John Barrett: Adding value in Washington, DC An experienced engineer, manager, and entrepreneur has found an enjoyable way to bring his skills together in one attractive business.

A custom-built business for custom-built projects

Before coming to Archadeck, John Barrett, an electrical engineer by training, worked almost 20 years for electronics giant Motorola, finishing as a director of business development in its semiconductor division. In the late 1980s, he left Motorola for several years to become an owner-operator of a number of Computerland retail stores. So John had significant management and entrepreneurial experience when he left Motorola in 2001 to get back into business for himself.

Finding Archadeck via a website devoted to franchise opportunities, he was attracted to both the service that Archadeck offered its customers and to its business model.

“The service and product we offer is a custom-designed, custom-built, creative experience,” he says, now speaking for Archadeck as a franchisee. “It lends itself well to computer tools, which allow you to do beautiful projects.”

And how has it worked as a business? “We’re doing very, very well.”

John started his Archadeck franchise in March 2002, having been awarded Montgomery County, Maryland, northwest of Washington, DC. Early in 2006, John also bought the franchise for nearby Anne Arundel and Howard Counties from a retiring franchisee. He has four full-time employees including an office manager, a two-man construction crew, and a design consultant who acts as salesperson and project manager for the jobs that John does not sell himself.

John’s dream clients are in their late 40s or older, living in larger homes that are not their first. Best of all is if they have had a negative home-improvement experience in the past—with some other contractor!

These people are “looking for quality of construction,” says John, “quality of process. They value a professional organization that does the job right.”

John has gradually shifted the emphasis of his sales so that he is building fewer decks and more screened porches and gazebos, using more composite materials. This year, about 75% of his projects will have “some kind of a roof.” Why? Because roofed projects represent more value. His average sale this year will be $5,000 higher than last year.

All other things being equal, that would provide a larger gross profit. But all other things are not equal—so there’s actually more. What’s the secret?

“It does not take anywhere near twice as much effort to sell a $30,000 project as it does to sell a $15,000 project,” says John. “It takes the same amount of time to drive to the client, measure, take pictures, and get specifications. It takes about the same amount of time to go back and close the sale, the same amount of time to process the permit. It does take longer to design the project—but probably not twice as long. It’s a very, very efficient process.”

The result is that as John adds value to his projects, not only is his profit greater, his profit percentage is greater. He adds value to his business.

Even better, while customers tend to think of open decks mainly in the fair-weather months, John has found that they tend to think about roofed structures all year round. “There’s only about a two-percent difference between our highest-sales quarter and our lowest-sales quarter,” he says.

In 2006, John will build about 70 projects. He still puts in long weeks—maybe 50 hours or so—but that’s the way he likes it, since he enjoys the work and has the flexibility to arrange it around his private life.

“I like having the freedom to choose how much effort I’m going to put forth,” he says, “how I’m going to run the business, how I’m going to manage my day and my life.”

What would John say to someone considering becoming an Archadeck franchisee? “It’s ideal for someone who likes independence, who does not want a ‘cookie-cutter’ franchise business. It requires tremendous creativity, and the ability to develop relationships, not only with clients, but with subcontractors—to help them develop their skills and their businesses.”

As a parting thought, John adds: “My goal from the beginning was never to borrow a dime to grow the business. I’ve been able to do that. The Archadeck business model is excellent for being able to finance your growth from your sales.”

As the owner of an Archadeck Franchise, John Barrett spends plenty of his time on-site overseeing his construction projects.

So what’s it like to be John? Let’s take a look:

Montgomery County: Friday, June 16, 2006

6:00 a.m. John, after a quick breakfast, enters his office. He generally doesn’t come in before 7:30, but today he has to present a proposal at 1:00, to show two different designs for a large front porch to a client. Those designs aren’t started yet. Katherine, his office manager, had last week off, and John found himself busy with office work he doesn’t usually have to deal with these days. Plus, some unexpected things came up in the field that couldn’t wait. Not wanting to call the client to push back the meeting, John, well acquainted with the software, chooses to design under the gun.

6:05 a.m. Using Dovetail, the Archadeck proprietary design software, John starts going through the steps of preparing his first design by drawing the house, positioning the walls, putting the windows and doors in place, all to scale—the starting-slate for the design.

7:35 a.m. John’s carpenter calls from a job-site. An unforeseen field issue has cropped up in the installation of a deck and screened porch. In tearing down the old structure, they have discovered that the house lacks a houseband—a continuous wooden section surrounding the house above the foundation. Since the building code requires that exterior structures be attached to this, John’s men will either have to install a houseband or change the new deck to a freestanding structure. Either way, it will enlarge the scope of the project—and its cost. John will have to explain to the client that this is not actually an increase in the project size. If the problem had been visible when John initially inspected the site, he would have included the work in the project from the start.

7:45 a.m. John calls the homeowner to let him know the news, but can’t reach him. He leaves a message. What to do? He can’t afford to have his crew waiting around at the job-site. He weighs the options.

7:50 a.m. John calls his carpenter back to tell him to go ahead and build the porch as a freestanding structure—the lower-cost option. He will confirm it with the homeowner as soon as he can. Meanwhile, Katherine comes into the office to start work.

7:55 a.m. Back to Dovetail and building a virtual porch for his customer.

8:45 a.m. A potential customer inquiry call arrives, the first of two today. John talks over the project with the caller and schedules an on-site sales call for next week.

8:55 a.m. Back to Dovetail...

9:50 a.m. Katherine reminds John that there is another deadline today. They have to submit a purchase order for a porch package—the framing package for a screened porch—to the lumber yard by noon in order to have the materials arrive Monday. John checks his watch and figures he can defer that a little longer while he gets his designs ready. But he has Katherine call the lumber yard to get prices on materials he’s planning to include in the new porch design. They’ll look into it and call him back.

10:25 a.m. The lumber yard calls back with the prices. John feeds these into the Archadeck estimating software to generate a quote for the deck he has just designed. It comes out at about $37,000, which John knows is more than this client wants to spend. Time to move on to a second design, in which he’ll look for ways to hold costs down. Luckily, it’s a lot faster to generate a second design after the first one is done.

John Barrett meets with customers to discuss all the details of the construction project.

10:50 a.m. The homeowner of the new screened porch calls back to okay John’s decision.

11:00 a.m. John feels he’s far enough along in the second design to be able to switch his attention to the purchase order for the Monday material delivery. He starts by printing out the “takeoff”—an Excel spreadsheet prepared by Archadeck corporate headquarters in Richmond showing the lumber requirements for the job, broken down into joists, deck boards, railing, and so on. John likes to double-check this to make sure everything’s accurate and he feels sure that there will be enough materials at the site. Comparing the spreadsheet to the framing drawings that also came from Richmond, he adjusts the spreadsheet slightly in a couple of places.

11:25 a.m. John prints out the revised spreadsheet and hands this to Katherine so she can generate the purchase order using Business Manager, another proprietary software package from Archadeck. He returns his attention to the second design and quote, answering Katherine’s questions on the takeoff while he works.

11:45 a.m. Katherine completes the purchase order and submits it to the lumber yard, 15 minutes before deadline. John checks his watch. He wants to be out the door at 12:20 to make his 1:00 call.

12:30 p.m. Designs and quotes complete, John has hustled out the door and is on the road in his GMC Yukon. (He finally gave in and bought a new vehicle last year when his old Ford Explorer needed to have a second new transmission installed. John believes in cost control!)

1:00 p.m. John arrives at the clients’ house in the town of Rockville—right on time. By prior agreement, the husband has come home early for the weekend. John does his best to keep appointments within normal business hours so he’s not meeting at nights or on weekends. John starts showing the couple the new designs.

2:25 p.m. John was hoping to have the meeting wrapped up by now, but they’re still at it. The quote has nudged up over $40,000, partly because the clients want high-end materials, but mainly because they want to add another foot of width to the designed deck. So John has been reworking the proposal by hand to estimate the impact of the extra foot, and of the clients’ eagerness to use a handsome tongue-in-groove decking material called Tendura.

2:50 p.m. John has done his best to come up with a design that will meet their needs and his.
Still finding the cost to be a stretch, the couple says they want to think about it. In order to get to “yes,” John offers to split the difference in the cost of the decking, giving up a bit of profit in order to give the clients their choice. They happily agree and sign the deal.

2:55 p.m. On the road again, this time to a site survey—an initial sales call in Potomac, a wealthy neighborhood of Montgomery County.

3:40 p.m. John arrives at the site. It was again supposed to be a couple meeting him, but the husband has not shown up—not a good sign, in John’s experience. He goes through the site survey with the wife, a stay-at-home mother. They want to convert a screened porch into a glassed-in three-season room.

4:25 p.m. Having examined the site, John feels that the project is not a great fit for him, since it will involve retrofitting windows into an existing porch. In fact, he had his doubts when the clients first called, but at this time of year, when the calls start to taper off a bit, he likes to be flexible about what he’ll look at. (“There’s no downside to honing my selling skills!”) He will work up a quick quote for this job, but he will build it only if the clients are willing to commit quickly, and if he can get his price.

4:30 p.m. On the road back to the office.

5:15 p.m. John returns to the office and reopens Dovetail to revise the design for his Rockville clients, turning a nine-foot deck into a ten-foot deck.

6:10 p.m. Design finished—and so is John’s day and week. He shuts down the office and gets ready to enjoy his weekend.

As an Archadeck Franchisee, John Barrett gets to make all the final decisions when it comes to his business.

How about you?

Many people have found they could make an Archadeck franchise work for them. Could this be you too? It’s easy to find out more. Just fill out our Request for Information form. Or learn more about how to become a franchisee with Archadeck.



To look into more Days of the Lives of Archadeck Franchisees, click here.

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