and then, you know, acting on what we were hearing, that helps the first business do this to this point. One point point. You know, and I think a lot of bosses get into that role right away, like, hey, I did this, I own this, it's mine.

00;38;07;12 - 00;38;18;10
Speaker 2
Do what I tell you to do. But remember, you're not you're not going to have that without them. So if they leave because yeah, it's yours. But what do you have at the end if it's just you there? So that was huge for me, too.

00;38;18;11 - 00;38;26;02
Speaker 3
And you relay that into your marriage and me. And if it is, she's gone and I have nothing. So no.

00;38;26;02 - 00;38;37;25
Speaker 1
Of it. Thank you guys so much for sharing about real growth and just being here on the podcast. If people want to learn more about your business, where should they go online? Where where can they find out how to get an estimate on a project they might be considering?

00;38;38;11 - 00;38;52;05
Speaker 3
Yeah, they can go on WW w that peak hour DST LLC dot com or they can follow us on Facebook, Facebook, backslash Picard. Yes. All right. Yeah. See all our projects on our Facebook feed, Instagram, feed.

00;38;52;19 - 00;38;59;15
Speaker 2
So or they can reach us by our 24 hour call center at five or 72584244.

00;39;00;06 - 00;39;02;13
Speaker 1
Congratulations on all your growth keep up the great work.

00;39;02;20 - 00;39;03;08
Speaker 3
Thank you.

00;39;03;17 - 00;39;03;26
Speaker 2
Thanks for.

00;39;03;26 - 00;39;05;04
Speaker 3
Having us. But yeah, it's been a pleasure.