We recently connected with Kristin Meyer and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kristin, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

In January of 2019, we purchased the shutter manufacturing business from another husband-wife team and Southern Crafted Shutters was born. They had one person who worked for them and part of the transition was to keep him on initially, but it wasn’t a long term plan. While it helped us get on our feet, he moved out of state a few months after we purchased the business and it was just my husband, Adam, and me (and sometimes we’d call in my parents). When we did start to hire, we didn’t have a good plan of action. We posted an ad on a local tech school job site and we asked people we knew if they knew anyone who would be interested in working with us. While we did get a couple decent people, we also had some horrible hires. One person couldn’t even read a tape measure, which is an important skill if you are in manufacturing!

We learned our lesson the hard way. After letting the worst people go, we discovered a unique approach to hiring in a book called Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz. We have used this hiring method ever since and have built an AMAZING team. The focus is more on culture than skills – though it’s important to include some must-have skills as well (reading a tape measure, for example). The description is 3 pages long and incredibly transparent about pay rate, work environment and expectations. At the end of the 3 pages, it includes a unique application filter. In order to be considered, they have to send an email with the subject: I’ve found my peeps. We also recommend they send in a video about why they’d be great for the job and if they don’t send a video, let us know why they chose not to do so. As any business owner can tell you, when you post a job ad online, there are a lot of unqualified, questionable applicants who hit the “apply” button. This filter meant we only had to look at the emails of the people who followed the directions. Genius! Now, we only look at the top candidates instead of all candidates. It’s been really hard to choose at times, because people we’ve had multiple A-players apply and we didn’t have the budget to hire them all. I tell all my friends looking to hire that they should try this method if it’s allowed. It’s not easy- you really do need to figure out what makes your business special and what makes it not as special. I believe it’s worth putting in the time up front to get it right, though, because it will save a lot of time by having the right people on the bus from the beginning.

Kristin, 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?

I have always worked for multinational companies. People used to tell me that I have the entrepreneurial spirit and that I would be a great entrepreneur and I told them over and over and over that there was no way I would do that because it’s too much risk. And then I had the opportunity to go off and do something on my own. My company was doing layoffs, and I had just finished my coaching certification, so it was the perfect time to take a leap because getting laid off meant I’d get paid for 4 months while starting my own thing. And so, I did it. It was super scary, but I survived. I also learned that while I was a good coach, I was horrible at selling my services. I wanted to help people so much, I’d give it away. Lucky for me, I met Adam about 6 months later. He’s an engineer and super handy, so I asked him if he’d help me build a sliding door for my doorless closet. It was a fun adventure, and I really loved the door we created. I posted it on social media and a friend from my prior company sent me a note that he’d started building doors on the side, and I should check out his business. I joked that if he wanted any help, he should let me know, because Adam likes doing that kind of thing. Two months later, he called me up and asked if I wanted to buy his door business. He was moving to a new state and he’d love me to take over and grow it. Adam and I were in the process of moving into a house that had a garage, so I said, sure! Neither of us knew that much about creating a door business, but we both had a lot of transferable skills that made it seem like a good thing to try. The following year, we decided to participate in a home and garden trade show. We figured, if we could sell 3 doors, we’d make our money back and if we sold 5, we’d be killing it. We ended up with 25 door orders! Suddenly our little garage shop bled into our living room.

We weren’t making enough for Adam to leave his corporate job, which was his goal, but we were learning a lot as we went. The next year we went to the show again and this time we met another husband-wife team who manufactured and sold shutters. Throughout the show, we’d have various conversations with them and realized that we had a lot of similarities. What we didn’t know, is that they were hoping to sell the manufacturing business and all those similarities made us the ideal people to take it over. In January of 2019, Southern Crafted Shutters was born. We took out a loan twice the size of our mortgage, Adam left his corporate job and we quickly learned the business of making exterior shutters.
We make both traditional Colonial shutters, the kind you would find throughout the East coast, New Orleans and all across Europe. As well as Bahama shutters that most people associate with the coast and Caribbean. Our Colonial shutters have a historical look – they are on hinges and have shutter dogs to hold the shutters open. While we can make them close over the windows, most of our clients have no intention of ever closing them. Since they remain fixed in an open position, we have a wide range of style options from paneled to louvered and have low maintenance, long-lasting, high-quality material such as a wood composite and aluminum. Unlike traditional wood shutters that need constant upkeep to avoid warping or rotting, ours need minimal maintenance. In fact, our all-aluminum shutters can be powder coated, providing the most durable finish available.

Our customers love having something that’s beautiful and has next to no maintenance. They love to make their house stand out and they care about curb appeal. Many enjoy entertaining and take great pride in their home and want something that’s more authentic and high quality versus vinyl shutters that often feel like they were added as an afterthought.

Our Bahama shutters are incredibly popular with people who value privacy and want to be able to enjoy their porch for example more often because now they can block out some of the elements.

I’m most proud of building a good team and showing them off whenever possible. In order for us to be successful, we need a team of people working towards the same goal with the same vision. As a small business owner, I believe I have a responsibility to provide the right people with the right opportunity for work. We fill a niche that other businesses are afraid to touch. First, we have flexible hours. This makes it possible for students to work around their schedule as well as people with other responsibilities. For example, two of our team members have to work around childcare. If their kids are sick or they need to take a day off to bring them to the doctor, we work with them. Second, we hire High School students. We work with the local career center and offer a work-based learning opportunity for select students. As such, we are helping build the workforce of tomorrow. I love educating and helping people and I think that we’ve done that, especially with our team. Since we have a young team, many of them have never had a regular job or any benefits. We have a simple IRA match, so the team can opt to start investing and learn what that is about, we also offer paid vacation after a certain amount of hours worked. These are usually things a large company offers full time employees, so we are proud that as a small company we can offer it to our part time team members. We also encourage everyone to take on leadership roles. Each team member has ownership of one area of the shop and is responsible for keeping it up and holding other team members accountable when needed. We also do team meetings where the leader rotates so everyone has an opportunity to learn how to lead and facilitate a meeting. Finally, we offer videos for our customers, so everyone on the team learns how to present themselves – whether they are in the office or on the shop floor. When people come to meet the team, they always comment on how impressed they are with them, and that makes me super proud.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We do manufacture all our shutters in-house. We purchased our shutter manufacturing business from another couple that we met at a trade show. We had been making doors (out of our garage) at the time and had been talking about how we could expand our part-time business into something full-time where Adam could leave his corporate job. The other couple were about to be empty nesters and we’re hoping to get out of the manufacturing business and just stay in sales. Together we discussed how the manufacturing of doors and shutters are very similar.

Adam, my husband, came from a manufacturing environment, so he was familiar with manufacturing in general. But, neither of us had ever made shutters in our life. The prior owner taught us the basics and there was somebody who had been working with the prior owner when we purchased the business who stayed on for a few months and so he was a great resource because he knew how to make the shutters.

After we had the basics down, we focused on ways to make the manufacturing more efficient and consistent. The prior owner drew out all his orders by hand. We knew this was neither consistently accurate nor scalable. As a result, one of the first systems we implemented was using CAD drawings. This allowed us to create standardizations of how we would build the shutters. Since I didn’t come from an engineering or manufacturing background, I was a great test person for how well a system was able to be utilized by someone with no experience. I’d ask Adam to tweak different things so I could better understand. One of the first improvements we made after the standard drawings was to create cut lists. Adam could read the drawings and know what to cut, but I needed to make a list. Now we have a drawing and a cut list for every shutter we make!

We are continually making improvements like this. We’ve learned that if something isn’t obvious, there’s an opportunity to make improvements to make it more obvious. Our team is constantly making suggestions and implementing improvements. Sometimes the new person is the perfect person to help us up our game, because they ask “why” and “how” and it challenges us to think about the answer and if there might be a better way.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

I’m always reading a business book. Not only have I learned so much by hearing other people’s experiences, I feel like I’m not alone when others tell their stories. I often describe my experience as a business owner as a roller coaster of both emotions and activities. Others have described it as building a plane as you fly it. In order to mitigate this craziness, I like to hear what others have to say and then apply what’s pertinent to my business.

Profit First by Mike Michalowicz, this book helps lay out a plan of paying yourself and, as a result, growing your business bottom line. Business owners (especially new owners) often struggle with paying themselves. It seems all their money goes back into their business. E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber, the E stands for entrepreneurial and this book reviews various myths people have about going into business for themselves. It also talks about the different kinds of people/personalities that make up businesses and the strengths and challenges of each. It focuses on creating a franchise model, which doesn’t mean make your business a franchise, but rather that your systems and processes should be repeatable and easy to understand and implement. This leads me to Clockwork, by Mike Michalowicz. After reading part of the book, I signed up for a class by the same name. During the Accelerator, I was able to work through the concepts in the book with a coach and other small business owners from around the world. You “graduate” from Clockwork when you successfully take a 4 week vacation. The vacation is less about you going off to the tropics, and more about your business being able to run for an entire month without you. That’s when you know you’ve made it! (We’re not there yet, but we are getting closer!) The other thing that I love about Clockwork is identifying the Queen Bee Role- what does your company offer that no one else can match and as a result, you protect it at all cost. Our QBR is “Unparalleled service with proactive communication”. And if you ask anyone on our team, they can tell you what it is and their role in making sure it happens. If you read our reviews, you’ll see many of our raving fans talk about it without saying it line by line. Any Mike Michalowicz book is a winner for me, but the last one I’ll mention is The Pumpkin Plan. This one is all about finding your ideal client and how you’re going to have to get rid of some of the not-ideal clients in order to have room for the ideal clients to thrive. So often I see businesses trying to be all things to all people. The Pumpkin Plan encourages you to be the best thing for YOUR best people and leave the others to other businesses. Currently, I’m reading Start With Why by Simon Sinek. It’s been very thought provoking. Just when I think I know “my why”, he poses a question and I realize I need to do a little more work. There are so many more, but that’s a good place to start!

In addition to books, I’ve used SCORE for both online classes and personal mentorship. I believe it’s important for business owners to have mentors from outside their business. We’ve been working with Joe, our mentor, for about 3 years. He comes to the shop once a month and we go over challenges, opportunities, and all our metrics.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://scshutters.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/southerncraftedshutters/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/southerncraftedshutters
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtMJ1e0JllDPoR3RnUB-atA
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/SouthernCraftedShutters/ https://www.tiktok.com/@scshutters