Navigating Through Uncertainty Ep. 2 with Mark Curry

All right, everybody, this is Mark Curry from Your Remodeling Guys and Revelaire Kitchens. Thanks, Mark. So unprecedented times, and I know you are a guy that has solutions for just about anything. So what are you, what are you thinking? What are you feeling? What are you doing?

Yeah, well, I can't necessarily tell you I got a solution for this one.

Yeah.

These certainly are unprecedented times. I, and I would be careful ever to want to make, be in a position to make any kind of predictions in terms of what tomorrow looks like. But I do know this, and this is the message I've communicated to our company. And that is we have a choice. And either we can just simply look at this and accept some type of unknown fate and be like all the young college kids down on the beaches of Miami and spring breakers who were just welcoming Armageddon with open arms, right? Or I can try to do something about this, you know, in our small segment of the world. And so the first thing we want to do is communicate to our company, to all our personnel, is one, we didn't want to dictate anything. This is something where we had to build a constituency. And the message though was clearly is that, look, we can sit idly by and do nothing and just hope and wait and pray for the best, or we can do something about it. We find ourselves fortunate in this type of business, Brian, that this industry, this business model that we have, and that we are not a public type of an organization like a restaurant or sporting arena or conducting concerts. So we're not a hair salon, not a gym. So, you know, our point of contact with our customer, it's interesting, it's limited to 4 separate visits on a one-on-one basis when you think about it, right? Face-to-face marketing, one-on-one with a customer. Then we have a salesperson going into a house one-on-one with that household, then a measure technician if a sale is made, and then an installer. And my sense is that puts us in a position to contain and reasonably manage this, this relationship with our customer where we're preserving within reason, the health of our employee as well as that of our customer. And so we've, with that mindset, then we set forth to put the right precautionary measures in place. Okay.

And so what are you, what are you doing like yourself to, you know, for all of us that are business owners, we have to step up and we have to lead and we can't, we can't really let anyone see us. I don't know what the right word is, scared maybe, but what are you doing personally to make sure that people aren't seeing that side of you? Or maybe you aren't, you know, maybe you are confident that this will pass and you just have to weather it out. How are you kind of feeling?

Yeah, it's a good fair question. You know, I find myself so focused on the employees, our family, staff, that, you know, I really haven't taken much time to sit back and and realize the impact that it has on me, which is not necessarily— it's perhaps actually a good thing. The last thing I want to do is sit there and look at my stock portfolio right now. Yeah. It is interesting, you know, about only a month ago it seemed like I was making a really good living and living a stress-free life without even working that hard. Now I'm making no money and I'm working my tail end off. Yeah, so such is life. But, you know, so personally, to answer the question, you know, less professionally in terms of me as being the ambassador for a company and, and how I look at this personally, and I'm not sure there's really much of a difference in that because, you know, I do believe that mankind is pretty resilient, right? I mean, when you, you think of how many times Mother Nature gets slapped in the face with earthquakes, volcanoes, just last year in California with all the forest fires burning to the ground thousands of acres. 4 or 5 years from now, everything's going to grow back. Time will go on. And, um, so at the end of the day, I'm betting on mankind, you know, the human resiliency to win this thing. And I find it incredibly interesting in that this is not, you know, uh, isolated to one part of the world. I mean, this is globally, you know, Just a few months ago, you got all these countries with all this strife between them and trying to conquer their neighboring country, and all of a sudden, this virus is likened to an alien invasion, right? All of a sudden, all mankind is being pulled together thinking, "How do we deal with and fight this alien invasion?" And so I'm optimistic, cautiously optimistic, but nonetheless optimistic that we're gonna come out on the other side of this thing globally being more unified. And things will be different, just like it was after 9/11 with all the screening and what have you. You know, it's, you know, maybe I won't be a home improvement company a year from now and start a hand sanitation business. But, you know, there's going to be some great opportunities that are going to abound in years to come. But I think Ultimately, you know, at the end of the day, I'm gonna bet on all of the most intelligent minds in our, not just our country, but in the world to figure this thing out. And yes, we'll weather the storm for as long as it takes, but I'm not gonna sit back and watch it all unfold. You know, I'm gonna do my part professionally and personally to keep things moving.

Yeah, are you running Leeds?

We are, yeah, we really are. And so, you know, with our backlog of business, you know, we're able to allay some of the fears and concerns that our customers have. And we have a script in place to give them, our existing customers, that assurance so we don't delay any installs. When we're in the home, you know, we need to put more arrows in our quiver in terms of handling objections that we haven't been confronted with before. So we're approaching things on that front. But the biggest challenge, most certainly, I would imagine that's the case for other businesses similar to mine, is the lead generation. And so, you know, that is the value of face-to-face marketing is that not necessarily a media or an advertisement can get across, but when you're talking to somebody face-to-face, We, we have that distinct advantage to give things the benefit of discussion and offer some assurances. So what we've developed is a COVID-19 health precautionary memo, and it prescribes, or lays out I should say, all the precautionary measures that we're taking as a company as we interact with our prospects or customers. And right at point of contact, when we set that lead, face-to-face or otherwise, we're providing a copy of that to our customer. When we confirm that appointment, before we ever issue it to a salesperson, we're asking 2 questions of the homeowner. These are 2 new qualifications that we have. And that is, has anybody in your household traveled to any of the governmentally cited quarantined areas in the last 4 weeks? And we follow that up with a question as, have they or anybody in their household shown symptoms of COVID-19, such as a fever, in the past 4 weeks? And if the answer is yes to any one of those two, then obviously we're not going to run that appointment. And then we offer the same assurances to that customer when we confirm the appointment, that the same applies as reciprocated with our salesperson. Visiting the home. So we are monitoring the health of all our personnel. So that's, that's the first step we take in setting those appointments. And then we follow up that confirmation with again emailing digitally the, our document that I just referred to a moment ago. When our salespeople then come into the home, whether it's a salesperson, a measure technician, or an installer, We have some protocols laid out as a new company policy. Everybody's equipped with hand sanitizers or sanitation wipes. So we're wiping, again, we are in the kitchen business, so we'll wipe down the countertop, any samples, any aids that we're using, the cabinet doors, drawers, hardware. Distancing ourselves best we can at the kitchen table, so we're not in close proximity, and limiting any type of human contact. No handshakes.

Yeah.

So, you know, and I'm not sure how unique all that is, but that's the measures that we're taking. And again, we cover 6 states in the Northeast, so we have to very clearly and consistently communicate that message to all of our staff. Execution is imperative.

Yeah, yeah, now more than ever, right? That system has to be very tight, very well scripted, very well choreographed so they don't slip up in the house.

Yes. Yeah.

All right, any, any parting words here? I appreciate you coming on. I know how busy you are, but any parting words?

Yeah, well, you know, I, I don't think, you know, the question that a lot of people ask, at the risk of oversimplifying this, is that, you know, some people— we all deal with our anxiety and fears in different ways, and I think we all need to be careful not to impose our value system on that of other people. Everybody's got to deal with this in their own way. But again, at the risk of oversimplifying it, you know, some people are looking at it like, hey, I'm not going to work, and if I lose my house and I can't pay bills, well, I'd rather live poorly than not live at all, right? But I don't think it has to be that either-or question, you know, live or die. I think, you know, obviously I choose to live, but I, I don't want to feed into fearmongering. And, you know, I believe that we have to be responsible and intelligently deal with this issue. You know, I'm concerned about all my employees. I don't want to put anybody's life or health or family members at risk. So that is at the forefront of my mind every moment of every day, and it'll continue to be that moving forward. Yeah, there you have it.

Yeah, well, I'll tell you, I mean, it's good to hear that you are, you are running leads, and I think people are, people are buying, right?

They are. You know, our sales are down, but, you know, our business is not shut down, right?

Yeah. Okay, good. Well, that's one— I guess that's the bright side of it, and everybody's still working there. So I'm looking for the, I'm looking for the silver linings in all of these conversations. I'm looking for the, you know, the silver lining and the glimmer of hope. But, you know, you have a very, you have a great attitude and, you know, I've known you for a long time. And so I appreciate you for coming and sharing. And yeah, I might reach out to you again in a couple of weeks and see what new advice you have. My, my personal hope is that, you know, we've figured this thing out in a couple weeks. I can't imagine them letting it go much longer, but what do I know?

Yeah, what do any of us know at this point, right?

Yeah, thank you.