Dennis Oz: Welcome back to the Remodeler Success Podcast. Today, I’m so excited to introduce a guest who is really prominent figure in the kitchen design and known for his really innovative approach to marketing. He shares his insights through his popular blog and he has also a podcast. It’s really rare, but I’m so excited to have another podcast host in my show today.

That’s why he’s engaging a broad audience. Also his creative strategies not only earned him the numerous awards, but also respect worldwide. Please join me today. We’ll explore this innovations that with this industry leader and pioneer. And please welcome the president of mainline kitchen design, Paul McAlary.

Paul, welcome to the show. 

Paul Mcalary: Thank you, Dennis. It’s a pleasure to be on your show. I’ve listened to some of your episodes and they’re surprisingly in our industry, , a lot of the podcasts specifically about kitchens and construction sometimes can be a little bit It’s hard for me to listen to, but yours is very good.

Thanks. 

Dennis Oz: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Hey, yours too. So can you share, how you started in the kitchen design industry and, you have a great company Mainline Kitchen Design, what inspired you to establish this company?

Paul Mcalary: Oh so not what you might think. So I originally, when I went, I studied computer engineering at University of Pennsylvania for many, many years because I kept on taking off and then going back and taking off. Um, and finally, actually, when I got to the end of my education, by that time, I realized I didn’t want to be a computer engineer anymore.

But, uh, what was happening during the times that I was not working on school, a lot of, I started off, I think, one summer, uh, building decks. So, um, I had built my parents deck when I was like 18 years old. I had finished my parents basement when I was 16. And so, my brother and I, who were both in college at the time, one summer, we spent the whole summer just building decks.

So, uh, then I kept on doing that on and off. Um, while I was taking off on and off for college, and then eventually we started doing renovations and then whole house renovations. And finally, when I decided not to be a computer engineer anymore, I just transitioned into it being a full time business and being a general contractor, which I did for, um, over a decade.

But eventually I looked at my 401k, which had no money in it and found out that the more people that worked for me and the bigger my company got, I didn’t make any more money. In fact, a lot of times I made less money. And made the most amount of money. If my company was smaller and maybe I had two people working for me.

So that really made me decide, you know what? I can’t afford to do this anymore. I need to go work someplace and get, get a paycheck and get a 401k. So I got the first job I could get, which was at a home depot designing kitchens. And that was in the late to late 1990s. And, , I started designing kitchens and I loved it instantly.

I really enjoyed it. And I got to implement, uh, you know, all the, the construction knowledge. I used to do the drawings and all the blueprints for the jobs that we did. And, uh, so I got to, to, to got to do that. And then since I knew a lot of construction, I was able to be a little bit more creative, moving things around and making changes, which really nowadays is the most important thing about kitchens.

So that’s how I got started. And then I went from working at Lowe’s, I mean working at Home Depot, to being the manager of the kitchen department at Home Depot, to being, to then going to Lowe’s, to then starting to go to different private companies that had higher and higher end kitchens where I worked for other people until the crash, the housing crash of 2010, when I got laid off, when our company went from, we did a lot of work for builders and, uh, Big, big housing companies.

And, uh, they all pretty much one of the companies even went bankrupt owing our company a half a million dollars. But, um, we went from doing 16 million in business to like four, I got laid off. And then the best thing that was the best thing that ever happened to me. And sometimes when I run into the guy that laid me off at a, some kind of industry function, he says, you should thank me every time you see me.

 So then I started my own company and I never would have done it. Because I had already had my own company and I didn’t have a 401k and I explained that to my wife and my wife said, Everybody’s a contractor. You’re like a really good kitchen designer. Wouldn’t it be much different when you’re a kitchen designer owning your own company?

Then you can do it the way you think it should be done instead of the way the other people do it, which you think is always bad. And I thought about it and I said, you know what, I think you might be right. And then I started the company and it was an instantly, uh, you know, took off. And, you know, we pretty much grown every year we’ve been in business.

This year is a little flat, maybe even a tiny bit down, but then the whole industry is the case for this year. But other than that, we’ve grown more than 25 percent every year we’ve been in business. So 

Dennis Oz: this is great. We also talk about this year and marketing all these things, but just want to start with the fundamentals.

I would like to talk a little more about your design philosophy. How do you think it’s evolved over the years? I think you’re pretty much different where you have started and where you are today. So can you explain us the difference? Well, I just think 

Paul Mcalary: it’s more, even more exaggerated than it over time as prices, the things that we, that people buy for their kitchens, the cost of cabinets, the cost of the appliances, the cost of everything that goes into a kitchen, those prices have skyrocketed.

And the cost of removing a wall or changing a doorway or something like that, in comparison, hasn’t really changed. And so, always, because I came from a construction background, moving things around and making changes was always something I was interested in doing. But, I mean, it’s gotten to the point where we don’t even measure where people’s plumbing lines are coming up anymore.

Because we’re just going to move them and make it, put them in the best possible location. And it really makes no sense. Splurging on materials, getting expensive appliances, we sell cabinetry from inexpensive brands up to the most expensive brands people could get. It would be silly for someone to buy custom cabinetry from us, and not have the best layout that they could possibly have for their kitchen.

Because taking out a wall costs 2, 000, but, you know, getting a Sub Zero refrigerator instead of a regular countertop, The refrigerator is 10, 000 at least maybe more so you splurge on the construction aspects of the of your home first and then get always maximize that and then get the materials that you can afford and that philosophy hasn’t really changed only it’s become more and more and more exaggerated over the 20 plus well almost 30 years now that I’ve been doing this.

Dennis Oz: Yeah. Well, um, not only this, you also have a lot of awards with your designs. I was looking at the whole these things that you accomplish already. I’m so amazed. Just want to talk about those projects. Since we have a lot of awards, I’m sure that are some projects that started really challenging and it just turned out to be something really rewarding. Can you give us an example about one of these projects? Well, actually, 

Paul Mcalary: One of the projects, which when we’re speaking , it’s my background in, in back of me, and I picked it intentionally for this call because this, the kit, the kitchen that we’re talking about, I won a bunch of awards for, but, um, it was very creative.

We had to move a staircase, uh, from the back of the house to under the main staircase in the middle of the house. We combined the dining room and the kitchen, made another room the dining room. We created a laundry room out of it. We did all these things, um, and won some local awards. But I actually submitted it to, um, I don’t know if you’re from, you know, familiar with the crystal awards.

, it’s a national award,, in kitchen design. So I submitted the same, uh, you know, this, the same project with all the same pictures, the before pictures, the after pictures, the architects, the, my, my drawings and the architect’s drawings, which I did for before and after and everything else to, to the crystal awards.

And then I actually got back the results. They have three judges that judge you and the, we didn’t win. Um, the, to the person that won the award got our , total number. Each judge has from one to 10 that they can give you. And the person that won the award got like a 25 out of 30. And then we had, I have to add it up, let me see, 19, we had 22, so we were short 3 points to winning the award, but then I looked at the judges scorecard, and one judge gave us 10 out of 10, one judge gave us 9 out of 10, and another judge gave us 10.

And the judge that gave us 3 out of 10, the comment that he had on his folder was, I don’t believe it’s the same house. So we had done such a good job designing the space that even with the floor plans and the before pictures, the during pictures, the after pictures, this guy couldn’t even figure out that it was the same location that he was looking at.

So that’s a big success. So that’s like, you know, that’s one example that I just think is sort of funny and there’s lots of, I mean, the great thing about kitchen design is there’s lots of these funny stories where people end up getting the very kitchen that they told you they didn’t want the, you know, in that case, the judge can’t even recognize because you’re transforming people’s houses and, you know, sometimes that really transforms their lives too and makes their, you know, makes day to day living better.

Which is stories of its own, too. That’s 

Dennis Oz: very rewarding. Thank you so much for sharing your golden nuggets. Among our audience, we have a lot of people, sometimes they have a showroom. Sometimes maybe just starting their business.

And I’m sure these things that the challenges and rewards that you shared. I’m sure they are really big eye openers for these people who is just tuning in today. So let’s take the conversation to the little bit of a client centric design approach. So let’s say you’re just ready to meet a client and of course, we need to deeply understand the requirements and their goals about their next project. How do you qualify them? And what’s your first approach to these clients? 

Paul Mcalary: Well, this is sort of funny too because if you’re talking about reputation and everything else, we actually don’t really have any bad, we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of five star reviews, but we don’t have really any bad reviews from anybody that actually worked with us.

But we do have a few bad reviews, but they’re from people that called up and ended up speaking to me and They told me what they wanted to do And then I explained to them why it wasn’t a good idea or why they shouldn’t do this or shouldn’t do that and it incensed them. And so they ended up writing us a bad review, you know, because I told them something that they didn’t want to hear.

So, you know, embracing the things that clients really want. The reason I really talk to customers a lot of the times before we pass them on to the other designers is to make sure that the customers understand that our process doesn’t really vary. And the way our process starts is we come out and measure their space And then we do the design we think is the best use of the space first.

That’s not a kitchen that anybody’s ever going to buy from us. And we haven’t implemented maybe any of the customers or hardly only a few of the customers ideas at this first preliminary design. But if we don’t do that, then customers will never understand what tradeoffs they gave up to get the kitchen that they thought that they wanted.

And then as the thing changes, they go, Oh, I understand. You mean if I close that window, I get less light in my kitchen, but then we’re taking out the wall between the dining room and the kitchen. So I get a lot more light that way. And now I can put my stove on that wall and now I can do all these things.

So we make people see things differently. At least to start that they weren’t anticipating and then as we make the changes, they sort of understand these different trade offs and it’s always their decision. They’re always making the decisions. That to buy the kitchen that they like the most because we don’t make any money unless they buy a kitchen from us.

So, but we’re just willing to sort of jeopardize the relationship a little bit in the beginning to put them out of their comfort zone. So they’re forced to see things that they might not have. And then the kitchen always ends up being a compromise of all these different things. And they’re making the choices after, you know, they’ve looked at them.

I always describe it as. Where our job isn’t to give people the kitchen of their dreams. It’s really to give people a kitchen beyond their dreams. Because we have information they don’t have. And once we give it to them, they can decide which of these different 

Dennis Oz: versions they want. Another incredible advice that comes from a true pioneer in the industry. So thank you so much for this. This is, uh, I’m sure that all our listeners and also the watchers. Sometimes you’re referring something that Paul is just refer his background. Maybe you won’t be able to see when you’re just tuning in as a podcast, but folks, you will also see this one on our YouTube channels and on our website too.

So if you’re just really feeling like missing out something, just tune in. Paul is just sharing all his little golden nuggets today here. So I just want you to make sure you are making the most out of it. So Paul, let’s take The conversation to the technology and tools that you use. I’m sure you have different tools for kitchen design, different tools for marketing.

We’re going to talk about marketing real soon, but let’s talk about the operational side of things, especially the softwares that you use for design. And also maybe could be estimating or anything that you feel really, really powerful for your own processes. What do you think those softwares are?

Paul Mcalary: Well, probably, I mean, uh, to do our payroll, we have a whole Excel program that we have, and that integrates with our CRM system, which is a customer resource management system called Monday. And those things are integral in, you know, us being able to track the customer’s projects, making sure deliveries are all happening and all the communication we have between the customers is all being documented.

And our office manager, uh, Juliette is making sure that all the trains are running on time and everything else. But, um, as far as the, you know, if we take marketing out of it, which is a fascinating thing of its own, you know, for me, uh, having studied computer engineering, I now, after not being doing computer engineering, now I get to interact.

And understanding computers helps me dramatically in marketing and Google analytics and all the things that we do. But taking that aside, the design software that we use, it hasn’t changed. I use it, you know, 2020 has gotten more sophisticated over time, but thankfully for me, because before there was 2020, which is The kitchen design program that most kitchen designers use a small percentage use pro kitchens, probably the most of us use 2020.

But when I started 2020 was always was a more rudimentary was black and white line drawings. But the good news for me was, it was a computer and I could use it and the first day I designed the kitchen for Home Depot I sold a kitchen with a customer. If I had to do that. By hand, which is how kitchen designers did it before that, I would have been in a whole lot of trouble because I’m not that artistically, I can do things and do some drawings by hand, but it takes me a very long time and getting the perspective correctly and everything else, you know, it used to be that even up until actually, I think it was eight years ago, in order to become a certified kitchen designer, you actually had to take the test using the doing the drawings by hand.

So, you know, what a waste of what a waste of time that is now. I mean, in reality, doing those drawings, um, you know, because it’s so time and so time, , intensive. It actually makes it much more difficult for people to change their minds because you’ve invested all this time creating this three dimensional drawing for somebody, right?

If I want to get rid of the wall, I just click a button and it’s gone. If I want to move the stove, I grab it and slide it down on 2020 and I can change the person’s design. 100%. In the span of a half an hour. Whereas, you know, if you were doing this by hand, I would have been a whole I wouldn’t have been a successful designer.

I am if I was stuck doing it by hand. And so thank thank God 

Dennis Oz: for 2020. 

We always have these challenges and I always have a hard time thinking about how these designers are just running their businesses without these computer aided programs CAD programs before they are ever so it’s really hard to even think about the life without them. You were talking about it also when some people will call you and sometimes when they hear something that they don’t really want to hear from you, probably the project is really impossible, they’re trying to accomplish something really, really hard. That’s why I would like to give you the question. Do you use any software or like own your vision to make a really difficult project to become alive?

Let’s say you may think that in the first glance, you may think it’s impossible to do, but it turned out to be something like, yes, you know what? That was hard, but we accomplished that. Well, do you have any kind of examples other than the ones that you have behind? 

Paul Mcalary: Oh, no, I mean, always.

Um, you know, there’s so many different ways to do things and it using 2020. It’s like, even when I’m at somebody’s house, people will say, well, what are you thinking? What are you going to do? It’s like, you know what? Until I get all these measurements, you may be, I might be measuring the whole first floor of their home until I get all these measurements on the computer and start playing around with it.

It’s really hard to know what design we’re going to come up with. Um, if you want to another example of a kitchen that I did, I always tell this story. Is you know, my wife, we do, we used to do a lot of kitchen tours. And so before COVID, um, these, a lot of, uh, towns in the area would have these kitchen tours where, uh, they bring people to all these, you know, luxury kitchens or whatever.

And I’m a little rough on people. So I would never, I would not be the representative of our company at the tour. My wife is much more engaging and pleasant. So she would be the one at the tour talking to people. Uh, And then she would sort of prepare them for me by saying now, you know, he’s going to tell you that maybe that he wants to do it differently than you’re thinking , he’ll still sell it to you the way you want, but he’s going to make you maybe see it ways that you haven’t thought of.

So she’s trying to prepare for people. And one of the people that she met had been on several of these tours and loved all these kitchens and that they saw of ours and finally scheduled a time for me to come out and measure their kitchen. And when I arrived, the, the husband. Um, who is a doctor gave me a 20 page document of all the things that he envisioned about his kitchen and the addition that he wanted to put on his house and everything.

It’s all spelled out. And and I said, well, you know what? I don’t need that. Um, we can talk about that document. After we start working on your kitchen, but you know, to start, we start always the same way. My wife must have told you about it, you know, that we’re going to do what we think is the best use of the design first.

And he was like, no, no, no. I spent so many years working on this. Please take this. Please take this. I said, it just I could tell you I was going to look at it, but that’s not would be lying to you. So, you know, hold on to it. We’ll talk about it after we start. And then he just looks at me and he says, yeah.

You’re really nothing like your wife, are you? And I had a laugh, I said, no, but you’re going to get a better kitchen out of it. And then the funny thing was, is, you know, one of the things I mentioned is, you know, I know you want to do this addition, but maybe we should think about taking the wall out between the kitchen and the dining room.

And then you can see what that looks like. Cause that’s going to be maybe 40, 000 less or 50, 000 or 60, 000 less than doing an addition. He goes, I don’t even want to do that. Please don’t even show it to me. And I said, you know, usually come up with one design. I’m just going to do two for you so we can quickly show you that design.

And then he’s like, no, no, no, no, no. And then the wife said, just let him do it. You know, uh, Bob, it’s, it’s okay. So then they come into the office to see these designs. And I said, well, I’m just going to show you the one that you don’t want first, and then we’ll just get rid of it. It’s the one that, you know, takes out the wall between the kitchen.

He goes, I told you, I don’t want to see that. And then I said, Well, you know, just gonna look at for five minutes, and then we’ll move on. And, you know, finally, he agreed. So then I brought it up on the screen, and he took a look at it. And he says, Well, that doesn’t look anything like I thought it was going to look like.

And I said, Yeah, that’s true. He goes, It’s really open and spacious. I said, That’s the whole point. He goes, Is this really going to be 40, 000? Or I said, I think it’s going to be 60, 000 less than doing an addition. He said, Well, then we shouldn’t do the addition. Let’s do this. And then, you know, we’ll move on.

And I said, well, let me now show you the one with the addition because I don’t need to see the addition. If that’s 50, 000 more than this, I don’t need to see that. That’s crazy. I don’t, you know, I’m not going to spend 50 more thousand dollars. This is a beautiful kitchen. Why would I spend 50, 000 more? I said, I worked, it took me an hour to do this one.

The other one took me two. I have to show you the other one. All right, show me the other one. I showed him the other one. He said, well, that’s not the addition that I was thinking about doing. I said, no, instead of Adding a whole little eating area. I moved the whole back of your house out four feet. He goes, what’s very different?

It’s a way better kitchen. I said, yeah, I mean, it is a better kitchen. The question is, is it worth an extra 50, 000? And he said, I think it might be. And that was the kitchen that he got. So he went at every step of the way, kicking and screaming, right? We dragged him through the whole process. And in the end, everything he picked was the things that he wanted, but only after he saw things that he thought maybe he didn’t.

So, I mean, that’s a great, that’s a really, I know that’s my wife’s favorite story just because whenever, later on, after the kitchen was done, my wife came over just to see it for them. And you know, they might’ve liked me and might’ve liked the designs and everything else, but my wife was the nice person.

So they said, the wife is coming tomorrow. The wife is coming tomorrow. So they were very happy to, but, , my wife got to see their finished kitchen. 

Dennis Oz: Great. Thank you so much for Telling us the story is a stellar explanation too because you know that this is the story that we are actually looking for our Podcast here.

It’s really funny. Thank you so much for sharing this and it’s great I think all our audiences really learn what you’re trying to give it there So folks, This is how a story just evolves and you just deliver your final product and everybody’s happy at the end of the day. So that’s the main thing here.

You can’t make people 

Paul Mcalary: buy kitchens they don’t like. So they’re , always getting a kitchen that they love. It just maybe is a little bit more work and they have to think about things that they might have not thought of. 

Dennis Oz: Right, right. Thank you so much for sharing this story with us. Well, uh, Paul, I would like to take the conversation to the trends in our industry.

I’m sure that you see many trends. And also, I’m sure that you have some thoughts about the future. First, let me ask you the past. What was the trends that you really remember? And do you have any kind of trends that you have in mind in the future that might be a trend?

It’s really hard to predict, but anything that the homeowners might be excited about? 

Paul Mcalary: So I would say that this question I get asked all the time. And the answer is usually not, uh, is not as exciting as you might think. So, I mean, what are the trends in kitchens? Well, for 15 years. We sold white kitchens with white countertops and shaker doors and it didn’t matter how many other things we showed people.

That was what people bought and what they wanted for 15 years running. Thankfully now people are getting away from that and we get to design different kitchens. But 20 years ago, we designed kitchens in all different kinds of styles and all different kinds of finishes, um, and contemporary kitchens and French country, antique kind of looking kitchens and transitional and traditional kitchens.

But, you know, for the last 15 years, we’ve been designing, uh, you know, mostly for us. Very, you know, we have, because our company is a little bit in the suburbs, we don’t do a lot of really contemporary modern kitchens. And when we do, they’re usually in the city. But, , for 15 years, we’ve been doing the same thing over and over again, which is a little bit maddening, but now it’s great that people are.

Are getting away from just white kitchens with white countertops and, you know, , even gray and then navy blue, they sort of went into. But now people are one of the things is people. I think I’ve also realized that. All the painted cabinets that everybody has wanted are not quite as durable as the stained finishes So people sort of anecdotally Know now well You know, even if I really wanted a painted kitchen like my kitchen is a stained kitchen because I know i’m really hard on things and I didn’t want that all the touch ups and Fabric furniture or finishes coming in to fix up my kitchen.

So um My kitchen is a stained kitchen, but people are now going back to colored stains and different kinds of wood species. So that that’s all good. And then always, as far as people predicting the future, everybody always predicts and has been predicting since the seventies. That we’re everybody is going to in the United States is going to suddenly go very contemporary that we’re all going to be going very contemporary and it’s what all the architects and the interior designers, but they all think is it going to happen, but it doesn’t, it never happens, right?

It hasn’t happened. It’s been predicted happening since the 1970s. And just people just aren’t that brave. That they’re going to pick make those selections. So we’ll always be a part of the kitchens that we sell. And for us, because we’re in the suburbs and not the city, a little bit less percent doing very contemporary kitchens, but, you know, the trends for us are just not as exciting as you might think.

They’re, you know, better appliances, better uh, updated, uh, You know, knife pull out drawers and all kinds of different things, those kind of updates and then thankfully getting away from very static white kitchens and white countertops or white and black and all the same tile and every everything else being the same.

Now we’ll have a little bit of more variation, but it won’t be as bold as a lot of people think. 

Dennis Oz: Thanks so much for putting this into this perspective. It is really clear, it’s always a controversial topic, but , thank you so much for giving me the information this way and sharing your true wisdom here.

Well, just. Take the conversation to the marketing. Where is the most fun part, right? The marketing tool is always fun because whatever we do, we might have the best product in the market or the service in the market. We have to do the marketing correctly and we have to reach the ideal customer avatar or like the correct people at the correct time.

Right. With the correct piece of information and correct piece of content. So here, A lot of different tools in place that you features that you use. Like you have your blog. I’m going to talk about that too. You have your podcast, Mainline Kitchen Design marketing infrastructure, and also like the whole perspective, how do you look at marketing and what do you think about the current marketing strategies right now?

Paul Mcalary: Marketing is probably for me, at least maybe, it’s more exciting than kitchen design and it’s a science, but it’s a very hard science because it’s so, so hard really documenting ROI return on investment for any marketing thing that you’re doing.

And, but it, the, for me, the wonderful part about it , is that it really, it’s all about computers and how computers. Are able to analyze and how we’re able to get information from the people that have been on our site and, you know, Yeah, there’s all these different social medias and how can we take advantage of, you know, each individual social media platform has its own different good things and bad things that you can be utilizing to get yourself in front of people.

But the strategy. And the implementation of the strategy and the analysis of what’s working and not working is really the most fascinating thing. I think in our industry. Now, it’s just incredible. Like, I always give a 1 of the stories. I always tell. It’s sort of funny is, um, We geofence a lot of things, and we started doing this like almost 10 years ago.

Could you please tell us what geofencing is? Because most of the people here, they’re just starting marketing, Paul. So let’s talk about geofencing and what that is. Let’s 

So I’ll tell you how we started doing geofencing. So what geofencing is, is as soon as you could actually identify the location from a computer of a specific area through global positioning, You could only advertise the people’s cell phones or people’s computer usually is people’s cell phones that are in that a particular radius around that location.

So the way it started for us was maybe eight, nine years ago. Um, somebody asked us, did we want to advertise? Go be in the Philadelphia home show. And they said, you know, maybe you get a booth in the Philadelphia home show is thousands and thousands of people walking through the home show. And I I’m just not that, you know, you really have to be an aggressive person on the floor of a home show to try to get customers to come in.

And I knew none of us, none of the people that worked for me at the time. And myself, it wasn’t the thing that we did best. And then one of the magazines we were advertising with at the time said, well, everybody at the home show is going to get one of the magazines that has your ads in it. So maybe it might be good for you to be at the home show.

And then I had just heard about geofencing. And I said, you know what? Let me call one of the advertisers and I called them and I said, here’s what we want to do. We want to geofence the home show so that everybody’s cell phone that walks into that home show is going to start getting ads for our company.

We won’t even have to be there. We’ll get ads. And then the marketer said, well, we can do better than that. We can there will be people from all over the area and all over the country coming to the Philadelphia home show. Well, you only want to advertise the people within your area. So what we’ll do is we’ll essentially infect everybody’s cell phone with your marketing plan.

And then we’ll wait a week and then we’ll see where they’re located. And if they’re still within the radius of the places you serve, then we’ll only advertise to that smaller group, which turned out only to be 10%. Of all the people at the Philadelphia home show. So now we’re advertising. They got a magazine with our thing and we never even had to be there and we’re getting phone calls from people that were at the Philadelphia home show.

So it started like that. And now we actually geofence individual homes. So when someone buys a new home, that’s the most likely time that they’re going to actually redo a kitchen. So once a home is sold or goes on the market. We get that information, we geofence each one of those locations, and then every cell phone going in and out of those locations gets our ads, and we also geofence our competitors.

So every one of our competitors, every one of the cell phones that goes into their showroom, Is now getting pictures of kitchens that we did and, you know, contact us and the second they’re not happy at that showroom, they’ll be calling us over the phone. So that’s like, just, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg of all the things that we can do now and emails.

And, you know, I also have, uh, people subscribe to our blog and they subscribe to our podcast. And, um, and when they’re on our website, we can identify a lot of those people’s email addresses from being on our website. And before it was too invasive to really advertise directly to them. But people aren’t too freaked out now if they know if they’ve been on a website looking at something, we don’t have to like, say, hey, I know you were looking at our website.

We can just send them , some things on kitchens and some other things. And if we, you know, we send them an email, we can send them an email. That’s helpful that they can get some information that they probably needed anyway, and then decide if they want to contact us or whatever later. So all of those things we’re doing and it’s, you know, end all of the platform, all the social media platforms, managing.

Um, I’ve given some of that away to the Giulietta office administrator, um, but, uh, you know, it’s the marketing part is fascinating and, you know, you know, that I don’t have to tell you. 

Dennis Oz: Yeah. , from my personal experience, geofencing helped me a lot, back in February in kitchen and bathroom industry show in Vegas.

Well, we were exhibiting there. Physically to exhibit like we have the booth there in South Hall. By the way, this year we’ll be in North Hall. I’m so excited about that because I like this North Hall better than the South Hall.

It’s another marketing thing, of course. But we use geofencing just to promote people that we are in that booth. just wanted to share my opinion about GeoFencing with our audience today, just like Paul shared, folks. It’s just really powerful, it’s marketing on steroids. So you can drive people to you and let’s say if you are talking about a specific gender, age, you can specify and then your ads will be shown to these people only to these people in that given area.

So it’s a real powerful tool just like Paul mentioned today. Try to use it. geofencing your competitors is another great idea that we just, talk about that because these people who just went to your competitor, they are in the market, they are looking for something, they get a quote from this competitor, but they didn’t really like the communication, right? There will be an opportunity there. So if you’re really good at, if you’re really good at what you do, it doesn’t mean that people will stop by and buy from there. You may create another opportunity for this client maybe you will be the one who was just starting that project. So do you see how this powerful marketing techniques that we are here, just like Paul shared in his experience too. So it’s really interesting to hear from our speakers that they are also engaging with this kind of emerging marketing technologies too.

So Paul, let’s take the conversation to the blog part. you have one of the top rated kitchen design blogs over there. What was your, your steps to creating this successful blog? And also I have the follow up question I’m going to ask you right now. What is your best performing topic over there?

Paul Mcalary: Oh, so it’s no question that one, the now there’s one blog, which has updated several times in 2018, I think was the first year we had it, but in 2018, we rated the top 50 or so kitchen cabinet brands and just discuss, you know, , what their construction quality was. Um, what their, uh, price point was and then what their overall value was.

And that was a blog that I did first in 2018. And then we updated it 2019, 2020. Um, now it’s an ongoing thing where it’s not a dated blog anymore. We just continue to update it and add more cabinet companies to the list. And it really is. Um, you know, as many people are on our blog, uh, in, you know, hundreds and hundreds of the blogs that we have, probably almost half of all those people are on that one blog.

Now that rate rates, kitchen cabinet brands, and it’s actually used as a resource more than consumer reports. More than J. D. Power. It’s the most used, information source for people picking kitchen cabinets in the United States. We have, you know, people call us up all the time. The presidents and vice presidents of cabinet companies call up to either thank us Or yell at me because we’re not reading that cabinet.

Well, and um, and you know, the answer is, is our criteria doesn’t vary. These are the things that, and how we rate them and you can fix your cabinet and then we’ll rate you better. And then a lot of companies have, I think master brands even updated how they did their cabinets. I think partly, I don’t know it for a fact, cause no one from master brands told me, but I know the bad press that they were getting when they were using three eighths of an inch sides.

On their cabinets was definitely hurting them and then they changed and they made them half inch sides and you know the whole you know We try to like I I know You mentioned in an email that you sent me just that we try to be transparent Well, the whole cabinet industry has to get more transparent over time because the homeowners are just doing more and more research And so, um, you know, but that one blog is 50 percent of all the traffic.

It starts for us usually on one of those individual blogs that rates the cabinet companies, and then, you know, all the other blogs are all topics that I find, uh, important or whatever. And then, you know, the secret to writing blogs, I think, is. One, to make them not too boring so that people can get the information and enjoy reading it when they’re getting it.

And then most importantly is, To answer comments on the blog, so we have some that those popular blogs about the kitchen cabinet, uh, ratings that we do several of those blogs have many more than 1000 comments on the blog and I respond to each and every one of them. And I respond, you know, usually, or at least sometimes in a slightly humorous way.

So if people try to challenge me or something like that, you know, I’ve even had customers say, I knew when that woman wrote you that what you said was wrong, you were going to give her a hard time. So we’re trying to make, you know, and it’s my personality, but I exaggerate it slightly because it makes it more entertaining for people reading about These topics and everything else.

If they have a question, you answer their question. If they, when you answer it, if you give them information and then make them laugh a little bit, it helps 

Dennis Oz: that was really crucial point. We just said there. It’s really important for for all our marketing efforts and folks here. We are talking about a blog on internet. It’s not like a social media piece where people just consume so fast. This is a permanent piece of content that is standing there for years and people are joining, people are getting updated information. So, it’s really hard to create.

That’s why I was asking you. What were the steps when you were creating it? You don’t get this kind of a really big exposure and successful podcast overnight. How did you get there? I think you just 

Paul Mcalary: keep on writing them. And then, you know, different things happen. Every once in a while something goes viral.

Right. We had a video that’s on our website that shows a kitchen being renovated into 211 seconds. And it’s, you know, stop action video, it’s from 2014 so it’s a long time ago, but at one point it was viewed in every country on earth. So, and same thing with the blog. Some of the blogs, like one of the blogs that I wrote, it’s called, it’s about the IKEA effect.

The IKEA effect is essentially a psychological delusion that we as human beings have that if we actually put work into something, and in IKEA, that would be, you know, Making the cabinets, putting them together, then we value what we did and what we participated in far above what would ever anyone would ever think was rational.

So, and that’s just human beings nature. So people that actually tried origami for the first time. Well, then if they have to look at two pieces of origami, their own creation, and one from an origami master, they will rate their own creation as better something like 60 percent of the time. So it’s just , we are not good evaluators of our own product.

So that the IKEA effect and my whole blog on that. Incenses people. So if we advertise that on Facebook, for example, not only do we get an incredible response, but a lot of people mad at us too, but that’s okay. Because if they’re really mad at us, they were never going to buy a kitchen from us. They’ve got their hell bent on Ikea, but, um, you know, it incenses people so much that like, I’m sure you would, what is a good price to pay for someone clicking through to your website, that blog, whenever I run it, it’s 10 cents.

It’s 10 cents a click to get somebody to my website to read that blog from a Facebook post, which is shockingly. And then, of course, then we’re only necessarily directing that to new homebuyers, maybe new homebuyers between this age and that age. They can’t they got to be over the older than 25 because otherwise they can’t afford a new kitchen.

They got to be this, they got to be that they got to have be in this particular locations. So we can tailor. All of these advertising efforts on these different platforms, and then, you know, and in this case, get people riled up, which is a good thing, because now they’re maybe on my website looking around, maybe, you know, so lots of different things.

We’ve got we had one viral thing. Uh, I will get it. I won’t get too specific. But, um, we rate not just cabinets, but we also rated TV shows, HDTV and other TV shows, and gave them ratings, and we incensed one of the people whose favorite TV show we didn’t give a good review to, who put it on that celebrity’s list.

Facebook page and that celebrity has one and a half million followers. So, one and a half million followers were instantly mad at me, for say, for not liking that particular TV show, and then we actually had to shut down our Twitter and our Instagram account for like, a week, until the water settled down.

But, you know, all good, all news is good news. 

Dennis Oz: Thank you so much for opening the Pandora’s box it’s a really nice story. Thank you so much for sharing it. The blog is one part of it. Of course, you also have a podcast, which I believe folks here on our show, I am also a big believer, whoever here is like an audience, it’s not hard to start your podcast and look, you are the actual resource of information that people are looking out there.

So that’s what I’m going to ask Paul. Paul, what motivated you to start your own podcast? Which I’m a big believer that every remodeler, every kitchen showroom, every design and build company, every countertop company has to talk about some relevant topics that other people may be engaged, right?

 You never know where the next opportunity is going to come. What was your motivational point that you started your podcast and how do you pick your topics for your next podcast?

Paul Mcalary: So it’s a both the just like I started my company because my wife said, you know, you’re a good kid. It’s different. It’s good. Owning your own company is going to be different when it’s kitchen design. I started my podcast because of my wife’s daughter, who, what we were doing, our blog got so popular that we were having people call us all day long, all night long, all the time to ask us questions.

And we couldn’t, I mean, we just couldn’t feel those phone calls. So finally I said, what’s a good solution here? Not to get people mad at us. Maybe people give us bad reviews because we won’t answer the phone. It’s just anytime one of these people calls, we’ll say, and we’ll put it on our website too. We’ll say, listen, you have a question.

We’ll answer it either on our blog, which helps the blog and helps the blog become more popular in comments on the blog. Or you can call in on a Friday between two and 4 PM. And one of our designers will answer all your questions. And then we got, you know, it was up to like three or four designers of, were all answering the phone, answering people’s questions.

That’s how popular it was, which is a good thing, but it was eating up our time. And finally, , my wife’s daughter said, you could be recording all of these phone calls. And you could be making a podcast out of it. You’re already doing it and answering everybody’s questions. Why don’t you make a podcast out of it?

And I said, I’ll give it a try. And the most amazing thing happened once we started recording it. It discouraged so many people from calling because maybe they could listen to the podcast to get the information they needed, but also they didn’t want to be recorded. And that was great because now I could field all the phone calls.

So now I didn’t have to waste three other employees answering the phone to record this podcast. And the podcast was that much better because it was all me. And you know, the other employees, even though they’re knowledgeable, I mean, So I’ve been doing it the longest. So, um, that created the podcast.

And then if you want to really get into the weeds here, um, now that I’ve got all these podcasts under my belt and now the thesis that I rejected doing when I was a computer engineer that I refused to do because it was 1980 Uh, seven or something like that was on artificial intelligence. And I said that was never, that was a waste of my time in 1987.

It is not gonna happen for 20 years. Turns out it’s whatever for 40 years, but it , was a waste of my time. I’m not spending all this time, I’m not even going into this computer industry. So I ended up, you know, becoming, a contractor. You can take AI and do so many things with advertising and other stuff, and now that I’m retiring, sort of, or getting close to retirement, we can use the podcasts and AI to have people ask questions. We will do this probably in a couple of years. On our website, And the, they can get the answers in my own voice, right?

Because we have all the answers. We have all the, the, uh, transcripts from the podcast will all be downloaded into AI and then they’ll, I’ll be long retired and long gone. Maybe even, you know, who knows buried someplace and I’ll still be answering in a Brooklyn accent. I’ll still be answering people’s questions about kitchen design, you know, from the beach, from the beach.

Dennis Oz: You see how these smart people just like Paul looking at the future folks, you see that, right? Paul is talking about answering people with his own voice. Why? Because he recorded a lot. You cannot record all like a 30, 40, 50 hours of podcasts overnight. If you were just creating the podcast, putting on there, just for AI to use when it’s capable of doing such of things. The building authority really brings people to you a little bit pre positioned to buy instead of just coming to you saying hi.

Is it easy to sell or what do you think about that? 

Paul Mcalary: Well, it’s a little bit of a double edged sword. So unfortunately, we give people so much information that people do come to us, um, that have consumed all of this information and, you know, they’re totally prepared for the whole experience and they’re the best customers of all that we get because they’ve consumed information.

But then so many people too, that Just want to use the information that they got to avoid actually working with us and doing stuff themselves. And that is a trend that I think that over time is, you know, you can’t learn how we do all of the kitchen design and everything that we do. You can’t be, you can read all of the blogs, you can watch all the podcasts.

But it really, you need an, uh, you need somebody that does it for a living to help you along the way. I mean, you wouldn’t cut your hair on your own. If your car needs a new transmission, you’re not researching how to do transmissions. You’re going to somebody that knows how to do it. You know, I don’t know why it is that just because people have a kitchen, they think that they don’t need anybody’s help, but they need, it’s a 50 who knows how many tens of thousands dollar project.

Right. You need people just to help you, just to direct you so you spend your money wisely and on the right things. But, uh, we lose a lot of customers that I know that use our website as a resource to not hire us. We just had a customer I spoke to this morning who used our company as a resource for his last kitchen, but finally now is doing another kitchen and a new home and now he’s decided, you know what, this time I’m actually going to get help from you guys instead of using your website, but we lose some customers to the, information.

That we give them. But to be honest, you know, they’re not, they’re not the best customers. The best customers are always the people that are gonna, you know, let us help them. We don’t, we don’t have a vested interest in you getting one kind of kitchen or another. We just want to help you get the best value for your dollars and get the thing that makes you the happiest.

But we’re not going to do it if, you know, you don’t let us in. So you got to let us in and let us help you and, and listen and, and, you know, at least look at the ideas that we have. So we lose 

Dennis Oz: some, we get, we lose some, we get some. And also it’s really disqualifies the customers that you don’t want to work with.

 It’s just giving you that power. So our website 

Paul Mcalary: discriminates against people. I mean, there’s things in our website that are designed to, we don’t want you clicking on our, we don’t want to waste a click on our website. Which is also why we have 150 deposit.

It’s not to make money. We don’t care about 150. We do, you know, we rip it up and throw it in the garbage can. It’s really just to get a better class of people that are coming to us. So that they’ll, they’ll, you know, if you really think you don’t need our help, you just want to price this kitchen out for me.

I don’t need your help. I don’t need your expertise. If they, if someone invests just a little bit of money, it’s 150. We’ll give them 10 hours of our time and by the end of that 10 hours they’ll have learned so much that now they’ll know that the $150 is well worth it. And it, you know, it’s rare that they don’t actually buy a kitchen from us if we, if they invested, but they haven’t, if they’ve invested nothing, well, you know, they, we don’t even want to invest a dollar 50 or three 50, whatever it is for them to click on.

So even our ads all say right up front, $150. ’cause if that’s gonna discourage you, then that’s good. Just go, go, go to somebody else. And then, you know, we, we want it. We, we want somebody that values us so that they’re a better customer. And, and, and we use our, that means we are using our time more effectively.

And actually that’s really what keeps the, our prices very competitive and less than our other competitors, because we’re pre screening customers. Through our website and other things, even the name of our company sort of screens customers out a little bit. It’s, it’s bad because we’re very reasonable for inexpensive brands, but the main line, the name of our company is the rich part around Philadelphia.

And that makes people think that we’re expensive, which we wish that it didn’t really, but what it means is that. We’ll always win the price battle in the end because we’re a little bit less expensive than other people, but it does screen at the people that are absolutely just, if you type a word like wholesale or discount, even though we’re less expensive than our competitors.

You, our ads won’t even come up, right? If you’re, if the thing that’s the most important to you is just, you know, I don’t care about design, I don’t care about health, I just care about money, then don’t, if you type cheap, wholesale, discount, none of our ads show up. You’ll never, you’ll never see a paid advertisement for us.

So yeah, so that’s, uh, you know, we have so many negative keywords that we get that anytime we find somebody that, you know, anytime we find even a philosophy that we think is makes automatically make somebody a bad customer, it becomes a negative keyword. 

Dennis Oz: Yeah, one, one thing about this. Paul, by the way, I just want to share some another example.

Folks, by the way, I just wanted to tell you that I, I asked Paul to have like a little bit of a 30 minutes interview. You see how this conversation is really, really entertaining and just we are going a little bit over time. Thanks so much for this one.

For this negative keyword, I was giving an audit to a company back in 2020. And they said, we have the best strategy about Google ads, we are reaching out to correct the audience. I was giving them an audit and I was just saying, look, there are people out there. They’re looking for donations. Sometimes they use “free kitchen cabinets” keyword. people are looking for donations, could be a church, could be like a nonprofit organization. That’s normal. We have to, yes, we have to also help build a better community.

There is nothing wrong with that, but would you advertise to those people? Right. This is the question you won’t advertise. Once I put “free kitchen cabinets”, they were the first one on the search results. And I just told them the amount of money that you’re wasting. For this part of keywords is showing me that you’re also wasting a lot of money for different types of keywords So that was the time that the that person really understood the power of negative keywords, well It’s whole another topic that the how we structure our ads right now We are talking about ads here paid ads.

It’s of course, it’s really one of the other fundamentals here. But yeah, well when you look at your marketing, just like Paul said, it’s, we have different Elements there, right? We have your most amazing thing I believe here is your help to your ideal customer avatar, your blog posts and podcasts and everything, because you know, Paul, correct me if I’m wrong, but just like you said, giving that all this information to the people, it’s a double edged sword.

Sometimes you discourage other people, but at the end of the day, All these informed people will be pre positioned to buy from you because they are looking for an expert in the area and you’re going to support your expert vision for this local people. We are also running podcast, Paul, we are running podcasts for our own clients too, that we are helping some local kitchen showrooms.

And once in a while, my client was telling me there were two women in the grocery store. They were finger pointing me and laughing. And because they watched him on social media that day, you know, being the best known in the market is very important because if you have these strategies and all these great marketing strategies in place, then being the best known will take you to a place where you can be the best remodeling company in your area, because once you have that great exposure and you bring people to your own funnel and build your authority, that’s the ideal scenario when you look at these things, what do you think Paul, do you think that you will like to add anything to this strategy, bringing the people and giving them a stellar service?

Paul Mcalary: It’s, you know, having all of these people listening to the blogs and being on the podcast and coming to the website. Makes the does the thing that’s the most important of all is makes Google understand that we are the authority and once Google understands that with the authority, then we’re going to come up way ahead of our competitors in a Google search.

So all of these things that we do and all of the blogs and everything else, it’s great information to give people out there. It’s great information for our own customers to have, but it’s marketing goal is to establish us as the authority in kitchen cabinets, kitchen design, et cetera. And then that translates into Google just sending, you know, more and more searches in our direction.

So, , that’s the biggest thing of all, is that, you know, a Google search, it’s more important. Like our company, we don’t have a showroom. On the street, we have offices in an office building. So you wouldn’t know that we have all this samples and displays and everything else. And, you know, all these things in this middle of this office building, because there’s only a small sign on the building outside that we exist.

Because we just decided that, you know what, having people wander in and asking us questions and doing everything else just eats up a whole lot of time that, you know, we can funnel out the people that we want to get over the Internet. And now the people that are coming to us. Already spent 150. We’ve already measured their kitchen.

We’ve already qualified them. And now everybody that works for me and myself, we’re spending time with better qualified customers, which again, just translates into us saving money to be able to sell cabinets for less and then not having offices, you know, if we had whatever we have, uh, for 1, 600 square feet of space on the street, Uh, instead of in that on an office building, um, you know, it would cost three times as much and, we’re saving money as far as that’s concerned.

But most importantly, we’re just saving our time. We’re not wasting time talking to people wandering in when I used to work in showrooms. The people that would wander in, like, you’d spend the whole Saturday answering people’s questions. You’d never see any of them ever again, right? Somebody would call up on the phone and just say, I was wondering how the process worked.

That person was the best person you talked to that day. All the people that just happened to take their Saturday off and wander around our beautiful showroom when I used to work for another company, those weren’t good leads, really. Almost most of them, at least. 

Dennis Oz: Paul, thank you so much for sharing all your golden nuggets with us today.

It was amazing to have you here in our podcast. I have one last question before that. I just wanted to thank everyone who’s joining us today. And also I would like to thank Paul, uh, for sharing. Well, I’m sure that you have a lot of learned lessons in the past and I’m sure that is something that you would like to share with our audience because among our audience again, we have a lot of individuals who would like to start their business. Either would like to become a really successful kitchen designer. What would be your suggestions for these people who are just starting? And thinking about a career in the kitchen and bath industry.

Paul Mcalary: So just starting and thinking about having a career and not having their own company because you wouldn’t start your own company If you’re just starting your career then you know, I would think that the way I started is sort of a good way because Really the entry point in the kitchen and in kitchen design Is probably and a good one is probably a Lowe’s or a Home Depot in a home center, because they’re going to train you how to use 2020.

They’re going to teach you some stuff. They’re not going to pay you very well. I mean, it’s funny, but they used to pay so much better if you went to a home center. 30 years ago when we were in the plumbing aisle, the person you were talking to was probably a master plumber that might have been retired.

And the kitchen designer might have been making, you know, back then 25, 30 an hour. Um, you know, that’s what they make now, 30 years later. And, you know, when I worked at Lowe’s 20 something years ago, the head designer, the designer that actually brought to the Lowe’s, he was making 95, 000 a year in 2000 and whatever, 2000, 2001 or something like that.

And I was making 70, 000 a year because we were getting paid commission and we were selling a million and a half dollars of cabinets ourselves. So, But that’s not true anymore. So both of those places, you’re only going to make 35, 000 a year or 40. But you could, you know, if you’re willing to sacrifice and work at those places for a couple of years, or at least a year, then you’ll be able to get a job at the next tier of designing kitchens, which will be a private showroom that maybe pays you a little bit less.

And then when you’re, when you really get good at your job and you become a really good salesman, well then, you know, the top salesman in our company makes 200, 000 a year, so you can make a whole lot of money if you’re selling a whole lot of cabinets. But the way you sell a lot of cabinets is first off, no one’s buying a kitchen from me unless you’re a great designer and you’re personable and people like you, but your designs also have to be very good.

So you have to go through the whole, you have to learn step by step to get to the point that you’re, you can make a lot of money. And that designer that I work with at Lowe’s, I know in 2021, it might have been after the whatever, he made over $300,000 a year designing kitchens. So he, I mean, he was the first designer at Home Depot to sell over a million dollars in kitchen cabinets in the 1990s.

And then when he, when I brought him on to Lowe’s, he was the top selling Lowe’s designer in the entire chain. Right. So, you know, he makes the most that, you know, you can’t, you know, but he’s not even the top selling salesman I’ve met in my life. There was one woman that had two full time assistants that sold 5 million in cabinets.

Um, when I was one of the companies I worked with, so you can make a great living in kitchen design, but it’s all you have to be able to sell a lot and it’s all you can’t sell a lot if you’re not good. Because if you’re not good, first of all, your customers are going to be mad at you because you made mistakes.

So you can’t make mistakes. You got to be good. And then people sort of have to like you and trust you. 

Dennis Oz: Well, wow, what an episode it was. And Paul, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. If anyone from our community, from our audience would like to even have a follow up question.

What’s the best way to reach out and get some information people who would like to really start or you know who would like to build their own podcast What’s the best anybody that has any questions ever for me, 

Paul Mcalary: can always reach me one of two ways.

Write a question on one in the comment section of one of our blogs. And the reason I answer those questions is one, because it shares the information with everybody, whatever your question is. And also it adds another comment to the blog and can produce a whole bunch of comments, which help Google find us.

So I’ll answer any question you ask. You ask any question you want. If you put it on our blog, I will answer it. And if you want to talk to me in person, 90 percent of the Fridays, every Friday, Eastern Standard Time from 2 to 4 p. m., we have our, our podcast, uh, helpline. And, uh, you just call into the number and 610 500 4071 between those hours.

And then I’m answering your people’s questions. And usually it’s not hard to get on because, you know, ’cause people know that they’re being recorded. it eliminates a lot of people that are, you know, not, are too shy to call in. So, you know, if you, as long as you’re comfortable and if it was something that came up that was personal, we would be totally fine.

Not putting it, we only make only a third of our. Calls end up becoming the podcast anyway. So if it really was, you mentioned , you didn’t think it was too specific and you didn’t want , it recorded, we would not record it, but um, you can always reach me on Fridays two to four. That’s what we’re here for.

I’m here for 

Dennis Oz: everybody. Thank you so much. Thanks so much folks. That was another episode of the remodeler success podcast. And we’re going to see you next time. Goodbye.