SHORTS 21 | Fatherhood Is The Mother of Invention with Heather & Eric Stenner, Co-Owners of Porch Box

Let's have some fun. Welcome to the LocoShortz podcast created by LocoThinkTank. In this podcast series, Loco Experience Coordinator Deb Piles will unfold bite-sized business learnings through conversational interviews with successful small business owners, topical experts, and community leaders. Together, they'll take listeners through the often crazy experience of founding and growing an enterprise or an idea. So listen in and listen up, because these small business stories may just have the secret ingredient you've been missing for your recipe for small business success. Welcome back everyone to the LocoThinkTankShortz podcast. I am your host Deb Piles, and today we're coming from Longmont, Colorado. I have a husband and wife team from Porchbox, and this is Heather and Eric Stenner. So owners of Porchbox, and I'm going to let them fill you in on what that is in their journey and things like that. So Heather and Eric, if you would, can you kind of give me some background on how you got into this company or this business? I'm glad. Thank you Deb for having us. It's good to be here. About 15 years ago, I was at a town myself, and Eric was home with our daughter and our young son, maybe about six months old, and they were looking for a project. And the two of them actually went out to build a wooden box to replace the plastic cooler that ended up on our front doorstep that the local dairy had dropped off when we signed up for local delivery. And we weren't really too keen on that plastic cooler. So Emma and Eric made a box and pretty soon the neighbors wanted one, and then the school one and one for the fundraiser, and here we are 15 years later, making lots of different sized boxes for home deliveries, storage, and contactless pickup. And here we are. So it's pretty exciting come a long way since that first box in 2006. So did you guys ever imagine that you would be a business for yourselves? Eric, that was you. No, I don't think we did. It's just grown as we've gone along. It's been something that we've done very slowly as we've moved forward. And it was last year during the pandemic, Heather's job kind of got put on pause, and she decided to leave. And we put our heads together and decided that maybe we needed to put some acceleration behind porch box, and so Heather really is in it from a day to day basis. And I've taken a different seat and I provide labor and maybe some, you know, suggestions here and there, but it's been a wonderful switch for us as Heather has really started to take over the business piece of it, and she's the one that's really making it grow. Awesome. And he's been very humble five years, when he launched the website in 2016 for five years, he made all the boxes, a couple hundred of them in our bank. And so last year we finally got him out of the basement and got some flex space, industrial flex space. We have a real workshop and that makes it so much nicer. I think our kids really appreciate that too. Yeah, that's so exciting. So how about our listeners understand like what these boxes are or what you use them or what they could use them for? That's a great question. So outside of the home delivery for milk, obviously during the pandemic, people really, really started to up their intake of orders online. So we've had a box outside our house for years. And we actually, we have a box that doesn't lock and we make a lockable box that people want to, they want to secure their packages, they can do that. But we really feel like concealing the packages that come really does the job in the neighborhood where we live. Everyone's in a different climate, whether they're in a big city or a rural, I know I'm thinking back to some of the customers that I've talked with and we have one that lives in a really rural spot and when they bought their porch box, they laid a cement pad just for the box outside by their gate at the front door because the FedEx guys didn't want to drive all the way down to their house. And so people use them for for deliveries, but people have also started using them like a deck box to keep their grill pellets in or their furniture cushions dry and depending on what kind of climate you live in, lots of times if you live in a rainy zone, you don't want to walk out for the barbecue and have all your cushions be wet. So we've had people contact us for custom size boxes, they literally measure their cushions and then we build a box just for them. And one person said they keep their shoes in the box so that they don't track money. They've kind of heard it all. That's amazing. So it makes you special from cushions like boxes that they can get at a big department store. What makes you different? It's a good one Eric, do you want to take that one? Well the whole idea behind porch box was that a lot of the boxes that are available that are mass produced, maybe done overseas and put on container ships and ship to America are just either poor quality or they just don't complement your house. Our boxes are built out of outdoor materials, they're built to go through every kind of weather, but they're also built to fit in with your home to compliment it. It doesn't look like a high school locker sitting on your front porch. It looks like it was built with care and precision in order to compliment the front door where our tagline is make your front door proud and that's literally what our boxes do. When you see a porch box, it attracts people's attention because it looks like it belongs there. It doesn't look like it's out of place. Love it. Yeah. Through your website and for the listeners, their website is www.pourch.corch.com and that's www.pourch.com. Some of the pictures you have in the ideas and the customization on them are beautiful. It's beautiful work. So tell me, describe what some of your challenges have been since you've kind of really taken this on as a business. I would say working as a husband and wife team, that's how it's beautiful and challenging at the same time. I think, of course, during the pandemic, it was kind of a crazy time to kick things off and go full steam because finding the supplies we needed, we had to find multiple vendors for just one item to make sure that we were covering that we had cardboard boxes to ship our boxes and that we could get tape. Tape oddly enough is something to tape the boxes that was kind of hard to find through the pandemic. Eric, I'm curious what your challenges for you see. Well, as we continue to experience growth, right now it's Heather and I and there's kind of a spot here where we're going to have to take on an employee here too to keep us moving forward. And I think as a husband and wife team and as a business that has been around for years and just existed without additional health, this is a big step for us as we look forward to bringing in an employee but also wondering what that looks like for porch boxes, it's not something we've done before. So you guys are personally building with your own hands these boxes? I've built every single porch box that exists in the world and it's almost, we're getting close to a thousand of them. Wow, that's amazing. So if I order one, you autograph it? Absolutely. You can autograph it yourself because we can customize it any way you want and if you want to sign it and put your own autograph on it. You can do that and if a year from now you don't like it, you can just repaint it. I mean, they are not only durable but you can make them fit wherever you want because all it takes is a first coat of paint and it's a new box for your house. And I absolutely love this idea that you guys have. When I first discovered you, I'm like, what a great concept. So we have to say something Heather. Yeah, I was just going to say we also shift unfinished boxes and those are some of the most fun because the customer gets the box. They paint it themselves and they decorate it and you can see some of those in our gallery. They paint the trim, the decorative trim it one color and then they paint the box to match their shutters and it's like an artist, we can't this. They can paint it however they want, they can put numbers on it so that you can identify the house quickly if you're driving by and our box is one thing I did forget that kind of makes us stand out is that our boxes come fully assembled. Lots of times the boxes that you buy whether they're metal or fiber board, you're going to have to put that together yourself and these just come ready for action right out of the box. That's amazing. And you're shipping like all over the United States? Correct. Yep. We don't ship to Alaska who I just get but we'll be ready when those requests come. We're going to have a contest soon to there's one state that we don't have a porch box in. So be watching our Facebook page and you too can get it. Now I understand why you left that out. We didn't coordinate before this. So as a husband and wife team I'm curious does it feel like you guys are constantly in your business or are you getting yourself sometimes away from the business? So it doesn't feel like it's all just shop talk. That's a really yeah it's a good question. I think anytime our kids are around we we try we just don't talk about the business. If they ask we definitely we have teenagers and they get kind of oh mom and dad they're doing that thing. We really try to focus our time when we're with them on the family we just brought our first daughter our daughter to college and we were able to take the weekend and really milk it and spend time with her and our son only has a few years left in high school. So when we're home we're home and when we're working we're working. And I think that was a big part of moving it out of our basement that Eric would come home from his day job and he'd go downstairs the basement and paint and build and we just really really ever saw him. And that's a huge part of me moving into the business that I can do those things during the day and when I come home and we all come home really it's downtime. We're watching a good episode of Ted Lasso or we're planning our next hike in the mountains. So we definitely make time to exercise together and try to keep that work life balance. And it's so important as I'm sure there are a lot of other husband and wife teams out there and we'd like to know I can imagine how especially when you're first starting out it's probably everything about the business and you do take the time to pull back a little bit and make sure that it's not everything in terms of your family. So what are some of your next milestones? Like grow what do you want? As Eric said we're going to get an employer to help us as we grow. We are also considering new products and where we go from here. Our biggest excitement this year was that with the addition or with the new workshop we were able to offer custom size boxes now. So instead of just our standard boxes, small, medium, large and extra large. If someone wants a box that is super big, we built a really big box for a hose wand and we could build it. We got a panel saw. We have a bigger facility and we've got the tools now to really specialize and make custom size. They send us exact dimensions and we can mostly build it. So that's exciting. Do you think you'd ever take this to manufacturing or is that your social size that these things are hand-built? Eric? So I think the long-term growth would absolutely be to bring it to manufacturing but we're funding the business ourselves and we've been in a slow growth mode and that's been what's working for us at this point. We do some contract manufacturing of the lower level goods that go into the boxes themselves but the boxes are all built by hand in the shop there in La Calerado. That's the special sauce. Special sauce. Special hammer nails. Actually, one of the things that's really exciting, we built a box for a residential community out in California and they just ordered another box for one of their other residential communities and that's when it gets really exciting when people get it and they're like, oh, I understand what I can do with this now. I want another one or I want a bigger one to store my pool cushions in or my pool. So when we get repeat customers, that's really exciting because we know that they like they get it and they see the quality. So what I'm just curious, what's the community box, what are they put in that? You know, I just shipped the second one today. It has a hand scripting with the name of the community. I don't know. I have actually texted them but I don't know I haven't gotten a picture from them yet. So I've thrown down a little note inside the box. They said, we're excited to see a picture of these in action. So I'm not sure if they put brochures in them or they, you know, when you go into a new home and they've got those little shoes, things slip, shoe covers, because it's a super tiny little box, but they wanted another one. So I'll find out and get back to you then. I think that's kind of fun to kind of learn and meet these people and see what their needs are and stuff like that. Um, really is. I had a Realtor call me yesterday and they wanted to get a box for the client for a closing gift. It's like perfect. I haven't matched their home and it's, it's a perfect welcome home gift, I think. So what are you guys doing to like stay sharp or, or are you giving yourself any training or books or things like that? I am in a local Toastmaster's group, love it. I try to practice my public speaking as much as I can. I'm a former music educator, so I used to be talking all day long and now I make boxes and they don't talk back to me. So I need to do that. I was, I love doing podcasts. I've been able to do a little bit of that. I'm looking forward to being a part of one of the chapters for local think tank. I need to be surrounded by other entrepreneurs who are doing this and learn from each other and lift each other up when it's one of those days where like, I don't think I can do this anymore. So I've, I've tried to just stay connected in the community, even though we are a really a national company, we really tried to stay connected in our community. We donate boxes to local silent auctions and just stay connected. I think, I love it and we're excited to get you on board as a member as well. It's good to be great looking forward to working with Lance and everybody in the group. So what brings you joy? Personally, Eric, Heather's waiting for me to jump in on that one. I love to work with my hands. I am a builder at heart and for me actually having a product that comes out from something that we've put together, we've thought through or we've worked together to create is just very important to me that I often tell people that I can spend an entire day in porch box and that refreshes me and I don't know if that's good or bad, but it really shows in the product that we put out there in the market and that people receive when they buy a porch box. It's, it's something that has been put together with diligence and care by, by some, by people that are really do care and are trained and been doing this for a lot of years. I think I have, I heard it say it's not a job if you're doing what you want. That's true. That's beautiful. And as a format, as I mentioned, I was a music teacher. I just start singing to the boxes eventually and I look at my little order form and I start singing a song to that person in the box, put some good juice, you good vibrations into that box and when they open it up, they can feel it and they're part of the porch box family. And that really does come through when I first found you guys, it really already comes through. You put into this so good to hear and one, I'll throw in this, my, my personal joy is standing on my paddleboard in the middle of a mountain lake at sunset, that brings me a larger. Try to do that as often as I can. That's amazing because I miss my mountains. So you guys have any favorite books or quotes that motivate you or that you got a lot out of that you might want to share with other business owners? Well, that one's easy. I always say to anyone that's close by, including my children, is that any job is easy if you have the right tools. You can move them out if you have the right tools. You can also do little, any bitty things. To do things well, you have to have the right tools and whether those are the tools that are in your head or in your spirit or in your hands. That's what's important to getting a job done well. Beautiful. Do you guys have any books or anything that have touched you? I think one of my favorite books is the Four Agreements that's on the ground, these, the Four Agreements being number one, being impeccable with your word. When I talk to a customer, I really hope they can hear that. Really genuine interest in them and what they're doing and don't take anything personal. If they don't like my box, I actually knocked on a door once and asked, I do this. I just knock on people's doors when I get a really cool box. I don't want to take a picture of it in the shop. So I go find a cool house and I knock on the door and I say, hey, could I take a picture of my box on your porch because it looks really cool and it's a beautiful porch. And sometimes they will say, sure, and sometimes they'll say, no, I don't, I don't like your box. And I say, no problem. I'm not going to take it personally. I'll just go find another porch and there's a lot of different portions all around. So don't take things personal. The third one is don't make assumptions. That's a huge one. And the last one is always do your best. So the Four Agreements, that's one of my favorite books. And who's the author of that? It's Don Guel Reese, I think that's how you say it, okay. And for any other women entrepreneurs in their fifties, I want another one of my favorites is a gift from the sea by Ann Morrow Lindbergh. It's very refreshing. Try to read it at least once a year written a long ago, but it really stays true to the times. Thank you for sharing that. Do you have a book, Eric? What's your book? Philosophical is probably Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. And from, you know, really from an impact perspective, Rich Dad Gourdad was a very important book for us, or for me, early on as far as he advocates that you work for yourself. And that's, I think, a really important mentality to have as you go into something like this. Absolutely. That's what I love, or what I love about Loco, even the two is supporting a local community, as well as entrepreneurs and small business, really does touch my heart, it's a passion. And so we're trying to help everyone we can, he's great. So one last question, do you have a favorite hangout in Longmont, or mountains? Or do you have time to hang out? My favorite hangout is probably a steamboat. We love steamboat, but when we're in town, Copper Sky Distillery is right next door to us. We become good friends with them as they grow their business. So we do spend some time there with them. And we love to get out and experience food. So we wouldn't say there's any one because we like to frequent many different places. Awesome. Anything for you, Heather? Oh goodness. The Gaffner family, with the ruse, smoking bowls, and half-aise, got wonderful, wonderful food. And they're always involved in the community. Just wonderful people. Yeah. And like Macintosh, it's one of my other quick paddleboard spots to hang out. The other night I went for a sunset and the sun literally right between the two peaks of the twin sisters, just the sunset right over it. I was with a friend and we just, it was kind of one of those moments. Yeah. Definitely hit a late night. Beautiful spot. Beautiful. Well, I want to thank you both for sitting in on this podcast. I had a great time. A lot of good information. I hope that there are other business owners that can. A lot of tips from this, so I really appreciate your time. Thank you for listening to today's episode of the Loco Short Podcast. This is Kurt Bear, founder of the Loco Think Tank and host of the Loco Experience Podcast. If you or someone you know would be a great guest for our show, or if you'd like to know more about our small business owner, pure advisory chapters at Loco Think Tank, please visit our website at localthinktank.com or email us at connect at localthinktank.com. That's L-O-C-O-Thinktank.com. If you've enjoyed this series, don't forget to subscribe. We love great reviews and Apple podcasts for wherever you're listening and until next time, stay local.