We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shaggy Eells a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Shaggy, thanks for joining us today. Taking care of customers isn’t just good business – it is often one of the main reasons folks went into business in the first place. So, we’d love to get a conversation going around how to best help clients feel appreciated – maybe you can share something you’ve done or seen someone do that’s been really effective at helping a customer feel valued?

Thank you cards. Yes it’s basic, but so few people take the time to write something thoughtful to their clients.

I find that personally handwriting thank you cards to each one of your clients (and friends) shows that you care about them.

Yes there are services out there that will handwrite these cards and send them out, but the point is that every client knows you personally wrote these cards, sealed the envelopes, and sent them out with love.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Shaggy Eells and I am an entrepreneur. My business partner Cole Lyon and I have a Christmas Light installation business.

We wanted to bring more joy to people’s lives in the area, and of course the best way to do that is to brighten up people’s holidays.

The problem is that Cole and I had never installed Christmas lights professionally before 2024. We started by installing lights on Cole’s house, and a handful of our friend’s houses to get a hang of things.

We are most proud to be a premium service. All the time our clients tell us about how the Christmas light installer from last year cannot help them this year, and they are left to figure things out on their own. We handle everything from installation, to maintenance, to takedown. Also, we use the brightest commercial LED bulbs on the market. On top of it, you own the lights that we custom-fit to your house, so you never have to buy Christmas lights again!

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Cole and I met skiing 12 years ago and have been best friends ever since. We were roommates in college, worked on many projects, and traveled to numerous places.

Cole asked me to start our Christmas light business together, and I instantly knew it was a good idea.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

We had a cash flow issue. Jobber, our payment processor and CRM, was taking 5-7 business days to deposit collected revenue into our bank account. Every time a new client paid our 50% upfront deposit, we needed to immediately buy the supplies to fulfill their order. We quickly had no money in our account.

Fortunately, our business model was profitable, so we were able to fix this issue by putting $3.4k of expenses on our personal credit cards until we were able to access more of the collected revenue.

Then we convinced Jobber to give us 2 business days of payout time.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.saltlakecitychristmaslights.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slcchristmaslights/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566465526911
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaggy-eells-89841116b/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/cole-lyon-887889158/
• Twitter: https://x.com/ShaggyEells
• Other: Phone number: 801-214-8254

Image Credits

Credit “Salt Lake City Christmas Lights”. Cole and I (who together own 100% of the business) took all of these images.