Scaling Excellence in Kitchen and Bath Remodeling With Andrew Blate
Andrew Blate, co-owner of Beautiful Home Services, joined The Contractor Grow Show to discuss how his company became a leader in high-end kitchen and bathroom remodeling. Starting in 2006,
Andrew and his business partner Craig built their company on the foundation of honesty, quality craftsmanship, and specialization. After experimenting with various types of projects, they chose to focus on remodeling kitchens and bathrooms, allowing them to hone their skills and maintain a drama-free, highly profitable business model.
Andrew emphasized the importance of team retention and leadership, sharing how long-term employees contribute to the company’s success and culture.
Business is like a riverit never runs straight for long, and success comes from going with the flow. — Andrew Blate
By prioritizing relationships with clients and referral partners, Beautiful Home Services has developed a steady flow of business through word-of-mouth recommendations.
The company’s commitment to excellence is reflected in their numerous awards, such as “Best of the Best,” and their community involvement, including fundraisers and charitable contributions. Andrew’s philosophy of caring for employees, clients, and the community drives the company’s values and growth.
With a focus on building trust, delivering exceptional results, and avoiding unnecessary stress, Beautiful Home Services continues to raise the bar in remodeling.
Topics Discussed
The Power of Niching Down
How Beautiful Home Services focused on kitchens and bathrooms to deliver superior quality and profitability.Importance of Trial and Error
Lessons learned from stepping outside their comfort zone and why sticking to their strengths pays off.Leadership and Team Retention
How Andrew and Craig foster long-term loyalty and build a culture of accountability and trust.Referral-Based Business Growth
Why Beautiful Home Services relies on repeat clients, referrals, and strong community connections.Adapting to Market Shifts
Insights into growing through housing downturns and post-pandemic market dynamics.Balancing Profit and Quality
The challenge of delivering exceptional work while maintaining profitability in the remodeling industry.The Role of Awards and Reviews
How industry recognition and client feedback reinforce their reputation and attract new business.
Audio Transcription
Mark Lamberth
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Contractor Grow Show. My name is Mark, I’m your host, and today I have the special pleasure of talking with Andrew Blake at Beautiful Home Services in Poolsville, Maryland. Andrew runs company with his partner Craig s Bulk S Close enough. It’s not bulk. Okay, great. And so I have Andrew on the show today. Andrew, thank you so much for being here.
Andrew Blate
Thank you. It’s my pleasure. I’m very excited to join you.
Mark Lamberth
Fantastic. So we’ve talked a little bit about the company, exciting stuff going on for you guys. You’re in Poolsville, Maryland, just about an hour away from dc. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about the story of the business, history of the business and where you guys are at today.
Andrew Blate
Yeah, it’s going to be a long podcast if you want the whole story. So Craig and I grew up together in Montgomery County, Maryland, so suburb of dc. We’re best friends, we’ve been friends since early high school. I’ve actually known him since elementary school. I was in kindergarten with his wife, Jessica, and we became really close friends in high school and after college. So Craig studied engineering at Syracuse. I studied history and accounting at Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and we both went off and did, we ran a painting company together in college in the summertime, painting outside of houses, making some money, having some fun. And we both graduated college. We decided we wanted to do other things. I actually went into public accounting and achieved my CPA license and Craig worked in commercial construction. And after about two years of working for other people, realizing we absolutely hated it, we decided to start beautiful home services in the spring of 2006.
So perfect timing for the housing crash that happened about a year and a half later. We started as a painting and drywall company, mostly interior next year, painting, hanging drywall, finishing basements. We quickly pivoted the company into more of a remodeling company. So we started slowly into bathrooms and got really, really good at bathrooms. And then we started having customers ask us to do kitchens. Hey, will you do our kitchen? Hey, will you do this small kitchen in our basement? And that was sort of the gateway drug into kitchen remodeling. And then that parlayed into whole house remodeling, so flooring and kitchens and bathrooms and moldings and painting and whatnot. And so that transition happened in the early 2000 tens. And I tell other entrepreneurs all the time that business is like a river. It never runs straight for very long and you kind of have to go with the flow of the river.
And in the beginning we sort of this change to a remodeling company and then we realized this is the direction our client base wants us to go. This is the direction that the company wants to go. This is the direction that our staff wants to go. And we really embraced it. And then we really doubled down on being a higher end company. It’s hard to be a budget friendly contractor and a high-end contractor and a medium end contractor. It’s hard to have staff that can do everything. And so we said, what space do we really want to be in? And we decided that we wanted to be lean into the high end quality work that we’ve always done, and that’s kind of the space we’re in now. So about 80% of our business is kitchen and bathroom remodeling, and the other 20% is sort of that catch all of other remodeling, installing railings and flooring and moving walls and taking out structural walls and opening up floor plans and all the interior renovations that kind of go along with a kitchen or a bathroom a lot of times.
Mark Lamberth
Okay, amazing. We talked a little bit about this before the show, but I mean you have 10 people, nine or 10 on staff as management at a certain level and then have upwards of close to a hundred people on your team and between all of the different teams that are running and folks out in the field.
Andrew Blate
That’s right. We produce, it depends on the year, somewhere between about 125 and 145 projects a year. So we need a pretty robust staff to do that. But our staff and what we’ve, especially Craig has crafted, I think is the right word over time, is really guys who are specialists at what they do. So we have high end tile installers, so if I’m doing your bathroom, the guys who are putting the tile in, that’s what they do all day, every day, five, six days a week. They’re not also planning azaleas, they’re not also pouring concrete for your pool. They’re not paving your driveway. This is what they do. They install tile and our painters, our painters, our flooring guys, our flooring guys. So because our scope is relatively limited, we can double down on really having great craftsmen that work on each project and each aspect of every project.
Mark Lamberth
That’s amazing. Andrew, we talk a lot of folks and folks just all across different kind of spectrums and different levels of business, and you guys have got an amazing business going on here. And I’m really picking up that, I mean, we talked a little bit about this before the show. You don’t build new houses, so you’ve really kind of figured out what your lane is. And I mean it’s kitchen and bathroom remodels, some other projects. But I mean, you guys have got a big team, you’ve got an amazing business in, guys have grown a lot in this amount of time. How have you decided, how did you know to sort of niche down in the way that you have and to get these specialists and to really say, this is what we’re doing. We’re not everything to everybody. We do exactly this and we do it really well.
Andrew Blate
I think it’s through a couple of things. First of all, it’s trial and error. We kind of over time as the company grew, maybe poked our toes into some water to try something new and it didn’t work. I like to live within the context of running a construction company as drama free, a life as possible. I want really happy customers. Almost a hundred percent of our business is referral based.
Either that’s previous customers, customers referring us to other customers or referrals from designers and realtors and other referral partners I have. And you’re only as good as your last project. I could have a designer that I’ve worked with 20, 30, 40 times and we mess up one project and that’s it.
They won’t refer us again. And so I think that gave us the experience of maybe taking on projects that we weren’t totally qualified for and those kind of going sideways and dealing with the consequences of that and also not wanting to burn those relationships really created some conversations about what are the projects we enjoy doing? I really enjoy kitchen and bathroom remodeling and so does Craig. And also, what are the jobs that we can do profitably, right? Obviously we’re a for profit business and we’re here to make money and support our families and what have you.
And every time that we’ve kind of gone out of our comfort zone, not every time, but the majority of the times we’ve gone out of our comfort zone has ended poorly for us on one level or another. Maybe we do the job fine, but we don’t make money on it. Maybe we do the job fine, but our crews aren’t happy doing it and it’s hard to find guys to do it. A lot of our crews have been with us 15 plus years, and so my guys don’t pour foundations. So if I’m going to do an addition, I got to find a concrete crew. Well, while I know enough about concrete and pouring foundations to get myself in trouble, I don’t know enough about it to run a successful, profitable business doing it. And so I think it’s been over time we’ve just decided, listen, let’s grow within our industry that we’re really great at and leave the other stuff to other people.
And that costs me business sometimes. I mean, I’ll have customers on a regular basis call me and say, Andrew, you did my kitchen a couple of years ago. You did my bathroom, you worked for my brother-in-law. We want to build an addition. And I say, listen, I really appreciate you coming back to me. I really appreciate the faith you have in beautiful home services, but this is not what we’re good at. I’ve never built an addition before for a client. Do you want to be my first? Wow.
I make a lot of food analogies. I think in analogies I’ve learned that in my old age is that this is the way my brain operates. And I think people relate to that. If you’re going out for a really nice dinner with your spouse on Saturday night, your anniversary, and you want to have steak, you go to a steakhouse. If you want to have sushi, you go to a sushi restaurant, you want to have Italian, you go to Italian restaurant, you don’t go to an Italian restaurant for sushi.
So I think one of the issues in home improvement is that you have a lot of contractors out there that, as my late father would say, are jack of all trades and master of none. And a lot of times their reputations get hurt. They don’t make money, they get in lawsuits, they get in drama with their employees, they get in drama with their clients. It’s just not a successful recipe to make a profitable low stress business, in my opinion. So that’s why we kind of doubled down on those projects. And again, with kitchens and baths, I find a lot of satisfaction in the results that we have, in the impact that we can have on people’s family lives and their enjoyment of their homes. I dunno if that answers your question. That was a
Mark Lamberth
Long answer. It does. It does, Andrew. I mean, it’s amazing, man. I’m just really learning a lot from this really, because we struggle with this with our ourself and we have folks contact us that are different areas outside of our core business, and it’s so tempting to want to take on that business and we get referrals and referrals from past customers and people say, I’m not calling anybody else, I just want to work with you guys. And it’s like, well, we could go out here and make this money. But it takes a while to, this is not your first rodeo, right? You’ve been around the block and you had that experience now of well, we could say yes, we’ve done that in the past, but our crew is not going to like it. Right? We could say yes, but there’s some drama and I mean, who’s got time for that, right? I mean, you’ve got your family, you’ve got a lot of the things going on in your life than just working 12 hour days in this business, which I’m sure you’ve done plenty of.
Andrew Blate
I sleep right at night. As you grow a business, you run into bumps in the road. I’ve had customers calling me at eight or nine o’clock at night upset about something on their project. I’ve had unfortunate reviews on Yelp or Google or whatnot. I’ve had customers say, Hey, I saw this thing online or this or that. It’s funny how long those ratings last.
I had a client a couple of years ago, we have hundreds of five star reviews on Yelp and Google and Angie List and what have you. And she brought up a review from 2007, and I’m like, we’ve produced probably four or 5,000 projects since that. And so as the running of the sales side of our business, I have to be conscious of that, of like, okay, maybe I take on this project, maybe it’s a big dollar value, but if I can’t do it successfully and I can’t do it in a way that I feel pride in it and that I’m satisfied with the result and also that possibly the client won’t feel that way, what kind of potential harm could that do to my company later on down the road that could cost me exponentially more revenue than that one project would gain me?
It’s just not worth it. And telling clients, I’m a sales guy and I’ve been a sales guy my whole life and telling somebody, no, I don’t want to bid on your project. We’re not qualified for it. Or I think there’s somebody who might be more qualified, is against my nature.
But I’ve also found that when you tell somebody that they also are a lot of times impressed by your honesty and that can lead you to projects later on down the line, that it’s not a one-off deal, they will remember that you’re honest and straightforward with them and then they’ll remember you for another project. Or they’ll remember when a friend or a family member, their golf buddy, their book club friend, whatever, says, Hey, I’m thinking about doing my kitchen. Do you know anybody? Like, oh yeah, I have know this guy Andrew’s beautiful, I’m services. He didn’t do our addition, but he’s super honest and his company does high quality work. Let me give you his number. And that’s how I’ve built my business over time is through that honesty.
Mark Lamberth
That’s amazing. And I mean, this may sound like a silly question. Anybody ever get upset you? I mean obviously you do this very respectfully, maybe refer them to someone else who’s more, how does that go if someone’s call you up and say, Hey, listen, I want you to do this addition for me, build a new house or whatever. How does that conversation go when you say that this is not a great fit right now?
Andrew Blate
Usually it goes well, sometimes I wouldn’t say people get upset. It’s more disappointed.
They really, really want to work with you. And again, I take that as a huge compliment. We’ve worked for 20 years to build that level of trust within the community. And what I tell them is what I just told you is, mark, I like you. I think you’re awesome. I would love to work for you. However, this is not a project that I feel my company can do. The quality and level of work that you’re expecting, that I’m expecting from my company. I don’t want to have drama. I don’t want to do bad work for somebody, and I value honesty, and I’d rather be honest with you and tell you I’m not the right company than go and do the work and have it turn out poorly.
Mark Lamberth
Amazing.
Andrew Blate
And I’m not willing to risk the reputation of my company, my personal stress, my business partner’s stress, my crew stress, my wife’s stress, especially on your project. It’s just not worth it for me. Usually people after they get over the disappointment, they respect the honesty.
Mark Lamberth
Oh, that’s beautiful. I saw that you guys won best of the Best National Award in 2022 for Beautiful Home Services. Maybe you could tell me a story about that.
Andrew Blate
We’ve actually won it. I think my signature has the 20 22 1 on, because I haven’t uploaded the video. We have won it 2023 and 2024. So the way the best and the best works is they look for contractors and other service providers in an area that have stellar ratings, and they go through and make sure that company is licensed insured that those ratings hold up. So we get reviewed every year, so they go back and look to make sure we have new ratings, clients are still happy, we don’t have any complaints with our regulatory boards. And then they approach us and let us know that we’ve won that award and then we have the option to have a video put together with the award. But we’ve won it, I think eight or nine years in a row now. They also look at our community footprint. So my partner and I firmly believe that as a good member of the business community, as a good member of our community, that we need to give back to that community.
So we do a big fundraiser every year. We call it our crab feast. We love crabs.
This is the Mid-Atlantic. We’re from Maryland, so blue crabs are what we do. So we have a big crab feast. There’s a local restaurant in Arlington, Virginia called the Quarter Deck that has donated crabs to us for a number of years, and we raise money for a number of different charities, but especially HSC Pediatric Center in dc, oyster Recovery Partnership. We give money to local schools. We sponsor the local little league baseball team. I played baseball growing up and there was always somebody’s dentist or the local hardware store, and Craig also played baseball and soccer and whatnot. And we always, those local companies, businesses that support those local teams allow those kids to have those experiences. So we view that as an important element of our company, of our culture.
And the best of the best looks at that as well is the company not only a profitable and a really high quality company, but are they also good members of their community? So we’ve won that award a number of times. We’ve won Angie’s List awards, we’ve won awards from Yelp, we’ve been nominated and the airing of this broadcast, I can’t announce it quite, but we’ve been nominated through our trade organization Pro Mid-Atlantic for an award for one of the projects that we did this past year. So there’s an awards banquet in a couple of weeks, so you’ll have to follow up with me and see how we did.
Mark Lamberth
That is fantastic.
Andrew Blate
Yeah,
Mark Lamberth
Amazing, Andrew. So I mean, I’ve seen companies, it seems like this is something that happens at a little bit of a higher level when companies really become more mature and they’ve got a great footprint in the marketplace and they great reputation that they actually go out sometimes and maybe schedule and seek these awards at some level. Obviously they’ve earned it and deserve it, but they say, look, we would like to do some more outreach and there’s some kind of awards that are happening in these different places. Maybe we’d like to jump in on this and see if we can win this or place in this. I mean, have you had any kind of strategy of saying, we’re going to intentionally go out and get this recognition from the community with these awards, or is this something that happens completely organically?
Andrew Blate
So the first set, the best of the best and the other service rewards that we’ve won are based mostly on the ratings that we’ve received. Lemme tell you what, we’re all overwhelmed with ratings. The Amazon guy drops his package off at my house and I get a text about rating how well he dropped it off on my porch. It’s like we’re overwhelmed at everything you do. Everyone asks you for a rating, you go to the restaurant, you pay for your food, they give you the little device to rate them.
It’s so challenging to get people to rate you positively, right? God forbid you screw something up, then immediately there’s a rating. But for the award that we have been nominated for with Promen Atlantic, we actually submitted a number of projects to them. They have an awards banquet and you could submit projects, and they have a whole bunch of different categories based on the size of the job, the scope, new homes and additions and decks and pools and really large kitchens and medium-sized kitchens, the whole thing.
And so for that, we submitted four portfolios to them of projects that we worked on. And that is, to your point, actually something, this was the first year we’ve ever done anything like that because exactly what you just said, we are doing top quality work, we’re doing award-winning projects, and we’ve never really considered, Hey, how can we get recognized for this? Not only from the standpoint, from marketing standpoint, it looks great when we win awards, but also I’ve invited my entire team, not most of the workers, but the entire management team, the foreman who were on the projects that we had nominated their families to this awards banquet, because it’s not just an award for beautiful and services, it’s an award for the entire team. Everybody works on it.
The project managers are designers, the accountants, like everybody works on these projects. So for the coming year, 2025, as I’m landing projects, I’m earmarking specific ones like, Hey, based on the scope and the kind of design of this project, I think it’s going to be something that’s going to be really great for us to potentially get an award. So on those, I have a photographer that’s going to come in and photograph the projects before we do them, photograph during the project photograph, after the project is done, make sure all of our plans and our design work is well documented so that I have a really nice portfolio to be able to submit for these awards.
So that’s how we’re doing it. So we, to your point, we are going after some of these more job specific awards, a little bit more aggressively than we ever have. This wasn’t even a consideration three years ago, four years ago during Covid, we weren’t even thinking about this kind of stuff. We were just hanging on with both hands. And now that things are a little bit more stable, we think that we deserve the recognition for the incredible work that we’re doing. And
Mark Lamberth
Absolutely,
Andrew Blate
I don’t feel ashamed to say that we’re doing awesome work. Why should we not get, not just me, the entire team, why should these employees who are working really hard to make our company successful, they should get an opportunity to take a bow for the work that they’ve done?
Mark Lamberth
Of course. Yeah. I love it. So Andrew, something I’ve studied a lot of is leadership and John Maxwell 21 Immutable Laws of Leadership. I mean, we’ve kind of studied a lot of that internally, and I mean, I get the sense that just talking with you, that you’ve got a lot of natural leadership skills, maybe Craig as well. I mean, you don’t get to the place that you guys are at with the team that you have and with the awards and things without having some combination of natural leadership skill and some accumulated sort of learned skill either on the job or really studying it. And then as well as all the positive reviews. You guys have got hundreds of great reviews and we’ve seen that. How do you look at leadership and how do you convey the values that you want to your team so that when they’re going out every day, that they’re reflecting what you’ve built here and what they’re building, what you guys have collectively put together and just keep those sort of values on point so they’re being reflected and they come back with the reviews and with the awards and different things that you guys are achieving Now,
Andrew Blate
That’s such a great question. I’m like you. I’m a student of leadership. I love reading about leaders. I love, I have some great leaders in my life. Craig is a phenomenal leader. I’m a phenomenal leader. We lead very differently and we lead very well together. I think from the company culture standpoint, I stood up at Craig’s wedding in 2006 and told him that I loved him and in front of 250 people. To be clear, I’m not in love with Craig.
That’s a different thing. He’s my best friend. He is my brother from mother, mother. We’ve been through wars together and we tell our staff that. I tell clients that I just told you on a podcast that’s going to go in front of thousands of people. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, that you can care for another person. And I think that saying that out loud and saying that in front of our staff is the beginning of our culture. That’s the beginning of our leadership, that we are doing this because we care about each other. We’re doing this because we care about our employees. We do this because we care about our customers and that we care about our community. And I think that attracts people to us, both clients, employees, workers, referral partners who subscribe to that philosophy. I want to make money. I’m here to make money. I’m here to be profitable. I’m here to build wealth for my family and Craig’s family and our employee’s family. That’s a top priority.
But we can also do that while caring for other people and by expressing care for somebody beyond just the 40 hours that you’re working at beautiful home services or caring about you for more than just remodeling your kitchen. And I think we take that approach to it. People want to follow people who care about them. It’s not just transactional. And I think that that’s the leadership style that Craig and I have embraced. I have worked for people who clearly did not care about me other than what profit I could bring to them. A lot of work experience. And you feel like you really don’t want to go very far for somebody like that. If the amount that your boss or your colleagues care about you ends when you leave work at five o’clock, you’re only willing to go until five o’clock for them, right?
Mark Lamberth
Yeah, yeah, right. Sure.
Andrew Blate
And I think that that leadership style also is reflected in we lead our employees in the manner in which we like to be led. Craig is a leader for me, and I’m a leader for Craig, and he leads in a way that I like to follow and I lead in a way that he likes to follow.
We attract employees who also feel that same way. I don’t know if I’m articulating it correctly, but we also don’t like to micromanage people. I’ll say to my employees all the time, mark, I hired you because you’re smart, because you’re talented, because you’re a great fit for our company. And me hiring you means I’m giving you a certain amount of trust, and I trust that you’re going to make great decisions for our company. And you know what? You’re going to make a mistake. And if you make a mistake, I’m not going to have a hissy fit. I’m not going to yell and scream and curse and throw things. We’re going to look at the mistake, why you made it, and I expect you to learn from that mistake and not do it again. Now, if you make the same mistake repeatedly, then we have a different conversation, right?
Sure. But just that compassion for other people, that we’re human beings, that there’s stuff going on in your life that has nothing to do with beautiful home services that we have to be compassionate about, to make sure that you can do your job well and also be a good member of your community and also be a good dad or a mom or an uncle or a husband or a wife, or whatever the situation is. Because if we view people in that entire context, then they’re going to follow you. And we treat our clients the same way. When I come into somebody’s home, I think a lot of renovation contractors think about the easiest, fastest, cheapest way to accomplish whatever the project is.
I come in and say, mark, what are you trying to get out of this project? What about your kitchen do you hate? What about your bathroom is not functional for you? And then we craft the project around that. Then we talk about cost of like, oh, well you want to open this up? Well, that’s a load-bearing wall. And we do have those conversations, but I take a different approach of caring about what they’re looking to do. Are you looking to have your entire family over for Christmas dinner and make sure we have the space for that and to be able to cook? Do you like to cook? Do you not like to cook? Are we building a kitchen so you have great space to eat or Uber Eats? What is it? And I think if you can say, I’m kind of jelling the two together, the relationship that Craig and I have permeates into the company, permeates into the way that we lead and attract people and permeates into the client of clients that we attract and the kind of clients that work with us. So that’s sort of the nexus I’m trying to build there. Sorry, I used a lot of words, but that’s kind of how I feel about leadership.
Mark Lamberth
It’s great, Andrew. It’s an absolute inspiration. I mean, wow,
Andrew Blate
You want to work for people who you know care about you.
Mark Lamberth
Yeah.
Andrew Blate
I try not to get involved in the personal lives of my employees beyond whatever, but I also care that their mental health is good, that their physical health is good, that their family health is good, because the better those things are, the better employees they’re going to be. For
Mark Lamberth
Me.
Andrew Blate
I mean, it’s sort of selfish, but it’s also sort of not selfish. If your employee is completely, I distracted because of whatever stuff they have going on in their lives, and you just don’t care about that. And you’re like, mark, where’s my report? Mark? Why isn’t this done? They’re not going to work hard for you. They’re not going to give you that extra and they’re also probably going to leave you.
Mark Lamberth
Yeah, and I mean, it’s a great point. And I mean these days in the trades, we all know, I mean, there’s a shortage of skilled smart talent. Tell me that. Tell me that
Andrew Blate
We have another podcast on that.
Mark Lamberth
Yeah. And so we hear these numbers. It can take sort of nine to 15 months when you bring on a new team, surprisingly long amount of time before they become profitable. And I appreciate your sensitivity around talking about money and profit, whatever. But I mean obviously we’re here to, we’re in business here. I mean, that’s what we’re doing. So profit is the lifeblood of the business. It’s sort of the oxygen and we have to have, that’s the r and d budget for next year. It’s all kinds of things. If you bring on someone and they’ve got all kinds of opportunities to work somewhere else and probably offers on the table, and you’re not bringing that leadership and caring about them and really teaching them about leadership for where they’re going to go next, teaching ’em about leadership for their own family. I mean, you’ve got young people coming in. Maybe this is an early career move for them. I mean, they’re going to be somewhere else in 10 years potentially. And they’re evaluating your leadership style. And if you’re not showing up and leading well, you’re not going to have a team. And ultimately you’re not going to have a business. It’s not going to be profitable.
Andrew Blate
And how do you assign a value to exactly what you’re saying, mark? How do you assign a value to institutional knowledge? So I have an employee who works for us, one of our designers, she’s been with us about eight years. We hired her. She was one of the first what we would consider big hires that we did when we were transitioning from a mom and pop painting your exterior house to a full fledged remodeling company. She’s been with us through this entire development of BHS. When we went from a one to $2 million company, we were at one point during Covid up to 15, 16 million, we’re now in the six to $8 million range, which is a much more comfortable space to be in. She was there for all of it. She was there for the successful employees, the not successful employees, the different policies that we came up with. She helped us craft the way we do things with our clients for these remodeling projects. What’s the value of the knowledge that she has? I don’t know, but it’s a lot,
Mark Lamberth
Right?
Andrew Blate
And what are the value of the knowledge that she has? Another employee we hired after her, who’s now been with us, she’s been with us, I don’t know, five and a half, almost six years. And the first employee trained her and she’s also been here to combine the two of them. They’ve probably worked on 4,000 bathrooms and I don’t know, 1200 kitchens. I mean,
Mark Lamberth
What’s the value of that?
Andrew Blate
I tell you what, I can’t go out today onto Indeed or LinkedIn and find that and install it and plug and play it. So you’re a hundred percent right. Same thing with our crews. I have a crew that worked with me and Craig when we were in college together. I know his family. I know where they go to church. I know their kids. We helped him buy a house. I mean,
Mark Lamberth
Incredible.
Andrew Blate
He’s a worker. He’s great. He’s phenomenal. He’s done dozens and dozens of projects for us. And the vast majority have been fantastic. There’s been a project here or there where everyone has a bad day and screws something up. But we’ve kept him along and his skill level has gone up over the years just like ours has. What’s his value to beautiful home services, right? He’s committed 20 years of his life working for me and Craig, and we’ve worked 20 years working for him. What’s the value of the economic value if we’re just going to talk profit and loss, and I’m a CPA, so just as the line, is it black or red? How do you assign a value
Mark Lamberth
To that?
Andrew Blate
I don’t know. I’ve been doing this for a
Mark Lamberth
Gotten calculate that yet as a CP.
Andrew Blate
And you’re a marketing guy. You’re a sales
Mark Lamberth
Guy, right?
Andrew Blate
Yeah. When I come into your house and I say, mark, I have crews that have been with me for 15 years, 18 years, 20 years. I know everything about them and I have trusted them in my house. I’ve trusted them in my mom’s house, and I’m very protective of my mommy and as a good son should be, and I’m going to trust them in your house, mark. And you’re not going to find anybody else who has that level of experience and that level of faith in their crews and that level of expertise to do a job better than me. Maybe find somebody equal, good luck. But you’re definitely not going to find anybody better than me or better than beautiful home services from just a pure sales guy standpoint. That’s a pretty good sales powerful
Mark Lamberth
Thing to be able to say. It’s amazing.
Andrew Blate
And from the other standpoint, I mentioned a few minutes ago, I sleep well at night because I know I have these people working for me who have the best interest of beautiful home services, the best interest of our clients. Back to that leadership mantra that you had that working for me. So I know that I’m going to sleep well at night, that if a mistake happens on a job, it’s not malicious. Nobody woke up this morning said, you know what? I’m going to take the kids to school. I’m going to get my coffee at Starbucks, and then I’m going to go screw up Mark Tile. No one thinks that way. So I can be assured that if and when a mistake happens, they do. It’s construction.
You worked in construction, things happen, right? It’s not assembling IKEA furniture. It’s one off that the mistakes are going to be identified. The guys are going to fix them, it’s going to end well for the client. They’re not going to have to get all upset. And I trust that my guys are looking out guys that work for us. Our workers are looking out for the best interest of beautiful home services because they’ve invested a large percentage of their career in helping us build the brand. And they’ve invested in that because Craig and I have always treated them well and led them well. Back to your central point,
Mark Lamberth
Incredible.
I have the amazing honor of talking with really, really smart people and amazing business owners. And I’ll tell you, man, this is one of my favorite interviews. Thank you guys. If you’re listening to this, we’ve covered a lot of ground here. So we’ve talked about beautiful home services. They learned early on really through trial and error, to really stick in their zone of Genius Kitchen and bath remodels, some other remodels, but not building new houses, not doing big additions. We’ve talked about the power of being, well sort of reviewed that sometimes mistakes happen. Those can come back to haunt you a little bit over time. But ultimately doing great work in the community, accumulating hundreds of great reviews as we’ve seen doing our research. And we talked about the value of achieving awards, not only the sort of team value and how it feels great for the team, but also the monetary value, right?
At some level of being able to go out and say, look, we’ve won these awards, we did this. This is all above board, of course, and we sort of have earned this and we’ve gone for this and this is what has been the result. So Angie’s List and other awards that you guys have won. And then we’ve talked about leadership and retention of the team that hiring at the beginning, a team member, a new team member that comes on and a beautiful home has got upwards of a hundred people now on their team. A lot of them have been around for a long time, but new team members only really become profitable, so to speak, after maybe a year plus of working together. It’s very important to lead well, not only to sort of care about folks, but also to model great leadership because new folks on the team are coming in and they’re thinking about their next career moves.
Maybe they’re going to go down and start their own company someday and they want to see how it’s done and they don’t necessarily know. And so when that can be modeled, it’s very powerful for the whole team, the internal team and people that are out in the field as well. So fantastic. Andrew, if folks were in the DC area and want to have a remodel done, kitchen bath, remodel, or if they want to just get in touch and I don’t know, maybe have a short chat with you or longer, we’ll get you on a podcast.
Andrew Blate
That’s right.
Mark Lamberth
What are a couple of good ways to get in touch with you?
Andrew Blate
Like I said, mark, one of the few good qualities I have is the ability to talk nonstop. So we service the DC metro area, so Washington, DC and Suburban Maryland and Virginia, Fairfax County, Alex X, Andrea, Arlington, Loudon, Montgomery County, the city of dc, prince George’s County. Best way to reach us is our website, which is beautiful home services.com. That’s the best platform. From there, you can see examples of our work, you can contact us directly if you fill out a contact form there, it goes directly to me. And from there, I’d love to reach out to anybody interested in a project, interested in talking some more interested in having me on a podcast.
this has been a lot of fun. You asked some really great questions. I’ve been on a few podcasts and sometimes I feel that they’re just reading a list of questions. Mark and I felt that you really crafted questions that were very insightful and I’ve enjoyed being on the podcast. So beautiful. Home services.com is our website, and I would love to hear from anybody who’s interested.
Mark Lamberth
Fantastic. Great. Andrew, sounds like maybe there’s some other future awards coming up here still.
Andrew Blate
Stay tuned. Stay tuned. They’ll be on our website if we win. I may or may not know, and I may or may not be able announce, but stay tuned to our social media. Our Facebook is BHS paints. You can tell how old that Facebook page is. We were painting company back then and we’re also on Instagram, and so we have lots of pictures up there as well. You can find us on Yelp, you can find us on Google. You can find us on Angie’s. And stay tuned. There’ll be some, hopefully a nice announcement coming up in February.
Mark Lamberth
Fantastic, Andrew, we’d love to have you on back on the podcast. Anytime.
Andrew Blate
Love to. I’d love. Come back.
Mark Lamberth
For sure. Thank you so much for your time today. And listeners get in touch with beautiful Home Services. You’re a great company.
Andrew Blate
Thank you.
Mark Lamberth
Alright, bye-bye. Bye.