03/29/2026
Buckle up, this is going to be a long one.
We have all heard of “death by a thousand cuts” when referring to many things. I never thought to use it in regards towards small businesses, until now. I’ve thought about that ten fold over the last year, well over a year now. Don’t worry, we aren’t going out of business or closing the doors at our lot. But I wanted to make this post not only for us, but for other people in the industry. Heck, even for other small businesses within any field. When you as a customer take up time from a small business, rather it is calling to gather information, texting back & forth, inquiring about a custom price, visiting their location for (x) amount of time, or truly asking them to provide any service even if it’s just providing knowledge, you are taking space from someone else. Now, when you have the intention of purchasing from them then by all means, TAKE UP SPACE. It doesn’t matter if you need hours versus someone else that only needs minutes. It doesn’t matter if you ask them to reprice it a thousand times versus someone else only needing it once. It doesn’t matter if you need to talk at 10pm versus someone else needing 9am (with respect to their family and/or schedule). The point is, we are VERY firm believers that every individual is different, every individual wants a different experience and as a customer you have EVERY RIGHT to have the experience you want. Especially when you’re spending the kind of money most of our customers do. We have never cared if we stood to make hundreds of dollars or if we stood to make thousands of dollars. ALL our customers get treated with the same respect and courtesy we would want if we were the customer. I think we can all agree up to this point, but here’s where things get controversial. For those that don’t understand what we do, let me explain the process. Customers contact us in many different forms, some come to us not knowing sizes but know they want a two car garage, some come to us knowing sizes but not knowing how many doors can fit on the side of a 30’ long structure, some know the lingo (gable ends, standard pitch, standard gauges, 4 foot centers, A frame vertical, boxed eave, etc), some know they want the strongest structures but don’t know the correct label. It is our job to build off what customers already know regardless of how little that may be or how long that might take. Then, we 3D design the structure they want until it is exactly what they envisioned. Once we have built exactly what they want (I’ve had this take 20+ rebuilds before), then we provide them with the specs along with pricing. Based on their answer it is then our job to provide monthly payment options with rent to own, any additional fees for rent to own if any, or provide finance links and/or set up appointments with finance managers. Depending on method of payment, then it’s our job to offer upgrades they may be interested in but not know are an option. At this point we have oftentimes sacrificed money from our pocket to fit someone’s budget without them having to sacrifice an upgrade they want. We do this more often than not & we are happy to do it every time. Once we have the method of payment, the exact build they want, and a budget the customer is satisfied with, that’s when we finalize the contract, the rent to own agreement (I have to do this manually depending on the manufacturer, and collect the deposit). THIS IS NOT WHERE IT ENDS. For some companies it is, for some they will take your money then you’ll never speak to the same rep again if one at all. God forbid you have any issues, you will be left out in the cold. We don’t operate that way. Our customers are ours from start to finish, all the way through. We’ve had customers change their structure entirely after it’s submitted. We’ve had customers come to us AFTER the building is installed and ask our advice on after market automatic openers, if they can paint their roll up door, how to seal a crack in concrete, etc. and we are happy to do it every time. Now that you have a full understanding of what it is we do, this is the part that becomes controversial. When you are working with a small business, use us as an example, unless you are 100% sure you want to work with this company then you SHOULD NOT have them price you multiple designs, have them walk you through upgrade options, discuss financing, take up hours on the phone with them, etc. In our industry, I would recommend to customers that you pick the most basic build and have multiple companies price it. THAT will tell you the price point you need to know. You do not need to waste hours of a companies time in order to make an informed decision about who you want to work with. We hear it constantly in our work, “Other companies just send over the quote to your email, they aren’t personable.” “Other companies won’t take my call past 5pm and on a weekend, forget about it!” “Other companies make me feel like an inconvenience when I want to change something and have it repriced.” Well, I’m going to share the news flash so many people need to hear. They’re tired. They’re exhausted. Independents like my husband and I, those people get tired of bending over backwards for customers only to have them go somewhere else if they save a couple hundred dollars, those people are tired of bending over backwards to only be ghosted, those people are tired of bending over backwards to then have you come and show a cheaper quote you want matched. Do you know that majority of manufacturers won’t price match anymore unless it is a big name competitor? There’s far too many “manufacturers” in this industry. They are people that will provide you 💩 structures, then dissolve their business & p**f start a new one under a different name. Oftentimes, if we match a price, WE gave that money up. At that point what other choice do we have? We’ve wasted days, weeks, heck sometimes months on your structure. Some money is better than no money. Stop wondering why you don’t receive exceptional customer service while simultaneously “shopping” your quote. If we had a dollar for every individual we educated, built them exactly what they wanted, & spent hours working with that took OUR knowledge, OUR build, OUR hard work to a company that wouldn’t do what we did and got a quote THEN came back to us wanting us to match, well we wouldn’t even need to make this post. When interacting with ANY small business, you need to know that if they are spending time with you then that time is coming from somewhere. Rather it’s a customer that would’ve bought, time with their child, time from work related tasks, time from cleaning their house, time from their spouse, time from personal care. No matter what it is, when you take time from a small business and you don’t buy, you’re affecting them far more than you know. I have watched my daughter cry for both my husband and I to play while being told “in a minute honey” or “we have to work baby” only for those same individuals to cut our legs out from under us without a second thought. My whole family sacrifices, including our daughter. It is essentially death by a thousand cuts. We have got to start doing better. In the world we live in, in the economy we live in, we have got to start doing better by our small businesses. I recently told someone “Eventually the only thing that’s going to be left are huge corporations that have salespeople that don’t care about you and the scammer companies that will pump out the worst building you’ve ever seen then disappear IF you get a building at all. Companies like ours cannot continue to kill themselves day in and day out to put customers first whilst customers just trample all over them.” We recently had a customer call us at 10pm at night, say he was buying by the end of the month and held my husband up from time with our daughter for well over an hour. He missed bedbye that night, something we both never miss unless we absolutely have to. He called us two days later and held him up for over an hour. We have priced him about 5-6 times and we have provided him with every ounce of knowledge we have. Today he messaged us and said he wasn’t buying anytime soon, that he was JUST getting pricing.
If you want to keep small businesses afloat, start with respecting their time. Then, if you can’t buy for whatever reason after a company has spent time with you then be honest with them. Stop ghosting them and leaving them to follow up with you periodically wasting both of your time. Lastly, if a small business went out of their way to help you in any way shape or form, leave a review for them, follow their social media pages, share their content for friends to see, let anyone and everyone know what they did for you. You don’t have to buy from a business to leave a review, in fact include that in the review. “We unfortunately were unable to purchase due to budget issues, but this company went above & beyond for me.”
I haven’t always been great at standing up for myself, it’s something I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful husband help guide me through. But now is the time for some brutal honesty, if we keep going at this rate we won’t be here next year. When we came into this industry, we worked around the clock with no ad money, no exposure, just two people that believed in what we were doing. So to the customers that did buy from us, please share our posts. That helps more than you can possibly imagine. If you haven’t already followed our business page, that’s a free way to support us. If you haven’t left a review, please do. To the customers that it didn’t work out for reasons beyond your control, there’s free ways to support us.
Our small business needs the help these days, we cannot keep doing what we are doing. It is not feasible to allocate all our time to people JUST pricing. We want to make this abundantly clear, we are not complaining about customers that we worked exceptionally hard with that bought or customers that it didn’t work out with for reasons beyond their control.
To end this, we want to thank every single customer that has supported us over the years. We can never repay each and every one of you for what you’ve allowed to be possible for us. We have met some truly amazing people that I believe would cut off their own arms rather than not support us. *cough* Daniel Runyon Jeremy Browning Dana Moore *cough* 😉♥️
