No Strings Attached

#33 (Spotlight) - From Door Knocking To an Eight Figure Business

• Roger Magalhaes

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He knocked on doors for years, built a multi-million-dollar operation, and still hit the moment every founder dreads: more revenue, more stress, and less money left at the end of the month. That’s the heart of my conversation with James Hutchings, founder of Southwest Blinds and Shutters and the mind behind the Aeris Dealers Network, a dealer-first approach to products and profitability in the window coverings world.

We walk through James’ real timeline, not the polished version. He starts as a young newlywed in Las Vegas, stumbles into door-to-door sales with no training, and learns how to turn bare windows in new neighborhoods into consistent blind and shutter installs. Then we dig into what happens when hustle turns into scaling a small business: hiring friends and family, stacking overhead, managing people without systems, and discovering that growth can expose every weakness in operations and leadership.

The most actionable part is James’ simple “every $100” breakdown of unit economics, profit margins, materials cost, commissions, marketing spend, and overhead. If you’ve ever wondered why your company feels busy but the bank account doesn’t, this explains it in plain language. We also explore why James stepped back from box store territory expansion and moved toward supply chain control and vertical integration, building Aeris to create a more reliable, easier-to-sell, dealer-focused product line shaped by installer and dealer feedback.

If you care about entrepreneurship, door-to-door sales, trades-based businesses, or building a profitable company that can actually scale, press play. Subscribe, share this with a business owner who needs the math, and leave a review with the biggest lesson you’re taking from James’ story.

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Spotlight Guest And Big Promise

Roger Magalhaes

Today's show is part of the Spotlight series, and I interviewed James Hodgkins, founder and owner of Southwest Blinds and Shutters on the West Coast. He is also the owner of Aries Dealers Network. His idea is to bring a reliable product and have a network of experts that don't compete with each other for a better market, better profits, and better business. James started knocking on doors and built an eight-figure business. Very interesting how you can do something when you have the willingness to do it. If you want to learn more, stick around right after this.

Intro / Outro

Welcome

Show Opening And Core Theme

Intro / Outro

to No Strings Attached, the place where we untangle honest conversations about business, reinvention, and the pursuit of the American dream. Hosted by Roger McGales, Brazilian-born, Boston-bred, Florida-based. He is an entrepreneur, speaker, and storyteller with 20 years of real stories, laughs, and screw-ups. This show is for anyone still searching for their place under the sun. So pull up the chair. The show is about to start. Here's Roger with no strings attached.

The Blind Guy Origin Story

Roger Magalhaes

Appreciate you being here, appreciate your time. And for the people that don't know you, I actually don't know you too well. I know you just a little bit from Facebook, from talking to you here and there. But tell everyone that listened to our show your 32nd introduction. If you just meet someone at a trade show or, you know, at an event, who are you?

James Hutchings

Yeah, so I think very first I'm a dealer, an independent dealer. I got into the business 25 years ago. So I have been an independent window covering dealer for 25 years. I operate currently in Las Vegas, Nevada, and in Arizona. And I love being a dealer. I mean, that's really who I am to my core. I started out in the business as a door-to-door salesman. I was actually a door-to-door salesman for almost 15 years. So really I'd say I'm a salesman at my core too, because that was just built into my DNA. And now we're opening another part of our business. So now we're going to be a supplier and a dealer. But all I do is window coverings. It's really all I've ever known. I've had some odd jobs before I got into window coverings.

Roger Magalhaes

Uh-huh.

James Hutchings

My entire adult life, my only real career has just been being a blind guy. So yeah, blind guy, man.

Roger Magalhaes

And when where did you grow up?

James Hutchings

So I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada. Okay. Um, yeah, lived there my whole life until I got married and started having kids, and then we moved. Um I got into the blind business in

An Accidental Door To Door Start

James Hutchings

Las Vegas by accident. I was actually well, I I was newly married. I was young. I I had good done a little bit of college, just like community college. I'd worked construction, worked in the trades a little bit. For a couple years I left the US and went to the Philippines. Then I was missionary for the LDS Church. Cool. So that happened from almost 21 to 23.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

And when I came back to the States, I met my wife. We got married really fast. We only dated for two and a half months.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

And got married, just trying to figure out life.

Roger Magalhaes

Sure.

James Hutchings

And so I thought I wanted to be a firefighter paramedic. And so I got to the EMT program, started doing that, loved that. And I still had to work because you know I'm trying to support my wife and she's pregnant. Uh I got laid off from a job. And I had a buddy who was selling sunscreens, a little exterior shade screens that are fixed over windows, and they did a little bit of blinds.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

So he offered me a position just to be a canvasser. And he worked part-time outselling, mostly door-to-door. So he just said, Hey man, you can ride with me, and I'll I'll just point to the houses that I want you to knock on. You just go knock on the houses.

Roger Magalhaes

Did you really do that?

James Hutchings

Yeah, that's what I did. Yeah, that's what we did. So he's like, just I get in his truck, there's no training, it's just like, you know, we just start driving around Las Vegas heading to new home neighborhoods.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

And he just goes, go talk to them and just points to a house. Yeah. It looked like there was a new move in. Uh-huh. You know, he just said, Introduce yourself and tell them we're out doing estimates. And so I just walked up. But I had been a missionary for a church.

Roger Magalhaes

So you did something similar kind.

James Hutchings

Well, we didn't do door-to-door in the Philippines where I where I had lived. We talked to people all day long, though, every single day.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

I had never knocked the door. Okay. But it was still talking to strangers. And so I knocked that door and talked talked us into that first house. Yeah. And then he went in and sold that house. And then I got us into the next house, and I ended up getting us in four houses that day.

Roger Magalhaes

And so was he was he sitting across the street from you watching you?

James Hutchings

Or yeah, he just sat in his truck. So he would stay in the truck. Because here's the thing. He couldn't pay me an hourly wage because he wasn't busy enough to do that. He was just trying to. So he's like, I'll pay you to do the part of the job I don't want to do.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

And then if you get in the house, then come get me and we'll go in there together. And then I I would just watch him sell because I didn't know anything about window coverings or how to sell anything. I just so that's what we did. But he wanted to work part-time. He wouldn't want to work full-time, and I needed money.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

We'd have some days we'd go out and do that, and we wouldn't get in any houses. And then, you know, we might go three days and not get into a single house. And then day four, we'd get into a house and sell a job, so I'd make 200 bucks or 300 bucks. Okay. So I was making about six to nine hundred bucks a week, uh-huh. Which was helping, you know. That was like that was enough that we were surviving.

Roger Magalhaes

But your job was just to open the door, and he was the one that's going to close the job, right? Yeah, so I just sit in the house and watch him sell. Okay. And when you knock on the door and people come out, so this so I understand because I come from Massachusetts, and usually the homes are kind of set back a little bit. It's not right on the street.

James Hutchings

Yep.

Roger Magalhaes

So we're not supposed to walk into someone's property, it's more like trespassing. So if I come to the front door, I'm actually kind of 300 feet inside the property already. So they could just shoot me right there. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. So did you go to places like that, or was the the front door right on the street? You just kind of knock right there.

James Hutchings

In Las Vegas, the neighborhoods we worked were like track home neighborhoods. Okay. So you'd have like the Poulties and the Del Webbs, the DR Hortons, the big national builders. Right. And they're just building, I mean, they're nice homes, but smaller yards. Yeah, that's how Las Vegas is. It's not most people don't have large properties and have, you know, Florida has similar situations.

Roger Magalhaes

Yeah.

James Hutchings

Utah, a lot of California's like that. So uh, you know, we we would see no soliciting signs. We would try to get into communities that had gates or gates, you know, we had to be a little sneaky and tricky to try to find the construction interests and go in neighborhoods where there wasn't as much door-to-door competition.

Roger Magalhaes

Sure.

James Hutchings

Yeah, it's a whether they had a gate or didn't, most

The Simple Script That Worked

James Hutchings

people are not excited to open the door. Uh they were not to a door-to-door salesman.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay. Yeah. So what was your opening line once people answered the door?

James Hutchings

Yeah, so I usually kept it simple. We would only knock on a house that looked like it was new.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

No shades, obviously. No shades. So that was the talking point. You know, and I just say, hey, my name's James with Southwest Blinds and Shutters. Yeah. I just want to come introduce myself. I noticed you guys didn't have anything on your windows. Uh-huh. It looks like you guys just moved in and were actually doing estimates in the area.

Roger Magalhaes

Uh-huh.

James Hutchings

I figured you guys would like a free estimate. And that's all I'd say. I just said I figured you'd like a free estimate.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

And it is there. Wow. And then the conversation would go wherever it went. Most people would say I already ordered.

Roger Magalhaes

Uh-huh.

James Hutchings

That was the most common thing I heard. Sometimes it was just no go away. And then, you know, about every 20th person we could find home after the door. Yeah. Sure, come on in. Wow. So we didn't knock every single door because you know, you go into a subdivision and you have to find the people with no shades that just moved in.

Roger Magalhaes

Yeah.

James Hutchings

So a lot of what we did was just driving. We, you know, we just there was a lot of new home communities. And so we just drove around street after street. We kind of ran the same route every day because we all the subdivisions were. And after you drive into a neighborhood five times in a week, you know the houses you're looking for.

Roger Magalhaes

Uh-huh.

James Hutchings

So we would, if they didn't answer, we'd leave a flyer. Yeah. Go back the next day. We'd just keep knocking until we saw something on the window.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

Um, and I did that. So I canvassed for him for about four months.

Roger Magalhaes

Uh-huh.

James Hutchings

But he was only working part-time. And I'm like, man, I need to make more money. Like, I see the potential. Yeah. If I could do this eight hours a day, and then I could sell and make a commission so I'd get my door commission and the sales commission. I think I could make enough money to survive.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

And so he eventually gave me sample books and said, Go ahead.

Going Full Time For Commission

James Hutchings

Okay. You know, there was no schedule. There was no like marketing or anything. So I he just said, take that side of town. And he stopped going out knocking.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

And I just went out and just started knocking doors all day long. And I would just leave at like nine in the morning. But I worked full-time. I would drive the entire day. And so I ended up selling usually about three to five jobs a week. Yeah. Door to door, but it was only full houses because I'm only knocking in brand new neighborhoods. Yeah. So there was no like two-window jobs or four every job was 10 to 30 windows.

Roger Magalhaes

So this was your primary source of income at that time?

James Hutchings

That was my only source of income.

Roger Magalhaes

So you were hungry.

James Hutchings

Yeah, I was newly married. We had just bought a little teeny tiny house. We bought a family car. I had a daughter. Uh-huh. My wife was about to have our first baby. Right.

Roger Magalhaes

So you're hungry and you kind of desperate. You need to make money. And you saw and you saw the potential. You know, I don't care what I need to do. I see potential. These guys not give me enough. So give me sample books. I want to do more. I want to make more. And what happened next?

James Hutchings

Well, then I start selling jobs. And instead of making $200 on that job, I just made $600. And if I sell three, now I'm making $1,800 a week. You know, if I sell five, now I'm making three grand a week.

Roger Magalhaes

And this incentive you're incentivized.

James Hutchings

Yeah, this is 2002. You know, I'm 23 years old. I never made more than minimum. I mean, I I think at the time construction, I was making nine bucks an hour. Right. So I'm approaching like a six-figure income at 2324. Yeah. The job sucks. You know, knocking doors is not fun. Right. And it's, you know, like people are questioning what I'm doing with my life. Uh-huh. My in-laws are like, oh, you know, my daughter married this guy who was going to go to college and be a firefighter, and now he's a door-to-door salesman.

Roger Magalhaes

And so how how this whole change happened from trying to be a firefighter to start knocking on doors?

James Hutchings

Well, my intention was to just knock doors and do school at night. Uh-huh. And just do that temporarily. Okay. And you know, that I would work for a while and I'd do school and then I'd take a little break because I just need to make more money. Sure. And then I'd start school again. But but I started making enough money doing door-to-door.

Roger Magalhaes

Uh-huh.

James Hutchings

And I knew people on the fire department, but I was making a lot more than they were.

Roger Magalhaes

Right. So kind of the hard to justify.

James Hutchings

And my wife didn't want to go back to work. She wanted to stay home and raise our daughter. Sure. So, like the and I met a lot of guys trying to get on the fire department in Vegas, and it was really difficult. And so a lot of them ended up being paramedics for like the private paramedic companies, like Mercy Ambulance in Vegas.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

They were making like 11 bucks an hour. And they'd been trying to get on the fire department for like seven years.

Roger Magalhaes

Uh-huh.

James Hutchings

So I'm like, in this thing where like I love the work, like when I do ride-alongs with the paramedics, I loved it. It was like the best days of my professional life were doing that.

Roger Magalhaes

Really? Okay.

James Hutchings

But I would have to have a second job and I'd have to have a crazy schedule. And it might take me eight years to get on the fire department. And then I had this other job that stinks, but I'm making a ton of money. And I'm driving around in my car, you know, listening to the radio, and then just getting people telling me no 50 times a day.

Roger Magalhaes

Yeah.

James Hutchings

But that I still make more money than I ever thought I could make.

Roger Magalhaes

So it was like a very You need to choose between what you love that doesn't pay, or what you don't love, but put foods on the put food on the table.

James Hutchings

That's what it was. And then uh, you know, my brother got into it because he was doing the same thing. He was doing real estate. Okay. He wasn't busy, he wasn't making enough money. So he he had also served a mission.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

Scaling Too Fast With Family

James Hutchings

So he ended up working for the same friend on the other side of town. All right. Same company. Same company. We were the only two salesmen on the opposite ends of town. So we end up after a while deciding just to go on our own. All right. Because we're kind of seeing the work, and it's like the back end's not that complicated. So we sure we get our business license and we just keep doing the same thing. I'm on one side of town, he's on the other side.

Roger Magalhaes

Now you really it scaled the business from making a commission to really creating this whole thing.

James Hutchings

Yeah, because I we had no overhead. So when we when I when we got a business license, I was making even more money.

Roger Magalhaes

Right.

James Hutchings

Because now I didn't have to pay the company I was working for. I wasn't advertising.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

The back end wasn't that much because we just fax our orders over to the supplier and we subcontracted the install. Yeah. So that part was easy. And it it went like that for a little while, and we were making a lot of money. But then we got this grand idea. Yes. Let's grow the business. We'll make even more money.

Roger Magalhaes

But working with family is not exactly fun, is it? Uh at times.

James Hutchings

Yeah, I mean it it's difficult. We actually started adding a bunch of family. Like one of our ideas was like, let's grow, uh-huh. Advertise.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

Let's hire buddies to door knock. Like, let's grow a big business. Sure. But we didn't know anything about business. Like, all we knew is if you go door knocking, you can make good money. Yeah. So we thought if we can hire more door knockers and then advertise in the yellow pages and and do that, then we can make even more money. And then we started hiring a bunch of our family members because we didn't know who to hire. And we had a little office and just shoved a bunch of people in there. Yeah. But we never managed anyone at all. I mean, we're 24. My brother's 22.

Roger Magalhaes

So no one has uh had a business background, what kind of marketing, you know, uh overhead.

James Hutchings

Roger, I was like, yeah, I I barely graduated high school. Okay. I was not a good student. I was like, didn't pay attention. All I did was play basketball, lift weights, and hang out. So yeah, I was I was a bad student. Uh-huh. You know, luckily the missions we served, we got very disciplined. Okay. You know, it taught us how to work hard. Sure. But when it came to like formal education, I didn't know what a bookkeeper was, I didn't know what a PNL was. I didn't know like I I had no idea even what a budget was.

Roger Magalhaes

So this is this is the this is the beauty of America. So that is opportunity for everyone. Even someone like you said, you didn't do great in high school, but you saw potential, you were starving, you still have an opportunity to create a business and to go after that. But obviously, you hit the wall because, as you said, you didn't have business expertise or anything. So, what happened then? How did you grow your business? And you have a bunch of friends and family, and sounds like fun, but I'm sure it was chaotic a lot of times. So, how did you learn to manage and to grow these? Because I know your business was extremely successful at one point, so how did you get out of these?

James Hutchings

So, so we tried, you know, like we we grew up pretty big. I think we had in my early 20s, I think we grew to about 20 employees. That's crazy. Yeah, we were doing, you know, I don't know, because we didn't keep any financial records. But I think we were doing about three to three to four million dollars a year door-to-door selling. Is that right? Yeah, and some advertising, you know, we were doing a lot of business, but the crazy thing is when I was just me doing door-to-do, and my brother was on the other side of town, I was making a lot of money. Okay. It was amazing. We start adding all these people, and our increasing. And we have a warehouse and we have employees, and all of a sudden I'm like having a hard time with payroll and paying my suppliers, and I'm making less money. Like, I'm having to deal, even though I'm selling a lot, because I'm still out doing door-to-door. Yeah, I'm not getting the money from my as much as I would have from what I was selling before. And then the other guys who are out selling aren't selling like me and my brother. Right. We have guys, but they're not out there like we are. I just assume these guys would go out eight hours a day like me, and that they'd sell three to five houses each a week. And if we had six or seven guys, we'd be making tons of money.

Roger Magalhaes

But what I it's funny because we all think that everybody's gonna think like us, it's gonna work uh like us, right? And apparently it doesn't work like that.

James Hutchings

Yeah, you end up managing people, and you know, like you end up spending a lot of time trying to fix things that are broken, but we had such a chaotic business because all we knew how to do was door to door. So we ended up getting to a point where it was like, okay, this isn't working anymore. We've got to figure out like what to

Retreating Back To Solo Sales

James Hutchings

do. Okay. I decided to move. We kind of scaled the business down. Uh there's a whole thing. I ended up giving the business to my brother and I moved.

Roger Magalhaes

Yeah, okay.

James Hutchings

And I moved to Arizona and decided to go back to the old ways.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

No employees, door knocking only, yeah. Subcontract the install. And I was kind of like, and I did that, that was in 2006.

Roger Magalhaes

Alright.

James Hutchings

So at that time, you know, I'd been doing it for about four years straight.

Roger Magalhaes

Yeah.

James Hutchings

And yeah, I went back from having a bigger team and a little building and you know, like 15, 20 employees to just me. So it felt like it felt like a huge failure.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

But I started making money again. All right. Did you stay that way? I did for a long time. I stayed that way for until 2012, so six years. Six years I kept it just me and I subcontracted my install. I didn't really advertise. I did tons of door knocking. I got better at getting referrals and repeat customers. I figured out some better ways to kind of canvas and create more business through door knocking. Yeah. Yeah, for six years. So it was really like a 10-year run, 11-year run, where all I did was door knock.

Roger Magalhaes

Yeah.

James Hutchings

But in Arizona, it was just like Vegas.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

It was the same just driving neighborhoods and trying to find people home. And at the same time, we went through that housing crash in 2007, 2008. Yeah. And that made it really difficult because I was selling to brand new homes. And there was no brand new homes then. No brand new homes. So I ended up doing a lot of crazy stuff during that time to try to survive.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay. So I heard from someone in the business a few years back that sometimes it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep it. And you just confirmed that that you had a bigger operation and a lot of headaches. And not making as much money as you used to, and then you went back to be a woman's show, and now you're making more money.

James Hutchings

Making more money.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay, so perhaps it's the overheads and those extra layers of administration and you know people to control the process that kind of eats all your profit, right?

James Hutchings

Yeah, and I didn't understand it. I didn't understand the money side of it, and I didn't how to run a business. So it's doing everything I was selling great. There was no issues with the sales. Right. But everything else is broken. And so I really wasn't prepared to run a business.

Roger Magalhaes

Uh-huh.

James Hutchings

And so what came out of that was just a mess. And it was just broken, messy, losing money, frustrating, like just a you know, it's just no fun. And so I retreated back and went back to what I knew, which was just selling. But I also, after six years, you know, at that time I was like 30. Right. And it's a different mental place when you're 30, 31, 32. You know, you know, behind the scenes you're making a lot of money. Sure. You know, and if you look at the bank account, you're successful.

Roger Magalhaes

Yeah.

James Hutchings

But at the end of the day, I'm still knocking doors.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

And you know, you walk up to a door and you knock on somebody's door and they look at you like you're a failure, and that happens every single day, all day. And then you come to a room and you talk about what you do for a living, and then people find out you sell door to door. And it's just this battle of like, is this all I'm ever gonna be is a door-to-door guy? Like, am I ever gonna

The Housing Crash And Feeling Stuck

James Hutchings

be a door-to-door guy at 50? All right. Like a stick. What I want to do with my life is is be a door salesman at 50 years old. I'll make money. Right. But this feels like I felt I felt trapped.

Roger Magalhaes

Oh, I so the this stigma was bothering you. So what did you do to get out of there?

James Hutchings

Well, it didn't, it wasn't like a choice really. I just I started to read more business books. Okay. Um, and and YouTube started to become more popular, and I drove so much. Uh-huh. And I started listening to like sales YouTube stuff first, and then I started finding business influencers, and then I just started hearing a bunch of terms that I'd written never really heard. And you know, I just got introduced to the business world for the first time, and I had so much free time driving, yeah, that I just started consuming a ton of content and just learning little things. And then I'm like, something happened, and I had an opportunity to hire a sales guy. Yeah. And so I decided to do that, and and we slowly started to scale the business again, but I knew a lot more than I did when I was.

Roger Magalhaes

So now you are you were focused, or you you had what do I say, uh a better guidance, rebuilding the business this time.

James Hutchings

Yeah, I was a little smarter, I was a little more mature. I knew what I had done wrong before, and at least now I had a resource to go get some answers. Like I didn't know how to do everything. Yeah, but I could go to the library and read a business book, or I could go find a podcast, or I could go on YouTube and do some research because I just didn't know anybody. I didn't have a mentor, somebody who could help kind of guide me. Yeah. But but just being able to go find the knowledge, I was able to start. And I and it wasn't like I built an amazing business right then. Right. It's just I wasn't as naive as I was when I was 24. So everything I did was a little more cautious. I spent more time thinking through it and you know, trying to do it better. But I I'd say, you know, now I'm 48 and I still do that to this day. It's like still for the business every day.

Roger Magalhaes

But you're just being humbled here. At one point, you were selling like millions of dollars a year, right? If I read this correctly, so it was a big leap. I don't think most people in our industry even hit a million dollars in sales a year. You were multi-million dollars of sales a year. So was successful as you thought, was chaotic as you thought, or did you like it? What was it?

James Hutchings

So when I started to rebuild it, we were doing just regular retail business, just like we had, except for we were advertising, we opened a showroom. You know, we we grew to that three to five million dollar range just in regular retail. Um good. I liked it, it was fun business, we were making good money, like everything was good. And then we got in bed with the box store. Yeah, uh, and actually, we were in Arizona at the time, and I had an opportunity to get some territory

Self Education Through Books And YouTube

James Hutchings

for a box store in Las Vegas, uh-huh. And I decided to take it. I wasn't, you know, it was a big decision, but we ended up taking it, and then that added a you know, a couple million dollars to our revenue, and then that box store every year would offer us more territories. Sure. They kept doing it in different locations, like we weren't centralized in one spot. They kept taking me to different states and places that we didn't run a business, but I uh I got excited about it, and it was like a big opportunity and lots of revenue, and we were making pretty good money, yeah, and that grew really big. I mean, at one point we were in seven major markets with 61 employees. Wow, and we had we ran a I mean, it was a good business. There was nothing wrong with it, it wasn't broken like it was when I was young, making good money, like our team was doing well, but we were starting to see a shift where there were a lot of factors that were hurting our profitability, and every year our profitability was getting a little tighter. We were getting a little bigger, and our profits were getting a little tighter, and we kept trying to fix that. Yeah, and I felt like if I continued on the same path, yeah, that I was gonna hit a point where our profitability really got tight.

Roger Magalhaes

Sure.

James Hutchings

And then I'd have this really big window covering business, but that wasn't making it would be like my door-to-door thing again.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

Where now I have a huge business with tons of risk and tons of people, yeah. And yeah, and I could make more if I just ran my three to five million dollar business. Sure.

Roger Magalhaes

I heard that too. So sometimes it's bigger numbers, but the profit, the bottom line is not as big because there's so much going on behind the scenes that people don't see it, right?

James Hutchings

Yeah, that's it's and you don't know what you don't know. Like, I didn't know the right answer. I didn't know totally how to fix it, but uh, but I learned like there's a in every hundred dollars you need to have a certain number of dollars for your profit. And then you need a certain number of dollars for material and for people and for overhead, and those numbers have to work. And I really didn't realize that until probably like at a deep level, yeah, like three and a half, four years ago, when I really started to understand like the the math in that hundred dollars has to work, and if it's not ideally fit, the bigger you get, the worse it gets. But I realized I don't have to get small because like before I had retreated so that the math would work. Yeah, I also realized like the math can work, and if the math works, you can actually grow and get bigger and add people. As long as that math works, you can get as big as you want to get. And so, you know, we decided to start pulling out of the box stores because for me the math didn't work.

Roger Magalhaes

Right.

James Hutchings

I needed to be able to buy my material correctly, I needed to be able to price it correctly. And so we retreated and now we're we're rebuilding. But we so we over three years gave all of our box stores back.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

It's like a very slow process because we just had too much exposure and I can't just turn it off overnight. Yeah, but our revenue is still, you know, eight-figure revenue.

Roger Magalhaes

Right.

James Hutchings

We're more profitable now because the math we understand the math, but we're still working on it. It's still, you know, there's a lot of challenges to get that right. But yeah, that's where we're at.

Roger Magalhaes

So for the people that are listening that don't don't have a business mentality, a business background, now you have all these expertise. So you're saying every hundred dollars that come in, you need to spread in different buckets. So you don't put everything sales, not put everything people, not put everything advertise. So it's like if you tiered the bill and put a little bit on each bucket to compensate to pay for different departments in your business, correct?

James Hutchings

Yeah, I think like if you if you have a 0.4 cost factor, right? Which everybody's had, you know, sometimes you have a 0.2 or a 0.45. If you have a 0.4 cost factor, then in every $100 you've allocated $40 to material, which means you have $60 left.

Box Store Growth And Profit Squeeze

James Hutchings

If you sell it at full retail. Right. If you don't sell it at full retail, say you give 20% off, now out of that hundred dollars, you only have eighty dollars left, because now you're selling it for 80 bucks. And so now 50% of your sale price is material. And to run a larger business, you can't have 50% of your revenue material. You need to have a much smaller percentage of your revenue allocated to material, which means you have to source differently. You know, if you're overpaying your sales team, if you're paying high commissions and their percentage of the $100 is too high, that doesn't work either. Or if you if your marketing budget is is 20% of your $100, that's too much. And it's finding, you know, sometimes people are like, hey, out of that hundred dollars, I only need to make three percent profit. So for every three dollars, every hundred dollars, I'll take home three dollars and I'm okay with that. But I don't want that. I want like our business to make twenty dollars profit after every bill's paid out of the hundred dollars. It took me forever just to look, you know, and my my recommendation for everybody in our industry is like if you're a one-man show, that's not as important. But if you're gonna add people, you should sit down and ideally sit down with somebody who understands money and finances and spend, you know, a couple weeks just digging into what those numbers look like. That way you can build it the right way. And and you and you can build it and be profitable. You can take it from a million to two million and it can be really worth it. But some of the people in our industry want to take it to 10 million. And if they want to take it to 10 million, they need to understand the math so that as they take it there, they get they don't end up like me, where it's like you grow it bigger and make less money.

Roger Magalhaes

Right. But I guess it's not just we speak about our industry because that's what we do every day, but I guess it it pertains to every business primarily. It's the same thing. You if you don't make enough, you know, it's not a sustainable business. That's why every 100 business they start, 80% fail and die before year five. Just because, as you said, well, I I'm content with three percent. Oh, but guess what? 3% is not enough in the long run. And what about if you get sick? What about if you stop working? So you're gonna consume all your 3% until you don't have any more, and then you your business die right there. Well, you know, someone sues you, and you need money to pay lawyers and all of these things, or you need to expend, and you need equipment, and you don't have money, you didn't allocate enough capital for those things. So it's very important to understand. We see this in our industry, but I think this is all over in every part of the country, every part of every industry, and that goes beyond. I think I I see the same problem in Brazil. I talk to people in Europe, it's the same thing. I think people don't have a business mentality.

James Hutchings

I don't think it's usually because they're not good at the work, you know, like you can be an amazing installer or an amazing window covering

The $100 Breakdown Of Profitability

James Hutchings

designer. You can be really good at the business itself, like the the trade.

Roger Magalhaes

Yeah.

James Hutchings

But most of us don't fall into the industry. Like we we usually stay and become a dealer because we're good at the trade.

Roger Magalhaes

Right.

James Hutchings

But we're not necessarily good at the business side. And sometimes if we're really good at the trade and we have a lot of energy and ambition, then being good at the trade hurts us because we're like, hey, now I'm just gonna take my energy and ambition and I'm just gonna grow this thing like crazy, but we haven't learned the business side. Right. Yeah, that's you'll see dealers who are big, who were, you know, they got 20 employees, but the owner is still selling their selling after they can't replace their income, you know, like the business isn't making the money, so they have to sell to make the same amount of money. You know, or you'll see uh somebody with eight, ten employees and the and the business owners working 80, 90 hours a week because they can't afford to pay somebody to do part of the job because they're they're not charging enough because the math is usually wrong.

Roger Magalhaes

So yeah, it's happening.

James Hutchings

I mean, it's it's happening everywhere, and I've fallen victim to that so many times. Yeah, that's the hard part. It's just trying to figure out, you know, you're competing. It's a competitive industry.

Roger Magalhaes

All right.

James Hutchings

All selling the same stuff. Right. We're all targeting the same clients. Right. And when you have some people who are smaller operations or larger operations, but they're willing to do it at much more discounted prices, uh-huh, then it becomes difficult to hold your price in the house. Yeah. It feels, you know, like it's just tough.

Roger Magalhaes

Yes. Now, tell me about Eris. How what is this? How we came about, what is your next step?

James Hutchings

Yeah, so we're still a dealer. You know, my my business is Southwest Blinds and Shutters. Yeah. We love our business and we're growing it and putting a lot of energy into it. Yeah. Eris originally we just created it for ourselves.

Roger Magalhaes

Uh-huh.

James Hutchings

Because for us to make the math work the way that we felt like it needed to work, we needed to control our supply chain.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

So we started stepping away from our traditional suppliers in the industry, and we just created our own supply chain. We started with our primary products first that we were selling, which were roller shades, zebra shades, and natural shades. And over the last couple years, we've just really been designing the products and improving them and trying to make a really amazing program for our own business.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

And the further we've gotten along that that road, we just realized there's an opportunity for us as a business to open up, you know, give it a name, which we call to Aeris, and open this up to other dealers. You know, the the challenges as an independent dealer with the suppliers in our industry, there's some really great things and there's some really difficult things.

Roger Magalhaes

Right.

James Hutchings

So we feel like with Ares, we can have a niche for ourselves that services an independent dealer.

Roger Magalhaes

Yeah.

James Hutchings

Gives them a little bit different, you know. We're not trying to replace the big suppliers. We're not going to be able to ever do that. Trying to create a line that a dealer could add to their portfolio that's very profitable, very easy to use, really dealer focused. So it's simple to sell, simple to run a business with, and it enhances the dealer business.

Roger Magalhaes

Okay.

James Hutchings

And that's what Ares is. So we use it every day in our own business. And you know, like I was on a video call with the factory last night with with my chief product officer, and we're working on a new cassette and some tube upgrades. And so we're doing all this development work so that we have an amazing line of products to sell to homeowners in Arizona and Las Vegas. And now we're opening it up for dealers. And so we're starting to get dealer orders, and you know, we want to build that supply check.

Roger Magalhaes

So you're pretty much controlling the entire process like a vertical integration from manufactured to selling, but because you saw potential and you saw cost savings, you want to leverage the production having a nice network of dealers, so you can through to volume potentially even make these even cheaper because of uh of volume to part of it, yeah.

James Hutchings

So we've got the price down, our buy price is good, like the math works for us. Part of what we wanted to be able to do was control, so we're not the manufacturer, we work with a factory overseas. Okay, but we what we are is the developers, so we're spending a lot of time in each category building the line and enhance

Why Great Trades Fail In Business

James Hutchings

like we want continuous improvement in a line. Yeah, so like in our roller shade product, we spend a lot of time redesigning brackets, redesigning cassettes, all the internal mechanisms, changing fabrics. Like we want to continue to design and develop. And all those things that drove us crazy as dealers, where we'd get something from the factory and there's like a root-caused problem that's not being solved. We want to solve them because we don't want to deal with them every day. Like we want to be able to take the shade and be able to install it and have it be exactly what it should be. And when we know there's fixable issues, we wanted the ability to fix them. And we also wanted the ability to add fabrics that we think are missing and you know, improve a sample book and make a make a line easier to sell. And, you know, there's a lot of things that we we wanted to get our hands on because there's the there's the price of the product, but then there's all the other things that come from the product that affect the profitability of a business. Like if my spec guide is 250 pages, it makes it really difficult for me to hire new salespeople.

Roger Magalhaes

Right.

James Hutchings

Because they can't understand a 250-page spec guide unless they've been with me for a couple years.

Roger Magalhaes

To me, it's a it's a great thing. I see, like well, for instance, when I go buy a car, I don't go ask the salesman at the showroom for feedback. I go ask the mechanic if this car breaks, or you know, how often do you need to replace you know the braking pads? So things that the salesman never gonna tell you because he wants to sell. So it feels like you are a dealer, so you bring your own pains

Aeris Dealers Network And Supply Control

Roger Magalhaes

into the manufacturer and say, hey, fix this because I don't want to deal with this in the future. Same thing with an installer. The installer gives a lot of feedback because we are the ones on the field every day and say, hey, don't I'm talking about, you know, my relationship with my dealers, my workroom, say, hey, don't order these this way, add a couple more inches, so we'll make my life easier. So you guys are doing exactly that. So you're creating a product that's going to work because you are installing and you see what works, we see what not, and that that's a great plus right there, in my opinion.

James Hutchings

Yeah, I don't think you know most suppliers don't come from a dealer. You know, most suppliers came from a different part of the industry, so they don't understand the life of a dealer. Right. They definitely don't understand the life of an installer. And so our chief product officer was our lead installer for years and years and years. So he understands product at the window at a very deep level and all the issues that he's had to solve with homeowners and all the complaints, and yeah, so and then you know, we have the selling side and the designing side, and like every we do everything as a dealer every day, right? And we're doing it within our own line, so we're continuing to identify all the pain points, and and now we're opening it up to dealers, and they're doing the same thing. They're saying, you know, I uh we sent out a wovenwood sample, and in our markets, we don't sell a lot of woven woods as balances, it's just not popular in Arizona and Vegas, right? But this dealer does, and he saw the balance returns and he didn't like them. Right. And so we've actually been working and we've redesigned our balance returns, and we're on, I think, version two of the redesign, and now it's better than what it was. It's it's we think it's really nice, but we're gonna continue to take that feedback. We're adding a new cassette because in our market, our Our window sizes, we our three-inch cassette works perfect. We're in a half inch cassette works great for sliding doors. Right. But we don't have a lot of really, really tall regular windows. Well, some of the dealers do. And we need to get to 135 in a cassette that's not really tall. So we are adding a third cassette. And I think it's but we're keeping the integrity of all the engineering innovations that we've come up with. So I think the more strong dealers we bring in with installation minds or strong design minds. Yeah. And you know, some of the dealers are selling and installing.

Roger Magalhaes

Yeah.

James Hutchings

Our founding dealers was he sells and installs his own stuff.

Roger Magalhaes

Sure.

James Hutchings

He really sees it because he's touching both sides of it.

Roger Magalhaes

Right.

James Hutchings

So I think we'll stay as a smaller supplier, but with our dealer partners, I think they'll be able to have a strong voice. And you know, it takes time to do product development. It's not like you can just say, hey, hey, James, I need this fixed tomorrow. But you can say, hey, here's an idea, and then we can start working on it. And maybe in three months we send out an email and say, hey, this is launching in 30 days. And that's the goal that we have. And we're doing it with our own team. Our designers, you know, we're launching honeycombs, and uh we have our fabric books, and we we went to Mills overseas and we started picking colors and fabrics. And I just met with one of my designers on Saturday and had her look at the fabrics that we're looking at. And I had a night, you know, going around our team, right? What's gonna sell, what's not gonna sell, what do we need, what are we missing? And they're the ones in the houses.

Roger Magalhaes

So wow, yeah, James, your your your story is amazing. So you you go from not being a good high school student to knocking on doors to start making good money to grow into a business that you have no clue about the business side of it, and you scale back and you go back again and start learning, grow into millions of sales. Now you go into the manufacturing side, it's just incredible. Kudos to you for all your efforts, all your hard work. I'm sure it wasn't lucky, it was all behind the scenes that nobody sees it. So we are getting close to the end of our interview. I'll leave a link to Aries on the show notes in case someone is willing to learn more. I also will leave your information there so people can contact you directly. So, as a last question, what would you say or what thought would you give to someone listening to our show? It doesn't have to be window treatment related, it could be business, could be personal. That's a that's a really good question. I I I think for me it would be based off what we talked about.

James Hutchings

Just don't be afraid to fail and and know that there's always an answer. Like just because you've done it once and it didn't work out the way that you thought it should work out, it doesn't mean that it's not possible. It just means that you haven't figured it out yet. And I think whether you're a salesperson or you're a business owner, you're an installer, it's like I've heard I've heard dealers say you can't find good employees.

Dealer Feedback Driven Product Design

James Hutchings

Well, I've been down the road. I've had lots of terrible hires of people who didn't work out. I've been sued before. I've you know, I've had people just quit in droves. I've but I've also had amazing people who've come out of the business. And the more that I learn about hiring and about helping people to become leaders, and you know, like just the more I learn about it, it's really just a skill. I just I just didn't have the skill, but I was doing the activity. And then the the more I understood it and the more I dug into it and learned, and the more I got mentorship and people helping me, it's like there are amazing people, and you can have amazing people who care about your business just like you do, yeah, and they'll stay. It's just a skill. So I think it's just don't be scared to fail and just keep looking for answers. There's a lot of amazing dealers, there's a lot of industry groups now, like exciting windows and and different business coaches that I've met recently that want to share. And and I think as dealers in the industry, the more open we can be. I love that you're doing this podcast. Yeah, I think our industry and your book, we need more voices. I think people get in this mentality, like I can't share. Like, they'll be an anonymous poster in the Facebook groups because people are gonna steal, you know, my secrets. And it's like, no, you know what happens is like even your competitors just start seeing you as a human and people share, and it's like there's plenty of business for everybody. But if you're if you don't do anonymous and you just post as a real person, you're gonna get DMs from people. Yeah. You have similar stories, and then you start making friendships and you start learning from people in the industry at all different sizes and levels. So I think uh yeah, I love the education component, and I think our industries need more voices, and people are just willing to to be raw and real and share.

Roger Magalhaes

Right. And it's funny because there's one chapter in my book that I say something similar to what you just said. A lot of people kind of try to be super protective and they actually they look weakened and then you know they're competitors because you're trying to protect everything you know as opposed to the night the to the guy next to you that shares everything, and instead of weakens him, it's actually making him stronger because now he's a resource and you lean on him or her and you it becomes those friendships that you just mentioned. It is yeah, people should change mentality. And and one last thing that you just touched. When I first started business, I became part of this networking group, so everything was new to me. And this guy was he stand out and said, Well, I'm looking to hire someone as our second employee, and I was kind of wow. So I came to him after the meeting and say, How'd you find someone to grow your team? Because it was so intimidating to me. And he said, Roger, you're gonna go through five or six bad ones before you find a good one. Yeah, so that stuck to me. So obviously, that was 20 years ago. There are better ways to find people, but definitely you're not gonna hit a home run every single time. Some people may look good on paper, but then they are not exactly what you want them to be. Perhaps you're not the right fit for them either. So it goes both ways. But eventually, as you said, you find the right people, and companies can grow if you if they have the right leadership.

James Hutchings

Yeah, if you look across your neighborhoods, there's amazing people that you meet in your social circles, and a lot of them work for people, right? Most people are not entrepreneurs, so it's like lovely, if you know a bunch of amazing people that work for somebody, right? That means that you can hire, like it's possible. Businesses are figuring it out. There's also businesses that have terrible employees, so it's it's just another thing to to to figure out and to solve, just like anything else in business.

Roger Magalhaes

For sure. James, we appreciate your time, your expertise, all your

Final Advice On Failure And Sharing

Roger Magalhaes

insights, and I'll definitely leave all the notes on the show notes for everyone looking for more information about what you're doing.

James Hutchings

Thanks so much, man. Roger, I appreciate it, man. I love what you're doing. So thanks for that. I appreciate you as well. Thanks so much. Have a good one.

Intro / Outro

And

Closing And Where To Connect

Intro / Outro

that's a wrap for today. Hope you're leaving with something that sticks. If this episode resonated, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. For more information, follow Roger at RogerMegalis.com and find the link in the show notes for a free chapter of his book, Nobody Told Me That. We'll see you next Sunday with no strings attached.

Head Shot

Roger Magalhaes

Host