Alex Brackett joins our “WiFi Studio” to talk about how his team “fills in the gap” by providing a service that many others don’t offer. We will discuss the many ways that Hole In The Wall stands out among their competition, so tune in!
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Read the Full Interview Below
Sarah: Good morning! Good morning! Welcome to Biz Talk! We have a great and fun guest today. We can’t wait. Let’s go.
Glyna: Whew! I love it! You’re right, Kelsi. It gets you pumped up. It’s a drinker kind of morning, Sarah. I’m the drinker again.
Sarah: It’s okay.
Glyna: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Biz Talk. I am Glyna Humm, the president of Fusion One Marketing, and we are here every Tuesday and Friday talking to small local businesses, just to hear about how their businesses stand out from the competition, but, also, they’re going to give us some tips along the way. So, before we get started though, I want to remind you of where you can find all of our broadcasts. Alright. We have a new podcast channel, which is called Marketing in a Mic, and it’s really the culmination of our Biz Talks and all of the shows that we do live. We are live on Facebook and YouTube for Biz Talk, and then you can catch all the reruns, I guess you can catch it afterward on all the rest of the channels. All right. Ladies, we have a really fun guest this morning. No pressure, Alex. Before I introduce him, I’m going to let you guys introduce yourselves.
Sarah:
Good morning. I’m Sarah. I’m the Director of Digital Marketing.
Kelsi: Hello. I’m Kelsi. I’m a Social Media Manager with Fusion One Marketing.
Glyna: Awesome! Alright. Today we have with us a really funny, genuine… We don’t say funny right off the bat because then the pressure’s on, right?
Alex Brackett: No! Don’t say funny!
Glyna: We have Alex Brackett with Hole in the Wall with us this morning. Alex, how are you doing?
Alex Brackett: I’m doing good.
Glyna: Awesome. Well, no pressure at all. We’re really laid back here.
Alex Brackett: Oh, gosh.
Glyna: We just expect you to be funny part of the time.
Alex Brackett: So, if something goes flat…When you said you were funny, and, also, I’m a liar now. I’m not funny.
Glyna: If it goes flat, we won’t make fun of you too much. All right. Let’s go ahead and get started, Alex. Why don’t you just tell us a little bit about your background and your beautiful family.
Alex Brackett: All right. So, a little bit about me is I have a background in church ministry. I did that for a good 10 years of my life. I also did sales for a good portion of my life. Now I do drywall, which is fun. So, I’ll explain that transition in just a second. So, I have been married for going on, it’ll be 11 years this August. I’ve got four kids out of that. Yeah. I know. Every two years. 10 years, four kids. I know. The math is astounding. Alright. So, I’ve got an eight-year-old, who’s Jayden, she’s my girl. I’ve got a six-year-old, Liam, he’s my oldest boy. Then I’ve got a three-year-old, Jackson, and an almost-two-year-old baby.
Glyna: Wow.
Alex Brackett: So, we are a super, super busy family. It never stops for us. I feel all of you guys out there who have been quarantined with your kids. I was lucky enough to be deemed essential. So, I could escape.
Glyna: But your poor wife.
Alex Brackett: My wife had to deal with a lot of the homeschooling and being home and all that. I don’t know if you guys have ever seen those pictures of parents throwing their kids. Whenever I walk through the door, I always had a kid thrown at me at some point, whoever didn’t listen the most that day. I got that one as soon as I walked in the door. My wife has been absolutely fantastic, teaching the kids. She never thought she would be a homeschool parent, and I don’t think she ever will, after this especially. But she did awesome actually teaching the kids. That’s just a little bit about my crazy life. It’s just having four small kids and running a business and just trying to stay happy and stay married has been fun. I’m insanely blessed to be where I am. How we got started with Hole in the Wall is that I figured out that I was decent with my hands when we renovated our last house before we moved up to Jasper, Alabama, or Birmingham area. I figured I had a knack for it. I knew Bill from basically being in Orlando, Florida. I’ve known him and his family 10 years, and they’re an amazing family. He started this company, Hole in the Wall, and I was able to tie into them. They gave me an opportunity to open up an office in Birmingham, and I haven’t looked back since.
Glyna: Perfect.
Alex Brackett: Yeah.
Sarah: So, okay. I was going to ask you what brought you from … because you originally started with … Did you start with Hole in the Wall out in Birmingham, or did the opportunity bring you to Birmingham?
Alex Brackett: Well, okay. Basically, I wanted to move to Birmingham because we wanted to work with a nonprofit, and we wanted to come up here and help a church. So, I was able to call Bill and say, “Hey, Bill.” I’ve had a good enough relationship with Bill, and he knows the type of person that I am. I told my wife, believe it or not, two or three years ago I said, “Man, if I ever open up a business or have anything to do with business, I want to do what Bill does,” which was Hole in the Wall Drywall Repair, because I thought it was such a cool concept. I loved the name. I love their integrity. It just fit into who I am as a person. So, I had got on the phone with Bill and I said, “Man, I want to move to Birmingham,” and he’s like, “Do you want to open an office?” He got excited about opening something. His thing was is he just wanted someone that he felt like he could trust to open something, or to trust with his business at another location other than where he is. So, I had never worked with Hole in the Wall before. Basically, they were able to give me the opportunity, give me some training, and let me loose up here in Birmingham.
Kelsi: Fantastic. I love the name of the company, It is so clever.
Alex Brackett: He may be sorry for that. I don’t know.
Kelsi: Well, tell us about all the services that you provide through Hole in the Wall, and, also, let us know if you have a minimum or a maximum for your repairs.
Alex Brackett: Okay. So, the services we provide, we provide small hole repair. Okay? Now, what that means is this. We’ll fix anything from just this tiny of a hole all the way up to sheets of drywall. Okay? The minimum we have is a $125 minimum, because that’s basically what it costs me to crank up my truck, with all the license, insurance, and everything that we need to actually pull up to your house to show up is $125. That’ll get you a one-by-one hole in the wall or less. Now, what that includes is a texture match. Now, here we don’t have a ton of textures on the walls. Mainly, everything’s smooth, if you noticed your ceilings. In Florida, they have something called knockdown. That is not like the drywall we see here/ That’s that kind of sloppy texture that you’ll occasionally see on walls. So, we can match that. The big thing here that I’m noticing in Orlando is the texture matching on your ceiling. A lot of people don’t want to do a full house popcorn scrape on their ceiling or the room, just because they have to have a patch in their ceiling. So, we’re able to match small, medium, and coarse popcorn. Now, that doesn’t make a difference until you mess it up, and that’s because if you put the wrong size popcorn on the ceiling somebody can walk around your ceiling and go, “Oh! There was a repair there.” So, a lot of the repairs that we do, no one can ever tell that we were even there.
Kelsi: That’s awesome.
Alex Brackett: So, that’s the service that we do, is texture matching, which is really important in your living rooms, in your bedrooms, and all those places, because there’s tons of imperfections in your house. Right? In your drywall. If you just go around and look. But you don’t notice what you don’t know. So, as soon as you see it, you’re going to notice it. So, we try to make it where you never even know that there was something there. We do provide painting services, but that’s not our thing. We paint if we repair something. If you want us to paint, we’ll paint. I’ve had requests for whole-home painting and stuff like that, and that’s just something that we don’t do because our specialty is drywall. Really, there’s no maximum in our price. It just depends. If it’s a large job, there’s going to be no maximum on your price. Basically, it’s just going to be our time to be out there.
Kelsi: Cool. Thank you!
Glyna: We have some people joining us this morning. We have Cindy Edmunds and Lavon Chaney.
Alex Brackett: I love me some Cindy. She’s awesome.
Glyna: Brenda Blanton. I think you probably recognize that name.
Alex Brackett: I do.
Glyna: Andy Entrekin, Harry Slagle, Harry asked, “Do y’all do ceiling popcorn removal?” I’m not sure that you do the removal, but you’ll fix…
Alex Brackett: Yes. We actually do removal.
Glyna: Okay.
Alex Brackett: Yes. We do removal. Right now we are working on how much removal we can actually do. Right now we can do about up to 1,000 square feet pretty easily. If it’s anything more than that, we can definitely work something out. Here’s the thing. If the home is empty, we do a lot more, but whenever there’s a popcorn scrape and the people are living in it, it’s the messiest thing that you could ever possibly do to your home is take off the popcorn in the ceiling. That’s simply because you have to cover everything. Your floors, your walls, I mean, it gets bad. The people in the home are going to have to go on vacation or shuffle around to different rooms. So, if they shuffle around to a different room or live in the other side of the house, and that’s why I say you’ve got to be careful with coming into somebody’s house and you’re doing a full popcorn scrape.
Glyna: Yeah. I imagine that could be a mess. I would say what you do, to me, that’s the first thing I would think of. “Oh my gosh. What a mess this is going to be, to have …”
Alex Brackett: It’s a hot mess.
Glyna: Huh?
Alex Brackett: It’s a hot mess. It’s bad. My wife takes pictures of me when I get home, because it’s coming out of my eyeball creases, my ears. She’s like, “What did you do today?” I’m like, “Yeah. It’s popcorn.”
Glyna: But you guys are able to save, I mean, when you’re doing the jobs, the normal Hole in the Walls, you said that you can save time and, also, dust with your repair process. I think that would be interesting to a lot of people, how you could do it without a mess.
Alex Brackett: Okay. So, the traditional way of doing drywall is somebody’s going to come in, they’re going to cut out your square, whatever hole it was. They’re going to put one coat of mud on it, okay? Typically, that one coat will take 45 minutes to 90 minutes to dry. So, that tradesperson doesn’t want to hang around and waste an hour and a half at your house. So, they’ll put it on there, they’ll put the tape in, and then they’ll come back another day. Then they’ll sand it down a little bit, which causes dust, and then they’ll put coat number two on it. Now, they don’t really want to hang around the other hour or two hours to wait for that to dry. So, they’re out, and they’re going to some other location to do another job. All right? Now, all that, you can imagine, with a tradesperson, gets really hairy because of all the random stuff they run into along the way, or family problems, or whatever. Now, we’re up to day number three. Right? They’re going to come in and actually finish it and sand it down, but if they see an imperfection in it and they don’t like it, guess what they’re going to do? Another coat. So, now you’re up to day three. Okay? You’re up to day three with somebody coming in your house, causing dust, and it’s a hot mess. People are used to this. If you ask somebody that’s done a drywall repair, they’re like, “Yeah. Okay. Yeah. He came back two or three days. He said it would take two days or three days for me to do it.” That’s their expectation. So, what we’ve done is we’re able to get everything in and out in about three or four hours, for that same hole. So, we’re not in and out of your house a whole bunch of times. We schedule an appointment with you, and we’re there during that appointment time. Now, there are cases where stuff comes up, but that is super, super rare, and we over-communicate with our customers to make sure that they know what’s going on and if we have to come back another day. Typically, if we have to come back it’s because we need to paint. Now, that actually does need to dry, and that’s pretty normal because we don’t want to put paint … If it’s a small patch, we can actually paint the same day, but other than that, we’ll have to come back the next day to paint. With our dustless process, that’s where it gets really fun. So, my boss has these three C’s he always says. Bill, he’s always talking about the three C’s, which is cover-up, complete, and clean up. Right? So, that means that we have to cover up everything. So, anything that’s even remotely close, we’re putting plastic. We’re putting these things called zip poles, which holds plastic to your ceiling. We put it on your walls, and we put it on your floor. Now, that covers just any dust that we do when we cut the hole out of the wall. As far as the actual process, we’re able to gather the dust with a little bit of water that we have. So, it collects all that dust for you, and it’s not on your house, it’s not on your TV screen, it’s not on your dark wood bookcase, your dark wood floors.
Glyna: Everywhere.
Alex Brackett: Everywhere. That as always is just insidious. So, we’re just able to collect all that dust for you in a little bit of a water slurry at the end of the process. It makes your life a lot easier, and ours. Everybody’s been real happy and surprised when we leave their house. They’re like, “It’s not dusty. It’s not dirty.” We take great pride in keeping people’s houses clean.
Glyna: Perfect.
Sarah: That is. Wow. So, you save time, obviously. You’re a lot cleaner than the normal process, the typical process. You also mentioned when we talked earlier that what’s unique about your business is that you’re able to fill in the gap for services that aren’t typically offered or that other businesses just won’t do. What exactly does that mean?
Alex Brackett: Okay. This is what that means. It’s because most drywall companies are trying to do whole home or new installs. All right? That means they want new stuff. They don’t like doing repairs because they have to come back, like we talked about earlier, three or four times to do it for … Somebody’s not going to pay $1,000 to fix a two-by-two size hole in the wall. Technically, they feel like it’s wasting their time because they haven’t figured out a way to make it profitable for them. So, if it’s not profitable for somebody, typically, they’re not going to do it, or they’re going to come after a big job. So, what we’ve done is we say, “Okay. You don’t like those jobs? We’ll take those jobs because we’ve figured out how to make and do really well in those at a cost-efficient way for us and the customer.” So, anything that’s a sheet or less, we’re able to knock out really fast. That’s just one of those things that most trades guys don’t want, because they want your new house. Then they’ll say they want 10 houses because they’re doing $20 a board or something like that. So, quantity, for them, is more.
Glyna: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Alex Brackett: It helps them more because they want that guaranteed work, which we just want to stick to repairs.
Sarah: Yeah.
Kelsi: Absolutely. That’s great. I’m going to jump over here back to the comments section. So, Allen Young said that you guys did a great job at his wife’s company. Thank you so much. We’ve got Gayle Mason with us. Kirk Edmunds wants to know, “so you can repair what I try to fix?”
Alex Brackett: All day.
Kelsi: All day!
Alex Brackett: All day. I get a lot of those. I get lots of those of, “My husband messed this up.” But that’s okay! Because I’ve had to call up an electrician and a plumber before because I’ve messed things up. There’s no shame. It’s okay.
Kelsi: Cindy wants to know, for her real estate clients, can you make a repair and get paid through the closing process?
Alex Brackett: Of course. For any of our realtors, we can do a 30-day invoice section.
Glyna: Oh, cool.
Alex Brackett: I’m not there like, “Give me my money right now.” We can set up something, if we have a business partnership where I know that you’re sending us consistent business. We can do a 30 day invoice for you. No problem.
Kelsi: Fantastic. I think that brings us right around into tip time, Sarah.
Sarah: It sure does. Okay. We’re going to have…
Glyna: So fun!
Alex Brackett: I can’t believe we got through this whole process without one dad joke! Oh my God. This is crazy!
Kelsi: Well, we are not done yet.
Sarah: Put your thinking cap on, Alex. It’s time for tip time.
Glyna: Such a build-up. We’re all ready.
Alex Brackett: Tips. Brush your teeth in the morning. Very important.
Kelsi: Oh! Good tip!
Glyna: All right. Here we go, Alex. What is your number one pro tip that could benefit customers when they are looking for a drywall repair service?
Alex Brackett: Oh my goodness. Look at their referrals. Look at people who have worked with them before. Okay? Google, honestly, is pretty accurate, and I think it’s pretty true. I would check their referrals. I would check with people who have worked with them before. I would check their response time. If they’re not responding to you really fast, I mean, if they’re not getting back with you within a day or so of everything, after you’ve contacted them, that’s a big red flag. My biggest thing is just ask for people they’ve worked with before and get a reference before they show up at your home.
Glyna: Yep. Absolutely.
Kelsi: Thank you.
Sarah: Is that ever true. It really is. So, this is another thing that I think was so unique, and we had talked about this earlier, is that you have an ability to provide a virtual quote to customers prior to a job so that they can get that quote before you even have to walk into the door.
Alex Brackett: Right. So, what’s cool is we have office staff. We have the best office in the world. So, I harass them daily. They’re probably sick of me. We do have office staff. So, what that means for you is that whenever you send an email in the office, or we have an app that you can text through … It’s not a whole app but it’s a phone number you can text pictures to. So, what we do is you’ll send a picture of your repair, and you’ll send it to our office, and then our office will look at it, and we’ll say, “Okay.” If they have any questions, they’ll contact me. Most of the time, they’re able to say … Because we have our pricing mapped out all the way from a six-inch hole to a full sheet. So, they can look automatically and say how much something’s going to cost. So, we’re able to respond to you within about 20 minutes with a quote. If it’s something more complicated, I’ll come to your house and check it out, but our virtual quoting saves a ton of time, and we do upfront pricing. So, if I get there, and if it’s a little bit more, I’m not going to charge you for that, because we’ve already given you a price. If it’s less, I can take off money. We do keep our price. The price is our price.
Kelsi: Awesome.
Sarah: That’s fantastic. Yeah.
Kelsi: So, we talked about you provide drywall repair.
Alex Brackett: Right.
Kelsi: You dabble in a little bit of painting.
Alex Brackett: Right.
Kelsi: You can do popcorn ceiling removal. Is there anything else that we haven’t covered that you offer?
Alex Brackett: Anything else? No. Honestly, that’s what we do. We do drywall, dabble in paint. I like that.
Kelsi: So, if I didn’t have a ceiling leak or any issue with my ceiling, I just wanted popcorn removed, could you do that?
Alex Brackett: Of course.
Kelsi: Okay.
Alex Brackett: Yeah. Yeah. We can definitely take that down, I will gladly make your house really messy.
Kelsi: When you’re done it’ll be a lot brighter. I feel like my popcorn ceiling really absorbs a lot of light in your room.
Glyna: Well, it absorbs light and dust. They used it originally for acoustic ceiling texture. So, to absorb sound. What you don’t realize is that most people use it to blow up really bad drywall work. So, when you scrape it down, you spend a lot of time fixing all the stuff that the popcorn covered up.
Sarah: That’s interesting. I didn’t know that.
Glyna: That does not sound fun.
Alex Brackett: Oh, it’s a lot of fun. So much.
Glyna: Well, Alex, I have to tell you that a lot of times, several times during the week, you just make me smile. You’re probably going, “Uh oh.” I’ll be working hard, looking at our social media, and all this stuff, and then I’ll come across what I call an Alex-ism.
Alex Brackett: Yeah. Most people use their Facebook for political purposes. Mine is just for memes and dad jokes.
Glyna: And harass your wife, apparently.
Alex Brackett: Oh, God, yeah. All the time.
Sarah: We really feel like we need to highlight this because …
Glyna: Most definitely.
Sarah: It’s too good not to share. So, we put together a little segment called Alex-isms. Your wife, if she’s watching, is probably like, “Oh, no. What’s about to happen here?”
Alex Brackett: She’s already rolling her eyes. Whether she is watching or not, her eyes are already rolling.
Glyna: So funny. It was hard to pick our favorites, but we picked some of our favorites, and I’m sure you’re not going to care at all that we share them right here in front of everybody.
Alex Brackett: I put them out for my 400 friends on Facebook. I mean, God, I’m not going to care now. Gee.
Glyna: That’s true. Let me see. Sarah?
Sarah: Glyna, I’ll start with you. Okay. This was Glyna’s pick. This is what she liked the best. Say it first, Alex.
Glyna: You have to read it for us, Alex.
Alex Brackett: Oh, I do?
Glyna: Yeah.
Alex Brackett: Hey Nicole. Want to get closer than six feet?
Sarah: Perfect.
Glyna: That’s so funny.
Alex Brackett: And she’s going “NO”?
Sarah: Let’s see. Which one is this? Okay. This was Kelsi’s favorite.
Kelsi: Yeah.
Alex Brackett: Hey Nikki. Do you need toilet paper? I can be your Prince Charmin.
Kelsi: I love that so much.
Sarah: Okay. This was my personal favorite.
Alex Brackett: Hey Nicole. Are you looking for a naughty boy? Because I only washed my hands for 19 seconds. That’s so bad. That’s so bad.
Sarah: I love that through marriage you’re still trying to hit on her.
Alex Brackett: Okay. So, the problem is I don’t think she considers it hitting anymore. She considers it harassment. She’s told several people, “This is harassment. This is not pick up lines. This is harassment.” What you don’t know is that my wife is this really awesomely beautiful Puerto Rican. Okay? She’s with this dorky white kid. So, most of the people realize … They’re like, “Oh my gosh. Did you not know this about him when you married him?” I’m like, “No. She knew. She knew exactly what she was getting. There was no hiding who I am as a person.” It wasn’t like I was all suave when she met me and dated me.
Sarah: “Honey, you signed up for this!”
Alex Brackett: You signed up for this. I didn’t change.
Glyna: Who’s Clarissa? Clarissa, I’m not sure how you pronounce the last name.
Alex Brackett: Winchester?
Glyna: No. Ojeda? Ojeda?
Alex Brackett: I’m not sure.
Glyna: Anyway. She’s hitting her head against the wall.
Alex Brackett: Oh, wait! I know. No. She’s in my BNI group. Okay, sorry!
Glyna: Then she’s like, “The jokes are painful.”
Alex Brackett: I know. I know. They are painful.
Kelsi: I think they’re hilarious.
Glyna: Oh gosh. Okay. Now that I’m crying. All right. Let’s move on to important things. What areas do you guys service? How far out do you go from Birmingham?
Alex Brackett: Alright. We do a 50-mile radius around Birmingham. Okay? So, that’ll put us all the way down 280. I’ve actually gotten some jobs down on 280 before. It was way past down 280, but contractors just told the people no. They would not come out there. It was too far for them. So, we do our best to get out there to get everyone.
Glyna: Okay.
Sarah: Perfect.
Glyna: I’m sorry, Sarah. It’s Clarissa Winchester. She must have just had her name …
Kelsi: Uh oh, Sarah.
Glyna: Did Sarah freeze?
Kelsi: Sarah froze.
Glyna: Are you frozen?
Alex Brackett: Oh no!
Kelsi: Oh! It kicked her out. There she is.
Glyna: Are you back?
Sarah: Am I frozen? Am I back or am I frozen? I don’t know what happened.
Alex Brackett: You’re frozen. Stay still frozen.
Kelsi: It’s a little delayed. You’re okay.
Sarah: Yeah. How still can I be? So, I think this is worth mentioning. Hole in the Wall really provides a level of professionalism that others really don’t, and there’s so many aspects about it that you provide, but I wanted you to expand on that a little bit more, because I feel like it’s so important.
Alex Brackett: Okay. So, what we do to be professional is we return your phone call, or we answer your phone call.
Glyna: Wow. That’s something.
Sarah: Amazing.
Alex Brackett: Hey. Whenever you have people thank you for showing up, you start realizing that the bar is really low.
Glyna: So bad.
Alex Brackett: In Birmingham for tradespeople. “Y’all, thank you for being here!” I’m like, “What?”
Glyna: Wow.
Kelsi: “Y’all are paying me to be here!”
Alex Brackett: So, you get an appointment time, and we do stick to that appointment time. If something got moved or there’s an emergency you’ll get a phone call from us. We just won’t show up. We do have uniforms. Okay? I don’t think there’s another drywall company here that has uniforms. We have uniforms and we have logo’d vehicles, which provides a really nice service. For all the realtors that are watching, I mean, just think that if you’re going to have a repair done, you’re not just having a guy in a pick-up truck in some overalls potentially showing up. You’ve got an actual company with people with white pants, orange shirt, and a logo’d truck showing up at the designated appointment time for a repair. So, most of the time that doesn’t go with trade service people. We call them trade service partners, which would be all your plumbers, electricians, restoration companies. I do all of the drywall for Mr. Electric, actually, in town. So, I do any kind of their mishaps, or if they have to cut the drywall, I’m coming over to fix it. They just give us the person’s name and phone number, and we take care of the rest. We’ll take before and after photos, tell them the appointment time, and we communicate thoroughly through the whole process. It actually keeps them from having to be the middle man, from communicating with their customer and us. It just takes one more thing off someone’s plate. A realtor, it’ll take stuff off their plate, because they’re busy, and they don’t have time to manage a tradesperson, as well.
Glyna: Perfect.
Kelsi: Yeah. Really set the bar high there, Alex.
Alex Brackett: I want to. I mean, I want to be the “King of Dry Wall in Birmingham”. So, you got to start somewhere.
Kelsi: Well, I want to take a little pause from talking about you …
Alex Brackett: Oh man.
Kelsi: And talk a little bit about the ..,
Alex Brackett: People don’t ask about me.
Kelsi: We’ll come back to you!
Alex Brackett: See, people don’t ask me things, like how fast I can run, anymore. They don’t ask my favorite dinosaur. I really get left out on all these really fun questions.
Kelsi: Well, we’ll get to the fun questions when we get to the hot seat.
Alex Brackett: Okay. All right.
Kelsi: But for right now I want to talk about Nicole’s role with the nonprofit Raising Arrows.
Alex Brackett: Yes.
Kelsi: So, tell us about her work with the nonprofit, and share a little bit about what they do for the community.
Alex Brackett: Okay. So, we live in Walker County. There’s a program called Raising Arrows. They’re a nonprofit, nonreligious organization, and they partner with schools, they partner with local businesses, but they do that to provide food for people who don’t have it. They do have some aftercare programs that they do, as well. So, during Spring Break, had COVID not hit, people would have been there at their facility. They don’t have anywhere to go with their kids. Now, what happened during COVID was really special. Walker County asked them to start feeding the whole county. Alright? So, they went from about 500 meals a day to 2,000 meals a day. They actually provide a hot meal, and they were delivering them to nine different locations throughout the county. They partnered with the sheriff’s office, they partnered with … oh my gosh … local grocery stores. All of the elementary schools gave them all their perishable goods. What they do is they prepare those foods at their facilities, put them in a very nice plate, and then drive them to the locations that people would drive through and pick them up.
Kelsi: Wow.
Alex Brackett: My wife got really busy. We got really busy during COVID. It’s crazy how things slow down for a lot of people, but it got really busy for us. She did a fantastic job just helping manage all of that. I don’t know. You don’t really think about how many people depended upon school lunches for breakfast and lunch until something like this hits, and then you realize people just do not have the income to feed their kids. So, they stepped in and just stepped up in a big way to help families in need during the crisis.
Glyna: Wow.
Kelsi: That’s amazing. So, for any of our viewers out there, if you want to donate to Raising Arrows and help them feed people in their community, you can go to their website at myraisingarrows.com, or Venmo @raising-arrows-2.
Alex Brackett: I’ve seen the process myself. No money there is wasted at all. Any money that is given is directly used to feed people. It is to provide gas for transportation for the vehicles. So, anything that you give is an absolute blessing to them, and it will bless Walker County. There’s lots of need up here. It’ll be used.
Glyna: Fantastic. We have some people joining us. [Lynn Rae 00:29:21] joined us. She said, “That’s absolutely wonderful.” Gayle Mason, she said, “That’s awesome.” So, it’s good to get the word out for that great organization.
Alex Brackett: My wife makes me look good.
Glyna: You get a bunch of brownie points, right?
Alex Brackett: I know! After all my jokes I really need the brownie points. I have a lot of sucking up to do after I embarrass her.
Glyna: Well, we’re going to wrap up here in a few minutes, but first we want to ask you who are the best referral partners for you? Who can we refer to you that will help keep bringing you business?
Alex Brackett: Okay. Really good referral partners, basically, are roofers. Anybody who does roofing, because, after a roof, people’s ceilings are always messed up. Plumbers, because they’re always cutting into your wall to fix a pipe somewhere, and they need someone reliable to come back and fit that hole, to make it look perfect and new again. Electricians, for the same reason. They cut into walls all the time. We’re a great service for them because it’s not a big job, typically. It’s a small one. Also, restoration companies. We do a lot of work for restoration companies, because if anybody has a flood in their house, they’ll have something called a flood cut, which will either be two foot or four foot up someone’s wall, depending on how much water was in there. So, that’s a lot of dry wall and trim that needs to go back. So, we’re a perfect company for those businesses.
Kelsi: Awesome.
Glyna: Perfect. Yeah. Gayle Mason said, “I wish I’d known you before.” She said she went through a similar process and it was a nightmare. Now she knows who she can call.
Alex Brackett: Now she could get us next time. I take that back. Hopefully, she won’t have to go through that again next time, but she’ll get good jokes along the way.
Kelsi: Package deal.
Sarah: You can’t put a price on that!
Glyna: No, you can’t.
Alex Brackett: Sarah, you get me.
Sarah: I get it. I hear ya. It’s what keeps us going every day, is the humor, isn’t it?
Alex Brackett: I’ve got to step up my game, apparently.
Sarah: Well, Alex, is there anything that we haven’t touched on that you wanted to mention? We wanted to move into our fun little game that you don’t know about. I want to make sure we covered everything that you want to cover today.
Alex Brackett: Yeah. You basically covered everything. I appreciate the opportunity that I have to work for such an amazing company. They gave me an opportunity in Birmingham. What I love about my company, I haven’t talked a whole lot about it, is their integrity. It’s hard to find good people that have integrity now, that will actually go above and beyond when they’re in someone’s home. We treat everyone’s home like it was my home. I honestly do treat it like if my wife would be happy with the repair I left, then I’m good to go, because I just want to make sure that you’re happy, that if someone came in my house and left a mess, I would appreciate it. So, our biggest thing is treating your stuff like it’s ours and even better.
Sarah: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Glyna: Awesome.
Kelsi: That’s so hard to find. Thank you.
Sarah: It sure is. It sure is. Okay! Well, before we let you go, we’re going to wrap up with our game, the hot seat!
Glyna: Look at that! Kelsi’s even got the timer ready to roll.
Sarah: Okay. We’re going to ask you a bunch of questions. You’re going to answer as fast as you can in 60 seconds.
Alex Brackett: You guys know who you’re doing this with? Gosh.
Sarah: It’s got to be the first thing that comes to mind, okay?
Sarah: All right. Are you ready?
Alex Brackett: I’m ready.
Kelsi: We’re going.
Sarah: Are you grumpier in the morning or at night?
Alex Brackett: Morning.
Sarah: Would you rather watch sports or play sports?
Alex Brackett: Play.
Sarah: Would you rather live without air conditioning or live without heat?
Alex Brackett: Air conditioning.
Sarah: What’s your wife’s favorite color?
Alex Brackett: Red.
Sarah: Good. Are you a neat freak or messy?
Alex Brackett: Kind of messy.
Sarah: Could you go an entire week without your phone or without TV?
Alex Brackett: TV.
Sarah: Okay. Do you consider yourself a good dancer?
Alex Brackett: Oh, God. No.
Sarah: What is your favorite app or most used app on your phone?
Alex Brackett: Facebook.
Sarah: Okay. Better decade, the ’80s or the ’90s?
Alex Brackett: ’90s.
Sarah: Okay. Are you a better jokester or a better liar?
Alex Brackett: Jokester.
Sarah: Would you rather go to the beach or go to the swimming pool?
Alex Brackett: Beach.
Sarah: Okay. Beach. Okay.
Kelsi: Time.
Glyna: Sarah’s playing freeze frame again. She’s like, “What am I doing? I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Sarah: I love it, man. It’s my own game I like to play.
Alex Brackett: It’s freeze-frame. That’s a lot of fun.
Glyna: Freeze frame. Yeah. We like to play it to keep people on their toes. Well, Alex, we just want to thank you so much for coming on today. We really appreciate it, and we hope that we helped you spread the word a little bit further about Hole in the Wall.
Alex Brackett: Oh, man. Thank you guys for the opportunity. I appreciate it.
Glyna: Well, we really do appreciate it, and we had so much fun. So, I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in a while. Thank you for that. My jaws are kind of sore.
Alex Brackett: I’ve got some awesome jokes for you, okay?
Glyna: I was going to say, I expect some things rolling out on Facebook, maybe.
Alex Brackett: My poor BNI group’s like, “Why?”
Glyna: Hopefully, we inspired you to get something out there today. I’ve got high expectations.
Alex Brackett: Be on the lookout.
Glyna: All right. Well, thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in. Again, I want to thank Alex, and I hope y’all have a great day.
Alex Brackett: Bye, guys. Thank you so much.
Sarah: We’ll see you next time.