We were lucky to catch up with Garrett Page recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Garrett thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Almost all entrepreneurs have had to decide whether to start now or later? There are always pros and cons for waiting and so we’d love to hear what you think about your decision in retrospect. If you could go back in time, would you have started your business sooner, later or at the exact time you started?
My current business, Solace Estate Services, was officially started a little over a year ago, but I began creating our software a year prior to that. At the time, my previous business Loana (a CRM for mortgage professionals) had come to a halt, and I was working as a senior software engineer for a big corporation to make ends meet. However, I was on the hunt for the next idea to chase.
My soon-to-be wife was also a bit discontent with her day job and pondering side hustles. One afternoon, lounging in my office, she showed me some websites of estate sale companies in our area and said, “these companies are so outdated, we could do better”. My eyes lit up and I knew this was the next idea.
Solace was started at just the right time because of a few reasons. First, I needed the mistakes and lessons of my prior businesses to help me grow as a business owner and a person. The next reason is that after the passing of my father I discovered a desire to help others through life’s tough moments, such as the passing of a loved one. Estate sales were a perfect fit. Finally, I had finally found the perfect partner to go into business with – my lovely fiance.
Garrett, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Garrett Page. I’m from a small town in Northeastern Colorado. I come from a family of entrepreneurs – my parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all have dabbled in being business owners. Therefore, I’ve always had the itch to run my own company.
My background is a bit peculiar and I’ve explored many career paths from film to software engineering. I’ve lived in multiple countries and am a frequent traveler. I have an amazing fiance and a sweet puppy named Sunny.
I currently operate two business – Solace Estate Services and LunaLogic.
With Solace Estate Services, we are modernizing the estate sales industry through technology. Our focus is on assisting our customers through life’s most challenging moments, whether that is the loss of a loved one or moving to a new city. Our approach is unique in that all of our sales are held solely online through our AI powered platforms.
https://solaceestateservices.com/sell-with-us
LunaLogic is a results-driven software consulting firm. We assist in uncovering your root business problems and deploying software solutions to fix those problems. LunaLogic offers our signature Road to Results Workshop, custom software solutions, and software training for small businesses.
https://lunalogic.dev/
How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.
Solace Estate Services uses a fully custom solution for our ecommerce site. We originally considered using Shopify, but quickly realized that it would be near impossible to provide our customers with the experience we envisioned if we used an external platform.
The pros are that we have full control over our platform, website, and apps. We are able to run wild with our imaginations.
The only con is that it is a lot more work to deploy and maintain your own custom software.
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
I am a lucky man and can say that the story of meeting my cofounder, Santana, is actually the story of meeting my soon-to-be wife! We get married in exactly a month.
We met at a mutual friend’s wedding, where we were the only two singles seated at our table. We talked quite a bit that evening, danced, and overall had a blast. Our friends were planning on doing brunch the next day and invited me to tag along. Well, I had a little too much fun at the wedding and text her saying we should go the following day instead.
On the walk over, it dawned on me that this might be a date. You see, the reschedule text was meant to say, “hey is everyone ok with doing brunch again on Sunday?”, since everyone was in town for the weekend. Turns out Santana also wasn’t sure if it was a date or not, but decided to go for it anyways.
We both arrived and endured a very awkward 15 minutes until I broke and told her I didn’t realize it was going to be a date. And as they say, “the rest is history”. We’ve been together over 3 years and look forward to many more years together as husband and wife, and business partners.
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