Bryant Gillespie: Hi guys.
Welcome to the next edition of the better sign shop podcast.
I've got my friend and colleague Peter Caris, the sign shop Yoda with me.
Hey
Peter Kourounis: Pete.
What's up, everybody.
What's going on, Brian.
How you doing man
Bryant Gillespie: and missing today is Mike the sign burrito, Riley?
Yeah, having technical difficulties,
Peter Kourounis: apparently Mike lives in like the Bermuda triangle, nothing works.
There's no wifi.
There's no apps.
There's no microphone.
There's no cameras.
It's just not there.
Bryant Gillespie: All right.
what's the update with you, Pete.
How's how are things?
My man.
Peter Kourounis: very busy on a lot of fronts.
we just completed a couple of projects on the consulting side, working on
some really great new projects with some new clients on programming, some
products in their shop box accounts.
My sign shop is busy, pumping out estimates.
I actually got in the bucket truck last week, which was nice.
I haven't done that in a little bit.
did you put up search?
no.
Listen, my installation days.
behind me.
I'm not a, well, I shouldn't say they're behind me.
I am not the skilled installer by any chance, but definitely training somebody
on like safety procedures on, on the bucket, how to stay safe, how to use it,
how to operate it efficiently, obviously, with the prices of gas these days, I
don't like wasting that kind of money.
So, just training them on best practices on how to use the.
Got I met a couple of new people this week met a couple of new vendors.
I'm really excited about implementing in my team, in my system.
And, they'll be coming out here, hopefully next week.
I think they're gonna come out here and meet my team and supply us with
a whole butt load of samples and really cool new things that, we can.
Get introduced to in our market.
I'm really excited about, are you going
Bryant Gillespie: tease everybody about it?
Peter Kourounis: I'll let you know after I'll let you know, after I, I
validate it, I'm I got I'm hopeful.
I'm hopeful.
but we'll see.
We'll see, I've seen really cool promises before.
Bryant Gillespie: haven't we all
Peter Kourounis: what's going on in your
Bryant Gillespie: world.
our middle daughter started pre.
This week, so,
Peter Kourounis: oh yeah.
That's right.
Like school started like for almost everybody these past weeks, right?
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
Yeah.
So, I was really concerned.
I thought, okay, I'm gonna get a call from the, uh, Principal
like, Hey, you gotta come get her.
she's either a screaming and crying uncontrollably or it B is
being very mean and has knocked somebody out or something like that.
But she loves it, man.
So I'm super proud of her.
We shoved her out of the van on Tuesday morning.
Her first day, she kind of was nervous about it.
You could tell that look in her face.
She was like, ah, I don't know.
I wanna, can you guys walk me in?
We're like, Nope.
That's not how this works.
You get out that nice lady over there will walk you in.
Peter Kourounis: so this was her first day.
This was her first day.
You're doing yeah.
Her first day.
Yeah.
And you've gone through this.
How many other times.
just once before, I've never gone through this.
And I think about it.
My, I probably won't be going through it for a couple years, but I think about it
every day, how I'm going to react when that happens, whether that school bus
comes or whether I have to drop it off at school and I'm gonna deal with like
the terror of crying I might be crying.
I'm probably going to cry.
I think it'll be like the hardest day.
I need to take off of like work for a week because.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, it is definitely a mental health a day.
Yeah.
The first time around, I was definitely, there were tears in my, I don't know
if I would call it like bawling and squalling or anything like that,
but definitely shed a couple tears.
But, you, this time around, I still felt all those emotions,
but, know, my wife is a little more emotional than I am at times.
So, she definitely balled her eyes out.
Yeah.
It's yeah, it's definitely a tough day, but a proud moment as well.
the other stuff kind of pales in comparison to that, but yeah, we've
been working on the platform a bit.
We've made some progress there, so excited to, hopefully throw some news
out there about the signed pricing course and the rest of it soon.
Peter Kourounis: You're like a, you're like a brainiac when it comes to this
sort of thing, you keep updating us with like screenshots of what it looks like.
And I gotta tell you, you have come up with some really great ideas and
things that I couldn't even think of.
And just stemming from a couple of conversations that you and
I've had over the past few weeks.
Like you, what you've done with that platform is just it's greatness.
It's greatness.
This industry is going to need it.
I I'm not, I'm dancing around calling you a guru.
Yeah, well, listen, if you guys don't know what we're talking
about right now, that's okay.
You'll find out soon enough, what this soon enough, what this platform
that we're talking about is all about.
We're gonna be, we're gonna put the, the finishing touches on it here and up in the
upcoming days where I should say Bryant's gonna put the finishing touches on it,
cuz I have not the slightest idea how he does what he does, but it looks great.
It functions fantastic.
And there will be a lot of really compelling resources that we have talked
about here on, on some of these podcasts and some of our mastermind calls and
these resources are just gonna be readily available for you to use because, and like
I said, I may have said this on another call, nobody is doing what we're doing.
Nobody is even coming close to doing what we are going to do for sign, shop owners.
It is.
Something I am up my man.
Bryant Gillespie: That's really excited about to live up to
. Peter Kourounis: Well, I think I think you got some of the best minds
in the business, in this mastermind.
Lot of great people have gotten some good feedback and Hey, if you want to
make a suggestion, I saw a suggestion here, in one of the comments, but if
you wanna make a suggestion, you can do.
Just get us up, hit us up on the Facebook chat, tell us what you'd like to see,
and we'll throw it into the pipeline.
Maybe we'll get it edited.
Bryant Gillespie: So I guess we should probably actually
get into the topic today.
So, what do we got today?
We've got a couple of guests actually joining us from Hilltop signs and
graphics, Mike Davis and Scott Dean.
They're gonna be on in just a little bit.
we're gonna have those guys on for a conversation about their shop.
They
Peter Kourounis: got a really great story.
They got a really great story.
Ah, yeah.
Yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: I like the story, man.
And I look forward to chatting with those guys.
so the topic.
we've talked about this on one of our other mastermind calls
recently is the looming recession or the inflation monster.
I think the code name we gave this one was surviving.
The next shop apocalypse.
is COVID classified as a recession.
Peter Kourounis: well, I don't know.
Most people do.
they use the term very loosely.
I mean, it, I call it the shut down, what that means, shut down what that means to
somebody it's different for everybody, but I know certain shops stayed open.
Certain shops never closed.
So for some shops, it was just a matter of like mine.
Just a matter of.
Figuring out a way to not be stubborn and pivot
Bryant Gillespie: yeah.
I'm gonna read some headlines off to you because I was researching this one.
These are like some of the top stories right now.
Worse is yet to come economist.
Steven Roach says us needs a miracle to avoid the recession.
Steve hanky says we're going to have a Whopper of a recession.
I don't know like why that was in quotes.
Peter Kourounis: we're gonna have lots of burger king,
Bryant Gillespie: 72% of economists say we're gonna have a recession in 2023.
. So you read some of these headlines, it's all doom and gloom, whether that is fact
or not, or whether it comes to fruition.
I, we obviously can't give that prediction, but I think
Peter Kourounis: when you're re oh, go ahead.
When you're research, when you're researching those topics, Do you
see anything that's positive?
Do you see anything that says there's not gonna be a recession in 2023?
Stop listening to the ho focus, stop listening to the BS.
Is there any of that?
let's see.
Bryant Gillespie: well here's one Nobel prize winning economist
says he doesn't see anything that resembles a recession in the us.
So.
Yeah, there is no consensus on this, but, you talk to a lot of people, everybody
is obviously concerned about inflation, which is at 8.5% here in the us.
yeah, for the average guy that gets a 3% raise every year.
That's obviously not even keeping.
Pace with that.
So materials are going up, prices for everything are going up.
It's my kids drink like six gallons of milk a week.
so milk is like outrageous right now.
I feel like a 85 year old man, Hey, back in the day, like
Peter Kourounis: the milk man used to come to the door and it
used to be a dollar 15, a bottle.
Now it's tow dollars and 15 cents a bottle gave that's highway robber.
Bryant Gillespie: That's exactly what I feel like.
But yeah, obviously this is, I just come up a lot in our mastermind group.
It's come up with, some of the other posts I've seen on the sign shop groups.
Are we entering a recession?
Are we already in a recession?
What do we do about the crazy inflation?
if we do NRA recession, how can we protect our shop?
So that's the topic today.
Me.
Peter Kourounis: Let me ask you.
away.
Oh no.
I got a bold opening statement.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
I'll around this entire theory.
Bryant Gillespie: are we in a recession now or is one coming soon?
Peter Kourounis: Yeah.
listen, I think that I'm not an economist.
I have money in the market money in real.
and doesn't matter what channel you turn on.
You're going to get different information.
Are we heading into a recession?
there are a lot of differences between today's economic climate and.
Well, our last three recessions, in our last economic climate, it's, there
are a lot of differences in technology.
There are things that we can do today that we were not doing
in 2007, 2008, late into 2009.
the ability of being able to work remotely was a hard, was
not even a thought that long ago.
So do I think that certain markets are gonna get affected by what's going on
or have been affected by what's going on certain in industries being affected?
I think the short answer is yes.
And, but I'm not going to put the hammer down.
yes, we're going into a recession.
or you, yeah.
Shut your shops down.
No, that's not where I'm going.
I think the, that I want you to understand is that no matter what,
it's called a crisis or inflation, we're going into inflation.
What the hell does that even mean?
You, the president of the country just got on the Twitter, like a
week ago and said, I'm eliminating.
School debt or whatever.
It was $10,000 worth of student loan debt.
I was like, hell yeah, go team.
I didn't care.
Who's in office, but I was like, that's if that's something that affects
the climate again, I, the economy, I don't know what the long term
ramifications, I'm a sign shop owner, man.
I don't care what goes on in those rooms with all those politicians
and people that make this official.
all I not wanna know is what does my daily routine look like when this does happen.
And for a lot of us that have that technician mindset, or even a manager's
mindset or an owner's mindset, that is a very different for everyone involved, does
your, do your employees need to have a conver, do you need to have a conversation
with your employees ex expecting them to be flexible with time off?
To work around some of these hard costs that you're gonna be expecting.
Are the owners going to have to look at manufacturing things themselves rather
than outsourcing giving way more margin?
Because wholesale rates have increased.
There is a lot to unpack about how this can affect.
Sign shop owner again, specific to this channel, this station here,
we're talking about sign, shop owners, print, shop owners, alike.
We want you to have a better sign shop.
That is the name of the show.
We want you to have a better sign shop.
So in other words, how does that happen?
What does that look like?
and honestly that's where the question starts.
That's where this whole thing starts is if somebody gets on
the TV today and declares, the United States is in a recess.
I don't know who that would be, but if somebody of high stature
gets on whatever news channel you watch and says, guess what?
Everybody we're in a recession, be prepared to shut down your businesses.
How are you going to pivot?
And that's gonna be the topic of today.
I hope we're gonna hear how this existing sign shop owner and his, and his partners
here were able to pivot during the last crisis, which was COVID when everybody
else shut down, what did they do?
I'm really eager to hear their story, again, and kind of introduce what
they did to you guys out there.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
Well said, man, you weren't lying about the great intro.
I like it.
if we harken back to the great shutdown of COVID, what were some of
the things that you guys experienced?
were some of the changes that you guys had to make in your shop?
Pete?
Peter Kourounis: Well, I did have to lay some people off.
That is, that was, that was a.
A detriment to what had happened.
certain employees did not come back.
They wanted to stay home.
They wanted unemployment, you can't, you're not gonna be able to solve
everybody's problems, but some people just would've rather stayed home.
So I lost some employees.
I kept the key ones, which was a vital piece for me.
I never had to dip into.
any type of reserve account, because we were able to keep things going, but just
under a different type of strategy, we were no longer doing business science.
And I say that with, I never thought I'd honestly ever say that a sign shop
where I never did signs for businesses.
It was nonstop in droves lawn signs and birthday signs.
Graduation signs and high school signs because you couldn't attend a
high school or college graduation.
So parents were thinking of ways to celebrate the occasion, the
monumental occasion of graduating.
So there was a lot of that.
And I just happened, I don't know if it's lightning in a bottle.
I don't know if it was, I don't know if it was just luck, but whatever
it was, I happened to be in a very.
Heavily saturated market, where there's tons of schools.
There's tons of kids.
There's tons of people living in several towns in five mile,
within a five mile diameter.
I'm go.
I have, I.
Millions of people that live in these towns.
So I was very fortunate, especially when you could see
oh, that kid just got assigned.
Now this neighbor got one.
And then that neighbor got one.
And how it's steamrolled for showed.
Yeah, they kind of, after that
Bryant Gillespie: social proof.
Yeah.
Peter Kourounis: And we put up one, I've never did anything like this,
where I was taking orders through Facebook and through Instagram, I
had never, that's not my strategy.
That's not our shop's target market, but this is what we were living off of.
I had some of the best sales months doing this, and I'm not afraid to admit.
I'm not afraid to admit it, 70, $80,000 a month in corrugated plastic signs.
I mean, I mean, we were stockpiling H stakes and order every, it seemed every
hour we were calling suppliers from, and this is, this was again being resourceful.
you have to, you, you're a local guy.
You can't just rely on the local guy anymore.
I was ordering things from Canada, Colorado.
I live in New York.
. Ah, if yeah, send me that sheet of core plus for $24 a sheet.
I don't care.
Get it over here because I'm making, I gotta, because well, not because
I cared about profits at that point.
I, I mean, we were making profits.
I mean, come on.
It's ink final and corrugated plastic.
We were killing it, but.
I didn't care.
I gotta keep the, I gotta keep the doors open, making a sale running.
Yeah.
Making a sale was more important than price costing materials like, oh yeah.
H stakes are now $6 a stake because we're low on supply.
Well, I was like, keep it coming.
Here's my credit card.
You wanna live off of your, you want my money?
Here's my money.
And I mean, okay, that's a pivot point now, do we don't do that anymore?
I think that wave is over, or has been over for quite some time, but you
know, you ask B a specific question.
This is what our shop turned into.
We morphed, I love that word.
We morphed into.
A shop that was literally pumping out fast signs.
Like every 15 minutes, there was a sign coming out the printer,
and that's not how it is.
Normally.
That's not how it was.
That's not how it is.
That's not how it was.
It's not, it's just this time period where, how, I don't remember how
long it was, but, we were doing everything we could to keep the
lights on and all my key employees, my project managers, my installers.
I sales people guess what they all did.
They learned how to use a quo cutter.
they learned how to become efficient in pumping.
They became delivery men.
They became, and that was actually like a bonding experience.
Like we were in the trenches, the owners were involved.
I was involved, I had nothing else going on.
Everything was shut down.
So why not?
I was like, yeah, sure.
I'll come.
I'll spend some, I'll spend the day with you guys.
I used a coral cutter and I'm, I don't have one of those Corex
machines I used to, and not anymore.
I would've made my life E easier.
Colex machines rather.
Sorry.
Excuse me.
Yeah.
but yeah, listen, I mean, we morphed into a shop where we built a better
and stronger team coming out of COVID.
I think we are now.
we think about it a lot.
Hey, remember, oh my God, that was crazy.
when we did 22 boards in 15 minutes, like that was insane.
That was insane.
that time period, and, the, we call it the box method and what we used
to do to pump these things out.
We had delivery zones and we were running cars with little birthday signs on it.
And, I mean, we don't do that now, but what we turned ourselves into to survive.
is what you have to do going into, you have to actually, well, I'm not saying you
have to, it's more of a philosophy if this does happen again, if COVID 22 comes out.
Okay.
And if this happens again, hist, history has to teach you something.
So what are you going to do?
And I hope that is going to pivot.
Not necessarily shut down.
And, I know I would pivot again and we
Bryant Gillespie: would.
lesson, number one, you gotta be flexible in a recession or
crisis or crazy environment.
Well said, man, that's I didn't know the extent of the banners and, corrugated
signs that you guys were doing, but that's yeah, I think a lot of people would get
hung up on, Hey, that's not what we do.
and certainly as you mentioned, that's not what you did, but what you had to do and.
You got through it came out the other side better.
So, yeah.
All right.
for sure.
Yeah.
Should we bring on our guests, Mike and Scott?
Peter Kourounis: Let's do it.
Bring 'em in.
All right.
Bryant Gillespie: All right guys.
So we are joined by our guests, Mike Davis and Scott Dean of Hilltop
signs and graphics out of Maryland.
Right.
Mike Davis: What part of Maryland?
Southern Maryland.
It's uh, Southern Maryland, Hollywood, Maryland.
So we're about 45 minutes to an hour south of DC.
So we're right.
That sweet spot right around.
excellent.
Peter Kourounis: Do you get a lot of, do you get a lot of customers in that
triangle there that like, that Washington, Virginia, Maryland market, you get a
lot of, we do go into different states.
Mike Davis: Yep.
We do.
We actually, we service a pretty wide section of the coast.
well of the Northeast, I should say pretty much the whole Mid-Atlantic region.
We will travel to as long as, customer's budgets allow for it.
and the guys wanna travel.
We.
What's that like
Peter Kourounis: working with like different states and counties
sign codes, like that's a lot to manage just in one state.
You guys get you can get a customer from DC and it be like a half an hour from you.
What's that?
Mike Davis: I'll let Scott?
reign in on.
Well, on that one, he handles a lot more of the, permit stuff and.
He'll explain that part of
Scott Dean: it.
it, serendipity, I guess we, we literally just got out of a meeting
with me and Mike and our two permit, people that do permits, like all the
time and the amount of permits we do and the amount of time it takes for
them to do it is just ridiculous.
And you, some of the stuff that they have to do is not even.
fact, I don't even understand it.
You don't, it's the bureaucracy and the, it, it just a simple story.
We have a big Aldi we're doing a sign for, and we've filed all the permits
and we went on a site visit yesterday and it wasn't the correct address.
So we have to start from scratch and it's been a two month process.
Oh man.
Pushing paperwork.
And then we fi this, isn't the address that's on your plans.
And they're like, yeah, this is our address.
And we're like, well, that's not what we filed.
So that.
And the bigger counties in Northern Virginia, DC, not so much the
local smaller counties in Maryland.
tho those are just a bureaucracy personified.
It's ridiculous.
Peter Kourounis: I imagine that's, I imagine whether you guys do that
yourself or whether you outsource that, that's gotta be a challenging
piece just from an SOP perspective.
Like what information you have to gather and things like that.
So I imagine that's what I thought of when you guys said Maryland
and like you're in that DC area.
I'm like, my God, they got, they could probably do Crazy amount of paperwork
that might make my life like explode, like stressful, like stress to the MTH degree,
just in that one factor right there.
and
Bryant Gillespie: I can't imagine fighting the DC
Scott Dean: traffic I there.
Well, well, I tell you to be, and it's not.
And to try to explain that to a customer, is it's hard to get through that.
Okay.
Our permit fee is what our permit fee and they're like, that seems ridiculous.
And then it, then we always offer the option.
You can file it yourself.
and we said this in a meeting today, every single one of them
always come back saying no way.
You guys got it.
but you talked, you talk to one permit expedite or one permit technician.
Their answer is different than this permit.
Technician.
It.
it's, there's no standard format for any county or within the county.
It's usually a one off.
It's always different.
Always different.
It's nuts.
Peter Kourounis: Yep.
Always different.
So that's what makes it so stressful is because it's always different.
Right.
Go ahead, Brett.
Bryant Gillespie: So, so let's back up for just a minute and, kind
of get an overview of your shop.
it can, one of you guys kind of tell the listeners out there, what
is Hilltop signs and graphics, kind of, what segments do you guys serve?
What type of products do you.
Peter Kourounis: I'll
Scott Dean: let Mike do that.
Sure,
Mike Davis: sure.
I can cover that.
so we are Hilltop signs and graphics.
we are what we would consider, I guess, a full service sign and graphics
company, meaning we do pretty much every segment that the industry has to offer.
We offer everything from little yard signs and banners to, fabricated
pylons, channel letters, vehicle wraps, vehicle lettering, striping, popup
displays, pretty much you name it.
If it is in the sign and or graphics realm, we touch it.
That includes service work.
one thing that makes us a little bit unique in our region, not necessarily
unique to the industry, but unique to our region is that we handle.
The entire things start to finish in house.
So we design, we fabricate or farm out the fabrication to our wholesalers,
and then we install it, give you a warranty on the installation.
And we service it after the fact.
So we have a ton of competitors in our region, just like
I'm sure most other shops.
But not everybody does all of it.
They might do the fabrication and the installation, but they're
like, eh, we don't really have, graphic designers on staff.
We can't do your branding for you.
We can't handle those pieces and parts, get something designed and then bring me a
drawing and we'll build something for you.
Well, that was one thing that when I bought the company from my parents,
that I said, you know what, we're gonna do the whole thing start to finish.
And that's really kind of set us apart.
In our region.
Peter Kourounis: Yeah.
How was that buying the business from your parents?
Was that a smooth transaction?
Was that a lot of no, we don't wanna sell it to you.
We wanna sell it to somebody else.
What was the fricking
Mike Davis: frack like there?
So I had already been running and trying.
Trying to take over the company essentially for about two years.
And, this was 2009, 2010.
So it was when the economy was kind of in the tank and we were
struggling to stay afloat, struggling to get paid, had all these issues.
And I had already been working for two years to kind of turn
things around and keep us rolling.
We were finally.
Coming out of it, reputation was coming back.
Vendors were getting paid, cash flow was starting to roll.
And, my mom was here with me every single day.
working, it was her company and she came in one day and she said, I'm done.
She said, either you buy it or somebody else will.
And she walked out the back door, got in her car and she left
Scott Dean: for the day . She had,
Mike Davis: I love that she had enough.
Peter Kourounis: She had, she just had enough.
Yeah.
The stress got to her Mike.
Well, tell me, what was the shop like back then?
what was it like to be in that shop?
What were you guys doing back then
Mike Davis: in terms of.
So it was a very different company back then.
So we were not Hilltop signs and graphics.
At that time, we were Hilltop graphics and gifts.
So we were a, we were a graphics and gift company and, we did, we
still did our, our vehicle graphics.
We still did wraps.
lettering striping, we still do ch class signage.
We still did pylon panels and that type of thing.
but we also offered dye sub based gifts.
So t-shirts mouse pads, coffee mugs, Christmas ornaments,
all kinds of different stuff.
and when I bought the company, I literally had already spent two
years shifting us into new stuff.
Fabricated signage, L E D retrofits, stuff.
We didn't, it was pretty much two employees.
It was me and my mom.
So I had to do things that I could handle with pretty much myself
and a couple buddies in evenings and weekends in terms of installs.
So the scale of things was still relatively small back then, but
I started the shift of us going in that commercial direction.
very nice.
when I purchased the company, changed the.
Hilltop signs and graphics, which is what we are now and all of those gift items
that I mentioned earlier, pretty much overnight, they were no longer offered.
you gotta sell
Bryant Gillespie: a lot of coffee mugs to make a million dollars.
Mike Davis: And I know that the ad specialty market in our industry, I
know that there are a lot of shops that.
D sub gifts and, small items and, small orders and stuff like that.
But the thing that I found when I started looking is I was like, man, I could
do one tenant panel in a pylon and say it's a $450 order at 35 to 40% margin.
Plus I charge for.
and Let's say the profit on that piece is, I don't know, 150 bucks,
200 bucks, something like that.
Or I could do one coffee mug who I charge $15 retail for, and I think I'm making
about three bucks and it probably takes about the same amount of time to make that
tenant panel as it did that coffee mug.
And so.
Once I did the math on that, it was like the dollars and cents was obvious.
It was like the gift items, just ain't where it's at, unless
somebody's ordering 300 of 'em.
And even then when I started looking at the bigger stuff, like doing
channel letters and some of the other larger fabricated pieces that we do
now, man, I could make, three, four grand on a piece that I never touch
or make 300 bucks on a set of mugs that I have to spend three days doing.
And it's it just, it was, it was very obvious what direction we were gonna
hit the writing was on the wall.
Yeah, absolutely.
Peter Kourounis: Absolutely.
So, so Mike, I got a real for me.
This is the million dollar question that I have for you.
just listening to your story so far, we've in this show and prior episodes,
and even in our mastermind group, we talk a lot about the mindset of
an owner and where they come from.
There's a lot of talk and a lot of discussion between a
lot of us get in this business.
we did.
We want, we were sticking, working for the men and we just thought
we could do it better ourselves.
So you came into this as an, as a technician, as an operations manager with
your mom and a former company of, Hilltop.
graphics and gifts.
Right?
And then what's it been like for you and I don't, I'm not talking
about from a, what you can do with your hands perspective, but like
now you're a business owner, right?
and if you didn't do a single installation or a single retrofit,
what's it been like for you?
To learn how to run your books or running a business or
marketing budgets and planning.
What's that been like from a technician mindset to a shift
where now you are an entrepreneur.
Now you are a business.
What's that been like for you?
Mike Davis: It's been a long road.
it's been, it's been a very long road, a lot of making mistakes, a
lot of spending, way too many hours trying to avoid being the entrepreneur
and stay in that technician role.
And, it's really been the last, I'd say two to three years where.
I don't really go on trucks very much.
I don't really spend too much time in the field.
I do invest.
I even invest a lot of my time in mastermind groups that I'm a member of,
in, personal development stuff that I know will help my ability to lead and
my ability to, make the company better.
but when I first came on board, I know and, and bought the.
one of the first things I took a business class that was for
entrepreneurs that was, run by our local small business development,
branch of our local government.
And they offered it for free.
It was a grant based thing.
And I said, heck, why not?
I'll take it.
And one of the biggest things that they.
Preached in this course, and this was, I don't know, a year or two
after I had taken over things was, figure out what you're good
at and hire for what you're not.
And so one of the first things that I did when I bought the company is that
I knew that keep keeping the books straight was not a strength of mine.
And it just was not.
And I knew that it wasn't a strength of my parents, and I knew that it plagued.
In the past.
So that was one of the first things I did was I said, I need an accountant
and I need a bookkeeper and it's gonna cost me money right off the jump.
But if I do that correctly, I won't have to ever worry about it.
And so that was one of the first things I did.
As well as like it's a smart booth.
Yeah.
Well,
Bryant Gillespie: I mean, we preach that a hundred times to everybody.
Heres yeah.
stop trying to do the finances yourself, hire somebody that deals in numbers
all day and get them to straighten you.
Peter Kourounis: Absolutely.
And you know, something it's not, it's a very common, it's very com.
It's very common to see that first person is the bookkeeper.
Cause when people think of business, they think of numbers, they think
of profit and law statements.
Oh my God, these financial statements, who's gonna manage all that.
So it's very common to see what you've did being like one of the
first things you've done, it.
was one of the first things I've done.
I could do this, get outta here.
I could do this.
Right.
And I could do this, a little bit cheaper than keeping you around
that, that there's a lot of us.
There's a lot of us that listen to this podcast that have that same
mindset that you have there, Mike, and that's one of the cool things about
this business is that you can get in from many different entry points.
you happen to be a family man, a family owned business, right.
And you had that door for you.
Not a lot of us have that.
So if you were an employee that you were a graphic designer and I
could do this better than anybody.
I could do this.
I'm gonna start my own.
Place, and then they have to learn how to become a business owner and they, and
like you said, they do fail more often.
So thank you so much for sharing your story there.
I'd like to kind of Bring in Scott here.
Scott, why don't you like introduce yourself and how you got
involved in here in, in Hilltop
Scott Dean: So, like we had talked about, I went to college, I had an
economics degree and I graduated.
I went to work for the go.
As a business financial manager worked for the government for about
14 years and got really tired of it.
And one day saw an ad for sign shop and didn't know a thing
about signs or installing signs.
So I went to work for blanket as an installer and that's, that was
seven, seven, almost eight years ago.
So we've grown together from a three person shop to a 14, 15 person shop.
my struggle with Mike is to keep him off the floor, keep him out of the books.
and that's why, when he was telling that story, I was like, that's absolutely.
wait a
Peter Kourounis: second.
Hold on.
hold on a second here, Scott.
Hold on.
I got two questions for you before you go on.
the first is you said that you were in finance for the government
business, financial manager.
Yeah.
Business financial manager.
are you doing the books for the business now?
Are you that bookkeeper that he was talking about?
No
Scott Dean: way, no way.
Peter Kourounis: Nope.
no.
So you don't touch the books?
I
Scott Dean: don't, well, I, the only way I touched the books is said, Mike, we
need some profit and loss statements.
Can we get those?
can we start being so we can make decisions based on numbers and not just
what we feel during the morning, you know?
Peter Kourounis: So your background, your background has a lot of really.
Components when it works with the government, but you had no sign, shop,
installation experience at all, huh?
Scott Dean: None at all.
Peter Kourounis: So what's that?
What was that like when you met Mike and Mike, I guess this is
a question for Mike, like Mike specifically, what made you hire Scott?
go ahead.
Tell him the story, Mike
. Mike Davis: So we,
Peter Kourounis: why would you hire somebody with no experience
that came from a finance background to install your signs?
Mike Davis: Oh, we hire people with no experience.
all the.
all the time, because in, in our region, we really don't have a ton
of applicants that are like, oh yeah, I used to work for so and so signs.
there is not that pool of applicants.
So especially back then, when I hired Scott, what I was looking for was
somebody who was physically able, somebody who had a good can-do attitude.
And I was honest, I was like, Some days really suck in this industry.
Like we work in the elements.
Like we work at Heights.
Like we work in the mud, we work in the snow, we work in the rain.
It's hot, it's cold.
Like sometimes stuff doesn't go together.
Like it's supposed to sometimes stuff breaks.
Like it's, that's just how it is.
The most important thing is that.
we keep a positive attitude and I will say Scott and I have been
on some really rough job sites.
And there has only been a handful that have completely kicked our butts.
And we're just like, Look, I really hate this job as much as you do, but
we can't go home until it's done.
So we either just freaking get it together and get it done or else, but, when I
hired Scott, he had a good attitude.
He was willing to come on and dig in, do the job.
And within the first week, I mean, there was nothing that I
proposed to have him go to do that.
He wasn't like.
Yeah.
I've never done that before, but I'll figure it out.
And that attitude is way more valuable than somebody coming on
board and saying, yeah, I've been hanging signs for three years.
Yeah, I would.
I would rather 10 more.
SCOs honestly, I would rather 10 more.
SCOs that?
Come on with no sign experience.
Don't even know what a channel letter or a push through letter is.
That's completely.
because I can teach you that stuff.
What I can't teach you is a positive mental attitude and the grit and
the willingness to get through a hard job and to problem solve those
things are very tough to find I can
Scott Dean: teach rest.
And what made me stay was, I'm not gonna lie.
I was making great money with the government, but what made me
stay was that's the macro level.
that's.
Humongous dollars.
And then to come to a small business and see how a young man, took
a chance and bought a business.
And I said, I gotta, I would love to help this guy grow this business, and he's
always given me the opportunity to put my 2 cents in and kind of steer him where
my experience, because there's 20, 22 year difference between Mike and my age.
So I have a lot of lifelong experience.
But he has a lot of the small business experience.
And I think those two meshed well together and he, I enjoyed it.
I liked being outside.
I like to challenge.
I know how to use YouTube.
I can figure out how to hang channel letters and wire signs.
And it was good.
Sign business is one, its best days is really fun and
a lot of cool things happen.
Bryant Gillespie: on its worst days.
That's why we, it is hot and sweaty, hot and nasty.
no.
Yeah.
I think one of the things that you said, Mike is like the
positive attitude is huge.
we talk a lot in some of our, in our mastermind group and our little
Facebook community that we've got set up about how hard it is to hire.
And lots of people want to hire somebody with experience.
Depending on your market, like you're just not gonna find it.
So a hundred percent agree with what you said there.
And that's a really important part.
Something I wanna drive home for all the listeners out there.
So let's, kinda steer this back towards the pending shop apocalypse or recession
Peter and I were talking about the.
The great shutdown during COVID.
we were struggling to come up with what word we were gonna use for it, whether it
was a recession or a shutdown or whatever.
You guys have a very unique story there during the recession.
Why don't you guys, share that with the listeners?
Mike Davis: Right.
So I'll start and then I'll let Scott kinda.
Kind of come in as well.
we all, I guess it was probably late February, early March, 2020, we
started hearing whispers about stuff.
I can remember, we were on a job right down the street and it was a
day or two be before lockdown and we were working on a wallpaper mural.
It was fighting us hard.
We're all in a really tight confined space.
lots of hands, everybody in really close proximity.
and then I feel like it was that evening.
All these reports came out, started talking about lockdown within 48
hours, all this kind of stuff.
And we're like, well, dang, we were all in each other's face today, man.
Well, hopefully nobody's sick cuz we all got it if that's the case.
and then I think it was probably like I said, about 48 hours
later that, Quarantine came down.
Everybody said it was gonna be two weeks, all this, that, and the other.
And I'm not gonna lie.
I went into full on panic mode.
I mean, I can remember, Scott and I had a conversation about him.
We were like, we just gotta wait.
We just gotta wait and see what happens.
we try to keep pushing on as best we possibly can.
And we're like, let's just see what the next couple days brings.
And I can remember going.
And making dinner for my family and literally inside,
I was freaking the F out.
I went for a walk.
I called my parents and I'm just like, and it was, it was pouring down rain.
And I walked for probably two miles.
I talked to them on the phone and I'm just like, I literally don't
know what the heck I'm gonna do.
I think it was that day as well.
we had a big contract.
We had just been awarded, it was like a hundred and hundred 20, $130,000 museum.
Biggest one we've ever done.
it was gonna be the biggest contract we had ever done.
And it was like the perfect job.
For a sign and graphics company.
Like it was, it had creative elements in it.
We were gonna be able to fabricate some cool stuff.
there were digital signage elements, wallpaper, murals pretty
much gets those juices flowing.
everything we offer.
We were gonna be able to use on this project.
And we were gonna have a little bit of creative control and engineering control
for some of these exhibits as well.
So we were super jazzed up about it.
Well, that had just gotten canceled that afternoon and they had no idea when.
It was gonna come back if it was gonna come back.
So I was freaking out, I got off that call with my parents.
I went back home.
Didn't sleep much, got to the shop the next day.
And I pretty much leveled with Scott.
I was like, dude, I am freaking out.
I don't even know what to do.
A lot of my employees were like, I got elderly parents, I got
this, my wife's pregnant, yada.
And I had employees literally say, I'm gonna stay.
So I had, and then we had a couple other clients that canceled
work that next day as well.
It was within a couple days we had almost like 200 grand worth of work canceled,
and employees dropping like flies.
So I went to Scott, freaking the F out and,
Peter Kourounis: and still your installer at this
Mike Davis: time.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
He is essentially.
my ops manager, which is the role he is still in.
Okay.
So he was running the show at that point.
but I went to him and I was like, dude, I'm freaking out.
I don't even know what the heck we should do with the amount
of work that just got canceled.
And the fact that we got no employees and Scott, you can come in and tell them
exactly what you told me and what we did.
So
Scott Dean: I told Mike and I didn't had no, no experience running anything.
Even figuring out how we were gonna keep everybody employed the most part, keep
Mike employed because it's his business.
So we sat here in my office and we have whiteboards.
We whiteboard everything.
We literally went to the whiteboard and I said, this is all we can do.
We can do seven day chunks and figure out how we're gonna survive for seven.
We wrote seven, seven days and we wrote, we need to do this.
Payroll is coming here.
We need at least this much amount of money in the bank.
We have these jobs we can do from the shop.
We have these employees that did, we did 7 14, 21, 30, 45 60.
and we just kept on doing that every week to pass by we'd survive.
Another week, it, we have a saying in the shop we're here now.
So it doesn't do us any good to freak out.
We might as well figure it out.
and me and Mike, and it's a running joke between us, but we've always
said, we're gonna run this shop until it implodes or we just blow up and be
super successful or it's in the ground, but we're going down with the ship
and so basically, that was our mantra.
It doesn't matter if we're going to shut down, we're gonna shut down, but
we might as well go down swinging.
And we might as well try to keep everybody who wants to stay employed, employed.
and then things started to break our way for a few months.
the governor of Maryland said, Hey, sign shops are essential employees.
We got letters.
We could still do jobs.
We had a core group of people that said I wanna work and make money.
And.
we went to our employees and said, whoever wants to stay home.
You voluntarily, we're gonna lay you off and you can go do what you need to do
until you feel safe and you can come back.
Great.
And through that, it just, we just kept chunking along week after week after
week until we had another catastrophe and Mike can pick it up there.
So we thought we were surviving and then
Mike Davis: well, and I will touch on too.
We.
We were very fortunate.
And I think everybody was kind of fortunate that, and it's not often
that I applaud government programs, but I will say the paycheck protection
program saved our, but I mean, we.
Applied for that.
And that literally bought us.
It added a couple weeks to that crisis plan.
It bought us a couple weeks of being able to move things around and keep people on
payroll and not have to lay them off and keep 'em working and be able to reach
out to other customers and market it a little bit different and learn about you.
About PPE, learn about sneeze guards and learn about, all these other alternative
things that we could do, all these other decals and signs and mobile order
pickup stuff, and just all these other things that helped to pay the bills.
And we shit, we, we pivoted really fast and.
, but I will say that paycheck protection program bought us time.
It bought us a couple weeks to adjust.
And as soon as we figured out, Hey, we can make sneeze guards, Hey, we can
make, caution decals and mobile order pickup signs and all these other things.
And we reached out to all of our customers and offered all these different things
and all these different products to them.
And we even.
Like we offered quicker turnaround times.
We said, look, we understand you guys need this stuff quick, fast, and in a hurry.
So if you place an order, we guarantee you will have it in 24 hours.
And so with all that stuff put together, it helped to dig us out a little bit.
and what Scott was touching on.
We started humming along pretty good.
we had a couple big contracts.
we had a couple, of our customers that were also pivoting at
the exact same point we were.
So they were doing a lot of mobile order structures and it wasn't sign
related stuff necessarily, but they were architectural structures that we.
Picking transporting and installing all up and down the east coast.
So we had to travel to get paid, but we survived, throughout that
stuff, starting to pick up and up, starting to get a groove.
we had a fire and that, I literally woke up and it was almost the end
of may, I guess it was May 20th, May 22nd, somewhere in there.
and I woke up, it was probably two 30 in the morning to Scott beating
the crap outta my front door.
cause like any other person, two 30 in the morning, I am passed out.
Phone is on silent.
I am zonked out and he's beating the crap outta my front door.
I look out the front door, unlock my gun, safe, literally pulling
out a gun cuz somebody's beating the crap outta my front door.
And finally realized that Tim, I opened the door and he's dude, I've
been trying to call you for half an.
The shop caught on fire.
Oh my gosh.
So and so.
Bryant Gillespie: Things are humming along.
You guys are getting some breathing room.
You got that margin.
Like the PPP helped you.
Yep.
Stay afloat.
And then you're just like two 30 in the morning.
You got Scott's face staring at you.
There's been a fire.
Yep.
Oh
Mike Davis: my gosh.
So I run and get dressed, hop in the truck and just haul as fast as
I can to the shop, which is about, 20 minutes away from my house.
And.
I get there.
And by the time I got there, fire department was gone.
Everything was out.
But, and I'm very thankful that the fire actually, in terms of fire
damage from flame was not that bad.
they, the fire department came in, they sliced open one of my bay doors
that they didn't have to, they, they caused a little bit of damage.
They probably didn't need to, but they got everything.
everything was all good there, but, know, when I initially got there, everything was
black, everything was soy in my, one bay.
I walked to the bay next door, cuz we have adjoining spaces, and looked
like everything was covered and just kind of a light layer of soot.
And I'm like, okay, everything's kind of dirty, but we should
be able to clean this up.
Right.
Like I immediately went into let's clean this mess.
. Yeah, that's when, that's when, other people started showing up cuz this was
still very early in, in the end morning.
So by the time the sun started coming up, other people started
showing up like the fire marshal.
Like insurance adjusters, like mold remediation and cleanup guys.
Other people started showing up cuz they heard about what happened.
like hounds.
Yes.
And man, you would, it was ridiculous.
It would like, like moths to a flame.
They all came out of the woodwork.
and.
it was explained to me, cuz we had already been there a couple hours and
we had already started to clean stuff up cuz I was like, we got work to do, man.
Like we're in the middle of a pandemic.
Like I got orders, we got stuff to do.
Like I can't be, we gotta roll.
I sent some of my people who came into out to get pump sprayers so we could
clean stuff and we started rocking.
Well then it was quickly explained to me that.
Yeah, no.
Sot is extremely, extremely caustic and corrosive to everything that it touches.
So that means all of my tools, my printer, my cutter, my CNC,
anything that was in that space.
And the air touched was immediately starting to rust.
And it's pretty humid down here, Southern Maryland.
we're surrounded on water by water on pretty much all sides.
So it's always humid here.
Well, I picked up a saws all blade.
It was probably nine or 10 o'clock in the morning.
I picked up a saws all blade that it was brand new outta the package.
We used it to cut one piece of lumber the day before.
Cause I was moving stuff.
and it already had a thick enough coat of rust on it that I could run
my hand across it and it was green.
Bryant Gillespie: Oh my gosh.
Mike Davis: And I was like, and one of the remediation guys came up to me and
he was explaining all these things to me.
And he's that's just the tip of the iceberg.
He said, imagine that in every single piece of equipment you own
and every single tool that's in this shop and all of your paper products,
everything he's everything you have in this shop has been affected by.
so, oh
Bryant Gillespie: man.
So every, like it there's nothing that you could salvage.
Mike Davis: So luckily we were able to salvage some stuff.
we had a electronics cleaning company that came in and were able
to clean a lot of our electronics.
They actually used, CO2 that were, was hooked up to special guns and they
actually blast the, Off of all the sensitive electronics, it's a really
wild process to watch, but they were able to clean a lot of our tools and our
electronics and stuff, but there was an overwhelming amount of stuff that had to
just literally be thrown in the dumpster.
oh man.
So we, we had to relocate for about three months, and there is nothing available.
Absolutely nothing to rent, nothing to go into.
we actually lucked out right down the street from our shop.
We found a warehouse that, another company was occupying and it
was just extra storage space.
Well, they were able to clean some stuff out and make a temporary home for us.
very appreciative of those guys.
we would've been way worse off if they hadn't.
To rent to us like that.
one downfall to that space, our industry, you have to have an internet connection.
Right.
email artwork.
Sure.
Files, customer supplied stuff.
Yeah.
We had no internet for three minutes.
Scott Dean: my gosh.
Bryant Gillespie: So you guys are running like off of, phone 3g,
Scott Dean: hot off our
Mike Davis: phone.
Oh my gosh.
It was anytime we needed to download big files or stuff, we were running.
Up the street, back to the shop where my internet was still running.
So we were running back to the shop that was being rebuilt because
everything had to be emptied out, put in storage or cleaned or thrown away
while they rebuilt the whole shop.
And, so we would run back, download files and then run back to our temporary
offices to actually work on everything.
So it, so
Bryant Gillespie: how did, how did you guys survive this man?
Scott Dean: it, it was the same.
We had just had lessons learned from the COVID literally sat on another
whiteboard, say here's the first things we gotta do in seven days, we need a space.
We need to make sure, insurance, we need all these meetings we had to, instead
of having the carpet bagger and the VUL.
What do we really need to do?
what is, and we could write a book on what you need to do with your sign shop,
to prevent from going through what we had to do is, proper inventory and you
should, yeah, we should you need to take pictures of everything in your shop,
down to dry erase markers and have it.
This is my inventory, cuz we were guessing at stuff we were guessing
at what our inventory was, how.
how many envelopes or how many that's, how, what detail they wanted, Oh my gosh.
And all that and make sure your books are straight because your insurance
is counting on your prior year and to give you money for when you were down.
Yep.
and what they didn't, what you don't know is you're probably better off
staying down than trying to stay in.
for the short term?
Mike Davis: Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And as, as contrary to being an entrepreneur, as that is
because for me, it was like, no, we need to be back up now.
Like any downtime.
Is unacceptable.
And what I learned is no we're gonna be down for a while.
And what, like Scott said, what we really learned was we probably should have
just taken a step back and said, okay, we're gonna need to be down completely
hard down 30 days a week, two weeks, 30 days, whatever that, that number would've
been and just committed to that instead.
Like I tried to get us back up and running as fast as possible.
I expedited getting new computers and this and putting this together
and just dumped all this time and energy into trying to get us back.
And I was like, I was fairly confident I could get us back to 75%
capacity in terms of our operations.
And I was lucky if I got us back to maybe 20 to 25%.
Yeah.
Lucky on our best day.
Ah, geez.
And,
Scott Dean: and just to tie.
And the reason being is that most people who have the insurance, that
you're required, there's a clause in there that will pay your employees
for the time that they are down.
So when it came, when it came to us to make the final adjustment,
it was, it would've been smarter to let those guys take the break.
let us get back to operating to where we can operate at 65 to 70%.
Not.
And just be bleeding money, which you never got back from the
insurance company, because you were technically operating, you
Mike Davis: were operating so operating
. Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
See, I never would've thought of that either.
but that's a good lesson.
Definitely a good lesson.
Peter Kourounis: So just a couple of closing thoughts here, guys.
Mm-hmm for listeners out there.
I'll ask this to both of you, Mike, you first.
what what advice would you give sign shop owners, new, old, what have you
with various different backgrounds?
What would you do to advise them on how they can prepare for another
type of crisis going in the future?
or that may happen in the future?
Mike Davis: I would say, the one thing that we have done
that I'm really proud of is.
we haven't pigeonholed ourself into one specific market into
one specific type of customer.
Like it's not, it's not a secret that most of us work with national sign companies.
Most of us Subin installs and producing graphics and signs and that type of thing.
I know some shop owners that rely on the nationals for a ton of their business.
And if the nationals were to dry up tomorrow, they would be in big.
And, we are right next to, pot river enabled air base.
And I have some other local companies who they rely on that base for a
significant source of their income.
And I made it my goal when I bought the company that I wasn't
gonna be one of those guys that relied on one source of income.
So I guess my biggest thing that I would say is that establish multiple markets.
That you serve, don't just serve the nationals.
Don't just serve your local construction guys.
don't just be, the go-to guy who does the vehicle wraps for all the
plumbing contractors in, your region.
Don't just pigeonhole yourself to one market diversify to multiple markets
because when something slows down, something else will pick up when
one type of customer stops buying.
there's an economic downturn.
There will be another type of customer.
If you were already serving them, that things are picking
up for them for whatever reason.
Right?
And if you're already having those contacts, you can easily pivot.
You can easily make those adjustment adjustments with minimal effort.
Peter Kourounis: Great advice.
What about you, Scott?
I loved
Scott Dean: it, I guess from my operations point of view, is I, my advice would.
two things know your books and know your production and know your
sales and what you have been doing prior to the signed apocalypse or
what, whatever issue you're having.
But you also probably should be looking out into the future.
And I tell Mike all the time I'm.
When we were talking about inflation, I'm like, I don't know if that's really
gonna affect us because our pricing has steadily increased, but we haven't got
much pushback, but I think six, eight months from now, we'll probably be seeing
less orders because people will be holding tighter to their money and all that.
So my piece of advice is always look forward, but also
know where you came from.
I know that's kind of cliche, but I think it's important to know what
your sales are, what your payroll.
So when those things happen, those dollar figures that you need to make that day
or that week, or that month to meet your payroll, cuz when it comes down to it, our
main goal is to keep Mike paid and all his employees paid because that's what we do.
That's why kind of we're in business is to make money.
So that would be my piece of advice.
Bryant Gillespie: I love the framework that you guys had.
That was like one of the big takeaways for me of Hey, when times are tough.
Like I've got a whiteboard, I'm looking seven days ahead.
just get me through these seven days and chances are, if I can make it
through those seven days, the next seven days we'll make it through.
it just keeps snowballing on that.
So what does, what do you guys look like now?
what's the future for you guys?
Mike Davis: So we have.
We have moved into doing a lot more larger scale projects.
And I think that's where we've made pretty significant investment.
we actually hired a commercial project manager and we had her on
the books for probably 14 months.
before we had a single project.
I mean, we just floated it on overhead.
so we have made significant investments in the commercial sector to go.
That segment to not have to rely on the national companies to not
have to rely on, just the local defense stuff that is right.
Our backyard.
but we are partnering with.
national contracting companies, local GCs that are building municipal
facilities, fire departments, hospitals, dental offices, doing these build outs.
and we're even doing a, a regional distribution facility for a
large grocery chain right now.
And, That is kind of where we are pushing, more of those types of longstanding
relationships with these larger companies that, we provide enough value to them
because we're experts in our field.
They don't know why they need an ADA sign at a stairwell.
They don't understand, all these specific installation guidelines
and why we need to have permits on a state highway for a stop.
they don't understand all of these things.
And that's where we bring our level of expertise and, we don't expect them
to give us all the answers and we.
And we have kind of really started to carve out a niche and build these
relationships with these companies where they don't even try to interpret or make
sense of these drawings or these plans or these things that, that they've given.
They send it straight to us and they're like, Hey, we got this job coming up.
It's this big project can, y'all just make sense of it.
Tell us exactly what we need to do and give us a bit, and
Bryant Gillespie: that's perfect.
That's the spot you wanna be in?
Do you wanna
Mike Davis: be the.
Well, and we have it.
we literally, and Scott talked about whiteboarding.
We sat at a whiteboard probably almost four years ago, and we figured out
who our ideal customer wanted to be.
We wrote it out right down to the smallest detail who we wanted our ideal
customer to be and what we wanted them to look like, what we also mapped out
what we wanted to be as a company.
And one of the things we wrote down four years ago is that we wanted
to be the authority in our region.
For these guys to reach out, to help them and slowly but surely working on where
we wanted to be every single day over the last four years, we now are in that
position where these larger companies are calling us and being like, please help
us because we don't know what this means.
We don't know what this is.
and we,
Scott Dean: we talked about that.
We have a group chat, but we just built a sign for a animal shelter for our county.
And they literally, they came to us and said, we wanna sign kind of
like the sign you did over here.
Well, it turned out into where our graphic artists trademarked their
logo, cuz they didn't have one and there was no questions asked.
They wanted to sign.
They knew we could produce it and we did it and they were, it, everybody was happy.
they didn't have to do anything.
Didn't have to worry about anything.
And that's what Mike said.
So we want the architects, the GCs, the municipalities to come to.
or at least say you should go to Hilltop and figure out what it is you want
and what it is really at early stage in the process at an early an early
stage, early stage in the process.
That's great.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, guys, super incredible story.
I would've either pulled all my hair out and it's kind of long at this point,
or I just would've gave up at that point after going through everything
that you guys have been through.
I appreciate you guys joining us on the podcast.
Peter, any closing thoughts or questions before?
Wrap this one up.
No,
Peter Kourounis: this was one of my favorite interviews, guys.
Thank you so much for sharing your stories.
Appreciate it.
I love that you both came into this business from very different perspectives,
from one background to just venturing into the business, through your family.
It's a great story.
I was telling Bryant before we got on here.
I think that this is gonna be one of our better interviews and it sure was.
So thank you so much for being here and sharing that with you guys.
I look forward to hearing about your success and having you guys.
Another time talking us about what you guys are doing, going into the new year.
So yeah.
Thank you so much.
Bryant Gillespie: if they're interested in learning more about
Hilltop, where can they find you guys
Mike Davis: online?
so Hilltop signs, md.com is.
Our website.
we're also on all of our social media channels.
So Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, All those really good avenues
to get ahold of us, or, if anybody has any comments, questions, concerns,
we do have a general email inbox, which is sales, Hilltop signs, md.com.
Excellent.
Bryant Gillespie: And we'll make sure add those links to the
show notes for this one, guys.
A pleasure.
I appreciate it.
All right.
Thank you.
Mike Davis: Okay.
Appreciate you having us.
Thanks guys.