Shed Geek Podcast
The Shed Geek Podcast offers an in depth analysis of the ever growing and robust Shed Industry. Listeners will experience a variety of guests who identify or specialize in particular niche areas of the Shed Industry. You will be engaged as you hear amateur and professional personalities discuss topics such as: Shed hauling, sales, marketing, Rent to Own, shed history, shed faith, and much more. Host Shannon Latham is a self proclaimed "Shed Geek" who attempts to take you through discussions that are as exciting as the industry itself. Listeners of this podcast include those who play a role directly or indirectly with the Shed Industry itself.
Shed Geek Podcast
From Sheds to Software: Jason Graber's Journey of Innovation and Investment
Join us as we welcome Jason Graber, a veteran in the shed industry,
who shares his riveting journey from constructing backyard sheds in
South Carolina to developing groundbreaking business tools like 3D
Shed Builder and Shed Suite. Jason opens up about the early challenges
he faced, like managing inventory through Google spreadsheets and
dealing with shed orders sketched on napkins, which ignited his
passion for innovation in the industry. This episode promises insights
into the intersection of traditional craftsmanship and cutting-edge
technology, offering valuable lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs and
established business owners alike.
The conversation takes an exhilarating turn when Jason reveals his
recent acquisition of a Lamborghini Huracan, a dream made possible
through strategic Bitcoin investments. We also dive deep into his
transition from hauling sheds to pursuing his true passion—music—and
how he balances personal interests with professional aspirations.
Jason shares his visions for the future of Shed Suite and discusses
the potential growth and challenges of navigating the business without
external investments. Expect to gain a nuanced perspective on
financial planning, strategic investments, and the future of the
shed-building industry.
Beyond the tech and cars, we tackle the importance of fostering a
positive organizational culture and the delicate balance of
reinvesting profits while rewarding team members. Jason offers
valuable insights on building a self-sustaining business and the
future of technology and communication within the industry. From
exploring the potential of modern rent-to-own management software to
emphasizing the need for robust, integrated systems, this episode is
packed with actionable advice and forward-thinking ideas. Tune in to
explore how continuous effort, a shared vision for excellence, and a
touch of innovation can pave the way to success.
For more information or to know more about the Shed Geek Podcast visit us at our website.
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube at the handle @shedgeekpodcast.
To be a guest on the Shed Geek Podcast visit our website and fill out the "Contact Us" form.
To suggest show topics or ask questions you want answered email us at info@shedgeek.com.
This episodes Sponsors:
Studio Sponsor: Union Grove Lumber
Shed Challenger
Cardinal Leasing
Cardinal Manufacturing
All right guys, welcome back to another episode of the Shed Geek podcast Friday, Sambassador Fun Friday edition. And I'm really honored and excited today to have an old friend back on, Jason Graber with Shed School. I've known Jason a long, long time and I've known his family even longer. We go back a ways. I don't know how much you remember this or think about it, but I plainly remember when some of your family used to come down to Cuthbert, Georgia, into the sticks down there, and they had kinfolk down there. I guess it would be your uncle actually not your dad, but yeah. So, I got to know the Gravers. I knew some of the younger uncles and aunts from back in the Sarasota days, so your family's been well known to me for a long time. And here we are, 30 something years later and we're both in the same industry.
Jason Graber:Isn't that?
Jason Graber:great
Sambassador:and it's kind of wild, because I remember a conversation I had with you. Oh man, you probably know the year better than I do, but way back when I was still selling sheds and stuff, somebody told me that you were doing something to help sell sheds and to help run a better business. I actually had a conversation with you about it. Do you remember any of that.
Jason Graber:So, I started building sheds in Pickens, South Carolina, in 2008. Probably seven, eight, nine, ten, when I was in high school, out of high school, and then that's kind of around the time when you were building sheds and delivering some sheds Because I mean you maybe a little bit later than that, because in 2012, we moved to Florida to run a shop here in Arcadia that was building sheds. We moved to Florida to run a shop here in Arcadia that was building sheds. So, you know we were, I was going through Seneca. I remember seeing you a lot there on 123, you know 123 buildings there. And when I moved to Florida, I was still just kind of doing, you know, like general technology websites and you know, trying to learn internet marketing because internet was pretty, pretty new. And but when I really got into like business solutions and trying to figure out how to sell sheds better and manage businesses was when I was running the shop here in Florida, so moved down here in 2012.
Jason Graber:So, 12, 13, 14, I was running the shop and you know, really didn't have any tools. I'm running the shop by a Google spreadsheet for what I need to build, what I have in my inventory and I'm getting these orders emailed to me with, just like you know, a picture of a floor plan scratched on a napkin, and I'm like, guys, I can't build this shed. I don't know what you want on this shed. So that's when my first idea of like, well, wouldn't it be cool if we could build a 3D shed on the internet where you could just see the shed, put the windows on it, put the doors on it, and then it would print you a floor plan that would have here's the door, here's how far it is from the end walls, and that's what I need at the shop to build my build the shed. So that was my first idea for a product called 3d shed builder. com, and I built that like kind of moonlighted, that one.
Jason Graber:I built it while I was working at the shop here in Florida in 2013 and 14, and then in 15 is when I pitched it to the company, I was building for was Weather King, and I showed it to them. I was like, hey, here's a prototype of what I built. They thought, wow, that's amazing. And at that time Idea Room was just getting into sheds. They were doing some other products, configuration products but they kind of just discovered the industry and they weren't well known, nobody knew that they existed, and so my product was kind of one of the first 3D shed builders that ever hit the market, and when I pitched it to Weather King, they had kind of a close knit group of friends and they said hey, we want exclusive access to this. We don't want our competitors to have it, we want to get it.
Sambassador:And so we made a deal and it was a great deal for me.
Jason Graber:I, you know, pre-revenue company didn't even have clients right and they signed an exclusivity deal to pay me monthly for this product as long as I wouldn't sell it to other companies. And so that's kind of 2015 is when I I put in my resignation at the shop and went full time into software and built that product out to support the companies that we had an agreement to support, and that company did great, and it just wasn't scalable because of the exclusivity agreement that I had. And so, you know, I talked to my clients, and they said, well, you know, this is what we want. As long as you support it, we don't really care what you do. So then in 2017, that's when I started Shed Suite, and you know that's what Shed Suite is today. It's more of a full business management solution. So, kind of a little bit of a backstory, but that's kind of how I got started in it.
Sambassador:Yeah, so did you. Um knowing your family, knowing you, know where you grew up in upstate south carolina, like were you born here or in new ford hey, insert in, uh, south carolina, yeah so I was born here in south carolina, went to school here went to school.
Jason Graber:I was homeschooled. Mom uh taught all six of us kids in homeschool all 12 grades. At one point she had all six of us kids in homeschool all 12 grades. At one point she had all six of us in school. I was graduating 12th grade and my youngest was going into first grade.
Sambassador:So there's 12 years between y'all.
Jason Graber:Yeah, 14 actually.
Sambassador:I think I did not know it was that big a spread in you guys? Yeah, so got married to a local girl here. I know, her family well yeah, um, so you know, homeschooling, going to school, um your family, like what was your dad doing back then?
Jason Graber:well, he's worked at the fair play boys camp the whole time and for 35 years. So, he moved up there you know 85, I think and started working at the camp as a counselor and then during that time met my mom. They got married and dad came back as a, as a what they call them, like a supervisor, and from there he's kind of worked in various roles. You know public relations. He was the director for a few years, but he's still there. I believe he's coming up on retirement. Actually, I think he's going to retire in a few years. Wow, that seems 35 years.
Sambassador:I mean since I moved to Williamston. It's hard to believe how long I've been over here. I'm coming up on 12 years that I've been in Williamston. Now I don't get to see him near as much and a lot of those people over there I kind of moved. When I moved over here, I told people I'm moving to Egypt, I'm getting away from everybody, so I don't get to see him near as much. Always enjoyed him, always. He was, always had a smile on his face and always had a good work.
Sambassador:Yeah, I guess where I'm going with this is. I'm trying to visualize, you know, a little 12 year old running around going to school and he dreams of being a computer whiz one day and owning his own company. What were you? What was? What was 12 year old version of you? Like you know, what were you dreaming of?
Jason Graber:Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. I was always very curious about how things work. I was I was taking apart my mom's egg beater at 12 years old, like and taking the motor out and putting it on a piece of wood and making a boat and getting electrocuted because I plug it in, put it in the water, right, I mean, that's, that was 12 year old me. I built bird houses, um, you know, we raised some cows. We were kind of on a little mini farm there. We had cows and goats and chickens and stuff, um. And then once I got 15 years old or so and could drive, I got really interested in cars and mechanics and engines. So I really dove in and learned. I bought a 1999 Acura Integra four cylinder VTEC engine. I took the whole car apart, I bought the Hays manual and I you know that thing Yep.
Jason Graber:And I took the whole car apart, took the engine out, took the engine apart, rebuilt the whole engine, cams, pistons and forced induction, everything New fuel system, spark injection and ignition system Put it all back together and put a turbo on it. Forced induction and it took me two and a half years to build this car, but it had. It had like 350 horsepower to the wheels and it would freaking scream, had Lambo doors on it. I mean, I just went all out on this thing. It was so much fun, I really loved it, but that was just that's me like. I've always been like how do things work? How can I, you know, understand how? How to take something apart, put it back together and make it better?
Sambassador:and so that that brings up an interesting. You just opened the door wide open into a question I wanted to ask you today, so you just completely explained my question that I haven't even asked yet. As you know, you're friends with my son, Shane.
Jason Graber:Yeah.
Sambassador:Shane's a full-time musician. He hauled sheds with me for six years, hated every second he did it, even though he had I still say he had the best gravy train job ever when he worked for me. But obviously his heart's in music, that's what he does, and I think it was we were camping all last week, and I think it was one day last week. He just out of the blue. He's like hey, you follow Jason Graber and I'm like, well, duh, of course I said we're both in the shed industry, we hang out a lot and I said know; I love seeing what he's doing next. He said have you seen any of his posts lately? I'm like I don't guess. Not really, I haven't been paying attention. He's like you need to go see what he's got and I'm going.
Jason Graber:Yes.
Sambassador:I do, I know.
Sambassador:So, so I was. I was like what I said that? Like I had no idea you were a car nut, oh yeah. But you just explained that you said you are a car nut, oh yeah. And somewhere in this conversation I was going to bring up this car that you've got, because Shane says not only is this a supercar, he actually called it something. There there's a terminology you car nuts use, like okay, so I'm a pickup nut, like if it doesn't blow black smoke. Now, if you give me a car that blows black smoke, like one of my nephews has right now.
Sambassador:Now you're interested yeah, now I'm interested. One of my nephews has this little car. I don't even remember what the thing is, but it is ridiculous how much horsepower this little diesel motor is making Diesel engine car.
Jason Graber:Yeah, it's a little diesel engine car. Oh, it's probably a Volkswagen or something.
Sambassador:It's either Volkswagen or does Acura make a TDI diesel or something?
Jason Graber:No, that's VW.
Sambassador:Okay so if it's TDI, it's VW, so it is a really bad looking little sleeper.
Jason Graber:Car yeah um.
Sambassador:But anyway, you've, uh, you've, obviously. So, whatever it is above a supercar that he called, he said, no, that's not a supercar, that's actually above a supercar. Um, talk to me a little bit about where we're going, because obviously this would be a question I would normally ask guys, is you know? Ok, so we know you're in the shed industry, we know you're doing shed suite, we know you're big about coming up with solutions, helping people. We all know that. What is what is Jason looking at in the future? And I think we know what he's looking at in the future. So, is it one, is it two, is it five?
Jason Graber:And where are you?
Sambassador:going. This intrigues me to no end.
Jason Graber:That's so funny, I know, because my close friends, I mean, I've got a really close-knit group of friends here in Sarasota and one of the guys is my CPA, and so I called him up and I was like, hey, I'm about to buy a Lambo. He's like what? Why in the Sam Hill are you going to buy a Lambo? Like that is so not Jason Graber? Like what are you doing? I was like man, I've had a Lambo on my dream board for ever. It's been my screensaver on my computer for seven years, I mean, and before that, you know, on my bedroom wall. I mean, like the Lambo, the Lamborghini Huracan, has been my dream car and yeah, and I think you know what really triggered the purchase. I don't really know. I think that you know we've been doing Shed Suite for seven years and you know I've been able to we've not taken any investors. We've been able to grow steadily, be very smart with our money and I didn't I actually didn't use any company money to buy the car. I just, you know, I've been investing money in Bitcoin. Actually, helped a lot. So, Bitcoin was a was a great catalyst for it.
Jason Graber:But you know, it's such a materialistic thing, right, it's one of those things it's like I don't want my identity to be, even in my company or even in you know, a car, but they are. It's like trucks, right, they're just unbelievable feats of engineering. And this car is. You know, I guess they would probably call it an exotic supercar, but, um, it's incredible. It's a v10, naturally aspirated car. Um, comes from Italy and it's about 610 horsepower, all wheel drive, and just rips it's.
Jason Graber:it's so stinking fast but, you know, I, I don't have a dream to own a big collection of cars. I think I wanted the experience to be able to drive one and you know, like old trucks and like you know, good vehicle, you can make good vehicle purchases right. You, you, you absolutely can, and these are the types of vehicles that you, you can make a good purchase, drive it for a while and walk away from it and not lose any money.
Jason Graber:So, you know we're not going to see grandpa Jason driving around this thing probably will, but I'll probably, you know, keep, probably keep swapping it out, but no, it's a really fun vehicle. I think for me it was one of those things where, about six months ago, I really strongly considered raising capital for Shed Suite, because I kind of got to this place where we crossed over a million in revenue. We're just like man, what's next? Like where do we want to go? Do we want to be 10 million, 20 million, 50? Where do we want to go and how fast do we want to get there?
Jason Graber:And you know, I really just spent a few days and tried to, you know, put myself in that situation and work backward from it. What would it look like if we brought on investors, we got capital, we invested it, we grew at a faster pace? What would life look like if I did that? And came away from that whole experience thinking I really just don't think my life would be any better if I would grow faster and have investors. I think it would actually be worse, it would be more stressful. And we're on a good growth track right now. And I decided, you know, I think that with what this business has provided to the team that we have, to the industry at large and to my family. Like, our mission is to run a business as a ministry and that's what we're doing. And so for me to grow quickly and sell just isn't in our DNA, it's not who we are, it's not.
Jason Graber:So, coming away from that all kind of came back to well, you know, let's just grow steadily, let's keep investing in ourselves, in our product, and you know we're seven years into this thing and you know I don't think we're going to, you know, grow super fast and exit. I'm going to make, you know I'm going to make a purchase that was, you know, kind of somewhat of a reward for the last seven years of hard work. You know kind of somewhat of a reward for the last seven years of hard work and you know let's keep moving forward, because a lot of guys, you know, seven years into a business generally, especially a tech business, it's almost unheard of for a tech business to go seven years or more, or five years, without raising capital and generally when that liquidity event happens, you know millions of dollars pour into the business. The founder gets a liquidity event, you know, gets a bunch of cash, diversifies a little bit, you know, goes and buys a boat or something like that, whatever it's like, my lifestyle is amazing. I love the job I have where everything is, the job I have where everything is. So it's kind of like I'm not looking forward to you know. Oh, in two years we're going to have this massive liquidity event.
Jason Graber:No, I don't think so. I think you know I'm in it for the long haul. I really want Shed Suite to be around for the next 20 years, and you know so. That's a lot of reasons why it happened. But it's funny because, you know, when I bought the car, I owned it for a whole month before I posted any pictures on any social media, because I'm just like you know, I don't. I don't want this to be my identity of who I am, but I also want to share it. I think it's an. It's an incredible car. It's such a, absolutely such an amazing vehicle incredible car.
Sambassador:It's such an amazing vehicle you can pick any. Airplanes is another good example. Kind of the culture we grew up in. Airplanes are considered a frivolous thing. There's lots of stuff the know, the way we grew up would just tend to I don't, I don't know, I I don't have the word I'm looking for. That would tend to darken somebody's character just because, oh, look what he's spending money on. Yeah, but at the same time you know they would go buy more, they would go buy more farms, they would go buy more cows or whatever. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. It's all relevant. I think it's fantastic and I've learned over the last dozen years that most times if somebody has a problem with something I'm buying, it's not a problem with what I'm buying. They got a problem with what they're not buying, or you know there's more going on, yeah, um.
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Sambassador:I'm all about celebrating success. I'm all about celebrating personal lives. I mean, ultimately, we all want successful businesses. And why do we want a successful business? It's not because I want to be known as Sam Byler, the guy that you know lived 50 years and you know died. Having a successful business, it's what the successful business gets.
Jason Graber:Yeah, and anything and gives and gives.
Sambassador:Right, I mean, you're the same, and that's what I'm saying, and what you get from that to be able to give back to your community. Yeah, and man, the doors that I see that would open for now, obviously this curly-headed Amish boy can't ride around in a Lamborghini and get any doors to open, but a good-looking guy like you gets out and somebody's like what in the world? You have an opportunity, A huge opportunity available to you. I don't know. I just I see it as like when I saw it I was just happy.
Sambassador:It was like this is so cool because I know the grind you've been in, I know the work you've put in and you know owning your own business isn't always roses. You know thorns stuck in us all the time. That's hard work and I'm glad you kind of followed up with it in the fact that you know. You explained a little bit about how you've grown your business. You've been able to do it all, naturally, without any help or whatever. Sure, it goes a little slower, but, man, we could, we could spend an hour just talking about, in today's culture, growing a business without getting all that fast funding, without getting on. You know what I'm saying.
Sambassador:I mean, yeah I think that's probably as close as I do to anybody I know that can see growth and not growth happening in businesses. That just man. It's heart-wrenching right now to see what some people are going through, and then I also see other people just going strong. How do you see that?
Jason Graber:Yeah, I think that what I found when I told you that I kind of really spent a couple days like really going into putting myself in a future state of what would life look like with investors and what would like life look like if. I don't know if you can hear that lightning, but it's like cracking around here.
Sambassador:I see I'm watching the outside. There it's, it's apparent, on you crazy, crazy lightning outside.
Jason Graber:But you know it's so. It's so interesting. One of my really good friends runs a podcast called the Pitch and you should go check it out. It's on Spotify or whatever and it's literally like Shark Tank, but real. He actually goes and finds real businesses, entrepreneurs, and matches them or puts them in a room with investors and they pitch the investors room with investors, and they pitch the investors and it's cool.
Jason Graber:But I'm like I'm, there is so much in our culture and so much I I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm designed to question everything, right, so I question everything and I'm like why is it that it is just the normal thing to have an idea and then go instantly raise a seed round for, you know, $2 million, and then you have a series A, a series B, a series C and you're like you're $15 million into a project and you have no customers, no revenue, stuff like that. It's like you're just setting yourself up for failure, like it doesn't even make sense, like it doesn't even make sense. So, for me, like I can see where a business that has some traction, yeah, some cash absolutely would put fuel on the fire, but it comes at such a cost that I'm not, I'm not willing to pay that cost. Cost, you know. So it's so expensive in terms of requirements and the expectation that's going to be put on you from those investors.
Jason Graber:Like you're not, you're not your own business anymore, you now have people that you answer to and I just feel like you know if you can't at all do it, I just feel like you know if you can't at all do it grassroots, organically, man, I've just had an exceptional experience growing it with my team. Now I don't own all the equity of Shed Suite, but all the equity is owned within the team my co-founder, second employee, we all own equity but no outside investor owns any equity and it's just great because we, our leadership team calls is us, it's our team, you know.
Sambassador:So yeah, um, how do we? Uh, so you, you, you mentioned that it's you know for you you couldn't make that decision. How can we get that? So let's say we got a hundred guys sitting in front of us they're all less than two years old in their new business, how's the best way to get them to see the picture that they don't have to have that growth rate? So, I struggle with this. I'm a pedal, pedal to the metal guy.
Jason Graber:I want to grow. I'm wide open all the time.
Sambassador:The only thing that slows me down is literally. I failed so many times at trying to grow fast that I finally just slammed my own brakes on. But how do we get somebody? I always tell people I get guys. All the time I say, oh, you've been around a long time, you're an old guy in the shed industry, what advice can you give me? And literally everybody that asks me that I'll say I can tell you what not to do. What's the flip side of that? How do we get people to see that not only what not to do, but how to do it? Just stay on that path as long as you're growing at even a small rate.
Jason Graber:Yeah, that's what I did I. I focused in on sustainability I see that it's crazy, it's cracking right.
Sambassador:I can see it in your window, man like that one almost struck here.
Jason Graber:But I think what the way my brain works was well, if my business doesn't have a good product market fit and if it can't sustain itself, then how in the world will it sustain itself after I get a big injection of cash, like it still won't. So, I've always tried to identify areas to improve efficiency first, so saying like I need more money, well, we should just do more sales. We need to, you know, lower expenses. Well, how can I increase efficiency so I can lower more, put more money on the bottom line? So really, just what I've tried to do is reinvest as much money as possible, all while balancing everything out, which is challenging, because you have people that when you start a new business likely the founding team they're not going to be paid what they're worth. They're founders. They can go somewhere else and make a lot more money. They're doing this because there's an opportunity here, and the opportunity is we get to. So as you grow, you want to compensate those people better, and so you need to be reinvesting in your people and in your business, whether that's marketing or more inventory or whatever it is.
Jason Graber:But I think it's just a misconception that you think well, you know, we can just pour on you know millions of dollars and everything will just take off, but if you don't have your processes in line in place, where you have a sustainable cycle of income and expenses, your cash flow, then pouring more money on it is just going to kind of blow up. It's not going to work. So, I think what's really challenging, though, is kind of when you get a good process in place, you have your cash flow under control, and then you have an opportunity to get investors. It's not always a bad thing. I think what my issue with it is now I have partners, and now those relationships could go bad. You've got, you know, different points of view. There's just a lot of not financial cost. It's like energy and mental cost that most people don't think about, and for me, I'm not willing to pay the price for that cost.
Sambassador:But yeah, it might make sense for some people. No, that makes 100 sense. Um, in the fact of uh. And so, in the last six months I've branched out into some couple of new projects with some people I love dearly, and what you're saying fits to a T, and I'm not even talking bad about any of these relationships. I'm just saying the stress that it puts on these relationships. Right, because so often, okay, I'll use Shannon and I, for example, relationships. I'm just saying the stress that it puts on these relationships, right, because so often, and okay, I'll use Shannon and I, for example, Shannon and I consider ourselves both great communicators. How in the world would we not be able to communicate between the two of us? Right, and even then, there's miscommunication.
Sambassador:Sure, you know what I'm saying and I'm like oh, my word, you know I'm thinking about. I'll just pull Clem Y. Oh, my word, you know I'm thinking about. I'll just pull Clem Yoder out of my hat. You know, Clem is one of my best friends. He's been on the Brotherhood from day one. He's been a board member. He's worked his tail off. Merv Miller, Woody I can put all those guys in there.
Sambassador:We have miscommunication problems? Yeah, and if, if it wasn't for the fact that we have a bond that's greater than that? That, I know is unusual.
Jason Graber:Right, right, which you don't get Just imagine where that would go. Right and generally, when you're taking an investment from somebody, very rarely is it from someone that you have a deep bond in relationship with. Generally, it's an investment company, a venture growth capital company.
Sambassador:Oh, that was in your glasses. That was a close one. Oh my word. I didn't even know you had a window on that side.
Jason Graber:I got a window over here and a window over here, but that's You're up, hold on.
Sambassador:You're up a little ways, we're up 10 floors. Yeah, so you're a little bit of a lightning rod up there I kind of am.
Jason Graber:We're on the top floor, so if it hits, that was close, wasn't it? That was really close. But I mean, hopefully the building is like, uh yeah, insulated right.
Sambassador:Oh yeah, I'm sure it's got a rod going down to the ground somewhere.
Jason Graber:The Internet might go off. Well, that's true, we might lose connectivity.
Sambassador:We might end up with a part two, but I'm going to get it on video before it goes.
Jason Graber:I mean, yeah, that's pretty crazy. But yeah, I think you're absolutely correct in that you know expectations and communication is so key and there's a lot of energy that goes into maintaining proper expectations and updating those expectations and properly communicating, and you just have this whole dynamic. You have an investor. The reason they gave you money was to see a return on their investment. You owe them a return, and so you should do everything in your best interest to give them reports. How are things going? Are there things they can do to help you? And there's just a lot of extra, extra work. I'm not saying it's not, um, I'm not saying it's not you shouldn't do it, I'm just saying it.
Jason Graber:You have to be very calculated when you make a decision to be on an investor.
Sambassador:Yeah, I actually, um, one of one of the things I don't talk about it a whole lot, but one of the mistakes I'm still paying for today was a mistake where we went after investment money, yeah, and it ended up costing me some relationships and it ended up costing me probably four years of my personal business life yeah, maybe even more than four, but four years of really hard.
Sambassador:And then you know, it's still ongoing right now, but I'm working my way back out of it. And you know we thought we sat down and did it all calculated. You know we thought we had it all figured out perfectly. We're not going to be dummies. We got it, it's all worked out and it can, it can still it's, it's, and I guess the reason I'm willing to talk about it today is if, if somehow I can like I see it today in in certain companies, um, today is not very friendly to business owners anyway yeah and then, and then, when you get stuck in a situation like I see some of them in now, it's like if anything I can say would help somebody, then I'm willing to say it.
Sambassador:Yeah, yeah, let's, let's say it, let's figure out. But the problem is I need smart guys to tell me how to say it, because all I'm going to say is don't do what I did. And I need guys like you that are smart, that have tore the whole car apart and say, well, this is why it's not going to work that way. You got to do this. Yeah, and at the end of the day, that's why I do these podcasts. Everybody has a story, but there is so much that I'll pick up. I'll listen to a whole episode. A lot of times I binge listen because I get too busy and I can't keep up. And then I go on a trip and I listen to 10 of them and it is amazing how I can drive along for an hour and there'll be two little 30 second clips in there or something nails. Yeah, and, and it's that's why we do it.
Jason Graber:Yeah, yeah, I love that. I mean that's why, you know, I reached out and wanted to come on here. I mean, our heart at Shed Suite is very much the same, Like how can we help shed businesses thrive? I mean our tagline is where shed businesses thrive. So, everything we do is for a shed, empowering a shed business. And that shed business has a lot of different roles in it. It has, you know, office staff, sales reps, drivers, dealers. You know manufacturers, managers, dealers you know manufacturers, managers I mean it's everybody.
Jason Graber:So, it's sometimes challenging, right, because sometimes what's good for a driver is not good for a sales rep, right, or something like that. And so, you're like well, but it's cool because we have the opportunity to hear both people and say, ok, well, I don't, you know, we don't want to make more work for the sales rep, the driver doesn't want to do it Well, but it's going to help the sales rep. So, there's like ways that we can say, well, but you both want to make each other's job easier. Right, at the end of the day, your heart is to run a synergistic organization and like help each other and be successful. So that's what's cool.
Jason Graber:We get to hear all the different roles in a company and hear why they want a certain thing or why they want a process to be a certain way, and then we can talk to both roles and say, well, let's make it work for both of you guys, because we hear you and we hear why you don't want to do that, but it's important for you to do it because they need it Right. And so it's like, let's make it easier for you to do that. Ok, now we're. Now we're working together and everybody gets the information they need.
Sambassador:So, I'm looking at a couple of companies right now where I'm trying to figure out Um, so overall I think morale is down. Um, just in the shed industry, and I'm not saying that we're in a bad place, we're not. I don't like I can sit here and I can give you a 15 minute speech. Well, we talked about a little bit. We were not even keeping up in our area, yeah, and I know there's other areas that are different. But, matt, you know people ask me all the time. You know you got friends all over the place. You deal with business everywhere. What's the national pulse? You know, and my national pulse is I opened up a super sales lot today. Okay, today. Okay Today, august 1st.
Jason Graber:Yeah.
Sambassador:Today is our first official day open of one of the largest lots you'll find in the southeast. Wow, so I'm practicing what I preach when I say you can still sell a ton of sheds and you can still make money in the shed business. Yeah, my question is how do we get? And I think you're a fair guy to ask this, because you see all the different parts and I see that too. So when I pull up on a lot and I see the grass isn't mowed as good as it could be mowed, I don't see buildings set up level as nice as they could be, I don't see signage up as cool as it could be.
Sambassador:Um, I might even see a couple buildings that I'm like man, they could have done a little better job on the trim on that building. So, I'm basically dragging everybody that you deal with in the shed in that shed the builder, the sales, the office, the lawnmower, the delivery guy, everybody I want. I think if I could get them all excited about a shed again, I think that place would look different. Yeah, you follow what I'm saying. How do we go about? I'm in the middle of this. How do we go about doing that?
Sambassador:it's a really good question. You hit on it a little bit when you said you're going to do this part just because it helps that other part. And at the end of the day, if we all know that we have to sell a shed so that our communities are all better, every piece in between there all of a sudden becomes important, right?
Jason Graber:Yeah, I mean, it's just like what we always talk about, where, you know, any one of those roles is reliant on the next. If we didn't have drivers, no sheds would get delivered, but if we didn't have a manufacturer, we wouldn't have anything to sell. Well, if you didn't sell anything, you wouldn't have anything to manufacture.
Sambassador:It's all together.
Jason Graber:You have to have every part, and so you know every role is equally important. And I think you know, I think that comes back to, and I think you know, I think that comes back to you know culture in business and the reason why your purpose. You know, in business you know if your purpose is to start a shed company to make as much money as you can possibly make, well that's your culture, right. And so, you're just going to, you're going to cut corners, you're going to do stuff that probably isn't the best, you're going to do stuff that probably isn't the best. But if your purpose is to supply quality sheds to the industry while providing an excellent working environment for your shop dealers and drivers, then now you have a different purpose. Now your driver has got a reason to set that shed level, a reason to set that shed level. The dealer has a reason to keep that dealership looking nice because their purpose is to supply quality sheds to the community.
Jason Graber:So, I think for me, in any organization, culture is key. You have to develop a culture in your organization that your whole organization understands the mission, vision and values of why you exist, like why? Why do you exist, why do you do what you do and if everyone's aligned on those items, then I think you have you've got people that will go above and beyond, because I think a lot of this is just it's just above and beyond. It's not that they're not doing the thing. You know, hey, the driver dropped off the shed, the dealer sold the shed, the manufacturer made the shed. It's just not like 110%, we're just doing like 100%, like I always love to see.
Jason Graber:You know, any one of my team members, you can see it, you'll, you see it in your group. When somebody does 110%, you see it, you see it right away. It's like man, that guy's doing 110. And that is, that's sharp, it's uh, it's attractive. I want to be, I want to be around that guy. You know I want to be. So I've tried to, you know, foster that culture and try to put those types of people as close to me as possible on my team, where you know it's not, it's not somebody micromanaging anybody, it's. They do it because they're there, is a purpose, and then because they're bought into a culture that it's bigger than themselves, right?
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Sambassador:To get started, I'm going to go biblical on you for a minute. How much do you think this plays into it? A little leaven, leaven, the whole lump. Without a vision, the people perish, yeah. So, the negativity, if it starts, can get big in a hurry and if you don't have, you said it, mission vision. And if you're not casting so you can have a great mission vision, if you're not casting it continuously, we get in the little rat wheel and six months down the road and we're like what are we doing? It's like you have to constantly cast the vision out there. This is a why that we can't answer. Why is it so easy for negativity to build and positivity takes so much longer?
Jason Graber:Human nature, I guess, but you know what I'm saying, yeah, so I think it's like trust, though right, it's so easy to break trust Instantly you break trust and it takes years and years to build it. It's similar and I think it's because we live in a fallen world, so our human nature is fallen. We live in a sinful world, and so our fallen nature is inherently sinful. So I think that that plays into it and you're right. I think that you have to just continue to cast vision, one of the things we do every week. Every Monday, we meet as a team and we review what we did last week, look at what we're doing this week, eliminate any blockers that we may have, and, since we're a completely distributed team, it's all online.
Jason Graber:We don't have like a physical meeting place, but we meet on Google, meet every week, and before we get into our call, I read our company values, I read our mission statement, our vision statement, and I pray for the week every week, and it's just like this is grounding us. This is why we do what we do our vision, our mission and our vision, and this is how and this is you know how we're going to do it our values right. So, it's been really, really good for us and, you know, I think for any organization like you nailed it where you're like you have to keep recasting that, you have to keep reminding people. It's the I heard Craig Groeschel say one time a CEO is actually a CRO. He's the chief reminding officer. That's, I mean, that's what's so true. You're just reminding people like guys, remember, this is who we are, remember, this is why we're doing this. Guys remember, and people need that. They just need to be reminded. It seems like a pretty simple job if you think about it.
Sambassador:Well, you know, we feel like as CEOs, we feel like, you know, we have it in front of our mirrors, we get up every morning, look at it. We just figure everybody else has the same thing and we are the note on the mirror.
Sambassador:It's up to us to keep it there. And you can take businesses, you can take churches, you can take non-profit organizations anytime. And I don't know, maybe it's because I see stuff different than other people but it never fails. When the vision starts lacking, it goes downhill in a hurry. So the one thing tell me what you think of this. You know, I don't know. I'd probably been married 20, 25 years before I really figured out the whole thing about. It's not 50-50 in a marriage, it's 100-100. Because if you're 50-50 in a marriage, if either one of you is off at all, you don't have 100% anymore, right, so apply that. Okay, let's take a shed company, for example, like you're talking about. Where you have, you have the manufacturer, the rent to own, the sales, the hauling, all the different pieces, and if all of those are basing themselves off, okay, we all got to run 100%.
Jason Graber:Okay.
Sambassador:Okay, next month I'm the hauler. Okay, next month I'm the hauler and I'm running at 90%, the sales lady she's way off, she's at 80% and the running at 110 because he's going to rub off on somebody else and somebody else right. So, on any given month, we all help each other. Yeah, yeah. And why, why do we not um? Why do we not teach that better?
Jason Graber:yeah, I don't know. I mean I, I've always thought about, you know, I never went to college. I learned most of the stuff that I've learned in business from peers and books. You know I try to. You know, get around business people and you know, talk business and books, really a lot of books. I listen to a lot of audio books and read a lot of the. You know the normal stuff. Like you know how to win friends and influence people and all you know the, the major ones there Good book, by the way, you know, I think I mean I don't know because I haven't gone to a formal education or like a college or whatever, but from what I can tell interacting with other people, it's not taught and I don't know why and I don't really know.
Jason Graber:Like you know, we're not teachers in that we have like an audience that we can sit down and teach. However, we do kind of have a platform with this. I've thought about it many times. I don't know the right way or the proper way to kind of push this stuff out besides modeling it Like I think that's where it comes back to Like I'm like, well, you know, I think God's given me this platform or this business to, you know, sustain and empower the industry and empower our team members, and the best thing I can do is just be a great model where it's like you know if, if there's nothing else, you know when. When somebody comes to me and they ask me a question and I have a good answer.
Sambassador:Yeah, you can't, you nailed it. I mean, by far the first thing you have to be able to do is model it. And the second thing yes, you know we do have platforms that if we help. So, I still say, you know, I give Shannon and all the credit in the world for starting this, but if nobody listens, he's got nothing Right. So, it's every bit as important that the people, the audience listening, keeps growing, the platform gets bigger so that everyone's voice is better heard. That's a good, very good point. But first, the first thing you have to do is you have to be able to model it yourself.
Jason Graber:Yeah, yeah, well, that's one of the things that it's funny, because I, you see these like, uh, college professors that that run a you know a college course on some academic that they've never done themselves, and I think it's like, come on, like I mean, I get your, you got textbooks and stuff, but it's like the best, the best information and the best learning that I've ever gained was on the job, training or, you know, following somebody around or taking a business owner out to lunch and saying, hey, you know, how did you do this? I mean that's there's just really not many better ways to learn than that, and so for me, I just want to be that resource where, come out there doing it every day, modeling it, and you know, when people come to me and ask you know questions, I have good answers. Um, I get this question a lot and I don't good answers. I get this question a lot and I don't. I've struggled with it.
Sambassador:The question is you know how do you?
Jason Graber:define success? Or like how have you become successful? Like what is success? Right, because success is. So. I mean the world has a definition of success that is very, very different than what I would. My definition of success, I mean my definition of success that is very, very different than what I would. My definition of success, I mean my definition of success, is monetary success.
Jason Graber:It's like this, much of it. It's like you know time, freedom and quality of relationships and you know health. There's so much of that and I've thought about it a lot, and you know, when people say what does it take to be successful, my simple answer is showing up every day and doing what you know you need to do. That's it. It's showing up every day and doing what you know because you know in your heart, heart, what you need to do every day. Just look inward a little bit. Spend some time in the Bible and the Word and in prayer. You know what you need to do today and you just need to show up every day and do it. Sometimes it's boring, sometimes it's not exciting, sometimes you don't want to, but if you do, eventually it will compound on itself and it will give you what you, what you're seeking. So, a little nugget.
Sambassador:You know what's cool about that? What's that it's? It's not the results. You did not say anything about results, right?
Jason Graber:It's all about the effort, right right. And it's the journey too, like if you can't. If you don't enjoy the journey, the destination will be meaningless that's man.
Sambassador:That's. We need to put that on a loop. Just let that run through our heads every morning um years and years ago oh, I don't know, man, I bet it's been 30 years ago. Gospel echoes and I'm sure somebody else did it before them, because most of the gospel echo songs were done by a non-Mennonite group, you know.
Sambassador:And then the Mennonites picked it up, made a Christian and, uh, you know, had to read it a little bit, but there was a song called there's joy in the journey, good times in the going. It's not all in the reaping, there's plenty in the soul. Yeah, that song has always. It's like I want it to be my motto, but I can't get there.
Sambassador:Yeah, so it's a everyday reminder for me that you know, I sow all the time and I constantly reminded of the verse that we don't reap always. You know, another man reaps what somebody else sows, and sometimes I'm blessed to reap what I sow, you know. But it's the whole thing of I can be happy and I can be successful without the results, yeah, and the relief and the joy that gives me is huge. Yeah, it is so. Yeah, you're exactly right, just go.
Sambassador:So, the other day I got in conversation with a guy about I had a little Facebook post I threw up about before you can do, you got to be. Ok, Ronnie came on there and he's like well, that's why we're called human beings, we're not human doings. I see, so it's A and B, you have to do at some point, right, but before you can do, you have to be. And now, once you're comfortable with being, then you go do and it's so much more stress-free thing. Then you go do and it's so much more stress free and you are 100% right in the fact that's the best example of success that I know is in the fact that you know what to do. Just go do it.
Jason Graber:Yeah, and, and be disciplined and showing up every day.
Sambassador:You're not.
Jason Graber:You're not going to want to show up every day.
Sambassador:No, I got plenty of days. I don't want to show up.
Jason Graber:No.
Sambassador:Shannon will tell you, I've threatened a couple times to just disappear.
Jason Graber:And he's like man you can't do that and I'm like I'm gonna, I know, I know.
Sambassador:This has pretty much been all my question and answer session here. Where are you at? What's going on with Jason? What's going on with Shed Suite?
Jason Graber:Where do you go, where you want to go for 15 minutes here? Yeah, I mean, we've just got so many really interesting and unique what I call them positioning opportunities. I was explaining it to somebody yesterday and you'll probably. If you've ever explained something to somebody, it's the best thing you can do, right, because you're alone with your thoughts. A lot, I think a lot, but when you start explaining your thoughts to somebody, you really have to organize them and they start to you start to make sense.
Jason Graber:In software we have this term called rubber ducking and literally it's you talking to another person and not expecting or wanting that person to say anything. He's literally talking to a rubber duck Like they have. You know that's where it came from. The software engineer had a rubber duck on his desk and he would talk to it and that's what you have. But I was talking through. You know what is positional opportunities, because it's a very interesting thing and where we are today with the Shed Suite platform, having an aggregation of so many companies and so much data and so much, we are in a very unique position that presents unique opportunities that no one else is presented with. These opportunities could not be executed on by anyone else because they don't have the positioning that we have Right. That's the definition of it. So, a prime example is the opportunity to build a rent to own management software. A prime example is the opportunity to build a rent-to-own management software.
Jason Graber:We know that RTO Pro is kind of the industry standard. It's not really cloud-based, it's not super user-friendly. Once you get into it and understand it, it's okay, but it's not modern technology. There's a lot of things that people wish it would do or that they wish could be done with it, but just because the nature of how it's built, it can't. And so, you know, I've had the vision for RTO Suite for a long time. And when you think about, like RTO Suite and if we can build that platform that has all the contracts that are being created in Shed Suite at this point is a lot of contracts across the United States that can be managed in one platform.
Jason Graber:The opportunity there to be able to lower fraud across the whole industry, because now we have all of the contracts in one database and one data set that the RTO companies can actually give feedback on bad actors, that we can push all the way down to the order form, and there's a whole opportunity with picking up rental returns that these rental companies have, but they all have kind of different systems and the drivers are all distributed across the country and they don't really know.
Jason Graber:If we had a place where all the rental returns were and a driver could just pull it up and be like, oh I'm close by, I can go grab that, and it pays 400 bucks, okay, those are the kind of things that it wouldn't be possible to build that really at all unless you kind of have everybody. It's like a facebook type of a situation right. Facebook would be completely worthless if nobody would be on it, but it's very, very valuable because everyone is on it. So those are the things that I'm very fascinated by. Um, and so yeah, those are some of the projects we're working on is just you know these opportunities.
Jason Graber:RTO Suite is a project we've started already. We started developing on it. We probably won't have a live version of the product until mid next year, but you know we work on them as much as we can because we're self-funding it. We pretty well just say, well, the budget for the dev work at this point is X amount, and if we get cash flow up we can up that budget. But until then the budget's very small, so it only gets a certain amount of work. But that's what's really fascinating to me is capitalizing on those positional opportunities for the good of the industry is kind of what's fascinating. I think I owe it to the industry to capitalize on those positional opportunities for the good of the industry is kind of what's fascinating I think it's.
Jason Graber:I owe it to the industry to capitalize on those, not just for the profit that it could generate or the revenue that it could generate and will generate shed suite. It's for the good of the whole industry too. Yes.
ADVERTISEMENT:What was?
ADVERTISEMENT:that you heard that too, sam what?
ADVERTISEMENT:was that? Oh, that wasn't supposed to come out. What was it? Uh, I was given some confidential information. Not sure what I'm supposed to do now that you heard that, though.
ADVERTISEMENT:Well, what was it?
ADVERTISEMENT:you gotta tell us. Well, you can't tell anyone, but the cardinal engineers, the mule guys, have been at it again. They heard all the hollers belly aching about a bigger machine. You know how they're always fussing about it ain't big enough. Well, guess what? They've got a bigger mule, a lot bigger. What? How about a mule with a 70 horsepower diesel engine that's built to move 40,000 pound sheds? You ought to see it. It's a real beast of a mule and it's up to any shed challenge. No way, Sam, a diesel donkey like you had. I mean, that's fantastic.
ADVERTISEMENT:Yep a diesel donkey like I used to have. Hey, there's a lot more stuff coming, but I've said enough. I'll get in trouble soon if I say any more. Just come to the Shed Show and see it all at booth 217.
Sambassador:You know that I haven't checked these numbers in a couple years but the last conversation I had with anybody about RTO Pro is um, sheds aren't even a fraction of what RTO Pro actually does and they're huge as far as, like you got to think of rent to own in like errands and some of those huge companies to understand the whole philosophy behind them and maybe why they don't seem quite as active or as friendly to Ched guys. Because it is. It's a huge organization. It runs way outside of just sheds and stuff. Absolutely, we, 100% we need something. I mean you know where I've been. I've been pushing, you know, the last couple of years already about we have to have a way. Okay, everybody has great programs. I don't care if they do or not, let's just say they're all great.
Sambassador:Yeah, they don't talk to each other, they don't work together, right and on one of our Facebook pages you know we see it all the time where lack of communication ends up costing the rent to own company a ton of money and you know it's I. Finally I just I give up it. It's like I'm sitting there and I'm like I'm just going to be like violent and wash my hands because it's like I have tried and tried to tell you guys that it has to get to where it's better communication. You know, I tell people all the time I'm an open book. You want to call me and ask me about somebody? I'll tell you what I know. All the time I'm an open book. You want to call me and ask me about somebody. I'll tell you what I know. Yeah, good or bad, but at the end of the day we have to, we have to come up with something. And it's terrible right now. Yeah, it's a complete disaster in our industry.
Jason Graber:Yeah, and I think it's like it's possible to create ways for systems to talk together, but it's fragile and it will always be fragile and there will always be new systems and these integrations are very expensive and fragile. So you know, I'm the same way and I mean my theory is well, the best solution for the whole industry is to have a company that's trustworthy be able to create a system that serves the industry in a very complete way, because if the RTO company has a system that is super integrated into the point of sale system and the driver system is very integrated into the RTO system and everybody has the same data, basically, then nothing will really get lost. You know exactly where stuff is. But when you have data duplication across systems and then the communication is fragile and maybe one time it does send a webhook and the next time it doesn't, you know it's very hard, it's very hard to do. So. The next time it doesn't, you know it's, it's very hard, it's very hard to do. So, you know it's. But then that brings up the question of you know well how is a monopoly, you know, healthy for anything? Right? I mean why you know, but it's, it's just, you know it's you're always going to have competition. I mean, facebook has its share of competition. Yeah, you're always.
Jason Graber:I think the way I look at it is industry always has a leader Generally. Generally, there's always kind of a leader of a, of a space, of an industry. I mean, apple would be a clear leader in mobile technology and hardware. Clear leader in mobile technology and hardware. They just are crushing it. And I would say Facebook is crushing social media. Right, they're a leader. There's plenty of competitors out there. So, I think that's where we kind of want to position ourselves is like Shed Suite wants to be the leader, wants to set the precedent for how we want to work together and we want to build an open platform. We don't want to build a closed platform that nobody can get data in and out of. But we've seen that it's very difficult to communicate with a lot of different platforms. So, try to be the market leader.
Sambassador:I like the word you used there, that it's fragile. It is. It's technology. For a guy like me, it's like man. We have all the technology in the world. Why is it so hard to do this? But there's the constant, and the last three or four years I see this more and more. It's just like anything else you can push it to its limits and there's still limits. Yeah, um, and that's.
Jason Graber:I like that, yeah and technology is always changing. That's the problem and that's what creates the fragile part of it, because you set something up and it works great, but as soon as one field changes somewhere, it's broken and it works great. But as soon as one field changes somewhere, it's broken and it's like it's so hard. It's just, it's a lot of work.
Sambassador:So Well, you guys do a fantastic job. It's so cool to you know, even when I hear the bad side, it always ends up being a good side. It's crazy Because you know. Well, you know, this happens not just with you guys in Shed Suite, it happens just about generally across the board. All the time when I get a lot of bad negativity on a situation, I start digging in. Most times I can find positive stuff, yeah, and at the end of the day it's like well, you know what If you wouldn't have that problem, if they weren't trying to get better?
Jason Graber:It's like well, you know what If you wouldn't have that problem, if they weren't trying to get better.
Sambassador:Yeah Right, yeah, that's true, that's true. And 99 percent of the time it's either lack of communication or it's the fact we're pushing it to the limits and we're trying and we literally break stuff because we try to change stuff, right, and? And then you know, majority of the time, everybody's cool with that, and then, you know, majority of the time, everybody's cool with that. I get a lot of grief, you know, on the hauler page or sometimes letting stuff run out longer than they feel like other people feel like I should and I'm like no, what you guys don't understand is if we let people vent their way through it, most times we'll actually end up in a better place than if we just shut it off. Sure, of course. So sometimes it gets a little messy. Yeah, yeah, we break stuff, but most times at the end of the day, everybody comes away with a better view and a better idea of what actually happened and what's going on.
Jason Graber:Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have with the software company, and all software companies do it. We have what we call postmortem with the software company and all software companies do it. We have what we call postmortem. Anytime something negative happens, a system outage or something that went wrong, we all sit down and review what we write up a postmortem why did it happen, what caused the thing to go wrong and how can we make this never happens again. And you know it's just a good exercise. I would say everyone should do it in any situation. If anything goes wrong, you should sit down afterwards and you know, talk about what went wrong, why did it go wrong and how can we make sure this never happens again.
Sambassador:Yeah, that's cool, and then it happens again, anyway.
Jason Graber:Yeah, yeah. And then you're like, well, all right. And then you look back on your notes, then you're like, well, all right. And then you look back on your notes and you're like, ah, we didn't realize we didn't talk about that. You know it's something we didn't consider well, you know, so you know stuff like that. That's one thing about technology, that, my goodness. I think that's why it's so fascinating for me, like I always like to know how things work. You will never understand technology, I don't care how smart you are there is something about it, somewhere you won't understand.
Jason Graber:You can be really good at certain types of software, but you may not understand. You know this other part. And now the technology we have today, guys, oh my goodness, with artificial intelligence and just the way that, the ease of entry, I guess we're going to have tools online to be able to like automate things that just by just by talking to it, you'll literally be able to be like okay, let me.
Jason Graber:Let me explain to you what I'm doing today. You know, I get this email and then I need to fill in this spreadsheet and I need to go update Shed Suite with this, and then I need to call somebody. Let me explain to this software, product or whatever AI or whatever thing. This is what I got to do every day. Can you help me fix this? And they'll say, yeah, well, let me, I can even do it for you, Right, and stuff like that. It's like well, it's crazy, man, we're going to see some stuff that we've it's going to be sci-fi stuff in the next three to five years.
Sambassador:Oh my, I can't. If I look back over the last five years and the curve that we're in right now, and then I've tried to look forward five years, I can't even I can't even either.
Jason Graber:I and that's what we sat down with our team. We did our quarterly planning call for Q3. And then we were going to have our annual call here in Q4. And we're like we're now just doing annual plans, like we can't even, you can't even do a five-year plan, guys, like five years is like it's just insane. So you know, you got to plan, you got to try to predict, but, dude, no idea what's going to happen. You know it's great.
Sambassador:It's great I'm 100 on board. I'm not one of these guys that's. You know I can be. You know there's a side of me that's all doom and gloom that I get wrapped up in pretty easy if I let myself. But, like you said, I know what I'm supposed to do every day and it's definitely not that so it's. It's. It's crazy to me to see, like where we're headed, where we're at right now and what it just what it looks like. It's. Um, I've started. You know, Dylan Street is my current hero right now, because that dude is insane, like I love.
Sambassador:I love tearing apart marketing and sales and looking at that stuff, what makes it run and stuff. And then you got a guy like him shows up that build a land boat. I mean lack of a better word he built a super car in marketing, yeah, and I just I like to sit there and listen to him talk about marketing. I like to sit and listen to you talk about you know what, what you're doing and where you see it going. There's only so many ways to build a shed.
Sambassador:We keep finding new ways to haul them, which is great. I'm all about that. I keep waiting for somebody to do a totally automated built shed. It's like it's coming.
Jason Graber:Somebody has to start doing this.
Sambassador:I don't know.
Jason Graber:I don't either. I think the cost prohibitiveness of it is tough. I know there's like this 3d printing stuff that's happening now and like surely some. At some point we're going to be where we can just 3d print components and snap them together right, I don't, I don't know, I don't know.
Sambassador:I agree it's. You know they have that. They have that concrete machine that 3D prints a house. Now it's a concrete house, but it's pretty fabulous how it does it Crazy. So, in wrap-up, what do you want to get out? Tell me, what do you want to cast your vision out to the shed industry, whether it's? Are you excited about the future of where we're going? Do you have any red flags that you see that?
Jason Graber:you think are important, or what do you want, what do you want people to know? Yeah, good, good question. I'm very optimistic. I mean we see, we see growth across all of our accounts. I mean, and most of the time because we attract people and organizations that want to grow. Right, I mean you're of the time because we attract people and organizations that want to grow, right, I mean you're not going to sign up for Shed Suite if you're like we don't want to grow. Right, I mean, I need a hammer drop on that.
Sambassador:I'm like we attract people that want to grow. Yeah, come on guys.
Jason Graber:So, you need to, I mean yeah, so it's great and we love that. And you know we're looking across our accounts. We did a survey which we need to redo the survey. It was all about two years ago we did a survey, we did a little internal. We looked at every account and we tracked from day one to month 12. So, 12 months their first 12 months in Shed Suite and they from month one to the last month every single account grew an average of 187%. An average. That's an average and that's 187%. That's almost 2X, two times right, and that's on average. So that just tells you the kind of caliber of companies that we're attracting, whereas, like they come to us to grow, and that's on average, some of these companies grew like 2000 percent because they started at zero in day one and in 12 months they were just rushing Anyway. So, you know, for us I'm very optimistic about the industry. I think I don't really have necessarily any red flags.
Jason Graber:What I do think that I think what will be disrupted um next is going to be sales. Um, just because the technology that's out there, I mean mean you just can't. You can't keep relying on setting up a dealer on a street corner and putting 10 sheds on it and doing it like we used to do 25 years ago and relying on drive-by traffic, when we have artificial intelligence and the internet now, like it's just not, that is going to get disrupted the most in the next three to five years. So, for you, for a business or a company, to rely on the strategy of hey, I need to do more sales, I'm just going to drop 10 more sheds on a lawnmower dealership, that's not going to work and it's going away. It's already almost gone.
Jason Graber:And so, your what we call order taker dealers that is what's going to be disrupted the most in the next three to five years. You're going to start to see rockstar dealers come online and they're just going to. They're going to be rockstars and that's great and you don't. It's great for everyone because now the shed company doesn't have to stock five sheds on 40 lots across the state. They can just have three lots and they're all just crushing it. And the rest of your exposure is all online and we've seen it. The Shed Sweetie Commerce platform is crushing it. We just did a look. We had um. 11 billion dollars of sheds were looked at in the last 12 months. 11 billion, um, that's a billion. Yeah, we um, that is awesome. The traffic on that site is and we all of our customers promote it independently.
Jason Graber:You know they promote it um but we have something like 35 000 monthly active shoppers on that platform and it's generating, you know, lots, millions of dollars of sales a month. So, customers are willing to spend money on shed. Sight unseen, they're doing it, they're buying it. Right now, what we've seen is the average price of an order on coming from e-commerce is about a thousand dollars less than what they're generating out of the point of sale from e-commerce is about a thousand dollars less than what they're generating out of the point of sale. So, if you go to a dealer, you're going to sell a more expensive shed. But, you know, some of our companies are really leaning into online sales and, you know, with the platform that we've created for them, they're able to do it. You can sell sheds direct to consumer right on your website. So, I'm excited.
Jason Graber:I think that it's going to be, there's going to be changes. I would say, if you're a dealer, lean into the new technology that's coming out. How can you, you know, position yourselves to be more of a you know, a sales focused organization? Because in the past, what a lot of times the dealers would just kind of be like a lawnmower dealership or a landscape company and they would just kind of take orders as they came in. Well, that just isn't. I don't think that's sustainable. Down the road I think you're going to have you're going to lean on more of, on more of a sales like what you're kind of going after, like a location. That's a destination that people are going to go to and they're going to talk to somebody that's very knowledgeable about sheds, and that's all they do every day. As soon as a customer leaves, they got to go talk to somebody about a pool. You know it's like no, we sell sheds here, that's what we do and we know it.
Sambassador:So that's cool work, yeah, I think anything else you want to get in?
Jason Graber:Man, I mean, I appreciate your time. I'm excited, you know, for the expo coming up. That's going to be super fun.
Jason Graber:Yes, that's going to be good, get to meet a lot of our customers and get some prospects. And you know, for us, I think you know, being around seven years, we don't really know how big the industry is, and that's one thing that's very interesting. You know, you guys have a platform with the podcast. We can kind of start to get some insights on you know how big it is because of the listener base and talk to Marty with the Shed Builder magazine, start to get an understanding. But I have to always wonder and I have to imagine that there's still a big portion of the industry that we just don't even know about, right, and they don't know about us.
Sambassador:Oh, there are some huge like if you ever want to go on a trip, you want me to go with you, just ride along, We'll go up the East Coast and it's mind blowing. You ever heard of Cloder Farms?
Jason Graber:No.
Sambassador:Unbelievable place and there's a dozen of them up through there. And then I keep finding places. I's a dozen of them up through there and then, you know, I keep, I keep finding places. I found a place in California the other day. I'm like anybody ever heard of this place? Nope, nobody's ever heard of them, never heard their haulers, never heard anybody there. And it's 14 acres of sheds. You know, putting 150 sheds on one lot and I think I'm getting somewhere. I can do that on seven acres. That is crazy. You're right there. There are places that I don't. Some days I'm just mind blown about. Like you know, we're in this industry. We see the growth, we see the big part of it. You know, we got friends who tell us all the time you be, how are you still in the shed business, you know, and it's like man, we're not even touching it, Something no, we're not, and I think that's where we can kind of get a little complacent, cause we're like oh, everybody knows about shed suite, right, not even close.
Jason Graber:So that's a good point. Our, our biggest like focus kind of at shed suite right now is I think we owe it to the industry to be more visible, right, so we just need to publish more content. That's really helpful that allows people to find us, because if somebody's searching on Google and they come across an article and then for us to just, you know, really pour into the industry, we're you know, we're sponsoring the NBSRA, we sponsor the event at the expo, Making Sales Simple. We try to just pour into the industry so that we can be in front of people, and when we even get a prospect and they're like, hey, we don't have software, I encourage them. You need to interview all of the people in our industry in the space. You need to go, interview the Shed app, you need to interview us. You need to. You need to get demos with other companies because, at the end of the day, you need to make the right decision for you. It's our job at Shed Suite to be the best.
Sambassador:Yes that's our job, one hundred percent. Get, get the correct info. You know I tell people that all the time about rent-to-own companies. You know, people come up and they make generic comments, you know who are? You using for rent-to-own, and I constantly tell people there is no two rent-to-own companies that are the same. No, does that mean the one's wrong and the other's right? No, no, they're just different, they operate different, and I can give you right now, I can give you six different shed companies that may or may not fit you.
Jason Graber:They're all very good at what they do, right, right, and that's where we said you know, for them, you need to make the best decision for your business. But at the same time, we are all, we're very confident in our ability to be the best solution and we're going to tell you that we're biased, we're biased, we're going to. We want you, we want to work with you right?
Sambassador:No, that should be your whole. I mean, the number one goal should be to be the best. Yeah, that's it.
Jason Graber:And so everybody's out there being the best like thank you. That, just you know, raises the whole industry, so I hope my competitors are trying to do the same thing.
Sambassador:So if somebody wants to find you, how do they find you?
Jason Graber:Yeah, shedsuite. com is a great place to start. There's a lot of we publish a lot of free articles on there. We've got this article series called Shed School that we published this year and it's a bunch of articles that we wrote I wrote with my content marketer and with some interviews from the shed industry and it's actually some really good stuff. Like I got to dig around in there how to set up a dealer. I mean you can go pretty deep, but you know shed suite. com, learn a little bit more about us. And the best thing to do is sit down with us and I mean, take 15, 20 minutes, book a demo on our website, super easy, just fill your information out and we'll sit with you. Like our sales process is an interview. Like we just want to know more about you. We're just like, hey, where are you? What do you? How big are you? How many dealers do you have? What software do you use right now? What pain points do you have that you're trying to solve? Like what's really killing your business right now? Let's, let's, let's dig into that and then we can show you some of the things that ShedSuite does to help solve those pain points. That's it, that's it. And then you're like, oh yeah, that solved my problem. Okay, great or no, that's not solving my problem. That's terrible. Okay, great too, you know, but that's it.
Jason Graber:I think that the industry needs to be willing, I mean businesses at large. You have to be willing to see what's out there and be willing to interview. I think what a lot of people do is like, oh, that that book a demo man, I'm locked in. You know, it's like absolutely not. We get demo requests a lot from our website that we simply say you're not a good fit for what we do and we turn. We turn them to a to somebody else. Or, you know, shed Suite is not designed for every business model. We fit a very specific business model and that would be a shed company that manufactures and sells and delivers their own sheds, whether that's through contractors.
Sambassador:But a shed right.
Jason Graber:We serve shed brands, and so you know that's. I think we'd love to talk to you. I know we've got a lot of people that are listening, that are, you know, may have never heard of Shed Suite before, and best thing to do is just go to our website learn more about us. There's a lot of content on there to give you kind of the scoop of what we do and how we operate yeah, well, you 100 definitely have the support of the Shed Geek team.
Sambassador:Um, not just Shannon, you got me and Susan too. Um, we talk about you a lot, love what you're doing. Um, excellent, appreciate it. Keep being the best, keep striving to be the best and keep being the best, but at the end of the day, that helps Everyone, helps all. Yeah, and thanks for taking the time to do an interview with us, for reaching out, it's. You don't know how much it helps us. Some days we feel like we're just constantly bugging people. You know, hey, you need to do an interview, you need to do an interview. You reached out. I much appreciate that, and when Shannon told me, I'm like man, I'm 100% on board with that. Let's go do it, you know.
Jason Graber:Yeah, so thanks so much.
Sambassador:Get busy. Congrats on the great car, thanks. I plan on getting a ride in it one day. Come on, come on down. I'm not sure when I'll ever to Sarasota, but I definitely want to ride in the car when you do you got to ride. Keep doing what you're doing, appreciate it Thank you.
Sambassador:I think we'll check out of here. Once again, thank you for listening to another episode of the Shed Geek podcast, the Friday fun day Sambassador version. Thanks to Jason Graber with Shed Suite for being on with us today. It looks like your storm has finally disappeared and you're back safe.
Jason Graber:We didn't get to see you get blasted out of your chair.
Sambassador:Thank you so much. Y'all have a great day. Thank you, hey. This is Mo Lunsford in sunny Union Grove, north Carolina, and we want to say thank you to all the guests and listeners.