How I Built My Small Business

How to Start a Christmas Lighting Business: Listener Q&A

• Season 2 • Episode 32

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🎄 Ever thought about running a Christmas light business? This is your behind-the-scenes masterclass.

In this special episode, a podcast listener flips the mic and interviews the host, Anne McGinty, about how she started a seasonal Christmas lighting business.

The listener comes prepared with thoughtful, detailed questions about every step of starting and scaling a holiday lighting operation.

If you're considering a side hustle, craving entrepreneurial inspiration, or curious about a surprisingly lucrative niche, this deep-dive delivers practical tools, strategy, and real talk.

This is more of a How-To episode.

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Website: https://www.annemcginty.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annemcginty

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Speaker 1:

Today's episode is a little different from the usual format. A listener reached out with questions about how I started and ran my Christmas lighting business and, instead of replying one-on-one, I suggested we record the conversation, just in case others out there are curious too. For context, I co-owned a Christmas light installation business with my husband, mark, for 13 years, before selling it in 2020. We spoke about it in an episode in season one, so if you're curious and want to learn more, you can always go into the back catalog and check that out. We built our business from the ground up, starting with one truck and doing all the jobs ourselves, then gradually hiring and scaling. By the time we sold, the business ran for six months a year with six trucks and about 20 employees. If you've ever thought about launching a Christmas lighting business, or you're just curious about seasonal businesses with high profit potential, this one's for you. It's more of a how-to.

Speaker 2:

So I currently am in construction. Okay, so I've been working as a project manager for a general contractor with this particular company for almost 12 years. I've got a wife and two small girls and have been starting to understand that I do have a good job and it's a steady job, but for what I'm trying to do and provide for my family I'm going to need to have something else kind of bumping things up. So I've been kind of on this side, gig side hustle journey here for a while, which has actually led me to discover you, and so I was just very intrigued by your story and oddly, I think I think I told you this in my email that was the second story I had heard that week of a Christmas light company and the immense success that has come with it, and I was just like, wow, this is crazy. So figured I would reach out and first of all, I want to say thank you for actually responding to me. I didn't expect to actually get a response, and if I did, I thought it might be from an assistant, and then it was actually you, and now we're talking, and so it was just very amazing. So thank you. Yeah, of course I'm happy to share everything I know. So what do you want to know?

Speaker 2:

Oh man, I have a whole list of questions here and I've tried to kind of compartmentalize them into categories. I'm sure I'm going to be kind of like a squirrel and all over the place and you're going to say something that's going to lead me to another question, so we'll just start from the top. So I've got materials as one of the first things that popped into my head as I was listening to your podcast. And you know what, what are you providing to these homeowners? Are you coming in with like a menu and saying this is our typical package, it's all white, led and it's, you know, basic. We're going your your roof line or wrapping your trees. Or are you offering many lights to do tree trunks and then bigger lights to do the canopy? And just how much in detail are you doing? Yeah, Okay.

Speaker 1:

So you've got a gazillion questions in there. To start, to start out, the first year we got the bare minimum that we needed to, just in order to get started. So we got a basic inventory of and this was when it was incandescent. So we transitioned to 95% LED towards the end like, well, maybe around the middle of when we had our business, but definitely towards the end and we were constantly trying to push people to move towards LED, both for its environmentally friendly reasons, but also because it makes installations so much easier. You're not dealing with broken glass, you're not dealing with calculations for incandescent lighting, which is just, it guzzles so much more. And then you end up having to create a more complex puzzle. So that was LED. Five mils are like the little hats. Then you've got LED minis, which they're more similar to like a typical mini Christmas light. They have like a little bit of a bigger bulb on them and then from there you start going like C7, c9s. They are the bulbs that get screwed into the sockets and that's along an SPT wire, so like an SPT wire with little sockets in them that you can get it spaced like six inches apart, 12 inches apart, 18 inches, 24 inches. You can buy the spools and then you can custom cut them and they come in green, white, black so that you can try and match the trim of whatever structure you are installing so that during the daytime it has the least impact for anybody that's looking at it. The SPT wire it comes in either SPT1 or SPT2. Spt1 is really thin, spt2 is thicker, spt2 can handle a higher amperage. We typically stayed with SPT2. And then you buy the little SPT2 plugins. So you, the little SPT2 plugins, so you can buy those in bulk online. Some are better than others, some are easier to use than others, because they've got these little prongs that push up into the wire and then you can slide it on and that's how the prongs engage with the wire inside the copper or whatever it is inside the casing, and so then you can custom cut any length, right?

Speaker 1:

So if you're doing a roof line, the bigger the roof line, the bigger the bulb, but more like distance. So for commercial roof lines we would often use C9 bulbs. Those are bigger, and for residential roof lines we would use C7. So C7 LED bulbs. They come in warm white. S4 lights is where we used to get a bunch of our lights.

Speaker 1:

I cannot speak to the quality of what they are doing today. It's been many years since I ordered from them. They are a wholesaler, so they don't sell retail. So you will need to get a reseller's license, which is literally you fill in a form online and I think you get a reseller's permit like instantly. So I think in order to purchase from them you're going to need a reseller's license.

Speaker 1:

We know some people who chose to just pay the taxes up front on the materials and then they did not want to deal with filling out the paperwork for the reseller's permit. You got to figure out what kind of accounting you want to do. We did it that way. We did wholesale, we got the discounts. Eventually we started ordering pre-season in bulk and you get an even bigger discount.

Speaker 1:

But so LED C7s C7 spool we usually did like one white and one either green or black, depending on what was available Boxes of SPT plugins that fit the wire gauge that you order for those spools. And then we do cases of LED five mils in warm white. We tried to stay away from the LED minis when we could, mainly because when you install them they can catch on things a little bit more because they've got a point on them, whereas the little hats like were super easy. We would pre-prep all of our materials before we showed up at any job site. So before the season started you don't need to do any prepping for the spools, but for the LED 5 mils you need little snips because you have to cut off the tags, otherwise the tags are really ugly in the trees and things. You just do a little snip in one spot and then it pulls right off. So as many cases as you can afford of that, that's going to be the number one thing you put on bushes and trees.

Speaker 1:

So, as you were saying, we're just talking about residential at the moment and what you do is you kind of create an assembly line so you can be quick at it, but you snip, snip, snip, snip, get all the tags off and then you start usually with the female end. You grab one in your hand and you just start rolling it around to create kind of like a ball, because then you can take the ball, you can take the male end, plug it into the extension cord, wherever you've set that up, and that's where you start and then you just grab the next one and you can continue. But let's see beyond that. You need regular outdoor heavy duty green extension cords or black or white like whatever it is. Again, that's going to be the most hidden as you go from the power source to where the various lighting is right.

Speaker 1:

So let's just take a standard house. You find the outlet in the garage. You're like great, I'm going to use this outlet because it's got 20 amps on it. Nothing else is running on it, so it can be dedicated to the lighting. You'll go from there and you'll put like a timer right. So an outdoor rated timer you can use indoor if it's indoor, but usually for 20 amps, 15 amps for sure, if you I don't know if you'll be able to find 20 amp, cause they were kind of tricky, but 15, 20 amp. And then from there you're going to put, say, an extension cord to run from the garage outside and then from there it's like they're called heavy duty adapters. They're like three part adapters and they've got, you know, the prongs so that you can split your lighting display from there.

Speaker 1:

So you kind of want to have an overall idea of the plan. When you meet with the client they're going to tell you what they want to do, like I want to. You know, do the roof line and I want to do these windows. I kind of want to do something around the doorway and I want to do these bushes and trees. So for you it's a puzzle. It's like great, how am I going to get electricity to each of those parts so that I'm not like running lights across the lawn Right? And then what else did you say in there? You said supplies, so ladders per truck. Okay, we would have a step ladder, then we would have a 24 foot self-leveling ladder so you can get self-leveling feet where we were in the Bay area. So we needed ladders that could go on uneven ground.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

And they have these self-leveling feet that are really cool but you buy them as an aftermarket thing. So 24 foot ladder and then like a 32 foot extension ladder, so those are both extensions. We got a painter's pole without the roller, so just the hook with the pole that helped us hook things. You know, box of timers, several timers. We would pre-program the timers before the season started. Just, you would not believe how much human error there is in setting timers AM, pm. Like whoops, I turned it on to go on at 8 AM and off at 4 PM instead of the other way around.

Speaker 1:

And then if you do have areas where you suspect like sprinklers might get water into the connections, you can use dialectic grease which you put in there. But just forewarning that it's a little bit messy and so when you come to take the lights down, it's just something that has to be wiped. It's just a little bit annoying but it helps to keep the moisture out. You can't, do not tape your connections. Tape connections are like they're so dangerous because water will get through that tape and then it could cause a fluctuation in the electrical system, it could trip it, it could cause a fire hazard that way. So don't tape.

Speaker 2:

So any of you guys use any of that. I seen like the little plastic housings that kind of go over the connections. You guys play with any of those?

Speaker 1:

We did not. Okay, but that was just us. I know there's a lot of different methods. There's the heat shrinking, there's maybe a silicone I think it was and beyond that, oh, staple guns, j21 staple guns. So J21 staples and staple guns are light duty. They more or less pop out.

Speaker 1:

If you are taking the roofline lights off and you're able to hook it and then you're pulling it down and it's not on any sort of trim, it's in the gutter, then the gutter will, the clips will all just go a little, it'll literally unzip. So you'll just go like this and you'll, you'll watch it and you'll be like wow, that's like a domino effect. Every now and then the clips get stuck so you can use that painter's pole to fetch them down without going all the way up there on an extension ladder. And then for the staples, we and this was just us, I don't think every company does this, but you know we were trying to offer a really like a really high quality white glove service. So we would make sure to take the staples out if they were visible. I know that other people just leave them in, and the problem with leaving them in is that they might rust and then they might create a little bit of a stain mark on the window trim and like we just didn't want to do that to our customers. So you need clips. So they have all-in-one clips that are suitable for roof linesters. The staples will go on wood.

Speaker 1:

And then zip ties. You need, like black zip ties, clear zip ties. Again, make it blend and what we would also do, so that we did not have to put a ladder up. Let's say that we wanted to zip tie a cord to the top near a gutter, near the downspout or something like that. You don't want to wrap around and you don't want to zip tie tight, because then you have to go up and snip it. But if you put it on somewhat tight and then you snip one side of it, it's enough to just hold it. But then when you come to take it down and you'd give it a little yank the zip tie just comes off and you just have to go and collect it in the grass or wherever it falls and along with everything else. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so with that, the efficiency of the install. I do remember I'm sorry, your husband's name is Mark, Is that right? Yeah, yeah. So I was listening to your podcast with him the other day and he had mentioned something specifically towards installing with efficiency. For you know the takedown, which is kind of what you're talking about.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, the the clips. You're using those on like um, so I'm in colorado, we have a lot of tile roofs in the area on that, so I can actually clip to the tiles. Or are you guys going to like soffits, gutter?

Speaker 1:

okay gutter, or you can go right underneath the gutter and there is I don't know what that's called. There's usually a trim piece.

Speaker 2:

The fascia board.

Speaker 1:

Maybe, yeah, you will. This is going to be a custom trim. You're gonna have to figure that out like one by one. I we didn't work with a lot of tile out here, so, okay, I know we had some spanish terracotta tile jobs and, yeah, the clips are a little funky on those because you want them to sit really straight, right, yeah, and, and when the tile is really thick, there's probably at this point somebody who has created a clip that is specifically for that tile, so you might just have to search that one okay, but beyond that, if you're like at the eve of a roof and so are you clipping on like the fascia board, or would you guys, because there's probably no gutter on the ease, right?

Speaker 1:

even the roof. So when it was shingle shingle, there are shingle clips. Those are easy because you just clip along the eaves You're talking about, like the ridgelines.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the ridgelines. So you just clip to the ridgelines. Tile is a little tricky because if you walk on tile you can crack it yeah.

Speaker 2:

And that's actually one of the questions I have. Do you guys experience any of that?

Speaker 1:

I mean, it sounds like you don't have a lot of tile, but we don't have a lot of tile, but we we would usually explain to the customer that your roof is tile and walking on tile is it's just it might crack it. So we would maybe steer them away from trying to do the ridge lines on their roof if they had tile. Okay, we would focus on other areas, other landscape features or other things. And if they want you to do the tile and they're willing to have tile replaced as needed should it break, this is all just stuff you can include in the disclaimer.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so is that something you guys kind of would exclude if you were to damage tile use? Hey, this is just kind of inherent risk You're going to have to be willing to deal with after we leave, or is that something that you would remedy before you left?

Speaker 1:

We for sure would let them know if it happened, and then they could have their roofer come and replace that tile piece. I mean we're not roofers, so I don't know how complex that procedure is. If it was easy like, hey, just pull this one out and put the other one in, but if there was any risk to the integrity of the system, then I mean I would just say, look, we'll let you know, we'll try to step lightly as much as we can and just know that there's a risk, and so we'll definitely notify you if there's a crack.

Speaker 2:

Okay, what about, like, leaning ladders up against houses? Did you have any issues with, like I don't know, damaging stucco or scuffing paint or anything like that?

Speaker 1:

So with like new construction places. It's so funny because the window trim is sometimes made with styrofoam.

Speaker 2:

It is yes.

Speaker 1:

You know it is the oddest thing. We did not have very many new construction places and, yeah, you do have to kind of be aware of that, so you can't really lean up when it's styrofoam. You have to lean up on the actual face of the building but not directly on the styrofoam, and we tended to so while we had these. They were like cushiony parts that went on top of the ladder so that when it pressed against it it wouldn't put too much pressure. Okay, we had this one circumstance where when we rested the ladder up against the house and we had those, when they stepped on the ladder it actually dragged down on the surface and it was that the house had soot on it. So the house had, like from the cars it hadn't been pressure washed maybe in several years, and so the legs of the ladder like kind of just made these clean marks. But that was the only house that we experienced that with. We didn't have other houses where that was an issue.

Speaker 2:

Interesting. So with with the materials, um, a couple of questions here. Is the homeowner purchasing those? I mean it's part of your package, so you guys are supplying them correct.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we, you can do it either way. Supplying them correct yeah, you can do it either way. We started out where we would sell them, the lights, and put them in a bin and then the client would store their lights at their house. We stopped doing that after several years, and especially when we switched over to LED, because what we found was our team would turn up at the house, open up the bin and then something would have stopped working, or maybe they decided to change the look of their job and these custom cut lines no longer made sense and it just started feeling inefficient, like we're wasting all of this time at the job site trying to sort out how to use the customer's existing supplies. This would have just been easier if we could have just gone to our sort of stockpile and gone hey, there are bins of led five mils. We've already estimated this tree needs 10 strands, that tree needs 15 strands. Just use it. And then we would lease the lights and supplies to the customer and we would replace those lights and supplies on an ongoing basis, like about every two to three years, and then we just priced that into the structure of the job. So we always, always wanted to have great quality products. If you keep the LED lights for too long, they look faded, they look old, they kind of just look like they've had a life. So the new lights they can blend with your existing stock in like a pretty natural way, because it kind of just creates a bit of a speckled you know, starry night look.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, every season we were replenishing and adding and we were testing outside of the season.

Speaker 1:

Anything that looked like it was not good enough quality got recycled and then we would just keep our inventory.

Speaker 1:

That way we started having bins where it was like short strands of C7s, long strands of C7s and then if the person had a roofline and we felt that they were consistently going to book that roofline, we did start binning their roofline lights and we would label their bin with the person's name and the address and we would keep that in our storage and just make a note on the work order that this person has a bin, one bin, two bins, three bins, four, how many bins they've got in our storage so that they could get retrieved for that job. If you think about it, if you've got boxes or bins of extension cords and your three-point adapters and your LED five mils and your bulbs and all your things, and then you just have these custom cut lines from previous years. That's so much easier to work with than showing up to a bin and going what have they got? And like did the customer use some outside of the season and not put them back? It's just, it became easier and, honestly, it's more profitable to lease the lights.

Speaker 2:

When you say that you're like doing the replacement, are you replacing just the bulb?

Speaker 1:

No, the whole strands. So yeah, we the LED C7s and C9s. They last quite a while, like we would If we stored that customer's roofline lights in a bin and we pulled them out. When you test them you'll be able to see are any of them faded and you can replace those as they're faded Again after about two to three seasons it would fluctuate depending on the supplier. You want to replace those bulbs entirely, just to keep the display looking top-notch so that it doesn't look old. You know what I mean. Yeah, we were constantly making sure that our trucks had a fresh face. We just take care of the branding that way, and quality of your work is represented in the quality of your displays and the quality of your products is shown.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, so what about timing In terms of your advertising? When did you start advertising for the season and when are you trying to start booking and actually starting your installs? I think I heard you say one of your podcasts you started maybe early November with your installs through kind of mid-December. Is that kind of the install range?

Speaker 1:

So first season? Yes, by the time we sold our business, we were installing lights in July.

Speaker 2:

Oh, wow.

Speaker 1:

It became a six month season towards the end, and that was because of the commercial jobs big properties, parks, things like that who would want their lights up before Halloween, and they didn't necessarily care when the lights went up, as long as we could guarantee they were up in time for Halloween. And you know, they start probably opening for Halloween at the end of September. Even so, the very first year, though, our first job was on November 4th and we printed out two to a sheet, these little flyers, and we probably printed off a hundred of these, cut them in half. I gave half to him and I took half. He would literally skateboard around blocks and drop these off. You can't put them technically in the mailboxes, because that is like US property. You can, however, rubber, band them to you know gate entrances or doors or things like that. And it really it was less than an hour, I mean it was probably only 30 minutes.

Speaker 1:

We were walking and I got the first phone call and we targeted a very, very high net worth area. So we weren't living in that area. We drove to that area, parked our truck, got out, started doing these walks among the blocks and dropping off until we ran out. And then, once we got that call, I kind of used the whole. I mean it makes me cringe a little bit now, but that concept of fake it till you make it a little bit where the person called and I just acted like I knew exactly what I was doing and I just said, hi, this is Anne at the Christmas library.

Speaker 1:

I was like would you like to schedule a free estimate? And she said yes, and I was like, great, How's tomorrow at this time? And I did the estimate and I was so nervous and she didn't ask how long have you been doing this? She didn't ask any questions like that. If she had, we were at that point a part of a network. So I sort of fudged a little bit and just said the Christmas light pros have been installing since, blah, blah, blah. I've been with the company for less than a year.

Speaker 2:

Okay, that's. One of my questions is do you think that being honest about hey, like we're brand new or we're just getting started Do you think that would have helped or hurt in any kind of way?

Speaker 1:

I think it's fine. I think, honestly, what people want is authenticity. They want trust, honesty. I always think in sales or interactions it's a nicer way to move through the world is honesty and not the salesiness. So in some senses I know it helped us that we were beginners because clients as we were. You know, our business was maybe eight years old at that point. And I have this one client in mind, he's actually a, he's famous, well-known, and he and his wife came and they just said, you know, it just brings a smile to our face we're so proud of how far you've come with this business we see your trucks everywhere and we're just so happy that we were one of the first you know and and so they knew. Obviously we're just like eager to do a good job and grow a business.

Speaker 2:

So with that first house that you priced, I understand you guys kind of took a course right and it got some help from the Christmas light pros that you were associated with, right. Yeah, did that teach you how to do the pricing? Or how did you walk up to a house and go okay, this is what it's going to cost?

Speaker 1:

It did, it did and there's some very general pricing. I mean I can only speak to our area and our area. Everything out here is expensive. So you know, we at the time when we first started would send a team of two people and do $. Then we would just tell the client that the takedown is included free of charge. Because truly that's kind of how we worked out the pricing was that we were charging for install, knowing that the takedown is so fast and that's what we started with.

Speaker 1:

We ended up changing it as time progressed and the skills of our team improved and we started having supervisors with crew leaders, with crew members and kind of factoring in like okay, the crew members are, they're brand new, they're just learning. It's not that the stuff is difficult, but you speed up as you go. So my husband could do a job solo in like two hours that a team of two might take three hours to do towards the end. You know what I mean Because he was so fast at it. So if I, if I was sending him on the job, then I would increase that how much we were charging per hour. If I had multiple supervisors on the job, then I would increase.

Speaker 1:

You know what I mean, but if it was mainly just one crew and one leader, then it was $2.50 an hour. And we started sending teams of three and we started doing $3.75 an hour. The jobs were, you know, getting more complex and we found that what is that expression? Whereas the sum of its, the sum, is not equal to its parts. So it was like three people could have so much more efficiency than two people. Yeah, we ended up sticking with teams of three.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so we'll going back to the pricing. So you're, it sounds like, regardless of the number of people you're figuring, roughly $125 an hour per crew member. It seemed like.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the pricing is a little bit nuanced because if you're at a job where everything is trees, let's say you get a job doing like a cityscape and it's all trees on the sidewalk, not only is that more time consuming, you have potential vandalism that you have are going to have service calls for which you charge for, but then you're setting up power like every two to three trees. If you do one block of trees and you try to daisy chain all of them together, by the end you'll have voltage drops. So you want to at least try to have a power source in the middle of the block and then from there go tree to tree to tree. But residential it's a little bit more just about figuring out again like where's the power source? Because you might not be able to run everything off of one power source. And so if you have to use three different power sources, well, now you have three different main extension cords, three different timers.

Speaker 1:

All of that adds up like extension cords. We might charge out at 20 bucks an extension cord to lease it, which is great because you're basically making your margin every year on the product and then the timers we might charge out at $40 a timer to lease the timers have like a one-year lifetime like they do, that we could not find a great timer supplier. So anybody listening in who knows how to make timers like, yeah, there's a need for good timers. And I think it's nuanced because some areas will take longer than you think and be more of a headache and some things will be really straightforward.

Speaker 2:

So, as you're, you're not like leaving a customer's home with a quote in hand for the customer, right? You're having to go back and calculate okay, I need so many lineal feet of lights and so many timers and extension cords, and then you're packaging all that together and providing a quote 24 hours later, or something.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So we always ran our business by like the sooner the better. So if you meet with a client, if you have the ability to get them their quote by the end of the day I would, because speed really matters in customer service they will trust them that if they call you and they need something, they're not going to have to wait until tomorrow to get a response. So the sooner you can get it the better. I would go usually with like a clipboard, generic piece of paper. I'd write down the client's name, address, phone number, email, any contact information. Then I would put power source. I'd note what the power sources were that we were going to use for that job and then from there on, like a left column, I would put the type of supply so LED, five mil, warm white and then I would put kind of in caps in the description area like large oak tree to left of front door, something. Really you got to make sure whoever's reading that knows exactly what you're talking about. And then I would be very specific and I'd say wrap tree from two feet up to 15 feet using six inch spacing. That means, like on the spacing of the strands, that I would make a note where it says supplies needed. It'd be like extension cord three point adapter. You know 12 strands of 25 foot led, five mil warm white, six inch spacing like very specific right, because you want no discrepancy. And then that way you then you go to the next thing. You're like LED C7s warm white Light. The roof line from the left corner, including the center peak, to the right Does not include ridgeline. Estimated use of approximately 75 feet LED C7s, one extension cord, one adapter.

Speaker 1:

I would spell it out because if they chose to get the whole job, say, I'd know exactly what to order because I put it on there and then that was both for me, it was for the client and it's for the installer. So I would do the whole job that way. I would try my best not to do an a la carte menu pricing. I would explain to the customer I'm going to provide you with the pricing for the whole job and this is this quote is fixed, it doesn't go up or down unless you change, you add or take away. Then it was I would put labor price X, that's your hourly that you've figured out for your team, then leased lights and supplies and I'd put the value there of what that was, and if there were any discounts, obviously, and then the total, and then the total $2,250. And then in the final box I would put the details of what I thought were pertinent, like includes installation, servicing and takedown. Includes all leased lights and supplies.

Speaker 1:

And we never even got signatures. I would only get signatures for commercial jobs, but other people may disagree with that. We didn't have people who really backed out, so it never was a need. And then there were the terms, of course. So payment is due within seven days of installation, and then, if you have specific instructions for them, like later on, you can say that you know the timer will be in this location. The hours are set from this to this. All you need to do is plug in the extension cord into the timer on the day that you're ready for your lights to start coming on, and that's how we were able to install before Thanksgiving.

Speaker 2:

Okay, what about customers asking for special decorations like giant snowflakes or blow ups or anything like that?

Speaker 1:

I mean there's there's a balance between trying to meet your customer with what they want and with doing what is best for your company and business as well, while keeping in mind storage and just added complexity of you have to order that specifically. A lot of times those flats are huge and so storage is something you can charge for, or you can say do you have a place to keep these in the off season? Or we can offer you storage for X amount, and then you can obviously increase your total revenue that way. But if the customer asked, we would search it for them and offer the pricing. The displays are expensive, so we would sell those items to them and add our margin, and then ideally they're responsible for the storage because, like well, we were in San Francisco, so for us it was like great, now we got to store an eight foot waving Santa, like who wants to store that?

Speaker 1:

And yeah, so we did do some of those, but I'd say that the big displays and ornamentation were probably less than 5% of our clients. The things that were really popular and they're unfortunately bulky are those led spheres. They're like they come in like six inch, seven and a half inch and 10 inch and they just are three dimensional lighted balls that people hang from trees. It's pretty. But again we tried to streamline as much as we could, kind of gently nudge customers into using the line of items. That would be both beautiful but also efficient for the team, and we wouldn't say no, but we would provide them with the option.

Speaker 2:

So when you're going in, you're quoting a project, you're saying, hey, we're typically using a warm white bulb. And if they're going, hey, I really want the you know Clark Griswold special with. You know colors and all that kind of stuff, is that something you're negotiating or or offering, or yeah, yeah, yeah for sure.

Speaker 1:

We did some color jobs and the led colors are just really neon. So they're not. I don't like the way they look personally. So then that leads the door open for potentially doing color and incandescent. The incandescent game is a completely different thing because you've got now glass that you have to deal with, broken bulbs, entry for water. You've got calculations you need to run, so you can run.

Speaker 1:

I'm not fresh on my math, but my husband would know I think it's like 110 C7 incandescent bulbs in one run before you need to have a brand new extension cord because the SPT2 wire, the SPT2 wire, cannot hold the load of bulbs beyond that. So you get what I'm saying. Like then you're using a lot more extension cords, a lot more outlets. You're splitting things up more. It is more complex, it's doable, but if you can steer someone into using LED 5 mils then or LED C7s, then you're just minimizing the need for service calls. You're minimizing the need for power. And whenever we did incandescent lights at the end which again was very few customers, very, very few we would make them purchase those lights because they have such a high failure rate, the filaments they burn out and you can't install them when they're lit.

Speaker 2:

I unfortunately have experience with the incandescent lights. It's what we put on our house currently. And when you were describing the unzipping, I know that all too well because I clip to my tiles and it goes up and down the peak and every year without fail I'll get to the very end and I'll drop it something and it'll just unzip the whole thing and I break like six or seven bulbs and I'm starting all over and it's so frustrating.

Speaker 1:

So frustrating. Oh so you've this, you have experience, I do, I do, I mean.

Speaker 2:

I'm I'm very handy. I do all my own projects around the house. I've I've had several small side gigs that I've ran over the years, like staining fences. I had a small deck and, um, I deck business. We did decks and pergolas and arbors and monument signs. Just some small projects here and there. So I do have. I'm very handy, so I'm very-.

Speaker 1:

Perfect level of experience Like honestly that's what my husband came from. He had me to handle the other side of it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and my wife is you, she's very, she's an office manager, she knows the books, the insurance and all that stuff. So I'm like babe, we got this, we just got to marry our you know skills together and then run and do it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you do. You do have this. You've got the honestly the perfect skillset, Both of you combined.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well it's. I think that's probably why I was so drawn to your story.

Speaker 1:

I'm like this. This sounds like it's my story. You know, I feel like I could replace my family with your family and kind of have the same. You know it sounds like the same story. So it's to remember that we would think this when we had our business. We're like there are the people like us. They just do it themselves, Right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And then there are the people who are like us, who don't know how to do it. Well, they're just going to survive without. And then there are the people who want it, even though it's a luxury service, and they're willing to spend for it because it's not. It's not a significant amount to them. So you kind of want to find those people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's been something I've learned with staining fences. It's like you know, I stained my own fence and then my neighbor was like, hey, would you mind doing mine? And then it just kind of progressed and now I've done several hundred homes in my neighborhood and I just like I walk away and I'm like it's such minimal skill, it's work, but the skill level is so low. I just like I'm shocked that people will pay me what I'm charging to do it and I'm not like remind myself like you can't operate a business like that, cause there's always somebody who has a different, you know, skill set or need or want or whatever that's going to be willing to pay for that. So I I laughed when you guys told the story about your husband's comment to the reporter. I'm like this is me, this is something I would do and say shoot myself in the foot and then totally blow everything up.

Speaker 1:

I still tease him about that today.

Speaker 2:

It's great, I loved it.

Speaker 1:

So what else? What else do you feel like you'd need?

Speaker 2:

So your employees. I have a whole group of questions here regarding them. Where do you find them? How do you retain them? I know you talked about a little bit about bonuses to try to get them to come back and sign up early. What are you paying them? You said you had a three-person crew. I'm assuming one person is a lead, the other two are labor quote unquote. Are you paying them different wages? How does all that kind of shake out?

Speaker 1:

That would really vary depending on how long the person had been with us. There's the beginning of our business and then there was at the end. So at the beginning we hired friends If we couldn't find them through friends or friends of friends. Then it became it was Craigslist, which is like you cannot use Craigslist these days Like for that purpose. I don't think it's not the same as what it was. Maybe you can. We tried rock climbing gyms, anywhere where you might find somebody who is capable with heights, ladders, yeah. And then we ended up trying to just keep the team that we had. So anytime we found someone who is just a really good employee, we would give a raise every single year. So anytime we found someone who is just a really good employee, we would give a raise every single year.

Speaker 1:

When we first started, I think we did, you know, $15 an hour starting and then towards the factored, the bonus potential was one individual performance, two team performance and then three company performance. So we used a multiple that basically, if you get a one for each of those, then you get your full bonus, because it's 15% times one times one times. So you get full 15% Every year. Our company hit our target. So that was always a one and we would tell people that up front. The team performance, like how do they work with everybody? And then the individuals, how are they working as an independent person? And honestly, most of the time we just gave everybody their bonuses of 15%. We did hold back a few times and that was mainly for the obvious reasons. And the other bonus we started bringing on was a return for the season bonus. So the 15% bonus for the season we would pay that out at the end of the season after takedown.

Speaker 2:

And that 15% of what.

Speaker 1:

Wages.

Speaker 2:

Just total wages throughout the season. Total wages for the season Okay, so if they brought in 10 grand over the course of the season, just giving a bonus 15% of that.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, exactly. And. And we would pay that out after takedown because of employee retention, like if somebody left in the middle of the season and they didn't make it through, they're forfeiting that bonus. Okay. And then we would do a signing bonus where it's like, okay, you were with us last season, hey, we'll give you a thousand dollars just to come back for the next season, and that will be paid out in December and the final paycheck of December, so that you're guaranteeing you get them for the for the whole install season. They still are eligible for their full season bonus, which gets paid out after takedown.

Speaker 1:

And that system worked really well. We actually got it from a friend of ours who was an HR at a tech company and that was what they did and we were struggling with how to retain employees and pay them sufficiently. Towards the end, we had some team members who were making like, hey, we'll give you $10,000 just to return for the season, and then you get your 15% bonus on top and now you're on $45 an hour, you know. So it's. It was really kind of a gradual process. We started with the bear of what we could afford just to get started. Again, that was like minimum wage. I don't even think we did bonuses that first year, so minimum wage and then all the way until what I just described there towards the end.

Speaker 2:

So there's a team lead, yep, and he's getting paid slightly more than than the other two that he's leading, right, yeah, do? Does each team member have a specific role, or is it they just kind of all showing up and, hey, billy, you're going to be on the roof today, mike, you're going to be moving stuff over, or how does that?

Speaker 1:

So that would be up to the team lead. So the team lead would and again, this is all efficiency. So the person who is a team lead was motivated to get the jobs done in a quality manner but also efficiently. Just, you know, that's going to be really good for for them and their bonus, and then they might be able to take off from work a little early as well if they finish early. So the team lead was responsible for driving the truck. So they have slightly more responsibility just from the get go.

Speaker 1:

They're driving and then usually in the training what we would say is on your way to the job, basically delegate what the plan is, because your job as a team lead is to go and ring the doorbell and talk to the customer while everybody else is preparing lights and supplies, getting ladders off and offloaded and doing whatever the setup is.

Speaker 1:

So he would talk to the client hey, we're here, we're here to install your Christmas lights. Could you open up the garage for us? I'll let you know when we're done and we're taking off. So then you know, while he's doing that that takes five minutes the other people are pulling out the letters and they're just sort of setting things up, and then usually the team lead would jump into running all of the power, because the power is like a little bit more of a sophisticated process, because it is that puzzle, and they could tell the person okay, I want you to start with the mail end on the c7s, on this upper left roof line, on these trees. I'm gonna get power to the crux so you can start there, somebody out on the roof and then somebody on the landscaping straight away, and and then, once the lead was done with running all of the power, that actually the running of the power actually takes some time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So once they were done with that, then they could go and jump in wherever it was needed.

Speaker 2:

Okay, cool, what about you don't do any kind of like permanent installation on a home, like to speed things up for the next season, like, do you have a homeowner? It's like, hey, we're going to book with you, you know, indefinitely. You know, starting now, we're going to install hooks on your house to make the installation go quicker. So you're not doing the clips. Do you guys do anything like that?

Speaker 1:

We would try to avoid permanent installations if we could, mainly because we didn't want to be responsible for the integrity of the exterior of the home.

Speaker 1:

Because we didn't want to be responsible for the integrity of the exterior of the home, so if we would put eye hooks in sometimes if necessary, because we were going to span a long distance with Beecher lights or something like that, for example.

Speaker 1:

But it always made my husband just slightly uncomfortable penetrating the exterior surface of a building with a bolt, even if he siliconed it and did everything that he was supposed to, because he just felt like I'd rather not be the one responsible for this. So if it made sense to install a permanent fixture, we would put that in the description on the estimate that it requires the installation of a permanent fixture, we would give the dimensions and the details of what that fixture was and we would put details of how we would waterproof that surface. But then also add in a disclaimer that like we're not responsible if water somehow gets in to their structure and creates dry rot over seven years. You know, it was like we just didn't want the liability. It may have been that there never was a concern for that, but we were always just trying to minimize liability.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I get that. I try to avoid that on my own home and I know what I'm doing. Yeah, yeah, you just don't want to deal with it. What about proximity? So I'm assuming you guys have a central location, a warehouse, an office or something of some sort, or all the trucks coming back there at the end of the day, all the crew members are meeting there to get their materials for their day, and I'm assuming they're not doing a job, coming back getting supplies, doing another job and coming back they're leaving from the headquarters with four houses worth of materials or whatever Exactly.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So again, there's a how we did it at the beginning and then how we did it at the end. At the beginning it was it was kind of just like a figure it out as you go. We had one truck at the beginning and then that season we ended up running two trucks, but we just had a pickup truck and a box truck and we did have one central location, but that central location was our apartment and so all of our supplies were in the apartment and you would just grab stuff and go and if you really, you know, forgot something and you just run back and get it.

Speaker 1:

But as we grew, then you know, my, my husband and I purchased the property that we were living in. It was a building in the city and we ended up using the garages as the storage and he built shelving in there that was perfectly suited for our needs and that is where we would have the trucks parked, was in that area, or the lead could take the truck home. So if they took the truck home, then we would ask that they get. The lead's responsibility was to go and get the lights and supplies and to make sure they have those at like 640 in the morning, because we did. We operated 7. We operated 7am to 330 to try and work around traffic and they would get the lights and supplies and they would meet the team at the first job.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so just the lead is picking.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, or they'd catch a ride, or they'd meet at 640 if they wanted a ride and they'd go and catch a ride to the first job, okay, but yeah, they would bring everything that they needed for the day If they forgot anything. A lot of times that meant a hardware run, hardware store run, and so we had credit cards for our leads or supervisors, at least Towards the end. We had supervisors and pickup trucks that could buzz around to any of the job sites and help with these little needs here and there. We also I was going to say towards the end, when we had like six, how many trucks did we have? We had like six trucks.

Speaker 1:

So towards the end, what we ended up doing was always grouping installs by location and takedowns by location, because our one truck number one could be on Sacramento street and then literally two blocks away, could be truck number two working at a different job, and if one of them was missing the other, then they could. Just they knew who was near them and they'd be like hey, I'm, I ran out of my SPT spool, like I don't have any SPT white wire, have you got any? And then they could just send one of the crew to go run to two blocks to go and get the supplies from the other truck. But that was towards the end.

Speaker 2:

And you guys were using box trucks outfitted with supplies and whatnot in or not pickups.

Speaker 1:

Okay, yeah, yeah. So box trucks, and the reason why is that they're moving billboards. I would tell my husband constantly I know when you guys are in transit, because that's when I get phone calls.

Speaker 2:

Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

And all the trucks were pretty, so like they were, all we did red and white, light, red and white lettering, so it was just stood out like a Macy's truck. So I don't know, if you pay attention to box trucks that you see sometimes they're really well-designed and sometimes they're busy and you're like I don't even know what I'm looking at. So clean design, real clean, easy to read and easy phone number to remember. So if you want to get an 800 number, something that's easy for people to remember without having to write down your number, and that was great.

Speaker 1:

So he had to build ladder racks on the top, which he did with wood I think. And then he had to have a way to secure the ladders on top. So he had bolts that the chain could go through or whatever he was securing it with for safety so they didn't get stolen. I mean, we're in the city so we had to, like, think about those things. And then inside on one side of the truck, he built shelving. Big bins could fit underneath on the bottom and then he made like a little shelf so that as he's driving around you know, I don't know if you've ever driven an rv or anything but like stuff's not falling out. So he had a little lip and all the supplies were neatly organized and then on the other side of the truck was like where he would put uh wall mounted ladder situations for the step ladders, and then the floor space could be used for the spools and things like that.

Speaker 2:

Okay, the materials. You mentioned, I think, a supplier earlier was there one specific supply location that you're going to get all the materials.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so definitely S4 lights was our typical one. That's where we got our spools. S4 lights was our typical one. That's where we got our spools, our spt wire, maybe even our plugins and the led 5 mils and the led minis, like basically we got all of our lights from them. The extension cords we got from home depot or lowes and we would order in bulk.

Speaker 1:

If you get a, if you must know like if you have a contractor's, then you can get pricing there wholesale and so we would place a bulk order with them. And if you're in a pinch and you just need LED Christmas lights and you can't get the stock in time, because there gets to be this point when shipping is backlogged and you're like I need supplies, you can go to the box stores in your area and you can use those for a season. But it's not something that I would recommend because the spacing on the bulbs is not ideal for professional installation and the length of the strands is also not ideal for professional installs. We wanted LED 5 mil strands that were at least 25 feet long and sometimes longer.

Speaker 2:

You mentioned the spacing. Is there a typical spacing on the lights?

Speaker 1:

We liked six inch spacing for LED, five mils, because LEDs are really bright. So if you're doing four inch spacing or two inch spacing then, like, sometimes it's just like a little too much. And and with four inch spacing on the bulbs, if you're spacing your strands six inches apart when you're like twirling the lights around, then it looks more like a line. And if you're doing six inch spacing, with six inch spacing on the install as well, it's more lightly speckled. So that's just an aesthetic install as well.

Speaker 2:

It's more lightly speckled, so that's just an aesthetic. Okay, more alternating. Okay, cool Insurance.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You have a big insurance requirement. What did that look like?

Speaker 1:

I mean, you don't have a big one, but people like to know that you're insured and bonded For commercial jobs. They're absolutely required. They will ask you for additional insured certificates in order to do the work. We we had an insurer who gave us unlimited additional insured, so it's not like we had to pay extra every time we asked for that and the insurance was so. There's workers comp and then there's general liability and I want to say the general liability ended up being gosh. I'm like digging here, maybe 1500 a season, something like that Workers' comp was a lot.

Speaker 2:

And then you're baking that cost in, obviously, into your pricing. So is there a assumed labor cost, added material costs, and then you're putting whatever percentage on top of those to round out the whole number.

Speaker 1:

No, I just was assuming that was all included in that hourly. Oh, part of it, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So is that included of like your, your assumed profit is also baked into those numbers as well, yeah, okay, okay, cool. Is there anything I haven't asked or you haven't already shared that you think is like man? You really need to know this.

Speaker 1:

I think that the box truck is kind of key.

Speaker 1:

It's helpful because at the beginning it can dub as both your warehouse and your install truck and everything all in one place without having to lug and again you get the advertising. When we first started one of our first jobs in this neighborhood where we really wanted to work, mark was like hey, this job's only going to take us, you know, three hours. We both decided we'll make it stretch out so that you're there just for the exposure to the neighborhood. And again, if you're a really authentic, kind, honest, you're clearly wanting to do the best work that you can for the customer, then they will see that and then they will also recommend you to their neighbors. You can also say you're our first job in this neighborhood. You're our first job in this neighborhood and you know, if you're happy with the work and you like what we've done, we'd really be honored if you would let any of your friends or neighbors know and you can ask them to leave your review. We never really did anything with reviews because it just didn't matter for us. But yeah, there are ways.

Speaker 2:

So you said reviews. So are you guys? What's the importance of a website getting started up? Do you guys have all that set up when you were first getting going?

Speaker 1:

I think a website's pretty important because they're going to want to know that you're legit and that's at least one step to feeling legit, some validation, yeah, yeah. And I would try not to put your personal phone number on anything, because you'll just get too much spam.

Speaker 2:

I made that mistake. I blocked five numbers a day. It's so obnoxious and I can't thank you enough. When you actually responded to me, like I said, I was really blown away. I've emailed people that I've discovered online before and you get some assistant or some automated message or no response at all. And the fact that you've actually not only responded to me more than once, but also taken an hour of your day to talk with me is just amazing. So I wanted to say thank you. It's awesome. So thank you for your time.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, no, I'm more than happy.

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Anne McGinty

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