EP288: Kitchen Remodeling Success | Cameron Matteucci's Business Transition Journey

Yeah. My name is Cameron Matucci. Me and my wife own Red Cell Renovations. So we are a licensed general contractor located in Meridian, Idaho. So greater Boise, Idaho area. We specialize in kitchen remodeling.

Sure. So we were new to the area. We moved out to Boise area 2021. Started out as a handyman kind of general remodel, you know, small jobs, did a little bit of everything. And over the course of the years, we decided to transition to just doing kitchens this year, actually. It's been a fun couple of years.

That business model was non-existent. So just like a lot of guys, I worked for other people, did side jobs, and decided to get licensed on my own and just thought I could keep doing what I was doing. run a construction business, you know, owner operator beyond the tools and run a business. I didn't have a business model at all.

Yeah, sure. So really what started is we moved, we moved from California to Idaho and I needed a career. So I had Worked in construction my whole life. Been a lead guy for guys, previous contractors. When we moved out here, I just decided to take the plunge and owner operate and run a remodel business. It's easy, right? Yeah,

Okay. Yeah, we moved out here. I just started picking up work. I knew a few people in the construction. industry and started picking up work and slowly built my clientele just organically.

Yes. Gotcha. Yes. Correct. And most of, when I say side work, that was California. I actually ran a separate business. I had a vending machine route and I did remodeling. on the side for other contractors.

Yeah. Awesome.

Since three months in December,2021 is when I got licensed in Idaho.

It's your guest. Okay.

Yeah. You know, when you're, when you're starting out, especially when you don't really have a network it's like, I'm going to do whatever I can. I got to get food on the table. I'm going to do whatever I can. So the handyman side of things was. An easy way to, you know, take on small jobs, you can do a bunch of small jobs and keep the family fed.

Yes. Yeah. As the business built up, as more leads came in and I got just more jobs, I was able to eliminate a lot of the smaller stuff and actually get to a point where I started charging a minimum and that in itself just organically weeded out people that wanted you to come out and do $100. jobs to repair patch of wall or something like that.

$400.

Yeah. If I had to show up, you know, trailer full of tools, bring everything I need, it's going to be $400.

A year and a half. Okay.

Yeah, I always, I had always done remodels. So my first remodel was my own kitchen in 2013, my first full remodel. And that's actually what got me out of civil construction. So I was, I started out in heavy civil as an apprentice and started remodeling my own place and decided it was a safer route than building bridges.

Yes. Yeah. Immediately. At that point, I had flipped houses for people in California, remodeled my own house. So my knowledge of kitchen, bathroom, whole home remodel was pretty extensive at that point. It was just. Not having a network out here, not having, you know, any marketing, anything like that. It was sprinkle in some handyman work with remodel work and kind of see where it lands.

It was a pretty even split of 50-50. Okay. Yeah.

Mostly bathrooms. Bathrooms and what I would say, like whole home remodels. You know, and at that point I was doing kitchens, but a lot of times the homeowner, because I didn't care who had control over it, as long as I had some money coming in. I was like, oh, we got our cabinets coming in. Can you, you know, lay the floor when they're done? And that type of stuff.

Yeah, that was, that was a work in progress. So after, after completing, I think two or three kitchens, I decided one, I really like it. I like, I like kitchens. It's for the favorite, my favorite part of the home is, is a kitchen. I like every aspect of it. design, picking everything out. And the kitchen, it's a long process. And so it offers some security, right? Like if I take on kitchens, it's four to six week project. I'm heavily involved. I'm not having to chase three or four bathrooms to make the same amount of money that I do on a kitchen. And I also had a choice to hire a crew or become a general contractor. and sub everything out and kitchens fit that better than doing bathrooms you have the same trades people are involved for the most part but the timeline is extended to where it's just more efficient with that business model

Yeah. Yeah. No, that was a conscious decision to stop doing handyman stuff. Okay. In order to be, for me at least, to be efficient at what I did, I realized that I couldn't be a jack of all trades. If I'm going to deliver a premium product and awesome service, I need to focus on, I need to narrow my focus down. Being a handyman and doing every single thing, you're good at most of it, but you're great at none of it.

The decision was made, I would say, kind of just organically as as I realized that my business was growing, my clientele base. You know, I was establishing myself in the area. I didn't like operating feeling like I was spread out everywhere. Okay. And so in organic, you know, organically, I just decided, well, I'm at least going to focus on kitchen, bath and interiors. I started phasing out exterior work. And then once it got to a point where I felt comfortable enough that I could start saying no, then I can start charging a minimum. And then I just stopped taking on those jobs altogether, you know. Sorry, I don't come out and do one day repairs. I know somebody that does. I'd be happy to give you their information, things like that. But it was an organic decision. I wish I could say I had some master business plan, something like that. I really never did. At this point, I do. I wouldn't call it master plan. I have a plan. But at that point, it was just stressful trying to do a bunch of small jobs. And yeah, your calendar's filled, but I didn't. care to operate like that.

Correct. Yeah, it was becoming overwhelming. Yeah, it was overwhelming.

Yeah, that happened in year three is when I started to phase out the handyman stuff. Year four, just prior to me meeting you, I decided interior kitchen and bath. And then we've been niching down ever since.

Yeah. It goes back to... to my business model. Because I don't have a crew of guys, kitchens are the right size to operate the way that I operate. It really was as simple as that. Trying to do bathrooms using subcontractors. One thing goes wrong, the whole schedule gets thrown off. It's a two-week project. There's not a whole lot of give there. With kitchens, the project is large enough where I can... create the schedule, get all my subs lined out. And, you know, even if something, even if something shows up late or not on time, there's, there's enough give in a project that size to operate the way that I do. And that's really what it was. Also, you know, kitchens are, like I said before, they're my, they're my favorite part of the home.

No, not at all. Okay. As the sarcasm in your voice alluded to. No, I mean, and to be honest with you, the transition to kitchens was within the last four or five months. Um, so I still do a bathroom every now and then. Um, it takes months to put a kitchen together. That process can take three to six months from design through finished construction. So, uh, with that big of a, a lead time, you know, in each job, I still have to fill my schedule. So yes, I still do some bathrooms, um, especially for return clients or clients that I'm already doing a kitchen for, uh, you know, if they ask me to do their bathroom. We will absolutely do it. And it's always a work in progress. I don't think it's ever going to be perfect.

Correct, yes. We've moved every aspect of our marketing, our website, everything to just kitchens.

It is exponentially easier to focus on one thing. I, my systems have been streamlined. My. my contacts, my vendors. It's a repeatable process. So the more times I can repeat it, the more refined it gets and the easier it becomes for me.

Yeah. Um, no, it, it didn't happen all at once and it's, you know, it's constant progress with it. Um, I was able to take, you know, certain systems for, for bathroom or whole home remodel in particular and narrow it down, refine it, um, you know, to focus on kitchens, but it's. Having the systems in place for one type of project, sure, maybe a kitchen, we're moving a wall or adding windows. There's other components besides just cabinetry and countertops. So there's some overlap there. But no, it's always evolving. But it's easier to evolve and progress focusing on one aspect of remodeling than it is to try and build it up, at least for me, to build it up and focus on multiple portions of a home.

Well, I mean, back when I was operating as a handyman, I don't think I knew what a system was. So there's that aspect as well. As I chose to take on projects that were more complex, such as kitchens, I was... forced to build systems out, right? If I wanted to be competitive and make a good name for myself. So building the systems was just a necessity. But now that I have the systems in place, you know, they're growing all the time. But for kitchens, I honestly couldn't imagine having that same thing for basements and bathrooms and additions. And it seems like, for me at least, again, we'd go back to it being overwhelming. I do. better if I can focus on one thing. And, you know, that's been a work in progress. But yeah, the results, the deliverable results for having a system, again, that's repeatable for one niche is invaluable.

No, no, it's much easier. Before we decided to transition to just kitchens, I was building out my systems for all my other services offered, mainly bathrooms, whole home remodels and additions. Those were in place, but it's exactly like what you said. I realized if I built those out, A, I'm going to have to scale to a point where it's not sustainable for me right now. I'll have I have to have teams and crews for every single service I offer, because when I realized to be proficient at all of it, like I can't handle all of that. I can't handle all of those phases to run a an addition, a kitchen and a bathroom remodel simultaneously is going to pull me in a bunch of different directions. So. Once I decided to just do kitchens and I took the systems that I had for everything else and just narrowed it down, yeah, it's much easier. I mean, when I go look at a kitchen, I get back to my office, I open up my cost catalog. I already have everything built out to do an estimate for that kitchen. And it is streamlined to a point where now I can do them in a few hours. Whereas if I was doing all of those things, it could take me days to put those multiple projects together. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And again, it goes back to, you know, we are a family-owned small business. So having... Offering all these services and having multiple templates like you were just saying, and then templates within those for different portions of the job. It would have gotten to a point where I would need, you know, my office team would have to be huge in order for me to provide the service that I want to provide at that level and offer all those different services.

Yeah. So on the operation side, it is still just me. We are, we're in the process. I have a plan for, for bringing on a project manager and some other people on the operation side, you know, as we grow my wife does the office management side of things. So she handles my social media invoicing and you know, all that fun stuff that I don't care to do. I mean, not, not fun stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but you know, so we are, we're, we're small, um, we're small and my goal is, and always has been to, to provide a great service while remaining, um, you know, family owned that may change as the years progress, but you know, part of the reason for niching, niching down was, um, I know what I can handle. I know the size of our business right now. And I think that I can make a profitable business and offer a great service if I just narrow it down.

I don't think it would be out of the question, to be honest with you. My goal right now is a million by next year. And to give some context to that, we barely broke 100,000 two years ago.

So, you know, that's the goal. 10,20 million? I think it's possible. And I think with the systems I have in place, it would be possible. However... You know, I've seen growth get to a point where companies just don't, the service starts to lack, some things start to fall off. And, you know, I'm a recovering perfectionist, as you know. So, yeah.

No, no, actually, you stated that absolutely correctly. Yeah, my business, I would like it to fit my lifestyle. I don't need a $10 million business. I don't know if I need the... stress of a $10 million business. So, you know, we know where we want to be. I'm not a Lambeau mansion type of person. But again, you know, I want to give my family everything I can. So we'll see where that happy medium lies as things progress. Yeah,

Yeah. Ultimately, ultimately, that is the goal. One to if we can hit five million at some point in the next, you know,10 years, I would. I would be okay with that as my cap. The goal, four to five people on my team, myself, a project manager, sales, being the only person that runs the operations, I would need that. And at that point, four or $5 million, you're paying four or five salaries. It sounds like a lot of money, but I know as things have progressed for me that it gets spread around pretty quickly. But yeah, it's the goal is to be comfortable, live the lifestyle we want to live. You know, I live in Idaho. I like to be outside. And if I can do that and, you know, have a retirement and be able to provide for myself and my team, then I'd be perfectly content.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, we're already at that point. You know, the project sizes and the numbers just themselves have gotten large enough where, I'm realizing that I can't do this all on my own, nor do I want to. I don't think that limiting myself, when we talk about growth, you know, focus on money a lot, but growth is adding to the team and making sure that, you know, I'm not killing myself by trying to take everything on simply because I can't let go of it.

It's been great, honestly. When I decided to start expanding, taking on larger jobs and niche down to kitchens, I had already had, especially out where we live, this model is actually very common. It's easy to get licensed in Idaho. So there's a lot of guys that just do installation, things like that. So I had been working myself as a subcontractor when I was starting out with the handyman side of things. Sometimes I would sub out for GCs similar to where I'm at right now. So that kind of sparked it for me was, oh, I can GC these jobs. I can manage everything and I can find really great installers and subcontractors. that are focused on their craft and that's it. And that's all they want to do. They don't want to operate a business. They want to focus on their craft, work for general contractors that are not all over the place. And so it just kind of made it easy for me. I already knew that model. I had worked on the other side of it.

They've been really great. A lot of my subs... you know, they'll call me on the weekends. Like I have personal relationships with these people. You know, they're, they become friends of mine. So, and you're right. Subs do get the short end of the stick. You know, in multiple ways, when things go wrong on a job and sometimes they do, sometimes things don't show up or they show up broken or whatever. And you have to change the schedule. You know, I, even in those instances, I try and, and be fair with my subs and that's like they know they're going to get paid they may even get paid a little extra because i know that i messed up their schedule so the other thing about substitute they get a bad rap it's like oh you know you're you're subcontracting it out you're not there's no oversight and blah blah you know my guys are are the best at what they do um and i try and keep them you know fed job to job which means that I can keep on the best guys. The other thing too, if we're talking about subs is I learned the hard way, don't hire the cheapest guy. If you didn't estimate it right and you don't have the room in the budget and you're forced to hire the cheapest guy, it's not going to go good for you.

If I don't estimate it right. You know, I can always go back to the client and say, hey, this ended up being more every now and then that may happen. But no, for the most part, my margins are my margins. And I've had clients ask me this, like, do you hire the cheapest subs? And I'm honest about it. No, I do not. I don't hire the cheapest subs, which is why I may be more expensive than the other person you're talking to about this. The reason for that is you got to pay guys what they what they deserve. with the product that they produce.

Yeah. Yeah. That's absolutely fair. It's definitely a two way street for sure. The other thing that I do, If there's jobs, like we were saying earlier, smaller handyman jobs, things that I no longer do, I give those directly to my subs.

Yeah.

yeah. It kind of brings me back to my point of not hiring the cheapest person. So when I was starting out with this business model, transition from owner-operator, being all the tools myself to subbing things out, yeah, there was some growing pains. Hire the cheapest guys or not do my, not vet them quite right, not have SOPs in place for this is how you treat my job site, this is how you treat the home. So yeah, absolutely. I almost failed a few inspections because I had bad subs.

It's a lazy way out. And in my opinion, it's the fear of thinking you're not going to get the job because it's going to be too expensive.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I found that to be true.

Oh, you know, sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes I would say a year ago with, with where I was at, um, I may have not gotten the job, but since then, um, the clientele that I am attracting, I have a better chance of getting that job.

They go hand in hand. Gotcha. I was just, if you're willing to pay your subs more because they produce better quality work, your jobs are going to be more expensive and you're automatically going to a need or attract those. higher value clients. I think it goes directly hand in hand.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, this is some real world experience that just within the last 12,18 months I've gone through. The people that are willing to pay the clientele, that are willing to pay the higher price, they're not going to balk at it. A contractor, and I have a client that's like this, she got multiple bids. The contractor that was the cheapest, she felt like they were cheap for a reason, right? They didn't quite have their stuff together. They didn't quite present themselves in the way that I do. So she was willing to pay more money for somebody that she perceived. And obviously the job went well, and I actually have her. another job going for her very soon. It's not about the price. For her, it was not about the price. It was about the contractor that she was going to provide and the professional, the professionalism of dealing with them. And then the, you know, the, the product at the very end, it wasn't about finding the cheapest person. And as I've grown, I realized those, those people are out there.

Yes. Yeah. For a long time, I didn't think that they were. I just didn't think you could charge that much. So you hire the cheapest people or you price yourself out cheap. And those people are out there as well. And I'm not saying that they don't need contractors, but with my business model, typically I'm pricing myself out of a certain demographic. Yeah.

is. There's definitely a range for consistency. There's a range. I base it more on, to be honest with you, on. home value. It's easier. It's easier for me because I don't know what people make, right? Like I'm not going to ask them what they make, but typically speaking for me, it's if the home is valued at $800,000 or more than those people are, are looking for a certain type of contractor. Now there are exceptions. I have plenty of clients that just want. a reliable contractor and a great product. And maybe they're not in that income bracket, but they understand, you know, what, what paying a little bit more for that, for that product and that service means, and they're willing to, to do it. And most of the time, unfortunately they've been bit in the past by hiring, you know, the cheapest person.

Yeah, absolutely. There's people that value, you know, value the, like I said, the service, the product. They have a good idea of what it's going to cost. And maybe. Maybe they've been saving up for a decade to do it. I've done projects for people like that as well.

$115,000 to date. Okay.

Yeah, I'm putting together some pretty large ones right now. I don't have any signatures yet, but they're exciting. The custom kitchens where we get to do full layout changes, move walls, maybe do some structural changes, those are fun.

The the transformation process, which is I like, you know, you we can make a. A kitchen looked beautiful, just countertops, cabinets, and some paint, obviously. But when we get into moving appliances, plumbing, you know, walls, the creativity that's needed to be able to take that from paper and deliver a finished product is what I enjoy the most about it.

Yeah, mostly just if anybody's, you know, out there thinking about it, or, you know, they're unhappy with... with the way their business is going, I feel like they're pulled in a bunch of different directions. Just don't let the fear take over. The fear of change is real. Thinking that you can't do it because you're maybe content or don't want to change. That was the biggest hurdle for me. Once I was able to start saying no to jobs, it completely changed everything. It's a powerful thing being able to say, sorry, we don't do that anymore. I didn't know that I could do it, but once I did it a couple of times, then you can commit. You can't commit if you can't say no.

I still have a problem with it.

Email, email me direct info at redtail-renovations. com. Or you can visit the website as well and connect me through there.