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
Community Spirit and Shed Industry Insights
What happens when you bring together family stories, shed industry insights, and a Friday Fun Day right from the man cave? In this special episode, Sam Byler shares how personal experiences with family and community shape his understanding of the shed industry. We'll uncover the value of networking, staying informed, and the surprising edge that ADHD provides in grasping customer needs quickly. Get ready for a heartwarming and informative journey through the evolving landscape of sheds, where optimism meets realism.
Join us as we dive into the dynamic contributions of leaders like Jason, whose commitment to accessible information is setting new standards. Explore the impact of the Shed Gal's nationwide carport sales, and the exciting shift from just selling sheds to mastering the art of sales through robust marketing and community engagement. We also discuss the bold move to consolidate sales lots and even invite competitors, fostering a vibrant, competitive atmosphere filled with fun elements like sign wars and patio furniture displays.
In a world where morale can make or break success, discover the secrets to maintaining high spirits in the shed industry. Learn about the importance of positivity, cleanliness, and the inspiring attitudes of industry leaders like Isaiah Adams. Plus, get the scoop on upcoming events designed to boost team spirit, such as barbecues and expos. Join us in celebrating the interconnectedness and potential within the shed industry with shout-outs to those overcoming recent logistical hurdles.
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
Cardinal Leasing
Cardinal Manufacturing
Shed Challenger
All right, good evening guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Shed Geek podcast. My name is Sam Byler, I'm your host, and this is Friday fun day edition with Sambassador. We're going to do something a little different tonight.
SAMBASSADOR:I am in my man cave, which took me years to get done, but I am hosting myself, so I'm not sure how this is going to go. I've got a lot of stuff I want to talk about. I don't have it organized very well, which is pretty typical for me. Let me fix my cord here before I mess up. I got it pinched, so yeah, it's. I love to dialogue with people. It's always cool to bounce ideas back and forth. This is I'm doing a Friday episode on a Friday. It is Friday evening, what is it? August the 2nd and it's been crazy, the last, while.
SAMBASSADOR:I've spent quite a bit of time with my personal brothers and sister brothers, brother and sisters, my personal family. I've spent some time with them recently and then spent last week with my wife's family. I'll be honest with you when it comes to family, my wife's family is no different than my personal family. They're all family. Most of my wife's family. There's five girls and they're all younger than her by quite a bit. So, when I showed up at a fairly young age, most of them were like little kids and I've been around them pretty much their whole lives what they remember, and I feel like they're my sisters. Hopefully they think I'm their brother.
SAMBASSADOR:I don't talk about my personal family a whole lot. I've got what I consider a blessing in a very large group of friends that are close to me and a bigger circle of friends that are outside of that. I have a lot of good people in my life, and we'll talk about that a little bit tonight. We'll talk about community a little bit. We can even talk about world events a little bit maybe. So, I had planned on doing this Wednesday evening and when I got home Wednesday evening. So, I had planned on doing this Wednesday evening and when I got home Wednesday evening I just I wasn't in a very good frame of mind to do this by myself out later.
SAMBASSADOR:And man, I'm so glad I waited, because a lot of what I wanted to talk about we talked about and man, he is just such a dynamic, smart guy and it is so good for somebody like me to just be able to sit down with somebody young like that and to hear their perspective on the industry, on what we're doing, what he sees. And with Shed Suite man they get such a huge variety across the shed industry of not just a region, not just a certain territory. I mean he covers the whole nation territory. I mean he covers the whole nation and I pride myself on staying up to date on what I feel like is happening all the way across the nation, just because of the friends I have, whether they're in manufacturing, whether they're in rent to own, whether they're in sales, whether they're haulers. Most people tie me into the hauler group because that's where I'm probably the most vocal and present. But, man, I love the shed industry, I love all the other working parts of it. And just like early this morning I had a conversation with a gentleman out of Nevada that sells sheds and does a lot of side work, has other stuff going on, and we talked for almost an hour Like I should have recorded it, done a podcast with it. It was that good to just sit and talk about what's going on out there, what's going on in different parts of the area. Irvin Plank, known as Wooden Plank, actually my wife's cousin. I've known him a long time, long before he went to Nevada. Uh, he was a good old Georgia boy. He's hauled sheds and just to be able to sit down and talk for a long, for a good while, um, just be able to do that, and with Jason it was just so refreshing to to have somebody else see the future of the shed industry the way I do.
SAMBASSADOR:I like to tell people that I'm a realist. I am an optimist. I tend to see the better side of stuff, but I am a realist. I can be a pessimist at times of stuff, but I am a realist. I can be a pessimist at times. My wife would be happy to tell you that I can be Eeyore in a heartbeat when I want to be, but I'd much rather be a Tigger. And that brings up another conversation I had today.
SAMBASSADOR:I had a conversation with a young gal that I'm looking at, maybe hiring to put on our retail lot that we just started here in Easley with Shed Gal. She's ADHD Susan and I both are. She just made the comment that ADHD people, we're chameleons. We tend to mirror people. We can read where something's going. We can normally be two steps ahead because our brains are just that they're that fast and they're, which gets us in trouble a lot of times. It's not always a good thing. I'm not. I'm not here to say that it's. It's the best thing ever. Some days I wish I was calm like my wife and more cool and collected. But yeah, what we were talking about with what I was talking about with her, she was like we can read customers quick. We can kind of figure out if they might have the ability, you know, if they're looking for more options, if they're looking for something different, and to be able to do that in this industry and to see all the different facets of it work.
SAMBASSADOR:I'm very optimistic about the shed industry. I know there's areas that I'm well familiar with that the shed industry. You know shed guys aren't doing so well. But I'll still double down. We talked about this yesterday. I'll still double down and say that there are plenty of sheds to be sold. There's plenty of business out there for all of us, yet we just have to go back to work. Let's see. There my ADHD got away. I didn't even say what all I'm going to do tonight. Yeah, I'm monologuing. I don't have anybody on tonight, it's just me.
SAMBASSADOR:I'm thinking that I might try to start something and do something a little different. I'm thinking I'm going to use my phone and good old Facebook and I'm going to jump on the hauler page at some point tonight. I got to keep track of time, or I'll be here for two hours if I'm not careful. But I think I'm going to jump on the hauler page and do a live on there. So, the podcast episodes, they're not live, they're all pre-recorded. We can edit whatever you want to do. If you ever want to get on a podcast, just remember it's very relaxed. Nothing is live. Anything. You want to come back and say, hey, I don't want that in there, I want that edited out. We can do any of that. But when you do a Facebook live, it's live and you're there. So, if this, this might be a total disaster, I don't know, but I'm going to jump on the hauler page, do a Facebook Live, tell them that I'm doing a podcast and maybe just interact with a couple people on there and just kind of see where they're at and what their feel is for what's going on.
SAMBASSADOR:Another thing we can do is I can make to where you can. If these monologues go good, I would love to do one like the first Friday of every month and I can send you a link. You can jump on the zoom call. You can be on for five minutes, you can be on for 15 minutes. We can put uh, we can put a fair amount of people on even at the same time. So, if it goes good, if it crashes and burns, we'll quit doing it. But if it goes good and a couple of you guys jump on, and we can just have very short interviews or we can talk about whatever we want to talk about. I don't care if you're on the sales side, the marketing side, the manufacturing side, the hauler side, it doesn't matter, we can cover it all, whatever you want to do.
SAMBASSADOR:Um, Jason obviously is not on the hauler side. He's not on the manufacturing, the rent known, or the sales side. He does a little bit of all of that. Um, with shed swing and just to shout out him for always supporting us and being. Uh, he made. He made a comment that we should all be the best and I like that. We should all consider ourselves the best and we should strive to be the best at what we can be, and one of the ways he does that is he tries to make sure that his information is out there on every platform that's available to everybody, and that's fantastic. I think that's great.
SAMBASSADOR:I want to talk about something a little bit before I get off track here too far, something that we talked about also, and that's competition. So, as most of you guys know well, I say most as most of the guys on Facebook know, probably not most of you guys on the podcast, but most of you guys on Facebook know I have teamed up with the Shed Gal and she started Shed Gal Steel and she's selling carports across the nation. You know, the cool thing about carports is they're not they're not delivered on a special trailer and you don't have to have oversize permits. You don't have. You know. You don't have to deliver it from where it's built. It gets built wherever it goes. So it's pretty easy to sell carports nationwide and she is doing a fantastic job of getting dealers on board everywhere, marketing everywhere on board, and we're growing that industry and along with that, she's hooking up with me and we're starting our mega lots where we honestly believe that the future of the shed industry is you're going to have to know how to sell sheds. You're going to have to focus on selling sheds. You're going to have to know how to sell carports, how to price carports, how to rent to own carports and all the other stuff that goes in your backyard with you, and you're going to want to do it all in one spot. I'm to a place to where I'm willing to try it. Um, if we crash and burn, we crash and burn, but it's like somebody, let's at least give it a shot and see what happens. And I already see other people getting excited about it. So one of the things we're working on right now is we just opened up a lot here in Easley, South Carolina, and, uh, the goal was to make sure we have at least 100 sheds on a lot, get a lot of carports, a lot of demos, up a lot of different ideas so people can see what all you can do with carports is amazing Steel structures we shouldn't even call it carports anymore.
SAMBASSADOR:It's steel structures. It's a galvanized steel product. It's not an aluminum product, so it's steel structures. Let's just call it what it is. And barn dominions we're getting into some barn dominion stuff. We're getting into containers. We even have collapsible containers. It's something that's on the market now Gazebo, it's grain bin gazebo, it's grain bin man caves. There's so much stuff out there that you can sell, that you can put on your lot. But I see it going away from the guys that are selling 5 to 10 sheds on a lot.
SAMBASSADOR:Jason said something yesterday that kind of stuck out to me. Those guys that have five to ten sheds sitting there, they don't actually sell sheds. People come in and buy a shed and they write the paperwork. This is the key y'all. This is a huge sales tool. That he just said off the cuff and it really never, like it didn't register right away. It took me a minute when he literally said he said those guys aren't selling sheds, they have. They have people that come in and buy a shed and they do the paperwork and there's a difference there. Y'all buy a shed and they do the paperwork, and there's a difference there, y'all. And I think that's the key to my.
SAMBASSADOR:If I were to do a state of the union, a state of the industry speech right now in front of all you guys in a room, I would say that the movers and shakers of today, the guys that are still selling sheds like nobody's business are the guys that know how to sell sheds. They don't just write paper up when somebody comes in and buys a shed. And I feel like the difference in that is the focus, the training, putting more tools in your toolbox, having all the tools there that you need, being willing to expand what you're already doing, not just having 100 sheds sitting on the corner of a street lot, but to pick up the marketing side of it, to get involved in your community. And I'll tell you something that's huge and this is one of the things I wanted to focus on a little bit tonight and that is the morale of the shed industry, the morale of the shed haulers, the morale of the builders, the sales guys, the rent to own guys. Overall, I just kind of get a feeling that morale isn't all that great. And I'll tell you how I spot that. I can pull up into a shed lock and normally within 30 to 45 seconds I can tell whether that shed business is excited about what they're doing.
ADVERTISEMENT:Unlock the power of productivity with Cardinal Leasing. Are you looking to elevate your business operations with top tier equipment? Look no further than Cardinal Leasing. We offer a wide range of reliable and high quality equipment tailored to meet your unique needs. Flexible leasing options Whether you need short-term rentals or long-term solutions our customizable leasing plans are designed to provide maximum flexibility and affordability. Conventional financing available Cardinal Leasing also offers great conventional finance options for those of you that prefer that over-lease purchase options. Expert Support Our team of experienced professionals is here to guide you every step of the way, ensuring a seamless leasing experience. Boost Efficiency. Boost efficiency. With our top-of-the-line equipment, you can enhance productivity, reduce downtime and achieve your business goals faster. Why choose Cardinal Leasing? Competitive rates, exceptional customer service, hassle-free process, quick and easy approvals. Don't let outdated equipment hold you back. Partner with Cardinal Leasing today and take your business to the next level. Contact us now. Visit our website at equipment. cardinalleasing. us or call us at 618-803-4086 to get started.
SAMBASSADOR:I hope you got that, because if you're not excited about what you're doing, you're not going to sell sheds. You're going to have people that show up and buy a shed and you're going to write the paperwork, but you are not going to sell sheds. And let me tell you how I can spot that quickness. The first thing, very first thing, I always notice is do they have good signage. Can I tell who it is? You know we talked about this a couple of years ago already that if you don't have good signage and you're doing marketing and somebody comes driving down the street looking for your place because you did the marketing side and they see another shed lot, they're going to pull in there and think that they're at the right place. I've seen this hundreds of times on my own lots and I see it in other places. People pull in, they buy a shed. They didn't even realize they didn't buy it from the place they looked up to start with.
SAMBASSADOR:Branding is a big deal it is by far not the biggest deal but you have to have your name recognition to match whatever you're doing. And if there's about a half a dozen of us that keep in touch with each other, every week and every week we find shed sales logs that have no name. We don't know the brand, we don't know what's going on. I drove by one six times this week. That's on the way to where I'm putting my lot in, and today I finally noticed that it does actually have a sign on it that says what the name of it is. It's on a two by three little real estate sign with the little poles in the ground. And all of a sudden I'm like, oh, there's a name, that's who that is.
SAMBASSADOR:Now I know who that is, but that's the only way I could tell who was selling chits. That's the first thing that I can notice in that first 30 to 45 seconds when I pull it. Second thing I notice is how well is it kept up? Is the grass mowed? Is it weeded around all the buildings? Is everything? Is the trash all picked up? You know what does the office look like? That's curb appeal. What is it? And here's what happens. I'm not knocking you guys that aren't doing all this because we forget. I know. I know that when I pull into the same place over and over and over and over again, I get used to what that place looks like and I don't even think about it. But what it shows a customer when they pull in is that curb appeal is, if it's not there, automatically you've dropped 5% to 10% of value in that one thing. And then they pull up and there's trash laying around, there's junk laying around, there's buildings aren't organized well and you lose another small percentage. And then they get out and they start looking at the buildings.
SAMBASSADOR:The builder's not excited about selling buildings here anymore. There's a window that's never been finished out all the way, there's a piece of metal that's been, there's a piece of trim that's not been fixed. I can go on and on about stuff. The ramps are all piled up in the grass over there. Nobody's taking care of the ramps, you know. There's no ladders for the lofts. I see fantastic looking lofts but I don't see a ladder for them. And every time you're losing five to 10% of that customer's excitement about seeing your building because they don't see the excitement in you, in your team, and you can say well, I'm, you know, I'm on commission, I don't, I don't get paid to do all this extra stuff. You may sell a barn, and the best way to sell a barn is to have excitement and have your customers excited, and that that morale comes from everybody on the team. It's just as important for the guy building the shed to be excited as it is for the guy delivering the shed to be excited as it is for the guy to sell the shed.
SAMBASSADOR:I had a conversation with a fellow the other day and I said you know, selling sheds is a little bit like married life and married life. You know, I was probably married 25 years before I completely grasped the idea that marriage is not 50/ 50. Marriage, you know everybody says, has the cliche that marriage isn't 50 50, it's 100, 100. And I'll even double down on that a little bit and say marriage is even more than 100 100 because as soon as one of us isn't at 100, we're not at 100 anymore. Um, and I'll say the same thing in the shed industry.
SAMBASSADOR:You know, I always said the shed industry is made up of five different fingers. Um, you have a guy that builds a shed. You have a guy that hauls the shed. You have a guy that sells the shed. You have a guy that does the finance rent, known whatever you want to call it on it. You have the marketing CRM, all those guys that are in there. It takes all this. Now, if we want to run at 100% production and efficiency, we have to have all five of those running correct. So, I don't care where it starts If it starts in the marketing side, the sales side, the rent-to-own side, the builder side, the sales side or the hauler side, whichever one it is.
SAMBASSADOR:As soon as one of those, I'm reminded of the verse that always says a little leaven leaveneth, the whole lump. Negativity grows extremely fast. Positivity is hard to grow. We all know this. So, if you want 100% production and all your guys are running at 100% and all of a sudden one of them, just one of them, all of a sudden drops off of 100%, something happens, he gets frustrated. He has a life-changing event, or something happens and he, frustrated, he has a life changing event or something happens and he drops the 70%. Well, that's not bad, he's running at 70%, but now you're not at 100% anymore.
SAMBASSADOR:And then he happens to be the hauler and he talks to the sales guy and he's like I don't, I'm not going to move your sheds around anymore, I'm not getting paid to do that. And now the sales guy is like well, this is dumb, he's not going to move my sheds around anymore, I'm not going to weed it around them anymore, we're just going to set them wherever they want to sit. I'm not getting paid by the hour to do that either. And he drops off. You know he might drop off to. You know he might drop off to. You know it's always worse, he might drop off to 60%.
SAMBASSADOR:Then the sales rep guy shows up. He's like what in the world? You know we can't get this thing to work anymore. What's going on? He drops off to 90%. All of a sudden, all your different parts of it, they're not running at 100%. You know the grass doesn't get mowed, the hauler doesn't care where he sets the sheds, and then the builder shows up. He's like what? These people don't care and all of a sudden you know he doesn't care about fixing the trim that's in the weeds. All of a sudden you run at 50 percent.
SAMBASSADOR:Guys, I see this all the time and it always starts by just something small. And I'm not saying it's anybody's fault. I'm saying life happens. And if we're not, if we don't have some of us, if some of us aren't willing to step up and run that 110%, 120%, and you know when that guy shows up and he's complaining about something, you're like you know what dude? I agree, but let's get above it. Let's figure out how to make it better. Let's get above it. Let's figure out how to make it better. Let's figure out how to fix it. I'll help you. Can you imagine what would happen if we would just start saying I'll help you? I can't even wrap my head around that. I'll give you an example of something we're doing right now. This is like the dumbest thing you've ever heard of. We're putting in a new law the dumbest thing you've ever heard of.
SAMBASSADOR:So, we're putting in a new lot and there was two lots there and I started this. It's my fault. I got a good deal on a lot across the street from where I was. The old Hickory lot that was there moved off and I'm like I don't want anybody coming on that lot. We got to go back and realize this was back before I got figured out that competition is good for us, Mel Weaver and I. One of these days I'm going to get Mel Weaver on an episode and we're going to talk about competition, because Mel Weaver and I both learned that we're a little bit of big dummies when it comes to competition moving in across the street. But anyway, I had these two lots and when I sold out back in 2017, they just kept.
SAMBASSADOR:It just made sense. It's a busy road. The traffic doesn't really wander across the middle of the road from one side to the other, and it always it always paid to have both lots. There was no reason not to do it. So, when we decided to do this super sales lot. It just so happened that one day Susan had the brilliant idea we don't need to be looking for a third lot, we should be on one of these two lots. And an overnight decision turned into a brilliant plan and we ended up moving all the buildings to one side of the road. We're going to turn that into the super lot and a lot across the street.
SAMBASSADOR:I reached out to one of my buddies and I said look, you got some buildings sitting up here on a back street. I'm sure you're selling up there, fine, but I want you to come down here and set up across the street from. This is a well-known, very shrewd, very smart one of my most highly respectable brains in the industry for me guys, and I literally asked him to come set up across the street from us on our old lot because I want him there and my hat's off to him for seeing the value in it. We're even probably going to have some fun with it. Put some blinky signs up, start a sign war back and forth, like the restaurants do, and see if we can't make something go viral off of our goofy signs. That we do, but I'm literally putting one of my competitors right across the street from me and about two miles down the road I've got another good friend that just opened up a lot there and I absolutely love it. There's nothing that thrills me more than to have all of us on the same road, right there on top of each other, settling together and working together. Now I'm going to try to raise their game and they're going to raise my game. I'm sure Richard's going to raise my game.
SAMBASSADOR:But you know, one of the things I've always wanted to do and I've never got it done and never had the time to do it is to put my courtyards in my sales lots. I like my street view of a lot of sheds, don't get me wrong. That's great. But I'm building these little courtyards, I'm putting mulch down, I'm putting patio pavers down and setting outdoor furniture out there. Make it look all nice and cool and they're going to have to step up if they want to keep up, because I love competition. But I want you to have all the secrets and the tools I have and I want you to beat me at my best, because if you're beating me at my best, you're doing a fantastic job and that needs to be recognized and what I think happens when we do that, we build morale back up.
SAMBASSADOR:When you build morale back up, you don't just build morale up for you and your competition, but you build it up for your whole team. All of a sudden, your builder, he comes out and he's like man, this place is cool, I'm going to build better sheds. And you get better sheds and the sales guy's like man, I love this, we're going to sell more sheds. At the end of the day, that's what we all want. We all want to sell more sheds. We all want more happy customers.
SAMBASSADOR:Um, you know, one of the things, um, that I learned from Dave Miller when I was with Smart Pay was um, this is just what we do. We're, we're not, we're not just in the shed industry. I mean, yeah, we do love sheds, especially the shed geeks oldies, we absolutely love sheds, we love the shed industry. But the sheds are just what we do to provide for our communities and to be able to provide for our communities with services, to offer jobs, to be involved in the community. You know, I love talking to Westwood, Mike and Arlen about that, because I feel like every decision they make it has to help their community. Start doing that in little pockets everywhere. We're not just going to sell sheds and we're not going to sell backyard items and gazebos and wishing wells and furniture and fire pits that all the families can sit around and enjoy and everything, but we're going to change communities and that, at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. That's what we want to do.
SAMBASSADOR:I think there's no better time than right now to start doing it. I don't want to kick you while you're down, but I want to prod you hard enough to get you back up again. You need to get that drive back that you lost. Look, I know all the ridiculous stuff that's going on around us right now, August 2nd. You know there's so much stuff going on. Every day I see stuff that I have to question is this the truth, or is this the truth, or what is the truth? And some days I'm like we're so far removed from truth we don't even know what truth is anymore. So I get it.
SAMBASSADOR:It is extremely hard to not only run a business in this day and age, right now, but to run a business that involves community, involves selling to your community and involves happy customers Not just customers, but happy customers. We have so much potential to make them have such a great experience that their lives become better. Every time they walk out in their backyard and they see that patio furniture, they see that breezeway, they see that gazebo, they see the shed, whatever it is that you're selling. Every time they see that they have a happy experience, memory. That's what we need to start focusing on. That's what we need to start focusing on. That's what we need to do, and there are tons of people in this industry that are doing that every day and you never hear from them. There's, you know, we always say the squeaky wheel gets the oil and it's the negative reviews are the ones you get. You never get the positive ones, it's. It's very much the same way in the shed industry and the fact that those guys that are out there that are killing it every day. You don't hear from those guys. They're doing what they're doing. They're in their communities, they're wide open and they are celebrating effort and they are getting it and we need more people doing that and we can do it. I know we can do it.
ADVERTISEMENT:What was that? You heard that, too, Sam. What was that? You heard that, too, Sam. What was that? Oh, that wasn't supposed to come out. What is it, Sam? I was given some confidential information. Not sure what I'm supposed to do now that you heard that though. Well, what was it, Sam, you got to 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 bellyaching 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. That's fantastic donkey. Like you had, that's fantastic. The diesel donkey like I used to have.
ADVERTISEMENT: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:We'll see if we can jump on Facebook, pull up a Facebook Live, see if we can get anybody to join us from Shed Haulers and you know what, if you guys want to, I'll do it on some of the other groups too. I think I can. I'm not sure I might not be able to if I'm not an ad here, but I know I could do it on Sheds United, which has a bunch of different guys on there. Let's see if we can get anybody to jump on here for a little bit.
SAMBASSADOR:This one's not going to. This one's not going to be very long because I don't. I don't know how this is going to work and I don't know how many of you guys follow us on YouTube or you actually see me. So if you're, if you watch the podcast and no backup, if you listen to the podcast and you're not watching it, you can actually go on YouTube and watch them and most no back up. If you listen to the podcast and you're not watching it, you can actually go on YouTube and watch them and most of them have videos. Not all of them do, but the majority of them have videos.
SAMBASSADOR:All right, I'm live. We are live on Facebook in the middle of doing a podcast. Let's see if we can get people to jump on here. All right, guys, shed Holler World, I am doing a live podcast. I don't have any guests on tonight. I'm doing this one by myself. What's up, Alex, and I want to see how this is going to work, because if this works out the way I hope it does, maybe the first Friday of every month we'll do a.
SAMBASSADOR:I can't do a live podcast. Shannon's working on it, but it's just not working out yet. I'm going to turn this camera around for a sec Y'all got to look at my mug and I'm going to sit this right there. All right, you Facebook guys, somebody owes me a hundred bucks. Is this like on Spotify? Yes, the Shed Geek podcast is on just about every platform that you want to look into. I do listen to it on Spotify, But it's on YouTube, and on YouTube most of them, we have videos. We spend a lot of money Shannon did. Hopefully I'll make him enough money one day to pay him back but we spend a lot of money on very good cameras so that we can do good YouTube videos. Oh man, I have a slow connection. That's a bum deal. Hopefully this thing will still work. Somebody owes me $100, and I don't know why.
SAMBASSADOR:So I'm talking on the podcast, which is not live, but I'm live on Facebook. So I want to talk to Facebook world for just a minute here. You guys, I want to do Facebook lives while I do podcasts, and I'm willing to even do it when I have guests on. So there's two things that I want to do here. I want to make to where, when I do these monologue podcasts, I can send you the link. It's a zoom call. You can jump on the zoom call and you can hop in and you can spend 30 seconds, 5 minutes, or you can sit there the whole way through if you want to. And we're just going to talk. We're going to talk to the shed industry and it's the closest I can do to a call-in live show and I think we can have fun doing it.
SAMBASSADOR:Why is this thing not keeping up? I can't keep up with who all is on here, but we got a fair amount of people on here. So, facebook world, I'm doing my podcast, my Friday fun day podcast, on the Shed Geek Show, and I don't have any guests tonight. I'm doing it by myself. So I was like I think I'm just going. It's too late in the day for you. It's not too late. Yeah, thank you. This is my.
SAMBASSADOR:So I'm wearing my original oh man, this is my Texas Ranger hat that I've probably had 25 years. This is the one I like to wear at the bashes. No, these ghosts don't keep me awake at all. But yeah, thanks, Dodie. I like my hat. I've got two new hats. One of them is hanging right over there and the other one's in the house. Um, but this, this is my bash hat. This is the one I wore in Tennessee, um, when I had to stand in the middle of the street all day because I screwed up and didn't put anybody in charge of something, so I did it myself, anyway.
SAMBASSADOR:So I'm talking on the podcast about just basically the overall general morale of the shed industry morale, morale of the shed industry and how I'm excited about it. And this is this is a podcast episode that, whenever it comes out, make sure you listen to, because it's a big deal to me that I feel like morale's down a little bit. Um, not across the board. Um, the guys, the guys that you don't hear from, the movers and shakers. They're out there wide open and I see them, I talk to them all the time. I talked to one this morning for about an hour. There are guys out there right now that are killing it. They're up 15, 18% from last year and I know some of you guys you're like that is insane, it's crazy, there's no way it is, and I know there's some of you guys that are. I talked to a guy the other day that's down 53%.
SAMBASSADOR:But it comes back to what are you doing. What are you doing to sell sheds? And what I wanted to talk to you guys about tonight is just the overall morale of the shed industry and when one certain finger of it loses morale, it starts wearing off at the rest of it and then you're not running at 100% capacity anymore because as soon as one drops off, another one drops off, another one drops off and all of a sudden you're running at 50%. Then it's not even about selling sheds anymore. I pull up on lots and I can tell in the first 30 to 45 seconds I said this on the podcast. I can tell immediately if you're excited about selling sheds or not, just by looking at your locks. Yawn here, yeah, I'm yawn here. So it's, this one is a little bit of a. I'm just trying to see if this is going to work or not. I would love to be able to do these more often if we can make them work, but I'll definitely need some feedback from you guys. But I can send out the Zoom link to anybody who wants to jump on. If you don't want to do a complete podcast, you know a whole hour Listen. Everybody that does one says they can't believe how fast an hour goes by. Doty, we have got to get Douglas Doty and Neil Doty on for a podcast. That's brilliant. We got to do it. We are up for the year. Up for the year for what To do? A podcast? Yeah, let's do one.
SAMBASSADOR:Sterling says I have so many thoughts and complaints about the shed industry. It's all what you make out of it, buddy. That's all I'm going to tell you. We can all have complaints if we want to. Isaiah Adams, there's a guy that doesn't complain about nothing. That dude moves and shakes every day wide open, always has a smile on his face and just kills it.
SAMBASSADOR:If I'm going to give somebody the title of legend tonight, as all you Facebookers seem to want to be doing the last couple of days, listen, guys, you can't say legend to somebody that's got an empty trailer. Let's just get that out of the way. Right now there's nobody a legend. If it's daylight and his trailer's empty, sorry, not going to happen, even if he's a really good friend of mine and I think the world of him and man, that guy has had my back so many times not happening. So, yeah, shout out to you guys, Adams, guys up there in Kentucky, man, they are going everywhere. Houston, your trailer's always full. Yeah, even in the middle of the night. Oh, sales is up. Yes, yeah, we need to do a podcast, Doug, let's do it. That'll be fantastic. We'll have a blast.
SAMBASSADOR:My ADHD is going to kick in here. We're not going to get nothing done. I wonder if Shannon's back or not. He muted himself and left. He said he has family over, but he's always in the back scenes watching to see what's going on. I don't see him. He's not showing.
SAMBASSADOR:Election years are tough. That is a very good point, Doug. In fact, that was something I was going to talk just a little bit about tonight. One of the things that I've heard a lot this year is so I could always tell you which one of my months, like I could tell you my top three months, my worst three months and the middle six months Election years. You can always throw that right out, dude, it's Alex. Alex is like what do elections have to do with it? People go a little bit crazy in elections and then you have the stuff going on that we've had this year. Oh man, it's, it's crazy. Elections there's Neil finally showed up. Elections it's. It's crazy how it can change the morale of a nation and, at the end of the day, happy and excited people spend money, nervous and not happy people sit on money. Yeah, the failed attempt that all plays into it. I don't care where you're at politically, it still makes a difference. And the other thing that I think a lot of people tend to forget is when kids are out of school. People lose focus on what they're doing and what's going on. When kids are out of school.
SAMBASSADOR:Oh, Danelle wants to know if I got my mulch spread. Yes and no, I worked on my mulch. Oh man, I got to give a shout out to Danelle Yoder. We have got a mess up there where we're putting our new lot in. I had a hay field that I had to mow down first of all, and then I had to mow it again. And then we moved. Caleb came down from Kentucky and helped us move all the buildings onto the lot, but since we were mowing it and everything, we couldn't put them where we wanted them. What's up, Brian Short? So we had to. We literally had to move them all over into one section and then move them all back to set up.
SAMBASSADOR:And poor Donnelle, he's never had to set up a lot like this, like this, before. I've got him putting buildings in circles. I've got him put buildings in long lines. I've got him putting buildings down fake streets. Um, all I need is a couple street lights and then he'll see my street. And man, I made his life miserable the last two days. Caleb, you can be glad that Danelle offered to do some of that, because I would hate to think how mad you would be at me tonight having to do what Danelle did the last two days. Now we are a long way from done. We got more to do.
SAMBASSADOR:Mike Yoder, what are we talking about? The morale of the shed industry? We'll go with that. That's what we're talking about. Oh yeah, susan, you tried to call in and I said I'm on a podcast, I'm doing a live podcast. Where are we at? On time wise, I'm going to run this thing from over to nothing. I know we're good, we got plenty of time and Shannon always says he's going to break my episodes into two episodes, but I'm not going to let him break this one up If it goes over. It's just going to go over a little bit.
SAMBASSADOR:The morale of the shed industry and how each person plays a part in that Negative grows. The weeds grow so much faster than the vegetables y'all. It is so easy for negativity to spring in and grow so fast. And I can. I can pick up on it the minute I pull up on your sales lot. I can. I can tell the morale of your hauler by how the sheds are set up. I can tell the morale of the sales guy by how the buildings are being presented, how clean the lot is. I can tell the morale of the builder by how the building looks presented, how clean the lot is. I can tell the morale of the builder by how the building looks. It's all right there and I can tell in the first minute. And I don't think we realize how fast the customer can pick up on that either. It's crazy. So I'm preaching at all of y'all and I'm preaching to myself.
SAMBASSADOR:First of all because I got a little frustrated tonight when I was leaving the lot because I didn't get done everything I wanted to get done and it was tough. It's Friday night. It's been hotter than blazes in South Carolina this week. I've cooked. That's why I'm wearing a hat. My face is cooked to no man's land, that's why I'm wearing a hat. My face is cooked to no man's land.
ADVERTISEMENT:Introducing the Challenger, the revolutionary new shed mover that's taking the industry by storm. The Challenger features a touchless design ensuring it only makes contact at the end of the skids and the bottom of the floor joists. So rest easy knowing your gable walls will remain pristine. Worried about reliability? Fear not, the Challenger is always up for the challenge and will not overturn or scuff your shed. Harness the power of innovative wireless technology. Remotely control the Challenger via your smartphone, no cell service needed. And guess what? The cell phone remote comes standard with every Challenger, at no extra cost. Featuring floating forks, a four-directional tilting mast and sliding weight transfer, move the shed weight precisely where you need it to get ultimate traction, with self-loading capability straight onto your truck. Say goodbye to the need for a hydraulic carriage. The Challenger makes your job easy and more efficient. Choose from two machine sizes 10,000 pounds and 15,000 pounds. Perfect for any job. Visit us at the Shed Expo in Michigan this September. Find us at booth 552. Don't miss out. Visit www. shedchallenger. com or email us at info at shedchallenger. com, or call or text 828-220-3508 for more information. Experience the future of shed moving with the Challenger.
SAMBASSADOR:Yeah, I didn't get all the mulch spread. I got it all piled where I want it, but I was so cotton picking hot I had to get home and get ready and I wanted to do this tonight that I didn't get it. Yeah, hot ain't the word for it, Brian, I don't know what. It's just brutal and it's uh, we got rained out, flooded out twice, and it won't rain at my house, where I really need rain. So it's, it's just been, it's been aggravating and it's been aggravating and it's pretty easy for me to say, ah, you know what I'm done here, let's just fix it. And you know, let's, let's just move on. No, do it right. Oh, Shannon's AI note taker is giving me notes and it says takeaways from the meeting. Reach out to Douglas and Neil about doing a podcast. So I got to remember to do that.
SAMBASSADOR:I wish we had rain on the way. I have a dozen oak trees that are sucking every last drop of water out of my ground and we have not had much rain at all in about two months here, but over there, where the lot is, we keep flooding out. We got rained out twice this week and it just felt good to just stand out and get wet for a minute. But it's frustrating because you know we spent an hour to get all the lawnmowers together and get the skid steer loaded and get everything over there, and the minute we showed up it just starts pouring. So we all turn around, we drive back home again. Go back the next day, Jason Graber.
SAMBASSADOR:What is up, man? I've given you 100 shout outs tonight. The shed industry is finally capped out. Everyone that needs a shed has a shed. Might as well hang it up. That is awesome Coming from who that's coming from. Yeah, I'm not buying that. You can't even sell me on that one.
SAMBASSADOR:Mike, you know I'm in an area that is crazy. Here. Upstate of South Carolina just got recognized as the number one fastest growing. Well, South Carolina, got recognized as the fastest growing state right now. It does not take a genius to figure out that it's four counties in the upstate and two counties in the lower way down state that are doing all the growth, which is crazy when you look at the amount. So if I call all the shed companies tomorrow and I find out how many sheds they've sold this year, we're not even keeping up with the amount of permits pulled for one county up here. Think about that for a minute. Oh, hey, Christy, how are you doing so? For you guys that are jumping on late, I'm actually doing hold on here, you guys. I think I've got a different crowd, probably by now.
SAMBASSADOR:Let me flip this around. I'm doing a Shed Geek podcast and I decided that I'm oh, there's Shannon, now you're going to jump on and I decided that I'm going to do a Facebook Live while I do my podcast and if this works and is as much fun for y'all as it is for me, we're going to start doing them more. You guys can. We're going to do it, or you guys can jump on here. You can ask questions. We'll just monologue our way through the whole evening, but you can also.
SAMBASSADOR:This is a Zoom call that we do. I can send you a link and you can jump on the Zoom call that we do. I can send you a link and you can jump on the Zoom call and you can do a five-minute conversation, a 10-minute conversation, a 15-minute conversation, it doesn't matter to me. This is as close as I can get to doing live call-ins and I think it'll work. I think we can make this happen. The other thing I want you to get familiar with is how easy it is to do a podcast, because I need more of you guys to tell your stories, to get on here and do podcasts.
SAMBASSADOR:All right, I'm going to flip it back around, but that's what we're doing here. I'll take you back up a little bit. So, yeah, I'm recording a live podcast and before I end this, I'm about done for tonight. I think we've got pretty good. I don't know. We got 27 people on. I've been on fairly long, so hopefully there's a little bit of interest in there. Twenty nine people, that's not bad for a Facebook live in the evening, and if we start doing it, everybody knows that we'll do it the first Friday night of the month. Then we all know about it.
SAMBASSADOR:What's up Street? Yeah, I'll send you guys the link. I can't tonight anymore. I'm too far in. I'm going to run out of time here, but I want to start doing these to where we do it like a live call-in show. You can hop on the Zoom link or you can hop on the Facebook Live. I'll run both of them. I'm just a pasty. You are definitely a youper Suarez.
SAMBASSADOR:What are you doing, man? Don't forget, I have a tee time. Yes, I do, I'm going to go out and I'm going to kick some shed-hauler tail tomorrow. They better bring. They don't even have an A game good enough to beat me. Tomorrow. I'm going to take a bunch of frustration out on a little white ball this week. So it's going to tomorrow. It's going to be good.
SAMBASSADOR:But I want to get this episode out and this will probably be the last one I get to do before some of these events start happening. But one thing, one thing I want to get before some of these events start happening. But one thing, um one thing I want to get out tonight to everybody on Facebook live and on the podcast is we're starting to run into the time of the year when all the barbecues happen. Uh, the shed expo happens, the MBSRA happens, all that stuff is coming up right around the corner. The Indiana barbecue is in September. Oh, it's earlier this year. I think that's a cliff nap. I'm planning on going.
SAMBASSADOR:Last year I ended up having a broke, Bessie, and I couldn't go Squirrel. No, there's no squirrels here, Nate. Oh, my word. Shanty B, I'm sure. All right, you guys. I can't even say oh, here comes the legend with his empty trailer. I wish you could see who's hopping on when I see him. Hop on, because you guys have. Well, some of you know who I'm talking about.
SAMBASSADOR:Freaking awesome sales reps is where it's at. That's the way. That's the key to it all working. Everything else, like barbecues and shed, exposes extra. Not going to lie, that's true, but one of the best ways to keep your sales reps excited is to get them at events and see what's going on. But anyway, that's I like having the events. Oh, I got sidetracked. We got the Indiana barbecue, then we have the Shed Expo, then we have the Texas barbecue and then we have the Southeast Shed Haulers barbecue in Georgia. Those are all coming up in the next couple months and listen when we talk about morale.
SAMBASSADOR:One of the best ways to build morale is to get around people that are excited about what they're doing. Training, training, training. That's all Susan Frair's done all week. She doesn't even have another word in her vocabulary right now. Every time I talk to her, she's training. That's all she's doing right now, which is good. You got to have training but at the end of the day, you can train a person all you want to. You can have the best reps out there. If they're not excited about their culture, their company culture, what they're doing in their community, they're going to struggle in what we're in the world we're in right now. Excuse me, I need a drink, don't get me upset.
SAMBASSADOR:Anyway, back to YouTube. All the podcasts on YouTube. If you watch them on YouTube, you get to see the videos. You get to see some of our reactions and stuff that you don't get to hear. Um, spotify is where I listen. I know other guys have their apple products and stuff. There's tons of ways that you can listen to the shed geek podcast. Um, they're all available. We always tell people um paid endorser, I wonder if I could get those guys to sponsor me. That's huge, that would be really good. But we always tell, we always ask people before we end the episode how can people get a hold of you? What's the best way to get in touch with you. Well, it's the same way for us. You can find us on Spotify. You can find us on YouTube. Hey, you can even find us on Facebook Live.
SAMBASSADOR:Sign up for the NBSRA. Thank you, Dave. That is, yes, cool speakers this year. You know, I need to get you on for about five minutes to talk about. I saw where was it on Facebook today. NBSRA it's for the rich guys. Mike, you got a chip on your shoulder. Come on, if it's for the rich guys, you should be there somewhere. Today I saw a clip of who the speaker is for the NBSRA and I don't know who that is. I read a little bit about him, but it looks pretty cool.
SAMBASSADOR:I will say this for the NBSRA as much grief as I give rent to own companies and the overall listen, I like to poke at those guys. I have some really good friends over there. I've got nothing against what they're doing, but the one thing that I will say is, every time I've been to the MBSRA, I've enjoyed it and I've learned something, and they've always had great speakers. Some of those, some of those guys just blow my mind. I can go all the way back to. Probably still my favorite one is the one where Huck actually David Weaver actually bowed up and says you know what? You're going to. Quit talking trash about rent to own companies. I'm going to make you come to the NBSRA.
SAMBASSADOR:The NBSRA is the day before the Shed Expo in Grand Rapids, Michigan, this year. Oh, okay, so that's what the link was you posted. That's cool. But the one in Fort Worth where that guy I don't even remember his name, but he has a business of, where he goes in and he analyzes companies and he figures out who's committed, who's kind of committed and who's on the way out, how to resolve those issues. The only thing I didn't like about that was he puts it all back on the leader of the company, the owner, the CEO. He basically said that if you fire somebody, it's your fault. And man, that has been. Oh man, that dude was tough. I want to go back and read his stuff.
SAMBASSADOR:In fact, Dave, if you know that dude and you can get him back again, I would love to hear that guy again. He had some really cool ways of figuring out how to keep their people, how to keep your people excited, who's sold out, who's not sold out and you know what. That's probably where my subconscious mind I get that whole idea that negativity grows so fast. You know, it's the weed that outgrows the vegetable is from that guy, because he talks about that um big time. Um, I got to know some really good people there. So, yes, thank you, Dave, for that shout out, and the link is in the comments. So I'll leave this one up. I'll probably make this one where it posts for 30 days. It doesn't go away, guys, I have got to wrap up. I don't want this to get to be too long an episode to where Shannon decides he's going to split it up.
SAMBASSADOR:Was he the predictive index guy? Oh boy, I remember that predictive index guy and I don't remember if it was the same guy or not. Probably it was in Fort Worth quite a while back. Ask Huck, actually. I'll see if I can get a hold of him. That dude was good, the memory guy. Y'all remember the memory guy in Virginia. That dude was phenomenal too. That guy is coming back. Oh, that's cool. Very good, thank you.
SAMBASSADOR:This is my favorite bash hat, this hat. I need to go back and figure out how old this hat is, but I know it's 25 years old, if not older. I took a predicament. Yeah, thank you, christy, I will have a good night. I was a little. I wasn't really sure I wanted to do it tonight either. I was a little bummed out about it. It's just been freaking hot. Thank you, black. I don't know why.
SAMBASSADOR:When I get to talk about the shed industry, it's like it revives me again. So, guys, look, let's get morale back up. Buy you a weed eater, keep your lot cleaned up, take those old signs down, put new signs up. When your hauler shows up, give him a drink and maybe he'll organize your buildings a little nicer and he'll go back. Get the shop guys excited. And people buy sheds from people who are excited. We can do this. This is still the greatest industry in the world and every time somebody walks out their back door into their backyard and sees something back there that they got from an excited person who loves their community, who shows up at the ballgame, shows up at all the events, helps with all the different stuff. It takes a freaking lot of energy. I get it. I know it does, but if you get involved in your community, you get excited, you can go out and you can sell all the sheds you want.
SAMBASSADOR:Yes, going off buying my drink. Man, I'm sorry for you guys that just jumped on here. Go back and watch this whole thing so you understand what we're doing. I'm going to leave it up so that people can go back and watch it again, but I'm all about first Friday in September. Let's jump on and do this again. If I'm out of town, I'll do it from wherever I'm at. It's still waiting on you, dude. You had ice cream today and I didn't have any, so I don't want to hear about you waiting on ice cream. The boy eats ice cream like nobody I've ever seen before, or something wrong with him, I don't know. I'm going to buy him orange creamsicle ice cream and put it in the freezer for him, and then I'm gonna make him happy. So anyway, guys, thanks for coming on tonight. Thanks for the feedback. Appreciate every one of you guys.
SAMBASSADOR:Um, let's go out and let's kill the rest of this year. Let's make some big numbers. Let's get excited about sheds again. Um, listen, you guys can get a hold of me whenever you want to. I, I, I can't answer all the phone calls, um, and for some unknown reason, the last six months, if, if I'm in my house, I get about half my calls. Um, in fact, I'm kind of surprised. I wonder if it's because I'm inside this building with a metal roof. I haven't had a single phone call in the last hour, which is unheard of. Phone call on the last hour, which is unheard of. Thank you Always enjoy the podcast. Thank you, Daniel, let's go out there. Oh, I know what I was saying. You guys can always message me, message me on Facebook, message me on my phone numbers.
SAMBASSADOR:Out there, I don't get to talk to all you guys as much as I want to. For dang sure, show up at the events and don't just. This aggravates me to no end when I go to an event and I find out one of you guys has been there and I'm like why don't you come up and talk to me? Oh, you had people around. You were busy. I don't care, we've always got 30 seconds. So make sure you show up at the events, make sure you stick a hand out, shake a hand. If you see Shannon smack a kiss on top of his head, let's see how many we can plant on his forehead.
SAMBASSADOR:I got to get out of here. Love you guys. Keep hanging in there. It's going to get better. We'll get this election passed and we'll go back to wide open again. You hide and watch. Everybody still needs something in their backyard. Remember what, Richard? Am I in PA? No, I'm in South Carolina. I'll go back to PA.
SAMBASSADOR:If y'all get me about four or five podcasts lined up, I'd love to come back up there again. But let's get it going. Let's pick the morale back up. If you see your brother falling by the way, just stop and say you're going the wrong way. One of my favorite songs. You got to try a little kindness and that's the best way we can help each other. Walk across the street, shake that guy's hand. Competition is good for us. Get to know them All right, you guys. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Shed Geek Podcast, Friday fun day, Sambassador version. This is your host, Sam Byler. Check him out. See you next week. Good night,