Episode 39 - How Alex Lelchuk Built Multiple Thriving Businesses Through Grit and Innovation

Episode #39 | Alex Lelchuk | Building Businesses Through Grit and Innovation

Alex Lelchuk joins us for the second Live Curious Builder Podcast from his event venue The Lowlands in Saint Paul, MN. He shares his inspiring story of immigrating from Belarus to the US as a young child and growing up to start his own Audio and Video company, Lelch. Alex discusses his journey as an entrepreneur and the challenges of running and growing multiple businesses.

Listen to the full episode:

About Alex Lelchuk

Alex Lelchuk founded Lelch in 2012 and has been taking the AV integration industry by storm ever since. He is an expert in all things AV and utilizes that knowledge to design cohesive and elegant systems for his clients through an education based approach. With origins in the residential single-family space, Lelch has expanded offerings to include full lighting design and specification through their in-house lighting department as well as now doing 50% of their business in commercial settings. Under Alex's leadership, Lelch has more than doubled in size over the last three years and Alex plans to continue that trajectory forward.

Resources:

• LinkedIn

  Lelch

  The Lowlands

• Transcript

  Mark D. Williams I didn't delete anything at all. I was wanting to try that you know how like high school teachers would just be quiet until the students stopped wrestling. So pretty effective trick. Thank you for everyone for coming to the curious builder live podcast number two. We had one earlier this summer. So some of you are familiar, most of you are new. So thank you very much for coming out tonight. Tonight, obviously, we're joined with Alex Leduc. And my co host is Jordan Diorio. Before we get started, just want to do a few thank yous one is to the lowland space here. So thank you very much for yourself and ownership here for letting us use the venue. It's an amazing place. It's only been open for four or five months. Is that right? Since March, okay, so since March, so please tell your family and friends a great place to have events, weddings, anything you want. This place is obviously is great. I'd like to thank a few of our sponsors too. For the event tonight, specifically, one is promotion, select. We have some swag over there for purchase. If you want hats, bottles, anything else, they also can do things for your company. We're also being sponsored by lucetta, a lighting company that Alex works with as well. They're part of the drink sponsorship. So I know we'll get a hearty round of applause for them. That's kind of like low hanging fruit when you're the drink sponsor. I like to think we have Andy Kasan. Here as well as Courtney mitten. Where are you guys? We got one in the back. And right up here. Thank you for buildertrend and CB, USA for helping us sponsor the event and for the food. The food is from child girls. If you haven't had it, it'll be open all night as well as the bar. So please feel free to kind of exit during the interview. If you feel like you need something to eat or something to drink. What else are we missing? I think that's it for the sponsors. Oh, one last thing. Where's Mark? Oh, strim. Mark. Oh, there he is. Can you stand up, Mark? So bingo. That's right podcast 34 last week. All right, who's listened to his podcast? Is anyone in here, listen to the podcast. Alright, so Mark has a nonprofit called The Joy collaborative, please tune into that his joy mobiel is outside. There's 44,000 Kids In Need in the state of Minnesota alone, ranging from any kind of disability that you can imagine. But the sensory mobiel, if you will, is essentially a way of letting kids reset. Let's say you're at a birthday party, a dentist, a corporate event wherever you have it. Even as an adult. If you haven't been in there. I just went there with Ben and drew. It's very calming. You could probably rent it out before any public event be great at wedding venues for brides it really calm the nerves down. Yeah, so anyway, please check out that they do amazing work in their nonprofit, it's pretty inspiring work. So I think anything else Oh, we have the roofing trio on the music, my brother in law, Nelson, and his group. They're very talented musicians for hire. So any sort of party or event that you have, they were at our artisan home tour this year as well and definitely classes that up. So I guess we'll get started. The way the night is gonna go is obviously we're gonna do a podcast interview with Alex here for about an hour, we'll focus on the first part on Lelouch audio visual, and kind of a second half will be about the low lens, the wedding venue business we're in now. And then we'll do 20 minutes of q&a. So if you have any questions, you know, write it down on your phone or remember it and then we'll pass a mic around. And then obviously, the rest of the evening, you know, feel free to eat food and drink after that. Bathrooms are behind the bar, as well as downstairs while it's downstairs. So, alright, without further ado, welcome to curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host along with

  Jordyn DiOrio

  and I am your co host, Jordan, special co host special

  Mark D. Williams

  co host Yes. And to bring some star power for number two, otherwise nobody would show up. And obviously we have Alex la Chuck from loves video. Live. All right, well, why don't you get us started a little bit softened up this crowd with some dad jokes. But why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey. You have an amazing, really story even coming to the United States that it really impacted me when we talked about it. But just tell us a little bit about your journey to where you're at now. And we'll kind of dive in from there. Yeah, so

  Alex Lelchuck

  you know, kind of all started with with kind of an immigration component. My parents immigrated here from Belarus, which was Russia at the time. But you know, is now Belarus, as everybody knows it. And it was you know, it was it was a time where like, it wasn't great for for them. Chernobyl had just happen and there was things that were being said that weren't true. My mom was out with me like, you know, I was one years old, one and a half years old. Turned out what happened There was a rain. And like started to get a little bald spot on my head because I was had a bunch of hair. And so the doctor, my grandma was, was a nurse practitioner, like one of the head nurses there. And the doctor was like, on the record, you, you know, have malnutrition. But off the record, obviously, it's, you know, you know, poisoning. And so that was sort of like the final straw for my parents. You weren't allowed to leave Russia at the time, like that way, you were just like, oh, well, we're just going to move to a different country. But we, you know, we're Jewish. And so we were able to utilize sort of the refugee sort of status to leave the country. And so you kind of gave everything up, you were allowed to leave with, like, $90. And, you know, like, whatever you can bring with you hop on a train roll out of the country. And then you kind of went into this, like, process of trying to get accepted by a country. And so, you know, each country has like a different list. See, my

  Jordyn DiOrio

  mouth is gaping. I mean, Chernobyl, that little church, I mean, I mean, talk about perspective. I mean, your parents left because you're being poisoned. I mean, it's something we read about in the history books. Your your family actually lived.

  Mark D. Williams

  Yeah, that's the 80s.

  Alex Lelchuck

  I was born in 85. Okay. I think that happened in 8687. Okay, yep. Yep. So kind of, you know, journey through that. We were stuck in Italy during the winter for like six months. And then finally, were able to make it to get over to the United States, went to New York, and then finally moved to Minnesota, Minnesota.

  Mark D. Williams<

  So why Minnesota? I love Minnesota. Don't get me wrong. Yeah. Right,

  Jordyn DiOrio

  from Russia to Minnesota.

  Alex Lelchuck

  We, you know, I like my parents were not digging kind of the New York vibe and the hustle and bustle and, and again, I think it comes back to kind of kids and schools, you know, at that time had gates and fencing. And just, it just wasn't the vibe that my parents were ultimately looking for. And we had some family here too. So kind of went and we had family in New York as well, which is why we went there originally.

  Mark D. Williams

  And how many siblings did you have at the time when you're traveling? Because you're what one and a half, two and a half?

  Alex Lelchuck

  I'm three? You're three at this time this time? Yeah. So it was just my parents, myself, my grandparents and my dad's sister. So no siblings, I have a little brother who's 10 years younger than me. And my parents had to kind of like, you know, RE and, you know, rebuild their whole lives up in order to be like, alright, we can have another kid.

  Mark D. Williams

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it's amazing, because I think you I mean, for myself, I sometimes wonder what to do. I was talking to Marcos from actually about this a little bit with the kids in need, actually. And you read about stuff in the paper, I never know personally what to do with some of these stories, like, you know, as I, you know, go to the club, or I eat my breakfast burrito or whatever. And like, you realize you have such so many privileges. And then you hear a story, I didn't know that part of your story. I knew some of the other parts. And it's just kind of eye opening of just how thankful we are. And I mean, I guess you part of this is the American Dream, which will tie into business, you know, exists everywhere, but I love hearing stories where people are coming and creating something that they couldn't get somewhere else. And I feel like you embody a lot of that. Yeah.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so I think that's a part of probably what is kind of baked into the drive to like, go down the path of entrepreneurship and starting businesses and you know, just the drive to like, succeed and, like, make that effort and energy that was spent in order to create a better opportunity and like, check, you know, like, check that box I guess that was that did evolve that did happen.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Mark robot said the same thing. So what I'm curious about curious builder, I mean, we should have a buzzer anytime someone says What am I curious about? Right doing those? or what have you learned from your parents what characteristics you take pride in that you've learned from your parents that have made you into the business leader that you are today?

  Alex Lelchuck

  I think even just from you know, the story that I just told, I think it's just like it's it's the drive and to like, not give up, right? I think as a as a business owner, there are lots and lots of things every single day, or if not every day, at least weekly, that are super, super difficult, that are like, Why would I do this right now? Why would I keep going through this? Why not just like, give up and go do something else? Yes,

  Jordyn DiOrio

  we left is it's daily, weekly, as generous, right feels daily.

  Mark D. Williams

  It's funny because I think one of the ideas and we'll talk about this a little bit later about creating a second business I think as an entrepreneur, you keep on coming up. If anything, you come up with four or five businesses a week and then you have to convince yourself of reasons why you shouldn't start them. So clearly, we haven't done a good job with that because we did at least two so walk us through a little bit of that I guess, scrappy mentality so as you're growing up in Minnesota, you I think you went to the University of St. Thomas is that correct? Yeah.

  Alex Lelchuck

  So I moved to California after after high school and kind of you know, did did that a little bit like needed to move away and go on that adventure? Did some school out there, and ultimately started to dabble with with kind of let Lelouch ultimately became, this is where that's sort of the story of, of, you know, mounting a TV for the first time, after the dorms and being like, Alright, there's probably not a lot of people that know how to do this. But this is easy enough to do. And then and then sort of wrapping that into like a business idea. And then ultimately, moving back to Minnesota, finishing school at St. Thomas, kind of comes back to that thing of like, drive, like, I didn't need that degree. Like, that isn't ultimately what I'm using today. But you know, it's helpful and and, you know, as a part of that, like, completing it, right and finishing it, and something that like, I can't not do.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  And I love that, like you, you are mounting a TV and you're like, How can I do this better, as opposed to like destroying your wall or just throwing the TV out? That's amazing that you've got lucky, right? Because you didn't think you're gonna go into audio, you were just watching a TV and you're like, hey, there could be a better way to do this. I have destroyed my walls during that and do not think of grading and audio. So that's all well, so I'll hire you, essentially, that's what you're here for. That's really awesome. Yeah.

  Mark D. Williams

  At what point? Did you realize that that is what you wanted to do? Like, what other jobs did you have? Or what was your career path? Because it's often been said that, you know, people are the entrepreneur, because they're forced to, you know, you have a drive to do it as well. Or maybe you're surrounded by entrepreneurs as well. Did anyone in your family have any sort of businesses? No.

  Alex Lelchuck

  So I yeah, my, you know, my parents had to just like, dive into it, right? They're 2122. And it's just like, what, what jobs can you get with no experience and no language, and you kind of just work, work your way up and work your way through it. But I just, I just always had like, the drive and the hustle to do it. So I think, as far back as I can remember, like, I'm like, I'm going to start something, it was just like a matter of when, or what and, and the it was really, I think looking for like, the right time. And it was like, Okay, here's this thing that I just did, because I thought it was cool. And I wanted to get a TV on the wall because I was like, I'm into technology. And it was a cool thing to do. I was like, alright, that I got from A to Z. And so let's, let's see if other people need to A to Z, right and started to market and to sell that. And that's kind of where it kicked off. Like, I didn't know, I was starting a business per se. I didn't have like this master plan that I thought about for you know, 18 months. I just did it.

  Mark D. Williams

  How are you soliciting business? So you're now you? At what point did you actually get your Articles of Incorporation and become, you know, legal? Or did you just start Hey, how many of my people how many people do I know that want my help? And you started that way until it was like, Okay, well, I have a lot of people who want my help, I should start a company and then it kind of went from there. It's

  Alex Lelchuck

  just, you know, selling and marketing is something that I have sort of a natural talent in and marketing in general and just kind of thinking about what one of the things I've learned with myself over the years is that I'm really good at sort of solving big problems right? Not super super great at like let's get really really really really into

  Jordyn DiOrio

  what I do for a living amazing things no one wants to deal with amazing

  Alex Lelchuck

  operations people on my teams to help me with that the the ying and the yang to that and so one of those problems is like how do you get people and how do you get business and how do you get things cooking and so at at that particular time it was utilizing Craigslist because that was super popular at that time and then Groupon was just starting right so this is this you know, kind of tooth out

  Jordyn DiOrio

  I mean, that's like a stamp and time Craigslist and Groupon, right? That's like a specific window of time. Sounds dangerous. I'm so happy you're alive.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Never know what you're walking into. Just

  Jordyn DiOrio

  gonna say, Oh, my God, I was Craigslist. We would sell

  Mark D. Williams<

  stuff on Craigslist. And my wife would be like, can you be home? Like, why? Because she's like, someone's coming over to like, get our table. I'm like, what? What's happening right now? Yeah,

  Jordyn DiOrio

  anyone can meet you from Craigslist. Like there was Yeah, that's amazing.

  Alex Lelchuck

  So I was I was that guy for a little bit. Yeah, blue blue van. It was scary. But it allowed things to get started, right? Because there isn't seed money. And there isn't this funding that I'm getting from people to like, kick this thing off. And I almost think that that's a better approach, especially now that I've had sort of the alternative view of that. It's just it's a scrappier approach. And and you can kind of test and go and test and go, and then you can test more and go faster, and eventually, you know, evolve to having money and being able to invest in grow faster. What

  Mark D. Williams

  were some of the milestones that you sort of hit in those early years in terms of either things that really demonstrated, I think every business owner can relate to, you know, the scrappy effect of really making it making it work one way or another. Everyone has a story and we can all share one but what are some of your early memories of like looking back you're like, Wow, I can't believe I did that to stay in business.

  Alex Lelchuck

  I mean, the Groupon thing was like a stretch. But But ultimately, like that turned into like, you know, 50 tv sales, which came along with mounts and all of these like peripheral things that you could bolt on. So that was a big milestone because that took things from like, Okay, I gotta like, Go run out and do this too. I need to hire people. Right? So it truly took it to like this next step of being able to actually hire people, I would hire electricians because I didn't know any better. I think another big milestone was like figuring out that there's industries and that I was in an industry

  Jordyn DiOrio

  as an industry, I'm in one. Yeah. Because

  Alex Lelchuck

  like, I didn't, I wasn't like, I didn't work in any industries. You know, I mean, I had jobs as a as a high school kid and, and was working in restaurants and hustling here and there, but Well, I don't

  Mark D. Williams

  you think though, it'd be kind of curious to pull the room at some point with this question. Because I think I think some of the things that makes a business owner successful is not knowing what's out there. Because you don't know anything. So you just simply go do it. Do you think? I mean, it seems like that's pretty accurate for you tackle that, right? Absolutely.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Yeah, I think you would start to maybe see things like, ooh, that Well, that seems scary, or that's like, that's really, you know, a tall hill to climb? Or? Or is it just like, all these excuses and things that maybe are gonna get in your way? Versus just like going and then when you get there, then you get there and deal with it? Yeah,

  Jordyn DiOrio

  they say something like, you'll never have your first business again, you only have one. So it's not like you're naive, you're almost ignorant to those things, you're more likely to take risks. Versus that was your first business which I'm curious once again, ding, ding, ding, is it curious, again, to talk about the lowlands, how you approach it differently? Because you've had a first business and because you've had to be so scrappy, so you're

  Mark D. Williams

  pretty good at dad jokes for a lady.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Mom jokes? I mean, can we rebranded? My mom's here?

  Mark D. Williams

  You know, I think that what's interesting about that is you're because you're not being held back by anything, you're willing to try anything or everything. And a lot of ideas are really bad. I mean, I have so many bad things that I've tried, and then you 20 years later, you're like, Wow, I can't believe I did that. Or I'm always really impressed that people that have a bunch of children that start a business, you know, when their kids are like I have young kids now like starting a business now seems very daunting. And I'm like, double hat's off to the people that do that like, but as a single 23 year old that doesn't know anything. Well, quick story, my roommate in college sold disability insurance, and he tried to sell me disability insurance and my job was a lifeline. I could only hope to be disabled. I'll move home, my mom will make me Huckleberry pancakes. And he's like, I have no rebuttal for that argument. And so but like, your story is so different once you have children, or once you have you have nowhere else to go. And so anyway, I think sometimes being fearless is there is a part of that that's can be really healthy for the launch of a career.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Yeah, it's a timing is everything. And being having the freedom to be fearless and not have to worry as much about the risk is really, really critical not to say that it can be done at any stage. But it's one more thing that's out of the way

  Mark D. Williams

  over the years. So what year did you start Lelouch?

  Alex Lelchuck

  It would have been

  Mark D. Williams

  12 years ago to Okay, yeah. So 2011 1213 Somewhere in there, for those doing DAF helped out

  Jordyn DiOrio

  your strong suit. Yeah. So

  Mark D. Williams

  coming out of a pretty awesome time and building. So a lot of remodel like Who are your clients? I mean, obviously, you had 50 people on a group on evidently, but other than that, after that, Craigslist, or Craigslist. So when did you start working with builders in, you know, commercial entities.

  Speaker 1

  So that took a while. So that, so that's sort of the traditional approach within our industry, is to really sort of target and go after that for a really good reason. But you know, I've always taken like, I take an approach to business with like, what is the edge, right? Like, what edge can I provide? That is different? Is it customer service? Is it? Is it me? Is it our offering, is it how we go to market, all of those nuances, and they've changed and they've evolved over the years, and they're different now. And they'll be different later. But at the time, the edge that I could bring to the marketplace was marketing. So marketing was being done really, really poorly in our industry, like it wasn't really being done. And so I could do that at a pretty low entry point, penetrate a pretty substantial portion of the market. And it was a good evolution point for me to be able to grow the business, be able to pace yourself, because I kind of looked at builders is like you're gonna get one shot, right? So if you're ready for it, then great, go for it. And, you know, and that can evolve and blossom into this thing. And that might be the primary thing and you might want to stop doing Groupons right? But, but you have to be ready for that and when you're when you're sort of starting out and getting things rolling, you're just not right and so having I think that intuition of just like, pace yourself, like go fast, where you can go fast and pace yourself where you need to pace yourself.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  I love that and I feel like part of growth is people. So I did a little internet sleuthing, which is just basically being a detective, stalking, stalking, whatever you want to call it, but I saw you have 30 employees, is that correct? 38 Yep. Oh my god. There's eight more that aren't on the site. They need headshots follow up to do Oh,

  Alex Lelchuck

  All right, we got

  Mark D. Williams

  to do list Chelsea's here a quick send a text, we can quick get their headshots. And before we

  Jordyn DiOrio

  do this, that's a lot of people. How I think people leading is one of the hardest things you can do as a leader. And I think it's probably the thing that I see my clients struggle with the most. I love to hear kind of your approach to leading people when to know when to hire or when to fire. Just how do you you lead? Because I know that's such a crucial part to growing a business and one of the hardest parts? Yeah,

  Alex Lelchuck

  I mean, people are everything at the end of the day. Lelouch is the people that are in it. The lowlands are the people that are in it. Like that's ultimately where it all comes from? No question about that. I think one of the things that I have happened to have a talent with and it's evolved over the years is, is finding amazing people, attracting amazing people, because again, I couldn't do it without them literally. Right. And so, you know, that I think, is a having really, really good people. And then you know, growing as an individual have different ways of managing and different ways of leading and kind of knowing what you're really good at. And knowing what you're not really good at and leaning into the things that you're good at is sort of advice that I give in general, to anyone in any segment of their career, but especially as a business owner. And so with, I think with leading people, I just I tried to empower and let them sort of do what they need to do, and really just kind of focus on the big problems and focus on like, here's where we're trying to go, like, here's the vision of where I think we need to be right, like, here's how we need the customer to feel at this stage, here's how we need to, you know, do business with our vendors, etc. And then, you know, collaboratively try to get ourselves there. It drives people that need lots and lots of direction crazy. But you know, you fill those, fill those voids with other people within the organization that can then take it down to that level and fill some of those gaps.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Yeah, when I was doing my sleuthing slash stalking, I even read all of your Google reviews. And your lowest review is a four out of five, like, that's pretty good. And I mean, that is amazing. I was like waiting for a one to show up. And I was like, that's impressive. I know. And I was like, is he paying people? Or maybe he just has a really good business. But everybody says in the reviews, the services and the team, so taking pride and like hiring the right people and delivering a high quality product shows when you stock the business. Yes.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Yep. Which we hope for.

  Mark D. Williams

  I mean, that's, that's really impressive. How many reviews were there? There was a couple

  Jordyn DiOrio

  100 No way, right? I mean, you're so Oh, my God. I was rounding out if it was rounding up for you. We shouldn't do it. But I was really impressed. That was from stalkers. Perspective.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Yeah. So it's a high focus area for us. Like it's an important component. We're in a difficult business, right? We're in the business of technology, which is imperfect in its nature. And so it can create frustrations, and it can create hiccups and, and it costs quite a bit of money, right. And so people have high expectations of it being perfect. The other challenge with it is, you know, when you buy an iPhone, for example, it's like that is a really confined sandbox, like everything in that is exact and can't be different. And when we put together a technology system, we're kind of doing like a kit car, right. And so we're doing all these parts and pieces and gluing it together and trying to make it work perfectly. But all of these pieces aren't intended to work perfectly. They're intended to work on their own individual space. And so, you know, I've I've known that on the onset of it. And the way that I approach that is, look, we can't make a perfect system, because we're just not in control of it. We don't manufacture everything. But what we can do is that when there is an issue, we make that process of solving it as seamless as possible. And so for many years, we've made it so that we resolve issues remotely with a variety of of method of methods and methodologies. But a part of that, and a part of what some of those reviews will ultimately say is that we had a problem. But we had an easy way to contact Lelouch. And we had an easy way to resolve that issue. Like that day, that night, on Sunday, whatever it is, and that makes people like feel good and feel like they're being taken care of. And it's it's a rare thing that you can, you know, reach out to somebody on Sunday night, and it's a robot that like knows what's going on and is like, probably at your house was at your house at some point? Yeah.

  Mark D. Williams

  I mean, it's pretty amazing. I think too, because I guess, two questions here.

  Alex Lelchuck

  One is what percentage of your work is commercial versus residential? So we're like 38%. Commercial, the rest is residential. And then we also so there's three businesses within wellchild you know, never, never, never slowed down. But so the three businesses are residential, commercial and lighting design. So we do in house lighting design with a lighting designer, and although all of those businesses sort of have interconnectivity, they really function as individual businesses. There's individual teams and people that are within each of those things. And again, we share some resources. And I love that right like that it's an efficient way to operate a business. And it's fun when we're able to do that with flow lands. And we have as, as we've kind of ramped the business up. But yet functions is three separate ones.

  Mark D. Williams

  I think you had shared with me last week when we were chatting that five years ago commercial was 0%. And so it's gone 38% In just five years. Yeah. What do you think has led to that kind of growth? I mean, that's pretty impressive growth.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Yeah. So you know, opportunity.

  Mark D. Williams

  We brought Groupon for some big companies

  Jordyn DiOrio

  are square as far as

  Alex Lelchuck

  we got pulled into a commercial project. So we were a large automation dealer in our marketplace of a particular brand called control for this was specified into a commercial multifamily project, we've all seen a gazillion apartment buildings pop up. And so it was specified, we got pulled in. And as we got pulled into this commercial project, I was like, Alright, this is at a different pace. This is at a different cadence. And it was like, Alright, if we're gonna go after this, or we're going to do this, let's do it. Right, let's get the drafters and we need an engineering team. And we need project managers. And we need kind of all these additional layers. And so we started to sort of really build that team out for these style of projects, because we started to get more of them. And then because we had that team, I was like, alright, well, then now let's go after the additional sort of interesting layers to us in the commercial space, which is primarily huddle rooms, conference rooms, sound masking systems, tenant improvement type of projects. And so those two segments have been our primary focus, and then that's continued to sort of evolve.

  Mark D. Williams

  It's interesting, because, you know, as a residential builder, and my other daytime job is when I'm not moonlighting as a podcaster. Evidently, part

  Jordyn DiOrio

  time business is homebuilder.

  Mark D. Williams

  You know, the spaces between commercial and residential are pretty big leaps. I don't know too many contractors that do both. And so I'm curious is that not as big of a leap for you to handle commercial and residential? I mean, I see some electricians do it. I mean, there are other industries that seem to be able to do it more easily than, say, a builder is that accurate statement, I

  Alex Lelchuck

  think at about 10% of the business, maybe 8% of the business, it was doable, and it was something that we could kind of sustain, and you could make it work. But as it as it evolved beyond that, it was it's, it is just too different. There's just a very different pace, you have project you have, you need a lot more project management, project management's really nice. on the residential side, engineering is really nice on the residential side. And so our engineer, our residential side gets the benefit of those things. Because we have those systems in place, you know, dedicated drawings and all of these additional elements. But on the commercial side, you didn't need those things. And so you're just running at a totally different pace. So it is very, very different. It is tough. But I knew that it would be right. It's back to that entrepreneurial component of like, I want to, you know, explore new things. And I guess a glutton for pain, I don't know, but we call

  Jordyn DiOrio

  it the figure it out factor. I've heard that and it's stuck with me. That's that's what you have. Yeah. Got

  Mark D. Williams

  a curiosity from a business standpoint, is commercial construction more profitable than residential? Like, why even go there, you simply saw an opportunity to go there, and a need needed to be met. And so you're willing to go there. And the reason I'm bringing it up, as I'll just preface this, like remodeling will tend to be at a higher percentage for a builder than a new home construction. And you know, some builders choose to remodel, some choose to do new home. There are definitely two different businesses for sure. But they're obviously close enough that you can play in both spaces. I'm just curious from a profitability standpoint, if that has anything to do with why you would branch out into commercial and show

  Jordyn DiOrio

  us your books, you're making any money, how much money Give me once on the log, and I'll log in right now.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Yeah, no margins are definitely at its base margins are definitely higher on the residential side and commercial right at its core. However, commercial is a little different. Residential has a lot more sort of after care. Whereas commercial has less aftercare. So there's, there's a lot like you can get to the beginning, the middle and the end of commercial much more efficiently than you can residential for a variety of reasons. But I think the primary reason for doing it is like it was to diversify. There's a lot of benefits to us being at 38 people than when we were at 14, there's things that are drawbacks, too. But there's a lot of business benefits to just how quickly we can scale up now. You know, how staff can be sort of interchangeable in certain areas. And so it's it's created a lot of opportunity and efficiency for the business.

  Mark D. Williams

  When you're recording, let's say different building companies, let's say residential in the space that I plan, you're developing a relationship with us. I think like any business, how often are builders choosing to work with you versus I know there's architects in the room here, how often are they not? necessarily specking some of your products in and that's your way and like what would be your, you know, split on your onboarding into a business platform, if you will.

  Alex Lelchuck

  In the beginning, or in the beginning of are sort of like, Let's go after sort of like that next piece of the pie, which is the builder, you know, designer, architect community, which again, is the primary method for a lot of people within our, with our within our industry, but was not larches original primary method. And we started going after that, that's very an uphill battle, right, that takes a lot of time, a lot of effort. But it's very beneficial, I think, as we've been in the marketplace longer established a higher relationship, proven that we can, you know, execute high level projects and have happy people, you know, involved afterwards, it's, there's been a shift, where it's a little bit more balanced, and you start to have people coming to you, and vice versa. Lighting was also a pretty strategic move in that direction. There's a variety of reasons why lighting is a problem, or was a problem where we saw it as a problem specifically, you know, we were getting pulled into the lighting control systems. But to do a lighting control system, I need an electrical plan, I need a drawing, so that I can figure out how many you need. And that was really, really rare, most of the time, there would not be an electrical layout or an electrical plan. And so it's like, alright, that's a problem that we could solve. And then it was always like, you know, will this light not flicker buzz, and it's like, okay, that's another problem that we can solve. And so the benefit of that is a we're solving that problem. And we're providing much better lighting solutions. And, and sort of filling this gap where there isn't all this ultimate lighting designer, but it's also not just being done by somebody that maybe doesn't fully have some some education in the space. But what it's also allowed us to do is move higher up in the chain. Right? So we're involved in the project a lot sooner, and getting established in the project. And so as we're if we're established as a lighting designer, we've been a part of that really initial design phase, when it comes to the AV. It's like, who else right? Of course, can you please do it for us? And it's just like, the relationships is already established, we don't want to go form a new relationship. So it's

  Mark D. Williams

  funny, because not only you're already a serial entrepreneur, but I feel like one of your businesses has like eight businesses. And

  Jordyn DiOrio

  I was gonna say there's really like four businesses total. And maybe the lowlands has three businesses with juice. I feel like we're

  Mark D. Williams

  adding up I don't know, a lot 38 Seems a little light for all these businesses, actually. Wow.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Can we I'm being time cop. Can we do a seamless transition to the lowland This is the transition? Sorry, where are you going to segue?

  Mark D. Williams

  I had a good question. But we'll let it go.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Oh, I'm so sorry. I just looked and I was like, Whoa, we've been talking. So I want to I want to talk about the lowest beautiful space, so

  Mark D. Williams

  to speak about so I guess I had to quit Well, it would be about lighting design. And then we'll go into these lights here, because I think these are really trippy lights. But so a year and a half ago, I came out to your shop. And you were just for those that aren't familiar with lighting design in the room. Walk us through just real briefly, you know, I was so impressed with the lighting that follows your circadian rhythm, and lighting that's following the path, I think for a big part of my job is educating our clientele or partnering with architects or with designers, or lighting designers to kind of really educate them on what this is. But I need a high level understanding to kind of like, Hey, you're gonna spend this kind of money to do this. And a lot of people when I do it are like, but man, you go in there, and you're like, wow, yeah, I need a light that follows my mood. This is amazing. And so walk us a little bit through that. And then we'll kind of transition to some of the lighting design here. Yeah,

  Jordyn DiOrio

  that's a good transition.

  Mark D. Williams

  Thank you.

  Alex Lelchuck

  You know, so at its most fundamental core, right, the sun is sort of the natural light that, you know, we have experienced as humans, and that has different levels, right, it's warmer, it's cooler, as it gets more into middle, the middle of the day, as opposed to where it starts. And where Dentons fire and an incandescent light bulb are pretty good representers of that they have different color temperatures within them, they can show that different segment and our bodies and minds react to that. So that's the circadian rhythm part when we got LED fixtures, which is great, right, super, super efficient and last for you know, 50,000 hours a lifetime. The thing that we got taken away is that so we had one set color temperature we just had like noon, right and it was noon, no matter what happened,

  Jordyn DiOrio

  right? Whether you did it is what it feels like, all the time, right target which is stressful. So

  Alex Lelchuck

  like nobody knew any better, right? They just like dealt with it. And so that is the so that's kind of a primary technology that's available that you know, we promote and is a nice component. Circadian rhythm is essentially tying that together and doing different color temperatures that are matching the sun throughout the day. which is good for wellness, mind, body, etc.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  That is fascinating sold, will you come to my apartment after this?

  Alex Lelchuck

  That's what everybody

  Mark D. Williams

  says, I think it's gonna cost as much as your apartment. So so my question on people that this is a fairly new technology, or at least that I'm aware of it, maybe it's really old. But anyway, I guess the point is, when you've asked people that have already lived in the home, because I think it's in some ways, that's a hard sell. And maybe I'm wrong. I'd like to hear how you sell this exactly, because I would like to do it. And then secondly, help me, help me help you. So but what do people say after they lived in the house for six months? Have you talked to some of your past clients and said, you know, what are they saying about this after it's done, that

  Alex Lelchuck

  it isn't something that they can live without, right? Like, it's the new norm, it's back to ultimately what they were missing on that on that point there is. So there's circadian rhythm, which is sort of this wonderful thing to have. But it is quite expensive. And it is a bit extreme. And that will come down in cost. And ultimately, I think every fixture of the future will have that technology. But in the meantime, at minimum, you can have something called warm, dim. And so when you dim the lights, they at least warm up. So kind of back to that incandescent light bulb experience. It's just that when you have a circadian rhythm system, it's automatically doing the color changing as you turn on the lights based on what time of data. So that's a part of the cost. There's really kind of like one company that's figured that out, that's also part of the cost. So as that sort of evolves, but warm, dim, like I would say 85% of our projects are getting warmed in fixtures. So you know, once it's experienced, it's like, yeah, we don't I mean, unless they're like, Look, I just the way my vision works or whatever, I don't like yellow light that totally comes up. And that's a thing. But it's, the majority of people do like to change the ambiance when they're Dimming the lights.

  Mark D. Williams

  Let's transition to the lighting here, so that Jordan is happy. And tell us a little bit about these lights. When I first toured this with you, I think it was like this last winter. And you're still remodeling the space. Let's talk a little bit about your journey here. But why don't we start a little with these lights, if I recall, are these laser lights.

  Alex Lelchuck

  So that's the name of them, which is kind of cool. So they're literally

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Yeah, I mean, I would be sold on. So

  Alex Lelchuck

  it's a very specific LED strip. So everybody's familiar with LED strips, but there are good, better best and all sorts of things in between with LED strips. And so the LEDs are spaced so tightly that it just looks like one fluid light as it's shooting across. Like there's not there's not anything covering it or diffusing it. And there's actually light shooting down and you can individually control the upper or the lower and it does have the warm, dim. So as we dim the space it warms up,

  Jordyn DiOrio

  which is important, because it's led are no more cost

  Alex Lelchuck

  effective in the sense of like it's energy efficient.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  So no,

  Mark D. Williams

  it's more cost effective than the sun. They built the building around these six lights. Tell us about and we're gonna have to go speed round here to respect our own timeline. Tell us a little bit about your investment here. And correct me if I'm wrong, just a quick. You came in as an investor to this space, right? Yeah. And then you just wanted your money to get invested and make a return, I'm guessing. Yes. And then a couple of the partners decided to hit the dusty trail. And now you are now saying I have to fire the GC, I have to rewrite the contract. And now you're the GC and now you have to take over this whole thing or the whole Titanic sinking? Pretty much. Yeah. Sounds interesting. Tell us more. Yeah.

  Alex Lelchuck

  And stress, as as you're locked in that days of Groupon have left? Right. We've gotten into it deeper. Yeah. So I knew some people involved came in as an investor, we had a vision for this type of space. And this building was here, and wanted to evolve that. And so you know, I didn't think I'd be going back to school. But ultimately, I went back to school, I went back to building a building school and starting to do business school and all sorts of stuff through the process, which has been a good journey, and and you know, is positive and will be even more positive in the future. But ultimately, we had kind of some other people leading leading the charge with the business, some of the decisions that they were making with the builders, with the GC that we were using and how that was configured. And ultimately kind of how the business was actually going to operate was not set up for success. And so as that got figured out, almost immediately, I stepped in and obviously know a few things about construction and that world. And again, just that drive to like, let's get it figured out let's solve a big problem. Let's let's get this thing opened and going. Because at this time, we're already starting to have bookings. And we've got responsibilities of of people that are planning events here and we'd hate to build this place now. And so I fired the JC I brought in a good friend of mine that's from the commercial, general contractor. world, we finished building this place. And our first wedding was in March. And it was like, it's like we built this entire place for that wedding.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  That's where I want you to tell us was your first wedding story. And I like you. Basically, we're building this for one wedding that

  Alex Lelchuck

  was booked. Yeah. So I'm actually like, at a wedding. This is like four months before the place opens up. So we're heavily into it. It's the middle of winter. So there's a lot of things up in the air based on like weather and what's going to happen on whether we can actually finish right, because we still have concrete that we need to pour for the sidewalks and we need to address landscaping and a variety of things. Our first wedding reaches out to us and it's like, Hey, I was like, tracking your guys's social media and where the first wedding. Like we're not good with that, like we booked this like a year ago. Like immediately

  Jordyn DiOrio

  start sweating. I'm sweating right now.

  Mark D. Williams

  I'm thinking like, like a builder and architect and designer. Like nobody wants to be like, I'm the first house I've ever designed is this house, right?

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Like, oh shit.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Yeah, it was Oh, shit. We're like, well, we're having a little industry event before your so it won't be the first event but yes, it will be the first and so that it was like immediate like, Alright, we gotta we gotta put this fire out. We put them you know, I put them at ease of like, look, we're gonna get it figured out. I promise it'll be built. I don't know how the landscaping will look like I think it's gonna look pretty good. Yeah, but the landscaping like I'm just I'm not 100% Sure

  Mark D. Williams

  How big was the wedding out of curiosity. It

  Alex Lelchuck

  was like it was one of our big boys. It was like a 260 person wedding. My so big for us is to, you know, to 60 to 75 300. So it was it was up there. So like we haven't this hasn't been tested. Well the parking situation work will you know like desert to our toilets where it does the kitchen work? Like how are the caterers gonna get in and out of here? Because we have this tiny elevator and like bride's dream

  Mark D. Williams

  come through as a roll of porta potties.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Do flush check.

  Alex Lelchuck

  So it was it was a mad scramble. And I mean, on top of all of that there's you have your licensing to like get occupy occupancy, right. So it's not just, you know, on the residential side it's occupancy to so people can move in here. It's occupancy so we can have a party.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Staffing, staffing, and beverage waiting.

  Mark D. Williams

  Yeah,

  Alex Lelchuck

  you've never done it before. You still have all your hair. Oh, lucky. Yeah, Chernobyl.

  Mark D. Williams

  Neither. Falls are cool. That awesome thick hair, man. We're all gonna have a tough pull test at the end of this thing like that there. Yeah.

  Alex Lelchuck

  But but the wedding, the wedding happened, it went great. We learned some things. But like the, you know, the clients had a fantastic time. It went. Awesome.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  And how many weddings since?

  Alex Lelchuck

  I think we've had 25 Six ish. Wow. I

  Jordyn DiOrio

  mean, that's amazing.

  Mark D. Williams

  Backup a second? Why are we getting in the wedding business? Exactly.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  And oppose COVID world?

  Mark D. Williams

  Maybe I should have asked that question first. But why the wedding business? Well,

  Alex Lelchuck

  it was it was the, you know, commercial real estate business. With the with the venue, business intact. It was like it was during COVID. Just like as COVID was kind of kicking off is when this was like, fully ramping up. And it was like, man, there's gonna be some pent up demand. You know, let's jump on that. And so, you know, those were the perfect little things that lined up to kick it off into gear.

  Mark D. Williams

  Well, it's a good thing. He didn't buy office space in downtown Minneapolis. Working all his coworkers are gonna head back there. Yeah. Such

  Jordyn DiOrio

  an opportunity as an entrepreneur to look at the pandemic and see it as an opportunity for the wedding industry. And I feel like there's event venues booked three years in advance now. So that's, that's really awesome and exciting.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Yeah, it's great. Like we get we have bookings in 2025, which is just like, I couldn't plan that far in advance. But it's, it's fun to see.

  Mark D. Williams

  Speaking of wedding venues, I remember when I was my job to book, our wedding venue. And I remember calling the place and asking me like, Hey, is it available and October? And they said, what year? That's when I knew I had a problem.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Yeah, October isn't very popular mode, laughed

  Jordyn DiOrio

  in your face. And they said that jokes are

  Mark D. Williams

  it's a little bit like, I don't know how many people have small kids in here. But when you like go into a daycare, especially when it's your first kid, you know nothing about the daycare system. And you're like, you know, two months before you're gonna have your child, you're like, I should probably figure it out. And they ask you the same question. I swear, you have to know like, if you're gonna have a child before you get married, I seem to want the wedding venue. You got to plan out these spaces for ages.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  It'll be 12 by the time they can get into your daycare center. I mean, that's how far in advance if the plan is

  Mark D. Williams

  the same deal with the wedding, out of curiosity from a wedding standpoint, how many of the weddings of the 25 events you've had, how many of them are weddings versus let's say an event like this?

  Alex Lelchuck

  There's been 25 weddings and then there's probably been like maybe five or six alternate like other sale of events.

  Mark D. Williams

  I need to get in the wedding venue. No,

  Jordyn DiOrio

  no more businesses.

  Mark D. Williams

  Aren't you stopped working for me like December? So on January I can start a business without you telling me no.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  That sounds about right. That's actually a good segue into another question that I had balance. You have multiple businesses, how do you balance? Or is that just a farce that everyone claims that they have? And they really don't, they're just lying. It's tricky.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Thank you. Yeah, it you have to, you have to try to balance like, you have to make an effort to do it. Right. I've got an amazing wife and two little boys, and making time for them, you know, making time for Lelouch, which is, you know, needs as much time as I could remotely give it making time for the lowlands, which needs epic amount of time, as as a new business to really, you know, get going. So it's, it's tough, but I think you just like every day, you have to proactively, like, think about that, and slot it in where you can.

  Mark D. Williams

  But there's certain this is a very interesting topic. For me. I just love asking this to pretty much every guest on the podcast. And I think you've guessed like 37 at this point. Exactly. So give me some knowledge here to fix my life. But how are you time blocking? Like, give us some there's a lot of business owners in the room. And we all struggle with similar things. Just what are some things that work for you, that have allowed you to create that space? I mean, you have two businesses? I mean, do you devote like certain days of the week to one business over the other? Is it like, how do you triage that? Okay, good. All right, I feel much better.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Really good. Okay, so it's a shit show for you, too. Yeah, great.

  Alex Lelchuck

  No, I mean, it just it honestly, it really is like a balance. And it's something that I make an effort to do every single day, like, I'm gonna be home to, you know, see the kids and hang out with them. You know, I'm their youngest. So it's not like I have to get pulled off to bring them to sports and all of those other things. And I think that's one of those other elements that like, I can kind of do this right now. And I probably couldn't do this a little bit later, because it just becomes less and less feasible. Because I'm just kind of like, let's just go and figure it out. It makes it difficult for me to alter, alter, plan and do time blocking and things like that. But attempt attempts at that happen. I also do like a reset. So all like just take a random day off, or I'll take a random work from home day, which is not something that I normally do. And that's really, really effective. Like if I'm like, get super, super overloaded, because stuff stacks up and there's fires and you can't get through like some of the core stuff that your hat is that day because you're dealing with a bunch of other stuff that reset at home can like get me caught up really, really fast. I get like a week's worth of stuff done in like one day because it's laser focused. And then

  Mark D. Williams

  how are you creating that space? Are you just canceling every meeting for that day? Or are you saying like, hey, once a month, I'm keeping one day dedicated to nobody can talk to me, I'm going into my bunker to do what I need to do. It has started

  Alex Lelchuck

  to get to a point where I'm like blocking a day off in order to not get meetings scheduled. Because I've found that if I have like more than three meetings in a day, things start to get a little squirrely after five like something's getting missed.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  I mean, it's exhausting five meetings a day sounds really, really exhausting. And you have a team of 30 people in how many people work at The Woodlands, what's the staff?

  Alex Lelchuck

  So we have two full time staff who are amazing and make all of this go and then we have like 1415 part time staff.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  That's a lot of people like a lot like again, I'm sweating thinking about all those people right?

  Mark D. Williams

  Time blocking something that I mean I use utilize time blocking effectively. How have you managed to make it work time

  Jordyn DiOrio

  blocking but I think he put it right I think it's like you know, every couple of weeks I'll time block but I reassess all the time. And I love this idea of resetting, whether it's monthly or quarterly, you take time to kind of reset to figure out if your schedule is actually working in the way that you set it. So think intentionality is the piece

  Mark D. Williams

  I've always been impressed with, you know, the let's call it the creative type. So think of architects, designers, things like that. I mean, you clearly have to have time set aside where they're just drafting and uninterrupted. And a couple of years ago, I was reading a book and was basically turning off every single notification on my phones. And one way to get a hold of me as call me shocking a phone is for calling. And but it's like all the dinging your computers do it's so distracting. But the reason I'm you know, going back to that creating that space, I feel like the creatives are very good at potentially spacing out time. I feel like as a business owner in a not I'm not don't consider myself a creative in the sense of, you know, drawing and things like that. I'm sure I'm creative in other ways, maybe but like I feel like I could do a better job of taking that time to actually think because it's funny. I'll go for a run in my eyes, you know, my whatever will stop and I'll have like 50 minutes and it's like I'll start five businesses on this business run which is a problem

  Jordyn DiOrio

  and I hear about all five of them. And I go, No, no, no, no, no.

  Alex Lelchuck

  You don't want too much time for yourself. Yeah. So it's a little it's a little

  Mark D. Williams

  Where do you see the future of the lowland what excites you? I mean, is the other thing about having another business and I can relate to this a little bit, just having, you know, the curious builder podcast now for the last year is like, sometimes when you had something for a long period of time, and you obviously appreciate it, and you love it, but it's really exciting to have another business. How are you, you know, maybe that maybe it's a lower kind of wear off when half of your partner's left you holding a big a call to figure it out? But like, where are you at right now? And where do you see the next couple of years going with this business venture?

  Alex Lelchuck 50:39

  I think what's exciting about this is like I've been through, and I'm in a journey with another business that that's, that's, you know, at different stages, with different people and things that work in that business don't work in this one. And when I've tried, it's like, okay, well, that doesn't, that doesn't go here. It's fun to see this, like, evolve and grow. And like, like, next year, we'll have twice as much business as the year before, right. And so that completely sort of changes the precedent of like, what next year will be like, and what we're able to do and how the place is staffed and the the additional things that we can accomplish. And although this is new and finish, there's things that we want to do, and there's things that we want to evolve here. And, you know, just other sort of normal fundamentals of a business marketing and, and financials and all of those nuances that like need resources and need time and need you no money to do. And so just seeing the business sort of like go from this, like, we're Can we open? And like can does this even like work to like, okay, it works. And like we're doing it to like, how do we do it better? How is it like, now it's sustainable, and then, you know, evolving from there. So it's fun to see that journey for me. Like, I think like, I can't not have that that's probably a part of why there's multiple businesses within Lelouch, and, you know, all of those reasons, all string together. Yeah.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  And we're excited to be a part of the early stages. So we're happy that you were able to host this today, it's excited to kind of see you start your next venture, we'll see where you're at 20 years from now, if you still have your hair TBD. Right, exactly. You know,

  Mark D. Williams

  my bet is he'll have hair. What How come it maybe it's just gonna not really checking out wedding blogs on a regular basis. But how come wedding venues? You don't see them? Essentially, franchising? are having multiple venues? Am I wrong in that?

  Alex Lelchuck

  There is there is some of that. So in the marketplace, you know, let's say maybe 10% of the of the venues are a part of sort of a block of multiples. So there's an element of that I'm not sure yet. So that's one of the things that I'm still learning, you know, we'll learn about the industry because this is another industry that I fully didn't know or understand and have had to, you know, get through to get an understanding of it. I love that

  Jordyn DiOrio

  you're surprised and what industries you're joining this is really fun to do.

  Mark D. Williams

  What I mean, it reminds me a little bit because like, without everyone here tonight, this is just an empty industrial building. And as beautiful it is, it's a little bit like I always say that demonstrating a house and a home is you meaning the client, right? Like, we build beautiful homes, but without the people that embody them, it ends up I mean, obviously, it doesn't exist. And I think having people show up for events and feeling that there's it's not only a worthwhile endeavor to come out and give up one of their evenings to hear a story and to share together and to network, but also to have a really amazing place to do it in. I mean, it kind of makes me want to do this every single night. I mean, that wouldn't be feasible, obviously. But I see this and I'm like, Man, why would you stop at one? Let's do like, 10 of these things. Monday

  Alex Lelchuck

  through Wednesday. It's pretty open.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Yeah. And then I say no, we're not doing that. That's

  Mark D. Williams

  a Tuesday Right? Kind of lost with chocolate tans. Well, let's move it on to the q&a period of time I'll walk around. Do

  Jordyn DiOrio

  you want to walk around you wanna be the runner me the runner also, thank you for hosting us.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Thank you all for coming out.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Once we have to do q&a, can people walk around the space and see downstairs because downstairs has some really cool like greenhouse elements that people can look at? Absolutely.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Yeah. So explore the whole space. So there's a terrarium downstairs, there's the lady slipper Lounge, which is our bar, a couple of hangout areas. There's a limestone wall that evolves and changes throughout the year, which is kind of cool. More laser lights. And then there's, you know, the bar up here,

  Mark D. Williams

  so. All right. Does anyone have a question for Alex or any of us?

  Jordyn DiOrio

  And if you want, I can run with them. Alright. without falling off the chair.

  Speaker 2

  Hello, say this fabulous space. I promise I was listening. But what was this prior?

  Alex Lelchuck

  It was a metal factory for like 50 years. Okay, thank you.

  Speaker 3

  So Alex, this isn't a question, it's more of a comment. Your story is so inspirational. And I understand that you're not the only person in the room that has a similar story in that you took a risk, you jumped on it, you figured out how to make it work, I just encourage you to take a story like what you shared today, spread it to the younger people that are out there, go to high schools, go to anywhere where you can make a connection with the younger people of the world and share a story like that, because I don't think they're getting enough of that right now. And your story is so incredibly inspirational, I think it just would play so incredibly well to those young minds that let them know that, hey, you may not know what you want to do today. But you have a talent, whatever that talent is, make it work, go out there, put your story out there and make it work. So

  Alex Lelchuck

  how fantastic. Thank you. Absolutely.

  Mark D. Williams

  Actually, on that topic, I've approached Minnesota or Housing First Minnesota as well as independently, there's a group of builders that we want to do speaking tours, something like that, not only to encourage the trades, but also to share stories like that. But we really need because we don't need more businesses, we need a master event planner to help organize all this for us, because the people are pretty much every builder or every person that has a business is willing to share their stories. I think it's really a cohesive game plan on how to do it and the mechanisms to do it. Obviously, with social media and marketing, we can do it in our own way. But I mean, definitely in this industry, it's something that's near and dear to most people's hearts. So appreciate the question or statement.

  Speaker 4

  All right, so given that you both have smaller companies, I'm sure that there's new roles that pop up all the time that you need, you learn that you need to hire, and I'm sure you've experienced this growing your businesses. How do you handle onboarding with roles that you aren't familiar with? And how do you how does that compare with existing roles that you have within your company?

  Alex Lelchuck

  You know, a little trial and error is the typical approach. But you know, there something, I think I haven't mentioned that, you know, mentors have been a big component to the journey, right. And in the beginning, the mentor component was like, Who is doing this at a better level than me? So I think the first thing was like, Who has the coolest website, installing TVs, and then like a call back guy and was like, what, How'd you make the website? What do you do right, and then leveled up. But later on in business, it becomes those other things like, alright, we're having this struggle, what have you done in your business to like, evolve to that next thing, and then they start sharing X, Y, and Z. So you started start to get little pathways. That's been my approach. I have a plethora of mentors and people that I respect, both within the industry, the industry, I came to find out I was a part of, and outside of that industry. And that is a wealth of knowledge of how I typically go about that, like, get as much knowledge as you can on something before going after it, and then figure it out.

  Mark D. Williams

  Regarding onboarding, I think I do a terrible job. Jordan can attest to this.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  I'm laughing in the crowd. I'm now part of the crowd. Yeah.

  Mark D. Williams

  It is weird to see you out there. In the sense that I very much value the figure out factor so much. So and I don't know whether this is an excuse or a crutch, but it's my crutch. So I guess I'm going with it is like, I kind of want to see if they can sink or swim. And so if they can make it. Like I've hired people that probably shouldn't have been in their role, but they had figured out factor like through the roof. And I hats off to them for doing an amazing job. And sometimes I wonder if I'm a good leader, sometimes I think I'm a really bad leader, because I'm like, Am I doing enough? And I don't, one of the reasons I asked about time blocking is, I didn't get a chance to ask you, because Alaska now is, I don't know if I give my team enough of my time to coach them. And I think now that I'm running two businesses, I can see it in their eyes. Sometimes my people will say, you know, we wish we had more time with you. And so to answer your question, Kyle, I do a pretty poor job of it. It's something I'm actively trying to work on and fix so that when we do hire people, there's, you know, standard operating procedure, or there's also the idea that someday personally, I would like to be able to sell the company, which is a tough thing to do for homebuilders. And so it's like, if I don't have documentation in place, it's gonna be pretty hard or a process in place. It's gonna be hard to sell the company. And I've heard before that if you if you are working in your business, you have a job and if you're working on your business, you have a business and so I have a job. And I would like to create a business.

  Alex Lelchuck

  Yeah, and I mean, people say that and it's really tough to like delineate that and zoom yourself out of it. think another thing, another approach that we take to that is like when we're hiring, we're hiring 75% culture fit 25% skill set, right? So ultimately, you know, they'll figure out potentially kind of what they need to do or the business will kind of guide that if the cultural fit component is there, like, you know, the skill will evolve. I

  Mark D. Williams

  keep saying it about culture is that we heard on the podcast actually from Ed engelberg from Pella windows, he said, culture, Trump's strategy. And it seems like I've been seeing that over and over and over again, just how you hear about all the time as a buzzword, that culture is important. But man, if you get someone in the office, that's a bad, it's, it's cancerous. I mean, you gotta get rid of it. Yeah.

  Alex Lelchuck

  I mean, you're, you're taking many, many steps backwards very quickly.

  Speaker 2

  So what advice do you have for somebody, you know, starting a new business that's going from providing the service themselves to like, Okay, we need to hire people, like, what does that look like early on is you're like, Okay, I need to stop doing this myself, and start implementing, you know, employees or, you know, 1099, or whatever, like, what advice do you have there? Just from moving from doing it yourself to that? And what does that look like, to prices have to immediately go up? Is that something that just will happen over time as you figure it out?

  Alex Lelchuck

  The approach that I took, and the advice that I would give would be like, What do you like to do the most? And what do you like to do the least? Right? I look at business in the sense of sort of three categories, right? There's sales, and there's a bunch of things that go underneath that marketing, all sorts of things that are required in order for a sale to happen. There's operations, like how do you build the thing, make the thing have the event, etc? And then there's finance, right? How do you get paid for it. And there's lots of businesses that can do one or two, and can't do three, right, you can sell it, make it and you forget to bill for it and go out of business, right? Or you can bill for it, but you can't sell it doesn't matter, right? So figure out which one of those things you're best at or like to do the most. And then outsource the other piece, and to your question on whether you need to raise prices, maybe. But what you might also do is you'll just increase bandwidth, like they'll just have more business. And so now you can support staffing due to volume, not because you're charging more per eventually, that all has to match out and you need to figure out what margins are in your particular industry, trade, whatever. And, you know, just as a, you know, I'm sure it's competitive, everybody is right, you want to you want to try to, you know, win, right. And so, keeping margin and

  Mark D. Williams

  we don't have enough time, I think to talk about tonight, because Jordan is an expert on it, but scaling and scale, you're gonna say you're an expert on scaling, we didn't get to talk about that tonight. That's another podcast, but I'm not getting another reason I'm not good at this is the scaling, I think I'm better at staying smaller and doing better work on a smaller scale, than I am at getting big. However, if I'm going to tackle that problem, personally, I'm probably gonna go get the sale, and then figured out how to support it on the back end. But part of it too, with me is, you know, if I'm building a large home, I mean, in about two to three years, you know, by the time I do a design retainer, we're working with architects we're designing, I mean, you might have six months to a year and a half and design, I have plenty of time to bring on someone on board them. And or maybe I take a senior, you know, depending on the projects, I don't know exactly which business of yours because you have multiple businesses to have which one you're talking about. Because I think if you have a shorter turn on that, you have to maybe have that process figured out a little sooner. Only

  Jordyn DiOrio

  thing I will say quickly is there's a difference between growing and scaling. And they people use them interchangeably. And as business owners, we think we have to scale and that's not the only way you can grow. So just because you think you should have employees and grow to a certain dollar of revenue doesn't mean you should or that you want to. So look up the difference between scaling and growing and you'll start to figure out, okay, how do I get there and then I'll help you decide if you need to hire people tonight deniers, etc. But I think we use those two words interchangeably and they have two different definitions.

  Mark D. Williams

  Any other questions? Mom,

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Dad, do you want to tell us we did a good job

  Mark D. Williams

  or? Alright Andy in the back, Scott a question

  Speaker 5

  on several grades. Today, I think when you look at what do you invest in? What's important eventually for resale? This is really a both you guys to where you live in both worlds. We've done a lot of the obvious things like kitchens, bathrooms, exteriors for what do you do in terms of kind of what you guys focus on and Mark, what do you see in terms of trends that bring not just return on investment but multiples to return on investment?

  Mark D. Williams

  So let me see if I understand the question. You're asking us as a business. What are we seeing as the best place to invest your money?

  Speaker 5

  Invest in something today. So how would you invest in things that are going to bring our own to market faster? are going to bring more value to the home? More return on investment? Than those traditional things?

  Mark D. Williams

  Wow, that's a loaded question. There's so many factors. Yeah, there's so many factors. I mean, location time. I mean, that's almost an impossible. It's a labyrinth question that no matter where I go, I could go somewhere else with it. I guess I would just tell my clients like, I usually ask them whether they're building a new home or remodel, you know, how long have you planning and living in the home? Is it you know, over under eight years, and the reason I say that is if they're going to stay long term, no one can predict the future a year from now, much less to good luck, eight. But the point is, is like you're gonna see them stabilization, stabilization of prices as well, once you look think a little bit long term, but you know, build the home for you remodel the home for you. I don't I'm not a big fan of like it. Now, it's a little bit different. If you're talking about investment properties, I'm not a good person to ask. I've also that's probably why I'm not a great spec home builder. I'm not good at predicting what the market will do. I'm much better at working for Joshua and building him an awesome house for him understanding. You're welcome, buddy. I would love to work together on your home. We haven't tried that one yet. And so I just think that it just depends on what you're trying to get. I mean, real estate investment would probably be, you know, Alex would have better ideas on commercial spaces, I think seeing opportunities. But the other day, if you're spending it on your own home, and investing on where you think do it, and the places that you enjoy the most. And guess what you're probably likely to, the person who buys your home is probably going to like what you like to

  Alex Lelchuck

  lunch provides, you know, lifestyle, and amenities. Right. And so I think what what we bring to a home is like elevating the experience of being in your home, through the through amenities, and through conveniences. I think that desire for that is growing and evolving, there's more, there's more of it. It's being asked for in more places, it's less of like, this is the Jetsons, and we can't dream of having this and more like this is the norm, especially like technology, etc, I would say one thing that you could do is invest in the home's infrastructure, right. So having a proper Wi Fi network throughout the home is looks like this critical thing that like your modern home can function if you don't have the Wi Fi properly set up. So if a new home is being built, and it's not being wired out for proper infrastructure, that's the same thing as not wiring, you know, plumbing all the way through or running electrical all the way through. It's a fundamental core component, right? I mean, in the modern in the modern space. And so I think, you know, that's probably the best thing from a value standpoint.

  Mark D. Williams

  We have time for two more questions. Yes, sir? Perfection, heating and cooling over here. Oh, nope. We're going over here first.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  I'll come back. Sorry. My running.

  Speaker 6

  So we're in the HVAC market. And technology is growing fast. He pumps, many splits. And I'm, I'm really good at selling high tech stuff and not telling my guys how to put it in. And they show up on the job site. And they haven't been trained properly. How do you handle new technology that you're offering? How do you translate? Or how do you train your guys ahead of time? Or do you run into the same issue we have where guys get intimidated by a new product. And they don't, they're not confident putting it in.

  Alex Lelchuck

  So we're, you know, we're technologists by nature. And so it's a part of kind of our our ethos in general. So new tech is sort of a positive thing in our world. And so it's a little bit easier for our team to sort of take that take that on, but that doesn't solve the problem of like, we still need to be able to physically install it, and program it and make it work and all of those things. And so even though they're excited about it, it doesn't magically just happen. So our approach is typically, we sort of have somebody that like, is the champion of that particular, you know, new vertical that we're doing, or new potential technology, and we have them sort of deep dive it go through whatever trainings available, be sort of the lead person to take it on, and champion it, and then sort of teach the rest of the team. And then eventually you kind of have your key person, you have a few people that kind of know how to do it, and then and then it's easier to get it through the rest of the team. That's our typical approach.

  Speaker 7

  All right, I have a question on pricing. So I I'd be curious for both years takes as you grow and develop your business. How do you think of pricing and charging for the value that you bring to the market as you go across that journey, so you're providing great service, you're trying to scale the business, how does pricing fit into that mix?

  Alex Lelchuck

  So, I think that, like so. So what we charge for example, per hour for our labor isn't really all that vastly different, right? Like the market sets, what that is, we can deviate that a little bit. But that's basically set by the market. The things that we can charge for, that we can't charge for earlier on in our journey are things like design and things like engineering and the and things like project management, these other value components that we bring into the project. That a we weren't able to provide before. And be because we provide them, we provide an elevated experience to the to the customer compared to a company that doesn't offer that. And so those are sort of the ways that we address the the pricing thing, if you will.

  Mark D. Williams

  Wow, this is a tough one to I feel like I've probably undercharged my entire career. Even right now, I'm probably undercharging. But what does that mean? And I think I just heard something recently that I really liked, where I forget the analogy completely. But basically, there was something broke on this engine, it was this aircraft carrier, let's call it, you know, $10 billion. And this engineer comes in, takes a hammer, no one could figure it out, knocked it. And he sent him a bill for $10,000. And like, Well, you did this in 10 minutes. And he goes, it was a $10 hammer, he goes, yep, you spent $10 on the hammer and 900 and or whatever the balance is, the it's 2000. On the knowledge, I think you accumulate all this knowledge and all these people that have the knowledge, I think I need to do a better job of whether it's your designers, your architects, your trade partners, of really celebrating that to the client and saying, you're not just in everyone's at a different segment, we built the high end custom homes. And so, you know, those homes aren't necessarily approachable for every person on various scales, but it's really illustrating to them, Why is that knowledge important? What can we do, and ultimately, it's a journey, it's an experience, you know, there's a reason why people keep coming back or why you have, you know, 200, you know, four and a half star ratings is because they're treating them well on service. And so I think, if you can demonstrate to your clients that you have, you know, their genuine best interest, but you also, if I think if you demonstrate that you love your craft, I think that comes out in a variety of ways. And I don't know if I've completely answered your question other than, it's kind of a moving target. And a lot of it depends on what your consumer values because we I have some clients that don't value the things that I do, those are the hardest ones to sell to, not to sell to, but to like, really show them your value, because they don't appreciate the same things. And so I, I try not to make it about price, I try to make it about value. And if I understand the client, and what their goals are, I can just tell them Well, this is what kind of experience do you want? And so it's really more educating them. And it's something I can always do a better job of. Go ahead.

  Speaker 8

  From elegance custom cabinetry, so the question 30 People Demetri from elegance, custom cabinetry? I have a question for you. You have a 3030 people working for you. And I want to understanding your mindset. It was a transaction from 510. I mean, did you feel the difference? And and you feel like let's say you're gonna have even 50 or 100 you think is gonna be different mindset?

  Alex Lelchuck

  Do you mean like my, like, my personal mindset or the mindset? Yeah, particularly,

  Speaker 8

  particular playdough. Personal, like, you need to change your mindset thinking to, you know, to have a 510 people, 30 people, and it was a changing and that transaction, or it was just doesn't matter. I mean, let's say tomorrow is going to be another 10 people, and they're like, Oh,

  Alex Lelchuck

  I wish is that easier. If they're completely different businesses, there are certain milestones that you hit, they typically come with revenue, and along with revenue people, because you need to support the revenue, and so on and so forth. But the business and thus my mindset has changed, probably three significant times. And that completely shifted, like who Lelouch was, with five people is a completely different business than it was at 15. And that it wasn't 30 Like, it's just they're just everything about the business is different. There's core components, obviously, that are the same and we're still doing the same things, but how the business operates, the level of process, the level of communication and interconnectivity in the organization has to elevate you just can't, if you run the same way you ran with five people when you have 15 You're just going to have mad chaos.

  Mark D. Williams

  Well, thank you very much for everyone for coming. I really appreciate it. And let's give a final hand to Alex and

  As a thank you for everyone that's come I think later on this week we want to put too much pressure on Chelsea, our videographer photographer, but everyone on the email list will be sending you digital assets of the entire evening. There's tons of photos of you guys. You guys are welcome to use them however you want social posts take us don't take us whatever you want. It's just fine as a thank you. Additionally, there are four hidden surprises somewhere in the audience. If you would check under your seat. You're looking for a winner sticker.

  Jordyn DiOrio

  Is it a car? Are they going to get a car? Oh my God. Not a car.

  Mark D. Williams

  He's got one. Karen's got one. There's one more there's four. There's two on each side. There's there's one over here. All right. So yep. Okay, so those that can those that have one? Yeah, those that have ng on. Those that have one please go to the merchandise table. You can pick anything you want off the merchandise table. Thank you for coming. Please enjoy the food and the drink and thank you again.

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