The Dumb Zone FREE - Business Wednesday with Dan Ratcliff

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Dan from Flooring Direct talks about how a bartender who liked to party too much became a successful business owner ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

It's been my experience that most business owners, especially in the type of business we run, are primarily concerned with operations and cutting costs and keeping gross margins up by focusing on the expense side and the sales operational side. Oh, let's make sure we don't give them the extra so-and-so. Let's make sure we don't give them the... What experience has taught me, you know, and everybody learned, lessons in a different way and different lessons frankly the key is revenue man you've got to have the sales because you can sell your way out of a lot of those little problems and mcdow special

bonus content learn to file your LLC circling back in drilling down and finding synergy I can think of better value for my 690. Okay, welcome to Business Wednesday. Today with Dan Ratcliffe. I pronounced your C correctly, correct? You did. And here on Business Wednesday... My C.

Yeah, the C in Ratcliffe. You said I just said Ratliff in the past. Yeah, you did. I thought it was a silent C. We talked to business owners, CEOs, kind of started this thing because, you know, I didn't know anything about business. I still know very little, but it's just kind of like a, I don't know, let's talk business. Let's learn about business.

And here with Dan Ratcliffe, I know you as the owner of Flooring Direct. Yep, that's right. And I used to know you as the owner of DISHDirect way back in the day. You're the guy that got me my first TiVo. Yes. Yes, and Ron and Don dubbed me Dan Dan, Dan the Distirect Man, as you might recall. Okay, is that where that came from? It is.

Don did that. The creativity of Ron and Don. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. Dan with man. You ever know that guy, Don? He was like a car salesman, man. I never did.

He really was. He was like that kind of guy. Real pumped up, real juiced. Rick Rennerish? No. Seems salesmany. He works for you, too. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

He's, yeah, Rick Renner's very salesmany, but Don was more, Don was more, he was salesy, but he was more just kind of ripped, you know, he rode his 10-speed bike all the time, he was real fit, just a high-energy, high-tee guy. Okay, no, I did not know him, never knew him, always just, Maybe listen to just a couple minutes, but... I think they're your competitor now, Dan. They have a podcast I hear. Well, who doesn't?

Fair. Yeah. Very fair. So, yeah, that was many, many years ago. It was when DVRs, well, it was called a TiVo. First came out. They were giant, think of a big, giant VCR, but even bigger. and it would hold eight hours of recorded programming.

And we were amazed. It changed my life. It did. Time shifting, they used to call it. And it was kind of like a Kleenex deal because you would just say, well, I T-vote this or I T-vode that. You didn't say I recorded it. You say I T-vote it. Yeah, somewhere they lost that.

Somewhere they lost the... They lost the plot altogether, I think. The battle, yeah, because now it's just DVR. Or did like DirecTV bought TV. TiVo and turned it into something. You know, somebody did buy it. I don't remember who it was, but what I do remember is their first year at CES in Vegas.

We used to go every year. And they had the biggest booth there at CES. It was like a two or three-story thing. What's CES? Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It's every January. And it's the one that they hold the adult video awards at the same time. Ah, so conveniently you.

you would be there at the same time. You might accidentally wander into the wrong convention hall. Yeah. So, or the right one. Anyway, they had this two or three-decker display there. And my TiVo rep grabs me and says, hey, you want to meet Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott? They were doing commercials for them back then. And so he leads me over to this secret door and it's got a spiral staircase up to the top of the thing.

You get up to the top of the thing and there's a full cocktail bar. set up there and sure enough there was ronnie lot and joe montana and i had two of my guys with me and he took me over there and introduced him and i told my guys before we went in there i said i'm going to ask him about the catch and they're like no you're not because i wanted to ask him if he was throwing it away and they said you're not going to ask him that well i did i said were you throwing that ball away and he looked at me with daggers in his eyes and he said you freaking Dallas fans I said yeah

I said no no no I don't think you were I don't think you were I backed off real quick and he said no I was just trying to put it where nobody nobody could get it but my guy maybe so that was his that was his story so on business Wednesday I'd like to just find out you know what your bid is what you do day to day to day and maybe even how you got

here as a business owner. So are you from Dallas? Yes. Yep, born and raised. I went to Richardson high school. I think I was a year ahead of Gordon Keith, actually. But yeah, always lived here. I went to school in Denton, North Texas. Did not graduate, had other priorities at the time. Were you like a good high school student? No. Okay. No, I was. not be student um and um got into un t yeah yeah got into un t everybody why not finish i mean what was your were you a business major yeah you know the funny thing is i started out as a biology major it took me one semester to be disabused of that notion what was your thought at that time what what you would be when you grew up i never wanted to be anything but i never wanted to be anything but

a doctor and um which was ridiculous with my grades in high school but you know you get good enough grades in college and none of that shit matters so um i was kind of half going at it because i had started to dawn on me that it probably wasn't a a realistic goal for somebody like me i just didn't like school never did um you know a lot of school to get to be a doctor a lot of school yeah and you know there are a couple of subjects I liked history, a little bit of science, but I just, I didn't want to sit there and listen to people talk all day. You know, I wanted to go work. That's really what I wanted to do, which I've done since I was about 14 years old. You know, back in those days, you could get a job at 14 and just tell them you were 16. So what'd you do? Cut my teeth at McDonald's.

Okay. I was a McDonald's worker. That's really where I learned how to work. time to lean time to clean dan and so the restaurant business is no joke even those restaurants you have to work so that's kind of where i learned to work um i was i was good at jobs i've always been a good worker i like to work you know i like to i like to be productive i like to produce i like to do a good job for my bosses and um so you know i've i've i've had to work you know i've i've had to be productive i like to produce i like to do a good job for my bosses and so, you know, I've had a measure of success just because of that. You know, I like to work. I like to be there.

I like to do the work. I like to see the results. But not work on some class paper or some assignment. So how long did you stay at U&T? A couple of years. I gutted it out for a couple of years. Got most of the basic course work done. Did you switch to business stuff?

Oh, yeah. switch to business. But, you know, I just, I'd started bartending somewhere in there. And I was having a lot of fun doing that. When I finally stopped going to school, I had, you know, I would have two or three bartending gigs going at the same time. You always wanted to bartending a hotel. That should be your main thing because they paid more per hour

and you could get health insurance. So that was always kind of my main thing. I would bartend in hotels. And then, you know, on the weekends, I would have the late-night gigs, you know, down in Deep Ellum and, you know, maybe a late-night hotel bar somewhere close to me. I always had two or three of them going. And I made great money, but I never had to dime in my pocket. You know, it all, it all went out the door just as quick as it got in. Yeah, you're not thinking about the future.

No. When you're in your early 20s or anything? No. Too much, but you are thinking of what you want to get into, so I would have imagined your first foray in the business would have been food or bars or something like that since that's what you had experience at growing up. Let's just get one thing out of the way.

This is not going to be your average business story because, no, I was not thinking about the few. I was not thinking about what I wanted to get into. I had no idea. I was just... I always think this is good to hear when I think about my own kids or other people. Because you have kids, right? High school kid.

Yep, I do. I've got three kids. I've got two high school seniors. I've got twins. And then I've got a younger one that's 11. But we hold them all to this standard that I don't believe we were ever near. Which is, well, what do you want to do? You kind of have to know it.

You have to know it now. Yeah. Well, I'm a junior in high school. Yeah, but you got to pick your college based on what you want to do. And it has to be able to. And then, you know, there's so many people, though, that I, in fact, interviewed right here that, you know what? I kind of figured it out in my late 20s or Jay J. J.J.J.R. You just threw it all away at 40.

Started a catering business, yeah. Yeah, which is incredible to me. I know. I know. So, okay. Now you're in college and you decide this just isn't for me. I want to work. What does that mean?

What's your mindset then? What did you do? Well, first of all, it wouldn't be really fair to say I decided. Did the college help you? I was asked to leave after a certain period of time. Yeah. So, yeah, that's when I started or I really, you know, dove into the bartending. And I had a great time, man.

I really had a lot of fun doing that. I love the work, love the job. You love the movie cocktail? Of course. Got to spend the mixing cup and all that good stuff. Spend the bottles, you know. We did all that. But I loved it, man.

I mean, it was late nights. It was drink as much as you want and party as much as you want. And, you know, there was always cocktail waitresses around. I mean, it was great, man. I loved it. But I also knew, you know, especially as it got later into my 20s, it had started to dawn on me that this wasn't a career for me because I liked the life a little bit too much. And I don't know how much you know about the restaurant business. You've interviewed a lot of guys that are in it.

It's crazy. It's a crazy life. And people that are in it for a career to, pretty wild bunch and you know the places just the hours or what makes it yeah well i mean you know when you're serving food and cocktails i mean it lends itself to late nights of course you're working late so then if you're in the serving business you know one of the jobs i had was at the marriott quorum in addison and especially back in those days addison was i mean that was the center of party life and certainly in north dallas and

And, you know, Memphis and Shuck and Jive and Broadway Grill and all those kind of places were hopping. And, yeah, we get off our shifts. We go over to one of those places and we knew all those guys and drink for free and after hours parties. I mean, it was, you know, it was a life for sure, but not one that you could, or at least not one that I could handle for, you know, decades. And you were able to see that. at that age you're like this can't I can't sustain this yes okay I had some help seeing it to be fair I can remember I can remember a couple of my buddies a couple of my buddies that weren't in that business yanking me out of a party one night and sitting me down and talking to me and you know

time to grow up man time to be a man you're you know you're wasting your life kind of thing and one of those friends was older ended up being my first business partner in DishDirect. We formed DishDirect. He was a CPA, you know, a few years older than me. We were best friends. You know, we ended up being really closer than brothers, or at least we were closer than he was to his brother or me to mine. So, you know, I had some help. I had some good friends that, you know, I had some good friends that.

kind of, you know, yanked me out of that life. Was Disdirect your first foray into business? It was. Yeah. This was 1996 or 95 maybe. Direct TV was released in 95, I think, Dish Network in 96. So these were the 18-inch dishes. I'm sure a lot of your listeners aren't even familiar with this technology anymore.

That's how fast it blew up and then went away, right? That's the way things do now. But DirecTV was brand new. Dish Network had just started. And another friend of mine was doing that as a business. And he was working for another guy. He said, I think I can do this myself. He went out and formed that.

I had, we missed a lot of the story, but I had stopped bartending at that point, you know, after a few of those conversations with my buddy. and I decided I was going to try to make an honest living and get out of that party life. And so I was working at a grocery store. And I hated it, man. I hated it so much. And what were you doing?

I was working in the meat department. Okay. Yeah. Back then they would still get in big, you know, I guess sides of beef and cut it. And then I would have to work that stupid counter where people, you know, come asked to look at 15 fish fillets before they find the one they want. And I just hated it so much, man. I was riding a bike to work and I just felt like the biggest looser.

You smell. Smell, your hands, the smell never gets off of them. But they did sell king crab legs and they had a steamer. So that was good. Okay. It was a fringe benefit. So anyway, this buddy of mine was doing the satellite thing. And he said.

So install, things like he worked for a company where you would, or he's selling. He had gone off by himself and was trying to do it. Okay. Just him. And yeah, uh, trying to sell. Sell, install. This will blow you away. So, well, let me just kind of tell you how I got with him first.

He, uh, he said, man, I really need some help with this thing. You know, I need some help with sales. And he said, would you want to you know come help me do it i said uh he knew i hated where i was and i said well how much can you pay me mike he said 250 a week and a car i said i'm there let's do it so man the office was on arapaho and 75 just north of arapaho the the building is still there and it was like this had like this octagon shape and it was all windows so we'd go work in there and it was the sun would beat through those windows and we would just sit there and sweat and try to work the air conditioner

couldn't keep up and i quite literally had a white pages on my desk and i would flip to a page and start calling people trying to get them to let me come do an in-home demo of one of these satellites Because we had figured out how to put it on a tripod, run a long piece of coax into the home, and we could cite in the – because early on it was real easy. You just pointed at one orbital slot, and we'd hook it to their TV and show it to them. And people would be blown away because I'm sure you remember when that technology was released. It was way, way better than cable. I mean, it looked better.

It was just everything about it was awesome. again, that's before DVRs too. And is that a the, I bring it on a tripod? Was that something that you came up with on your own? Or did you franchise a company and they said, hey, do this? No, no. We came up with that on our own. Okay, that's good.

Yeah, we were just throwing darts, man. And, I mean, I would sit there with this phone book and he would, you know, I'd get off a call and he'd coach me up on it. He had been in the car business, so he knew something about. sales um sales is a beating man you're what's your percentage you know it's especially cold calling i would imagine i didn't measure it i'll tell you that one out of a hundred oh if that man i mean i remember the first sale i remember it very well a guy was an engineer and he was just fascinated by the technology you know an engineer at t i went over there and a demoed it for him

and he didn't buy right there. I didn't know how to close anybody anyway. And got back to the office and he called me and he said, hey, I think I want to. And by the way, these things were $1,200 at the time. When they were first released, it was, they were expensive. And, you know, fast forward four or five years. We were giving them away for free just for signing up for the programming.

But early on, they were expensive. And this guy said, hey, I want to do that deal. I went, when can you install it? And I went, really? I couldn't believe it. And Mike stared, you know, daggers through me for that. But that's how it was. You know, we went along and what changed everything was.

He said, we were in his office one day. He said, you know, I think I'm going to put up a website, try to sell these things online. and I said, what's a website? You know, this is 1996, man. And so he did, and they just started flying off the shelves immediately, just immediately. Now, at this time, this is not you owning a company with the guy. No, no. You're just working for this other guy.

Yeah, I was working for this other guy. And so, I mean, it just blew up, just overnight when we put that thing up. and so you know fast forward a little bit he was looking for investors and um he had a very successful uncle on the east coast who was a clotheier I had a bunch of men's clothing stores and he came and acted kind of like a consultant where he ended up getting him to invest in the company and when they did I was kind of expecting you know hey probably get a little little taste right A little bump. Been working here for nothing.

And that didn't happen. So my buddy Gary, who I mentioned before, the CPA, like, man, you can't let them do that to you. And blah, blah, blah. You know, I was not going to go anywhere. I was just going to take my medicine and be happy that it was going to be able to make a little bit more money. And he just kept after me and kept after me and started saying, you know, We could do this. They're going to treat you like that.

You don't know them anything. We could do this ourselves. And I'm like, Gary, I don't know anything about business. He said, but I do. And you know about the technology. Let's just do it. So he talked me into it. And that's how Distirect started.

The other company, the uncle, when he had come in, disdirect was his that was his name he wanted mike to change the name to that mike didn't want change the name so i used that name just kind of a little you know a little jab yeah there you go um so so off we went and um now how now that i know a little more about business how is that structured how is he putting in all the money and you're putting in the sweat and you own it 50-50 or How did that start? Yeah, we were 50-50 from day one. He had a little bit of money.

He was a pretty successful CPA. Because what you told me so far, you probably don't have any money. No, I didn't have any money. But my dad, who was very happy to have saved all that money on college, loaned me $10,000. So I came to the table with 10. Gary came with 10 and that's what we started with, 20 grand.

And we put up our own website, started selling them. The business evolved many, many different times after that. But we were successful. We ended up being a top 10 dealer in the country for both services, Dish Network and DirecTV. So right off the bat, you're successful? Pretty much right off the bat.

Yeah, we knew what to do. because we'd seen it already. And, man, those were wild days selling stuff on the internet. You know, you bought ad banners on Yahoo and Likos and Alta Vista. You remember all those search engines? And it was fun. We had a blast. It was a company of a bunch of young guys.

You know, I had a bullpen in there with a call center. And it was a blast. We had a really good time. any early like mistakes in there that really stick out to you we made every mistake in the book I mean but when I look back at it and think well

what would I have done differently I really I really don't think I would change anything because all those mistakes taught us a lesson and obviously we didn't make any that put us out of business and I think we got just about everything we could get

of that company. We knew early on the way that business was structured was, and especially when they started giving them away for free and charging a hundred bucks for them. I mean, we got all the way, Dan, to where we were giving them away for free, and then you'd get $100 rebate if you sent us the proof that you'd activated your programming. So we were paying people to, you know, sign up for satellite TV. Was it just DirecTV or could you install somebody with Dish Network, too? Oh, yeah, we were doing it all.

Direct TV, Dish Network. Just any satellite, that's what you do. That's what we did, yeah. And, well, what was your question before that? We could rewind it. I don't recall. I think he asked a specific question. Oh, mistakes.

Oh, yeah, mistake. I thought you were ruminating about that. Yeah, I thought there was one after that. No. I really wouldn't do anything. Oh, I know what I was the track I was on. We knew early on that it wasn't a forever business because we knew that DirecTV and Dish Network would,

they would go direct to the consumer and cut out the dealers just as soon as they felt like they could. Because they were paying us huge commissions. Initially, when we got into the business, you would get paid for the initial sale and then you got a commission every single month for each subscriber as long as they stayed a subscriber lifetime commissions so i mean oh wow we were getting mailbox money that you wouldn't believe it was because i was i had direct tv for 20 years i know yeah yeah i still get a commission from direct tv still we still have active act i mean it's not a lot of money now but it's

We still have active subs out there. But that was kind of the model they were working on, and we knew that they would cut that out as soon as they could. Each subsequent renewal of the contract to sell with them, they would cut something, you know. And to the point where they actually got sued for it eventually, there was a class action lawsuit that we joined. And the settlement was unbelievable. and we got a gigantic check at the end of that. And it was about the lifetime commissions because they took that away

and that's what people sued them over and they lost. So, but anyway, we knew that it wasn't a lifetime business. So around about 2004, 2005, it went through a lot of evolutions before this. The main one being that they eventually got so complicated to install with two dishes and all this kind of stuff that you really couldn't sell them over the internet anymore. So we had to transform ourselves into a local business with an installation

operation. And that's when we got on the radio and started advertising and all that. And that was very successful too. But we learned a lot through that, learned a lot about marketing and advertising. and then 2004, 2005, we were kind of casting around for something new to do. And I went on vacation one time. When I got back, Gary had bought this flooring company called Carol John's flooring. It had one employee. He was friends with the guy.

And that guy hated the owner. So Gary thought, well, I'll just buy that and get him out from under this owner. And we'll see what we can do with that. He immediately started pestering me to join up with him. I didn't want to. I was trying to get an independent insurance agency started, which I had done, and I had an employee. And we weren't just setting the world on fire, Dan. So, but his flooring company started to grow a little bit.

And so he brought me in there one day. We're probably about a year into this. And he said, man. he had hired these three sales guys and you probably know a little bit something about that by this point hiring salespeople oh yeah um these guys were nuts they were uh you know they were your typical business to business salespeople they you know they had to take their clients out they're big partiers you know they're out to all hours and they're wild and they're crazy and he said dan these guys are driving me crazy I can't do this by myself. I need your help. Either join the company. We'll be 50-50 like we've always been.

Or I'm shutting it down because I can't deal with this. It was on track to do maybe a million, a million dollars in sales that year. I said, okay, I'll do it. So I agreed to come into the company. 50-50. Now, do you have to put a bunch of money? money in now? No. No, it was already a, I mean, we had. Your partner had bought the company. Yeah, but we had this, we had a, in addition to the company, we had, you know, we had a partnership

brokerage account that we just kind of dumped all our, um, profit that we didn't take out of the company. So we had, we had plenty of money. All right. To, to, to do what we needed to do. What is that? What do you mean? A partnership brokerage account. Oh, it's just, it's just a fidelity account that he would mainly trade stocks in that we were both on it was just uh we both owned it 50 50 and he was a pretty a pretty adroit uh trader and so i just let him handle all that you know it's a it's probably a good time to say if you can find somebody in your life that you can partner up with and trust like their family It's a rare thing, man.

I mean, you just, it's tough. We all know it's tough for two people to coexist in a marriage and a business and a partnership. And even in a family. And so I've been very, very fortunate to have those kinds of people in my life that I could, that I could trust with anything and never even consider whether that trust was misplaced. So I'm very, very grateful for that, been very fortunate on that count. And that's the kind of guy Gary was. He was a, first of all, CPAs are generally very trustworthy people.

I've met a lot of them through him. And, you know, they're generally salt of the earth. They just do the right thing. And of course there are exceptions, I'm sure. But Gary wasn't one of them. And so I was lucky to have him as a part. partner and a buddy. So anyway, we, we, we had plenty of money to do what we needed to do and invest in the

company. And so, um, so you did invest your own money because you used that money. Yeah. Yeah. But I just meant he initially said, I want to buy this. You said, I'm not interested. Right. Yeah.

He bought it. With his own money. I was, I was on vacation. With his own money. Yeah. I mean, but it was, it wasn't a big, it wasn't a big sum of money. I mean, the other owner, I think, just wanted out. Well, what's that then?

What's not a big sum of money? $100,000? 50,000? 50,000? Okay. Like 50 grand. For the name and the list. Yep, for the name and the list and the going concern, right?

So, turned it into a C-Corp. That's probably not going to mean anything to you, but we, it started growing pretty, pretty. It doesn't really mean anything to me, but why did you do that and what does it mean? Because. turned into a secret because Gary was a CPA and he was making those kinds of decisions. The guy was a genius tax accountant. I mean, that was kind of his specialty. So, man, he was doing all kinds of things with the structure of our business and related entities.

And again, there was plenty for me to worry about with the operation and sales and growing the company and business development. I left all that to him because I knew I could. I didn't have to worry about that. And so that's what we did. It was really a... And he left a lot of that other stuff to you? He couldn't care less about... Because he's busy day to day.

He's the money guy. Yeah. So, and he kept a few of his CPA clients, but he was pretty much focused on what we were doing. But I ran the operation. I managed the sales team. And so here's an important point. When I joined the company, these sales guys that he had hired,

they were all commercial sales reps and multifamily reps, multifamily apartments. So the primary business we were in was make readies for apartments. So when people move out of an apartment, they've got to make it ready for the next tenant. And typically that involves at least cleaning the carpets, but a lot of times replacing the carpet and any other flooring that's damaged or needs replacing. So that's what we were doing. It's a very high inventory.

You have to have the inventory for every property that you serve because they typically want it same day or next day. So you have to have the inventory. It's very expensive to buy and store all that inventory. you have high receivables because builders and property owners are notoriously slow pay so you have to set up a robust collection apparatus because in business to business if you do not make people pay you they will not pay you that's just the way it is and that arena multifamily and builder is especially that way my dad dad was in construction. I can remember him telling me when I was a kid. I mean, he, he would work huge job, like Tampa Stadium. He was on that job. And then when they built Epcot at Disney, that was his job. So, but he was a, he was a superintendent. You know, he didn't, he didn't own the companies. He was kind of middle management. But he would be under so much stress. And I just remember it as part of the reason I was resistant to getting involved in flooring because, I knew what my dad had been through and, you know, he had high blood pressure problems while he was in it, and especially on some of those big jobs. And I can remember him telling me, son, if you don't make them pay you, they won't pay you.

If he told me that once, he told me a hundred times. So anyway, that's kind of what we were doing and that was the environment we were working in. but because of my experience in DishDirect, I knew the minute that I joined the company, at some point, I'm going to turn this into a residential flooring company because I knew how to advertise, I knew how to make the phone ring,

and I didn't want to deal with what we had to deal with in that business. I mean, I hated it. I really did. So when you were with Dysdirect, were you ever the sales guy? You were in the homes doing? in the demonstrator you're just hiring sales guys no i was definitely early on i was the guy okay that's yeah and that probably helps in hiring too sure it helps but i'm not going to sit here and tell you i was

very good at it i'm never i was never a great closer i tell you what when you when you get some of those guys in working for you like a good sales guy a real closer they stand out you understand i don't i'm this that ain't me that this guy this guy is really doing it. You know what I mean? But I was nice to people and I could converse with people and talk to people. So I did okay. But a closer is a different animal.

You got an order taker, you got a closer. And how do you find them? It's a very interesting question. Well, first of all, you've got to know what one is. And, you know. You know, I hate to sound like I'm disparaging other companies or businesses. I really don't want to do that, but I will say that you can probably walk into 10 or 15 mom-and-pop flooring shops and you won't find one closer. You just won't.

It's been my experience that most business owners, especially in the type of business we run, are primarily. primarily concerned with operations and cutting costs and keeping gross margins up by focusing on the expense side and the sales operational side. Oh, let's make sure we don't give them an extra so-and-so. Let's make sure we don't give them to what experience has taught me. You know, and everybody learns lessons in a different way and different lessons, frankly, the key is revenue, man. you've got to have the sales because you can sell your way out of a lot of those little problems. If you're always focused on the expense side and the operations side, and this many widgets equals that, you're not focused on growing your revenue.

You need real salespeople and you need real leads. So how do you find them? Well, you can find them at your competitors. That's one way you do it. But you really need an experience and talented sales manager who has contacts like that, who knows where to go find them, and can spot that kind of talent and get it to come on board. And I've been lucky in that area too. I had some pretty good ones when I was in the satellite business, but we were all phone sales by that time.

We weren't going into homes anymore. Most of our sales were done over the phone. So I had some good phone closers. Got them from various businesses around Dallas, Fort Worth, carpet cleaning businesses. You can find phone sales agents if you need to, especially back then. It's a little bit less now. Right now, I know we've kind of gotten off the track of the story here, but we're talking about closers. I've got some good ones.

and I you know I don't want to make it sound like we're going into people's home and just hammer and you know close them it's really not like that it's really just as simple as people who are willing

to ask you for your business you'd be amazed how many sales sales people in quotes are scared to ask for the signature on the dotted line those are order takers I'll present the product to you

show you how everything works. I want to be very nice. You know, I want to, here's my quote. I'll just go back to the office. You call me when you're ready. That's not a salesperson, man. You've got to ask for the business, not once, multiple times. Because the way we feel about it is,

we believe that our company is here to treat people right. I want to treat our customers well. I want to make sure that they give them. the best deal, but I also want to make sure my company is able to survive. And so we want to provide a quality product at a reasonable price. I don't want to hammer any, everybody that I make, but I also feel that if I'm not working hard enough to close these people, when I get an opportunity to be in front of them, they might go with one of these guys across the street who aren't doing business the way I would do it. And so I'm doing these people a disservice by not getting them to

sign up with me. That's the way I feel about it. So I've got some good ones. We've got some really, really good ones. I've got an excellent, excellent executive vice president and sales manager, Steve Wright, also a partner in the business. And he can find. Is that how you got him to join you? He came to me. Offering him a piece of the business? He came to me. No, it was, that was later on when I, when he showed me what he could do, which is a lot. He's like, probably, I don't want to lose this guy. No. So let's, no, and probably the most talented executive that I've ever, that I've ever been in contact with. He's just really good. He was a big wig at, um, Daltile, which was later bought by Mohawk. These are flooring manufacturers.

And he spent years in executive management at one of those companies. So he's a talented administrator, very, very good at spotting talent and hiring them. Just an awesome, awesome guy. Another one of the people I've been blessed with in my life that, you know, I would trust with a million dollars. So your knowledge, though, of organizational structure, your sales manager, sales guys just how did all of that is just learned on your own by doing it it's yeah most of it yeah and i mean you went to college for a couple years but yeah yeah it's it's learned in the trenches for sure i mean of course i've read business books i like reading that kind of stuff

oh yeah you were suggesting a book to me i was going to save this for later but you were suggesting something before the show and i was going to ask are there other because i've read books that will inspire me in certain ways the Steve Jobs book. I don't know if you ever read the book on CAA. It's a talent management agency. The book on how HBO was created was very inspirational as well. I'll turn you onto those because you turned me on to one before the show.

What was the science of scaling? Science of scaling. It's so good, man. So you're business book guy. Yeah, I mean, not as much in the last few years. But like, for example, when I was in the satellite business, there was a great book written about. about Charlie Ergen, who started Dish Network,

and some of the other players, one of them John Malone, who owned Liberty Media, and I believe is now the CEO of CBS or Infinity, whatever they're calling it these days. But he was an early direct TV guy. And the book is called Cutthroat, and it's about those guys in the early days of the satellite business and how they bought those orbital slots

and how they financed getting those freaking satellites. I mean, these guys were, they were successful business people, but they were not, you know, multi-millionaires or billionaires by any stretch. So I like reading stuff like that. And, but yeah, I learned a lot. I tell you where I learned a lot is when we're in the satellite business and a lot in the floor business too. when you put up big numbers, your vendors will take you on these trips and stuff,

and there'll be a lot of other dealers there that have big numbers, and you meet them, and you talk to them, and you learn. And of course, that's why they do it. That's why they have those incentive trips and spend all that money, is to get their dealers together so that they can, you know, put their heads together and figure out how to do things better. So I've learned a lot from other dealers, other business people. And, you know, had I been more studious and more learned when I started, maybe I would have gotten to where we were going faster.

I don't know. But, yeah, I think most of what I've learned has been just by doing it and making mistakes. So if we get back to the story, then, I guess. This is still mid-2000s. This is when you got into the flooring business. Yeah. And you were doing apartments and whatnot. Yeah.

But you had the vision, a long-term vision. You're like, we will be residential. Could not wait to get out of it. I really couldn't. The apartment deal? Yeah, but it was growing, you know. And I mean, we got it up to about 8 million annual sales, which is, you know, in that business, that's not that much because it's a low-margin business.

But, you know, we had entrenched competition who were multiples larger than us. Are you named Flooring Direct DFW at this point? Carol Johns Inc. That was the name of your company when we bought it, so we didn't change it. But I knew early on that I would eventually change it to Flooring Direct. I already had that idea because, you know, DishDirect was my other company. And we knew we wanted to do the shop at home model, which is we drive in-home appointments. We come to see you.

We show you samples in your home. Close the business on the spot if we can. In the industry parlance, that's called shop at home. And so I knew it was going to be that. So flooring direct made a lot of sense. And it was available. So that was part of it too. But yeah, this multifamily thing was growing and it was making money.

And so I didn't want to just dismantle it. I didn't really know how to make the transition. I just knew that I would eventually. Then comes 2008, great recession. A really, really challenging time. I mean, you know, I tell people when they ask me about business, I typically say I'm really not very good at it, but I've learned a lot over the years.

but if I do have a talent, a special talent, it's surviving because we've been through some stuff. The dot com crashed when we were in the satellite business, the Great Recession 2008, which was really bad in 2009 and 2010. You know, I remember we had a, this was late 2009, we had a, we had a, we had a, 250,000 dollar line of credit with Bank of America with a, with a zero balance. We didn't know anything on it. We hadn't drawn on it. You know, but things were bad. And I remember Gary told me one day,

he said, man, we're going to need to draw on that line of credit to pay our taxes at the end of the year in December. And then we get a letter from Bank of America in November. Line of credit gone. They just shut it down. Which is really, that was really the hallmark. of that recession was credit got extremely tight to the point where it was it was less than tight there just wasn't any you were not going to get banks to loan you any money they just weren't doing it and um is that where you dip into your partnership brokerage account to pay the

taxes man we pulled a lot of rabbits out of hats i'm telling you um but the twist to this part of the story is um in in in february of 2010, this is just a few months later, after that all happened, we found out Gary was sick and it was melanoma. And he had had it when he was in his 20s. He always called it a mole that went bad. It was between his shoulder blades. That's the most common place for melanoma to come up. For the listeners, melanoma is skin cancer. It's the worst one. Almost always. fatal so we found out he was sick in February by September he was gone and it was not a good seven months let me tell you between February and September so

here I was huge receivables if if you thought collections were bad before the Great Recession they were really really bad now and um you know my my partner who does all the books and is the money wizard is gone and i owe everybody in town money uh you know all my vendors and stuff not that that was unusual at that point in time time everybody was kind of in the same boat um but uh man i didn't know what i was going to do i really didn't but we were still selling you know we still had revenue and when when everything else has gone to shit revenue can save you as I was saying earlier as long as you're still selling man you got a pulse you can you can you can

usually figure things out um so again pulled a lot of rabbits out of the hat I could tell you some pretty amazing stories about stuff that happened within that two or three year period but the big one was I learned how to factor. Now, you may not have ever heard of this, but we had this one carpet manufacturer who I noticed that my payments that I made to them were not going to the carpet manufacturer. They were going to some other company,

so I looked up this company and they were a factor. What a factor does, they buy invoices from you for whatever you negotiate with them, you know, typically be 98, 99 cents on the dollar. They'll buy your invoices and pay you immediately, and then they're in charge of collecting that money. So I thought, well, that sounds perfect for us, you know. So I did.

And sure enough, man, that was a big factor in, there's a pun. that was a big part of how we pulled through that period. We started factoring all our invoices. I didn't have to worry about collecting them. I got paid immediately. I turned that huge receivable into cash very, very quickly. And it really saved the company.

And so, you know, of course, then two, three years down the line, when I didn't need to do that anymore, I stopped doing it. And we went back to collecting our own stuff. um so then you know 2012 2013 some late 2012 we were kind of out of the woods and um

growing again and i our lease was coming up at the time we were in an office up there by Addison Airport and carolton and uh so I thought one of my friends said well why don't you buy a bit of I'm like man nobody is going to loan me money to buy the building we would need would need to be at least 15,000 square feet and who's going to loan me two or three million bucks you know when they look at our last few years of financials well what I ended up learning was you can just buy a building that's bigger than what you need and you can lease out

part of it to other tenants and then you occupy the part you do need and come to find out banks love to loan money on that because it's a fully collateralized loan if you don't pay they just kick you out now they on the building so they like those didn't even have to go sba got a conventional loan from a bank found the building that we are still in today over in lake highlands uh Dallas it's actually it's actually in an industrial area north of 635 not not in Lake Highlands proper but a realtor friend of mine taught me that for marketing purposes it's a lot better to say Lake Highlands than almost Garland so so we're in Lake Highlands Dan bought that building moved my company in there and with my newfound wealth, I decided now is the time to start. I had already started having, I identified one sales rep to start running residential leads when we were still in Carrollton.

So I had one guy running residential leads. And at the time, our only lead source was Angie's list. I don't know if you've ever heard of them. Sure. But they were one of the first, you know, listing services for home improvement companies. and they were nationwide. And they were golden leads, man. They were so good and so cheap.

And so that's kind of how we got our start in the residential market. And when I got over to the new building, I really put the foot on the gas. I hired a separate sales manager from another shop at home company. And she started building a team of salespeople. and we started doing it. My plan was to keep both things going simultaneously, but what happened in practice was

when a lot of my multifamily sales reps started to figure out that my focus really wasn't in multifamily anymore that I was spending most of my time doing residential, they started leaving. And in that type of abey, business, your salespeople really own their books of business. When they start leaving, a lot of the sales start leaving with them. So the transition to residential happened a lot faster than I thought it was going to.

And before I knew it, man, we were 90% residential. I mean, it happened very, very quickly within a span of maybe a year or two. And off we went. And so that's kind of been the trajectory of the business ever since. We, you know, we've grown a lot. We're at least twice as big as we ever were as a commercial and multifamily house. That was when I started calling the company flooring direct when we moved. And, you know, here we are.

That's, there's really, really, I mean, of course, things have happened since then. Is there a flooring direct national? Like, your flooring direct DFW, which implies that there could be a flooring direct Atlanta. Well, what it actually implies is that the URL flooring direct.com was not available, but flooring direct DFW was. Okay. So we had to buy that one. Um, but you're the only.

FlooringDirect.com is owned by a, uh, a freaking, an English company like England. Um, they're not interested in selling it. I know you've been through that process too. So, uh, if you're asking, if we have plans to expand other markets, we do. We're not in any other markets right now, but, um, it's one of the reasons I'm reading the science of scaling. And why do you plan to expand? Is this because you are a person who is on the go and keep, you know, because you're doing well? We are, we are doing well, of course.

Now, I will say we've been in a home improvement recession, at least recession, for about three years now. What happened was coming out of COVID, the market got white, I mean, people were all in their homes during 2020. Well, I didn't even mention COVID, but when you had said, man, I'm a survivor. I get through bad stuff. Like, that had to be the worst. It wasn't. 2008 was the worst.

COVID. COVID was not the worst. Okay. Because the government spent a lot of money to keep. You probably won't remember this, but back at the time when everything shut down during 2020, as like March or something. Because I remember I had my kids on spring break. We went to Santa Fe that year.

And while we were there on spring break, we found out that they were not going back to school that Monday. And they never went back the rest of the year. So weird, man. But so. Did you get a loan? The government loans? They were trying to help?

Yeah, a loan that they later said you don't have to pay back. Okay. Incredible. I mean, boy, I could talk for a long time about the insanity that was all that money they gave away. But I was also a beneficiary. But at the time, the local government authorities designated construction as an essential business. You know, that was a hot home market back then. They were builders were going nuts.

you know, mortgages were dirt cheap and money was cheap. So people were buying, selling, moving all the time. And it's, I mean, when you're in a home improvement business, if you can't make money in an environment like that, you're in the wrong business. It was just easy. And so what happened is they designated flooring as a part of the construction industry, and construction is an essential business.

So we didn't even have to close. And so we just kept coming to work. And there wasn't anything happening there for a few months. But late in 2020, stuff started selling again. People started calling again. And then 2021 was just insane, man, because we were coming out of COVID. People had been looking at those old floors because they were home all the time. They were calling.

then we had that week-long freeze in February of 21, and that just poured gasoline on the thing. And we did sales in 21 and 22 that we have yet to do again. Because then in 2022, mortgage interest rates started going up. And they basically tripled. You know, there were 2.5% mortgage. out there. We got all the way up to almost eight. And I don't care

how much money you have or how bad you want to move, people are just not going to trade in a two and a half percent mortgage for a seven and a half percent one. They're just not going to do it. So when people aren't moving, it causes trouble for

companies like us because we are almost 100% residential remodel. And one move can create four flooring jobs. So we need people moving. We need the home market to be healthy and it just hasn't been for the last three years. Good news is it looks like that's changing. Even as we speak, mortgages just got back down below six here in the last few days. We don't need them to go back down to three. But, you know, now you buy a house. You can probably buy that down to five

pretty easily. And that's a good healthy number, you know. So most of our industry experts feel like it's starting to head back in the right direction. Our experience day to day certainly is kind of showing that. So we feel like we're back to growth this year and I'm ready to start working again. So you definitely weathered the, you were doing well just now you weren't growing. Correct.

Yeah. growth kind of stopped um and some other things going on in that period i got a divorce and you know had to move became a little distracted for a little while there but um but yeah yeah we feel like we feel like this year is getting back to growth and then hopefully next year we start our expansion that is the plan let me ask you a this is a business question i guess but if you're 50-50 partner with somebody and they do not they're not alive like is that written into your initial agreement that what happens now or are you now partners with his wife his ex-wife is a 12-year-old he was not married he was not married did not have any kids um so that wasn't a concern

dan we never had anything in writing we never had an agreement Because we started with nothing. Yeah. You know, and we just never updated it. So you got lucky in some. So many ways. Great sense. Yeah.

I've heard, yeah, others have talked about just getting burned by partners, this or that. Look, man. If you ask me the question, what is the secret to your success? I'm going to say luck every time. Every time. I mean, I could tell you a hundred things that happened that I shouldn't have been able to be in business. and these things happened and they worked out. But in Gary's case, to answer your original question,

he ended up willing his 50% stock. When he was going through his illness, we knew where it was going, and he brought in an attorney and did a will, and he willed his stock to me. So that's how it happened. Yeah, I think we're kind of, have done, but I also like to know, which you've already given me a little hint.

Because talking to a lot of, like, what's your day to day? When do you get up? What's your, you know, what's a day for Dan? Do you sleep well? Do you, are you extra? You even intimated that you're not very organized. No. Which I think is always the struggle of, I try to get more and more organized. So I try to ask for tips and somebody will give me, hey, you should use this app. So I'll start using that, but now it's like my eighth list. I still have all, like I try to focus.

I'm trying to funnel it all into one and it just ends up adding more. And I try to, you know, I think that's a struggle. I think the game changer for me on that count was I'm definitely ADHD, first of all, probably have been my whole life, never been diagnosed. I mean, when I was a kid, they didn't. They didn't try to figure out what was wrong with every kid. They just, you know, hit you and told you to act different. The game changer for me was I intentionally set out to learn how to delegate.

And so my rule was simple. I just decided everything that comes across my desk. Now, I'm lucky because I do have multiple employees and a lot of people in my company. But I decided that everything that hit my desk, I was going to pick it up and just figure out who do I give this to? I don't want it. Who do I give it to? And I just started doing that. And it worked.

I learned how to effectively delegate in that simple way. But as far as organizational tools, I try to use my Outlook calendar. I really do. I try to use the calendar on my phone. half the time I put appointments in there half the time I don't I'm just not my brain doesn't operate that way I need people to help me you know I need somebody to tell me hey it's time to go do so and so and I'm lucky enough to have that in my in my company I guess maybe early on when I didn't have people like that I guess I just gutted through it you know and and and

I mean, hell, when your job is everything in the business, it's not hard to figure out what to do next. You just do it. As far as what a day looks like for me, I do get up early, not by choice. I mean, I'm up at 5.15 every day. I just, I cannot. I have trouble sleeping any more than that. I try to sleep into the 6 o'clock hour on the weekends. Sometimes it works.

Sometimes it doesn't. You go to bed at the same time? Pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. When you get up that early, you're tired at night. What time is that? Between 10 and 11, usually. I make, this has been about probably seven or eight years now.

I started to make fitness a priority for me because much like you, I just don't want to die, you know, and I don't want to be sick. read a great book called Lifespan by a guy named David Sinclair and back when I read it Harvard University was the only university in the country that had an anti-aging department and he was in charge of at least part of it

one of the buildings or one of the nodes of that department he's not a medical doctor he's a PhD but it's a great book and I got myself on the supplement stack that he takes I figured if it's good enough for the only you know head of a department of anti-aging in the country it's good enough for me so but yeah I started to make fitness a priority it helps me sleep at night I believe that you know if I can sweat a little bit I also heard Roger Stalback say one time I try to break a sweat every day.

Pretty simple, right? So I try to do that. Again, it makes me tired, makes me sleepy. Last year I went through a really, really severe back issue, sciatica, and I couldn't go to the gym, and my sleep was just terrible, man, just awful, miserable. But, yeah, I try to do this. things to wear myself out so I get a good night's sleep. I get to the office usually I start I

start working when I'm still at home you know catching up on email and text and making sure I didn't miss anything from the day before hit the office 930 10 something like that usually work a full day I mean I have a pretty flexible schedule but I like to be present you know I feel like Um, even if I'm not working effectively 100% of the time, at least I'm present. At least I'm there. I can answer questions. I can, you know, tell people to do things. And I like to be at my company when it's open.

I would guess you never really have any days off. Like you're on vacation. You're still going through email. You know, um, I, I really don't like to set myself up as some kind of, you know, get off the cross. Jesus needs the wood, man. I'm not, I'm aware that I have a good life, and I'm aware that I'm very, very lucky to be in the spot I'm in. And so I try not to complain about it, you know what I mean?

But it is true. I mean, when things are tight and they get tight every winter in my business. It's, you know, December through February, you're, every year I'm wondering how we're going to make it. You know, but every year, late February, the phone starts ringing again and everything's fine. But it's, you never get used to that dead period that happens every year. And it's scary. And yeah, I am the one that's waking up at 3 a.m. in the morning when I'm worried about stuff like that. But, you know, it comes with a dinner, man, as your former partner with my, my,

say so uh you know it's not all wine and roses but um i'm very lucky and i know it well cool man i like hearing about your story i had no idea how you got to where you are but uh you're and then goals moving forward you are trying to yeah your next thing would be to expand into other markets yeah there's a reason i'm reading that book regional first like do we go texas first or what i mean how do you do that yeah just to analyze other markets let me just answer that question by telling you our competitors in the shop at home space are all large big empire today billion dollar in sales a year they're in i don't know how many markets 30 30 plus um there are two others that are in multiple markets um And that's who we're competing with.

Now, we frequently kick their ass in Dallas Fort Worth, but not outside of Dallas, Fort Worth. So the answer to your question is, I'm not going to tell you where we're expanding to first because they might be listening. It's none of their business. Do you worry about losing? Because obviously with you here and focused on DFW,

you're beating them in DFW. Not all of them all the time, but yeah. To Denver. We cause them a lot of headaches. You're not there now. Right. You know. Yeah, yeah.

You would be losing. You do like to delegate, but. I will tell you this. That would lose a step, you know. My belief on where it would be smart to expand first would be large markets. I think a lot of people that live in Dallas, Fort Worth, don't realize. what a dynamic area this is. I mean, if you're going to be in business,

there is no better place than Dallas-Fort Worth to do it. It's the fastest growing market in the country by a long shot. I think it was about two years ago I saw this stat, and I bet it hasn't changed. But at the time I read this article, three out of the top six fastest-growing counties in the country are in DFW, Colin, Dallas, Tarrant.

Three out of the top six. Dallas Fort Worth by 2050 is expected to be the largest metropolitan area in the United States. Bigger than L.A., bigger than New York. That's where we're headed. So this is a great place to be. We could stay right here and get fat and happy and be healthy and all of that.

just that's not the way my brain works I want to I want to grow more than that I want to do more now I don't want to do it for another 20 years you know so um again get to it yeah it's time to get busy and again that's why I'm reading that book because that what that's what that thing is all about expanding your goals and compressing your timelines let's go do it That's the one called The Science of Scaling. The Science of Scaling, yeah. By Benjamin Hardy. Maybe someone else, too, but if anybody's looking for that.

Yeah. You'll love it. If you're in business, you need to read it. Well, thanks for your time today, man. You're welcome. I really enjoyed it, man. Thanks for thinking enough of us to offer it. I appreciate it.

And if anybody wants to get in touch with you for any reason? FlooringDirectDFW.com. Oh, you mean me personally? Yeah. Email, Dan. Yeah, email Dan at flooring direct dfw.com, D-Ratcliffe, flooring direct dfdefdorfdif.com, or you can call me 972-67966426. That's my mobile.