EP270: From Craftsman to CEO: Scaling AKN Interiors with Andrew Nuhfer

Absolutely. I've been excited to interview you and talk more about your business. Give us just a little overview of what it is that you do. And yeah, just tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure.

awesome. And how long have you been in the business?

Right at four years. Did you did you start the business like by yourself? You have partners like kind of how did you get into the starting of business?

Awesome. Okay. So when you started then, did you just start out like an all sub model? Did you have employees? Were you self-performing? How did you kind of start out?

Okay. How many how many field employees do you have then? Six.

I remember the first time I came, I realized this. We were doing this basement remodel and it was like. It was outside of town. So it was a 30-minute drive to the store,30 minutes in the store,30 minutes back, hour and a half round trip. And at the end of the job, I was job costing, and I had like 25 receipts from Lowe's. And I'm like, holy crap, that's like 30 hours right there just in driving to the store. It was just a big realization. So does she actually goes and picks up materials and does material runs for the guys?

So she orders like all the materials for all the jobs that you're doing.

Okay. So she, once you have the material list for the, from the estimate, then she orders everything cabinets. I mean, everything, if it's three weeks out, she orders it in advance. Do you guys typically like ship to site? Do you have a warehouse you bring stuff to? How do you, how do you handle that part of it?

Gotcha. Okay. Yeah, these are I mean, this is kind of in the weeds, but it's stuff that people don't think about or hear about, you know, having having a purchaser that does that. You know, a lot of guys are just like, hey, let's go to Lowe's, you know, turn it into a snack trip and get some coffee and, you know, Snickers on the way at the gas station and make it a two hour endeavor. Right. So you guys eliminated all of that as well as, you know, typically your project managers would order materials. Right. If you don't have like a purchaser. And you've taken that off of their list, I mean, off of their... Does it help the project managers be able to do more projects that way since they don't have to deal with that part of it?

Yeah. So how many project managers do you have now? Three. Okay. And then, so you're, you're doing, you said they do roughly three to four each. So you're running like 10 to 12 jobs at a time. Correct.

Gotcha. And do you have, I know you do mostly, uh, is it, is it interior remodeling? Is that what I read or

Right. I got you. You whenever you fill out your information, you said you're kind of your average projects around one hundred twenty five thousand. Is that about right?

What do you, what do you, what types of project do you do the most of?

Gotcha. Okay. And so you have three project managers. Do they, do you have kind of like one project managers, more of a specialist than this? And, or, you know, like, do you kind of break it up that way?

Makes sense. OK. So you have it. Yeah. Yeah. It broke up that way. I got you. Okay.

You said you have an in-house plumber. You have that much plumbing to keep someone busy, a plumber busy. We do.

Oh, yeah, for sure. That was one of my goals in my business. You know, if I grew big enough to have in-house, you know, electrician, in-house plumber, but you have to have enough volume, obviously, or you're going to start advertising for plumbing, you know, and sending them out doing plumbing calls and stuff. So awesome. Do you think you'll ever like bring in like an electrician or is that something that...

Yeah, it makes sense. Absolutely. Especially if you have the if you have enough, I would say if you have at least like 50 percent capacity in house, you know, to keep them busy, then you just hire out for service calls or whatever. I think that's I think that's a smart play, actually. All right. So back to kind of getting started, you said you started out by yourself and then you hired you made some hires. What was your what was your first hire? What position?

We have a very, very similar background. I had a lot of project management experience, also finished carpentry. When I started my business, focusing more on like finished carpentry type work and then, you know, hiring out. So it's always interesting to me because that's like, you know, finished carpentry. It's just kind of a unique trade by itself in the sense of like the type of work you do. I mean, obviously you're either doing new construction. right trimming out a house or you almost always end up doing remodeling because there's just not enough trim carpentry work by it unless you're doing like custom built-in bookcases and that's all you focus on but yeah it almost always leads into remodeling it's just always kind of an interesting transition

No. I mean, you basically have two paths as a trim carpenter, decks or remodeling. That's your options if you're going to do that in-house and self-perform. When I got into the finished carpentry, it was in 2009. So we trimmed out one house. And then there were no more houses to trim out, right? Because it was the... And so we switched into remodel. I was working for someone at the time. So we just completely switched over to remodel and then never went back to new construction after that. So we were kind of forced into it. But okay, interesting. All right. So what has been your success in finding and landing jobs, like marketing perspective? What have you done that's really helped you land these clients?

Oh,100%. Yeah, I agree with you 100%. I like that you did that. And that's basically the same way I approached it, a little bit different time period as far as what was available and things. You said you invested lots of money into a website. I mean, we're talking like $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, $10,000 at the time.

So you knew, or let me ask you this, how did you know that it was that important to invest in a website?

Yeah, I know Logan personally from CGN. I've known him for a long time. They do great. They do great work over there. They do. So you you had I mean, you had a front row seat to like what a successful design builder modeling company looks like and all the things they did.

Yeah. So you, I mean, you literally just said this works for them. I'm going to repeat it for myself. And you've had the similar success, right? With, with what, uh, what you've done. I love that you spent that much money on the website. People listening to this would probably, you know, I mean, they'd probably be shocked. They think I'm done. They would be shocked that like, Oh my gosh, why would you ever spend that much? You know, I can build my own website on Wix for free.

that. Penny smart and dollar. I'm going to write that down. I don't know if I've ever heard that.

Your grandpa was a smart man. He was. All right. I may steal his saying. So. Okay. You don't have it copyrighted, do you? No, I do not. Okay. All right. So. Yeah, that's awesome. I was kind of on the same trajectory that you're on. When I started my business, I approached it from I'm more of like a branding. I'm in the business of marketing and branding, and I just happen to do construction. And that's that mindset you're talking about.

I have no idea.

there's lots of books that talk about that. I mean, there's other ones that talk about, you know, you're not in the construction business. You're in the customer service business, which I also believe as well. Right. Yeah. But I took a very hard marketing. So, like, when I started in 2010, nobody had websites. You know, only big corporations had websites. It just hadn't rolled out to individuals. And so, like, I actually built my first website using Microsoft FrontPage, if you've ever even heard of that. Really, really old, I mean, just terrible thing. But I had a website as crappy as it was, and nobody had a website. Like, I was the only one that had a website. You know, so I was actually getting website traffic before people even knew that a website was important to have, as little as it was. And so, let's first move our advantage. Right. I mean, just first mover advantage of being the first. I had like one of the first vehicles that were wrapped first to collect Google reviews as these things were rolling out because I've always been super tech savvy and like early adopter. But back to the website. You had enough experience with your current with the company you're working for. They had a really nice website. You said, I'm going to go all in on this website. Yes, it's a big, you know, it's it's it's a big risk. You know,25 grand is not nothing.

You honestly went all in all that and it worked out. I mean, it helped you launch the business. I'm putting so much time on this because it's so, so important. You know, too many guys think that it's more of the field of dreams. Like if I build my business, they will come, you know, but it's not. It's like if you build your brand and you and you market it correctly, then they will come. And those are two totally different mindsets and thought patterns. Right. Yeah. I just, I mean, I think it's awesome that you invested that much money. I mean, and you went all in. I'm assuming you have, your vehicles are all wrapped, you know, uniformed guys, like professional across the board.

Yeah,100%. You have to put all of your effort into marketing your business in the beginning. And this is the part a lot of people miss. I mean, you would probably agree if you hadn't bought that website, or maybe you just got a Wix one for $500, you would not be where you're at today. Is that safe to say?

more a little bit behind you in terms of, you know, growth. They may be on the same directory, but they're a little bit later or slower than you because they hadn't had. that level of clients. I heard this the other day or I learned it the other day, and this applies 100% to where we're at. And it is, if you focus on being better, then your clients will demand that you get bigger. If you focus on being better, doing quality work, marketing, if you focus on that, then you will have so much work coming in that you have no option but to grow your business. Right.

I just think that, you know, again, you like I mean, we could like. put our business in all of like side by side and they would be identical with how we focused on, uh, you know, just being better, providing good service. I, when I first started, you know, everything was, we like on my website, it was, we do this. Yep. I was the only one, right.

yeah, it's you're you're kind of projecting that you're a bigger company that you are not to be deceitful. I mean, you're not trying to, you know, lie to people, but that's that's the goal. That's you projecting that, you know, that that goal. And, you know, that can change the next day, like the next day you could hire someone. And then now it is we it is us. But it's such a subtle little thing. You know, too many people are like, I'm the I'm the carpenter. Look at me and how awesome I am and how great I am at a craftsman and I can build all these amazing things and it's all about me, me, me, right? Yeah. But when you start putting the focus on the client and you start making it, what's the benefit to them if they hire you? Then it shifts that kind of ego. Let's just be honest. There's a lot of ego in construction. Yeah. A lot of pride. And that's I think that's a that's a cripple for most companies who have that kind of ego. Would you agree with that?

Yeah. I mean, most people are working for like 12 bucks an hour. Like if you add up all the hours. And what they get paid, they're making like 12 bucks an hour. They would make more money to go work at McDonald's than they do in their own business because they don't understand that concept of like, I'm the only one that can do it this well or this good, you know? And it's funny because you're like, really? Like you're the only person on planet Earth. that can do it as good as you. I mean, you think that's, you believe that truly. And it's like, well, no, I mean, not the only person, but everyone that I've talked to can't do it as good as me. Well, maybe you just haven't found the right.

You just haven't found the right people, right? Yeah. And this ties into profit. So, you know, a lot of guys, like I can't afford to pay someone 30,35,40 bucks an hour that they're asking for. I just can't afford it. It's like, well, then you have a profitability problem in your business. You're just simply not charging enough. Right. So that you can provide the level of quality and service that the client wants so that they're happy to pay you that so that you have more profit so you can hire more better people.

You know, it's a cycle of that. And I'm assuming you've been able to hire top notch people in your business. Yeah.

That's awesome. That was always really important to me was company culture as well. Yeah. Well, it shows

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. One of my clients, they were having a conversation yesterday in our community. And one of the owner's people, one of their employees, were cutting some metal for this project. And they set up a saw right in front of the... the hedges and stuff. And so like metal shavings, you know, in the bushes and the client wasn't happy about that. I'm saying, absolutely. I would not be happy if my, you know, if my contractor was putting metal shavings. And so like, it may seem, it may seem kind of silly, but that's a company culture and systems problem. That's not necessarily an employee problem. For sure. Hey, just a quick timeout from the show. If you're a frustrated contractor who's dealing with low profit margins, stuck working on the tools every day, or doing free estimates for people who are never going to hire you in the first place, I invite you to my private contractor community, The Profit Club, where contractors just like you are adding two to three times more profit each year without producing any more jobs and finally getting completely off the tools to never do another free estimate again. So if you're ready to increase your profits, stop doing free estimates and get off the tools, then all you have to do is click the link in the show notes to learn more about the Profit Club and see how it can easily two to three times the cash in your pocket, give you a proven sales process that will convert more jobs with ease and get you off the tools once and for all. And the best part is you can do all of this without having to produce more jobs than you currently are. Click the link to learn more. Now let's get back to the show. How much time and effort have you put into developing out your SOPs, systems? How extensive is that? Do you not do it at all? Kind of dive into that a little bit.

I don't doubt that at all. Yeah. When you're having that much, when you're having that kind of explosive growth, it is hard to, keep up with the changes. And they say, you know, people say that for every five people you hire, it basically breaks all of your systems anyways. And you have to kind of redo that. Yeah. You know, so maybe when you like stop growing in terms of people, then you have a little bit more opportunity to kind of start dialing in some of those systems. Do you think you'll keep growing in terms of people? I mean, you're gonna hire more crews, more carpenters, more project managers.

Yeah. That's what I was going to say. Do a punch list and little, you know, cleanups and putting down plastic or something like that. Yeah,

Which, how do you have your guys set up? You have, they all have their own vehicles. You have two man teams. How's your field team set up?

So you kind of. use your in-house as almost like a pool of talent and then you just supply the talent wherever you need to on the jobs that are coming up.

Yeah, I ran into this problem too. So your drywall guy, he's hanging drywall, finishing drywall 60% of the time, maybe in the other 40%, he's helping the carpenter, you know, stand up doors, install trim. And it's kind of like that kind of scenario where they're not always doing 100% of what their main craft is. And people don't realize like when you have to get to the level you're at to make that make sense when you're in between there, you know, if you're only doing like a million or even below that, it doesn't really make sense to have like, individualized people. And that's the hard part is because a lot of remodeling companies, they're trying to find the unicorn in employees. They're trying to find the one guy that can do six different trades. And it's like, that's not, you know, most people, most craftsmen at best are, you know, they're really good at one craft, one trade, and then there are two or three other trades that they're not bad at. That they're not bad at. And then it just starts going down from there. And again, those are unicorns. Like that model just doesn't work. I ran into that problem a lot. And

Well, yeah, because they typically can do more, right? They know their value. I ran into that problem because we started out doing like handyman stuff. And then we switched over to doing also adding remodeling. And within the handyman side, it's even worse, right? Because you're doing, you may end up doing 15 different trades. Right. And like trying to find someone that can do that is just it's just it's too difficult. It's way too difficult. Yeah. So as you're adding your field guys, you started with the carpenters, you said first. Right. And then you like got to a point to where it makes sense to bring in a drywall guy or a painter or whatever. And you just kind of added those in as you built your business. Is that

Well, that's the part people don't understand is that you're so inefficient. The more trades you do, the less efficient you are. Right. And so, yeah, maybe you can, you know, you can do a bathroom remodel and you do everything, the tile, the drywall, the painting, the carpentry. But, you know, you're not going to beat out, as far as like painting, you're not going to beat out a professional painter in terms of quality and speed. Right. So you're going to they're going to do it in a day and a half. It's going to take you three days. And so this mindset of I'm saving money by doing it in house is not really true. Right. Right. So so then the sub model comes in and this is what we did. We had a hybrid just like you. We had some field guys and then I had subs out subbed out all the specialty stuff. And that's really that's really the way you need to do it. If you're. If you don't have, if you're not big enough and you don't have enough, you know, field guys, then you have to sub that out. Right. You just have to bake that into your price. Right. Yeah. It may be a little more expensive to have a professional painter coming in versus in-house, but you put it in your price, you learn how to sell your value and then you make money doing it.

Absolutely. I recorded a podcast yesterday on time management. I had a guy commented on one of my podcasts. Hey, can you do something on time management? I said, sure. So I was talking about time management. And one of this ties in here is like what I call VPH or value per hour. So what's the owner's value per hour, right? You just take your revenue, divide it by the hours you work. It spits out your value per hour. hiring project managers and salesmen that changes that. Yeah. But if you're a solo owner, you're doing the sales, the project management, you got a couple of guys, your value per hour is really high in your business. Yeah. Because you're, you're the one doing everything. And so when you're doing like, I had one of my clients was like, he was, he's, he's in the same spot. Like, you know, he's growing his business remodeling. And one day he was doing the plumbing in a shower and he was there like all day doing the plumbing. I said, what, why are you doing the plumbing? He said, well, the plumber was like $4,000 or $5,000, and I can do it myself for much cheaper, right? And that's that mindset of like, yeah, you are saving money based on that math, but what about the lost opportunity cost? Like, if your value per hour is $200, right? Take that times eight hours. You've lost money. But not only that, what if in that eight hours you sold a $50,000 job, right? So that $4,000 savings actually cost you a $50,000 job. And when you start looking at it that way, you're like, holy crap, why am I doing all this? Why am I going to the store and picking up materials? Why am I doing all this stuff? You have to, as an owner, and I know you know this, but as an owner, you have to look at your value per hour to your business. Right,

part right there. Going from a craftsman to a business owner, like truly making that transition. A lot of guys get lost in there because they feel like a part of their identity is dying. Yeah. You know, my identity is I'm a craftsman. And it's like, great. You know, if you're doing some kind of like a super niche or artistic style, like I have a client that does wine cellars. Oh, yeah. That's super niche. Like, yeah, you can be a craftsman and make a lot of money and have a life that you want doing that because it's in that. But if you want to grow a business where you're not on the tools anymore, you have to make that mental shift. You have to realize that, yeah, maybe your employees are not going to do it as good as you. Right. Then maybe they're not going to do it the same way as you. But what's more important that you do all the work and it's like perfect in your eyes. Or you leverage other people to do the work and you're not killing yourself every day trying to do, you know,12 hours worth of work in a 10 hour day. Right. Like it doesn't make sense. Like you have to make that decision.

Yeah. I got my back of your time on my shelf right behind me. Yeah. I've read it too. It's really, really, really good. Yeah, I've talked about this before. It's like, you know, this is where like we call a curse of knowledge. Like if you're a carpenter, you know, a finished carpenter, you have the curse of knowledge about how things are supposed to go together, right? And so, you know, to you, a 16th inch gap in trim is not acceptable, right? To a client, they don't care if it's an eighth inch gap. I mean, like they're not going to maybe notice that. I mean, I'm saying you should. do that. But I'm just saying,

Your level seven of quality, like one out of 10, if you were to produce like a seven is like their 10, like your client's 10, you know, quality, they're blown away. But we are like, Oh, it's a seven. It's not good enough. Right. And I have to make it a 10. And that's when you're diminishing returns come in where you're just spending an extra two hours making it perfect. And your clients won't even know the difference.

Well,100% experience, right? You have, so you have, you have like product quality and then you have experience and experience far outweighs quality of product if you do it correctly. Right. And this is I think this is a part two where a lot of a lot of contractors don't understand this. They're like, why are you mad? Like, I just built you a beautiful thing. I mean, why are you mad that I was 30 minutes late? And it's like, because experience matters more than the quality. Right. You could if you're really, really, really good at experience, you blow your clients away with experience. You could get away with a six or seven quality product on everything. And they're they're I mean, they're just over the moon. But if you deliver a 9,10 quality product and your experience is like a 4 or 5, it doesn't matter. Like, you've lost, right? It has to be. It's always a customer experience. And I'm sure you have that dialed in as well in your business. Yeah.

For those that don't know, JobTread, like with the daily report, it goes into like the client portal and they can see the report that your guys filled out. Right. And then any pictures that you add as well. So it's like complete transparency, you know, of what's going on. And I agree with you. It's not that they care like, oh, you spent eight hours, you know, doing this task today. It's just that you documented this is what's going on and this is what happened. Again, it's that transparency. Yeah, that's huge. I just I can't even speak enough about how important that part is as far as the communication side of it. You know, some people like I don't have time, Brad. You know, that's going to take an extra 15 minutes every day to do all that and take pictures and fill it out. And it's like, well, I mean, do you want to do you want to have more success or not? Like, it's not really optional. Right. Like this is, you know, you have to make this almost mandatory. If you want to get to like your level of where you're at in your business. Is there anything that you're doing that may be different than what you know others are in far as the sales process? Or, you know, like that from from first lead till like, you know, sign contract. Like, is there anything in there you feel like you're doing differently?

But Andrew, no clients are cheap and they don't want to pay. They don't want to pay what I'm worth. You ever heard that before?

It's funny, too, because even if you throw out a $125,000 estimate, like, we don't want to spend that much money, you end up at like $110,000. By the end of the project, you're back to $125,000 or over, right? Because halfway through, like, you know what? We do want to have heated floors in there.

And so that's, I mean, obviously that's some sales training, some sales skills. You got to understand that with people. But yeah, it's, I always say that this is my kind of motto is like, it's not your job to find a price people are willing to pay. It's your job to find people that are willing to pay your price, right? And those are two totally different things. And, you know, a lot of times a lead comes in, it's like, oh, I got to sell this person. You know, I have to sell them. Well, it's like, you don't even know if they're a good client yet. You don't even know if, you know, they may just be needing another estimate for their insurance. And like, they have no plans of hiring you in the first place, but you're trying to sell them, right? Right. So yeah, I love that process you do. You kind of, do you have like a pre, like have a phone call and kind of pre-qualify a little bit?

You said something interesting though. You said all of your leads go through your website. Have you had any pushback or like leads drop off because you kind of make them do that process?

i mean I agree with you 100%. I did the same thing. And obviously, there's levels to this, right? If you're still on the tools, one-man show on the tools, you shouldn't be answering the phone unless you don't have any leads coming in. If you have no leads coming in, every phone call is important, right? I mean, there's always levels to this. And so early on, when I was still out on the field or doing project management and stuff like that, I had a voicemail, said the same thing. Hey, sorry, we're out and busy. For faster... you know, for faster service, go to our website and fill out our form, you know, directing them to the website. There's one part here, like this is where it's tricky is because once you've built a name for yourself, as you guys have, then people are, if they want to work for you, they will jump through more hoops in order to get to that level, right? So it's the fact that you make them go to their website, your website, fill out a form that may have a bunch of questions and then go through this process. Some people that aren't really like that motivated or they're just looking for a price, they may fall out of the, you know, out of the lead flow. But the people that want to work with you, like they're going to do it. And it's, it is a pre-qualification process. The more, the more friction you put in the way as leads come through them, the better the lead is. Right. And if you're not getting enough leads, then you have to remove a lot of that friction so that you can add more value through the phone. That's, but that's a, that's a scale that depends on where you're at in your business. There is no like, you know, one size fits all. Um, if something happened in like your phone just stopped ringing overnight and there's no calls coming in or whatever, you would probably change up your process a little bit. Right. Um, in order to meet that demand. So that's awesome. Oh yeah. Awesome. Andrew, I know we're getting a little long here. Um, I always like to ask this question. It's like, what's, what's the question I should have asked you, but I didn't. Something you feel is important to get across to people that might be helpful.

Absolutely. Do you think you'll ever bring on like a full-time social media manager type person?

One thing you might try, and I don't know if it is doing internships with local universities.

You don't have to say anything else. You don't have to say anything else. I had an intern here a couple years ago from the university, and he was like a video major. He wanted to make movies and stuff, but it still definitely carried over, right? Sometimes you might get a photography major. You might get somebody that wants to get into social media or marketing. The good thing about interns is you don't have to pay them that much. You know, like it's a learning opportunity for them. But yeah, okay. Yeah, that's something I'll also be adding here pretty soon as a social media. There's so much. I mean, it is a lot. It is a lot to do social media. No doubt about it. You have to be very consistent. You have to be very intentional. It is a lot to hit record and then edit and do all this stuff.

Yeah, that phone is a window. It's a teleporter into wealth if you use it correctly. That's awesome. All right, Andrew, I always like to ask this question too, and you kind of mentioned one earlier, but what's a book that you're currently reading or one that you would recommend?

I mean, honestly, none of my ideas are my ideas. A lot of stuff is just, you know, repackaged. A sales technique is repackaged into something else. I mean, it's been around for decades, but I mean, you might have a different take or a different philosophy about something. But yeah, we call it, I call that windshield university. Right. Like when you get in your vehicle, you should be listening to podcasts, audio books, something educational. Right. especially when you're going on road trips. Yeah. I love going on, if I go on like a six, seven hour road trip, I mean, that's like a whole book. Right. Both ways. You know what I mean? So awesome. Awesome. Andrew, thank you so much for being on here, man. I know we have some information we'll put in the show notes, but if somebody wanted to reach out to you and just connect with you, what's, what's the best way to do that?

Awesome. Guys, we'll put those links in the show notes too so you can get access to that. But Andrew, thanks again for being on the show. Really appreciate it. You're welcome. Awesome. All right, guys, that's the end of the episode. If you're looking for help in your business, I'm more than happy to do an audit of your business. You can schedule a free call with me. We'll take a look at what's going on. strategize with the plan. We'll show what you can do with that. And if you want my help, I can show you what that looks like as well. But you can find me on all the socials. Just search for the Hammer and Grind podcast. And remember, until next time, profit is not a dirty word.