How The Queen of Wraps Scaled to Success: Loss Leaders, Capacity, and Margin Control

Summary

00:00 - Introduction to Heather Griffith-Barber

01:25 - The Origin Story of Queen of Raps

06:04 - Growing Up in an Entrepreneurial Family

11:01 - The Journey to Starting Queen of Raps

20:04 - The Evolution of the Business Model

23:01 - Navigating Early Business Challenges

24:58 - Marketing Strategies During Economic Downturns

27:52 - The Hamburger Analogy: Loss Leaders in Business

30:01 - Building Long-Term Customer Relationships

33:57 - Personal Inflection Points and Business Growth

38:56 - Life Changes and Business Adaptations

45:56 - The Decision to Sell: A New Chapter

47:43 - Navigating Family Dynamics in Business Exits

49:59 - The Villain Origin Story: Financial Freedom and Personal Growth

51:22 - The Importance of Choice in Relationships

53:21 - Breaking Free from Golden Handcuffs

58:15 - Empowering Women Through Financial Independence

01:01:34 - The Vision for Future Generations

01:10:05 - Building Confidence and Knowledge in Women Entrepreneurs

01:11:15 - Scaling Businesses: The Ideal Client Profile

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Full Transcript

Jeff Holman (00:01.122)
Hey there, welcome back everybody. This is the breakout CEO podcast. I'm Jeff Holman and I'm here today with Heather. Heather, tell me, do you say your full name or your, I should ask this beforehand, but you know, why not ask right now and let everybody say it. Tell us, is it all three names, two last names, one last name? It's on LinkedIn and everybody's gonna have this question, so.

Heather Barber (00:20.041)
I usually go by Heather Griffith Barber because my maiden name is so well known around here.

Jeff Holman (00:29.376)
Awesome. Awesome. Well, Heather Griffith-Barber, it's great to have you here. And I get to be the one who asks the embarrassing questions like that. And so it's really fun to have you on the podcast today. Yeah, for sure. So I just mentioned beforehand, and I probably am not alone, if you're in Utah and you've driven down I-15 through Salt Lake City, we've probably all seen you.

Heather Barber (00:42.079)
Thanks for having me.

Jeff Holman (00:56.182)
The Queen of Raps, we've seen your billboards or your, think it was actually the side of a building, if I'm not mistaken, right? We've seen that. And I think I've read a little bit about your history, but I'm coming in a little bit fresh here. So we're gonna get the story on your background and then also what you're doing now, because I know you're leveraging what you did before into helping other people. So there's a story here to be shared and I'm glad to be helping to bring that to the audience.

Heather Barber (01:00.883)
Yep. Yep.

Heather Barber (01:25.013)
Oh, well, thank you. yeah, we've had 18 years. We've had that building on, it's literally the corner of I-15 and I-80 in Salt Lake City. And so it's kind of been an institution for 18 years. And it did not start out that way. didn't, it kind of just ended up like that.

Jeff Holman (01:36.813)
Nice.

Jeff Holman (01:48.854)
You didn't just have a building and think I'll just land a business in here and everything will be fine, huh?

Heather Barber (01:54.45)
You know, I started with the storage set. So here's our origin story.

Jeff Holman (01:59.084)
Well, and tell us what, it was Queen of Raps. That's the name of the business, right? Is that also a moniker for you or did you go by Queen of Raps and the business was, there you go. I always wondered that. drove by, I'm like, is this the person or is this the business or is this both?

Heather Barber (02:02.901)
correct.

Heather Barber (02:08.309)
I've always been the queen.

Heather Barber (02:13.459)
Both, both, it's all encompassing. So actually our entrepreneurial journey, our meaning, I own the business of three of my brothers and we grew up in a very entrepreneurial family. Like I was the only eight year old with a job and my dad was super excited when fall break came and Easter break because he had all this unpaid labor that we could go and do things.

Jeff Holman (02:16.771)
Awesome.

Jeff Holman (02:24.163)
Fantastic.

Jeff Holman (02:41.038)
what did he do? How did he leverage you? What did he do to bring you? Did he have his own business?

Heather Barber (02:43.733)
you

Heather Barber (02:48.173)
Yes, so he by day, he did medical sales. But by night, he owned a business brokerage, because he wanted his kids to learn how to work. And so he would buy small businesses, he would add

Jeff Holman (02:54.689)
Okay.

Heather Barber (03:06.779)
break them up, you know, just the OG private equity would either buy other businesses, put them together or break them up into pieces and then sell them. So we had like a million family businesses. So like an art gallery, a framing company, a cleaning company, a handyman service, a grease trap cleaning company. So

Jeff Holman (03:33.714)
wow.

Heather Barber (03:36.058)
ran the gamut. Like my dad was completely industry agnostic. He just bought the companies, saw where he could add value and then flipped them. like here's one example. I was, I don't know, 12, 13, somewhere that age when you like wanted to spend the summer with your friends. And my dad did not think that was a good idea. So

Jeff Holman (03:40.514)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (04:00.279)
Yeah

Heather Barber (04:05.617)
We owned a commercial framing company. So we not only built the frames like for artwork for a hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska, we loaded up a U-Haul and the entire family drove it out to Lincoln, Nebraska. And I was literally holding the pictures while the actual employees who knew what they were doing were hammering them into the walls.

Jeff Holman (04:19.074)
Hmph.

drove it out there.

Heather Barber (04:35.581)
And we did that for, I don't even know how many patient rooms, weeks we spent in Lincoln, Nebraska. And my dad was like, this is great, July in Lincoln. And that's what we did, like 12 hours a day. And that's just what the plan was. So we grew up in a very entrepreneurial family. And like I said, this was not my dad's full-time gig. So he pawned a lot of the work, pawned a lot of the work off to my brothers and I.

Jeff Holman (04:44.109)
Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Holman (04:51.895)
That's so funny.

Jeff Holman (05:03.137)
Yeah, yeah.

Heather Barber (05:05.461)
So my older brother was, I don't know, it was before he was a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So he was 18, 19, know, somewhere right in there. And that means I was 17. And we were literally running a commercial cleaning company, doing that, for him, taking in invoices and calling customers. And we were running it.

Jeff Holman (05:15.639)
Mm-hmm.

Excuse me. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (05:27.841)
Meaning doing the cleaning.

Heather Barber (05:35.574)
And so we learned really early on what this looked like. So when an opportunity came, and I'll get into that in a second, we honestly didn't even think twice about it. It was like second nature to us because we had been doing, we knew what it took. We knew what the deal was from the beginning. So this was not like, I'm going to go fly to the moon. It was like, okay, here's a good idea. Let's go for it.

Jeff Holman (05:35.681)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (06:04.83)
It was just like last spring break or last summer. No, I've...

Heather Barber (06:07.029)
Correct, yeah. Like, this is easier being the boss than working for my dad. Let's put it that way.

Jeff Holman (06:12.715)
Yeah, I can imagine. can imagine. I will say I've spent a summer or a week in the summer in Lincoln, Nebraska, and it is hot and the humidity will kill you. So that was interesting.

Heather Barber (06:23.041)
Yes. And there is relatively nothing to do for a 12, know, 13 year old girl in Lincoln, Nebraska. So we were eating at Perkins Family Restaurant and like staying in the Best Western. Like it was, you know, this was 20 years ago, 30 years ago. was, yeah. I was...

Jeff Holman (06:32.149)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (06:40.205)
It was the high life, right? It's getting stuff done. Like that's how, that's how, so I have a dad who's he's in real estate, but he's, he's had his own thing. And as you're, as you're describing this, I think back to when I was, I think I was 10 or 12 and I would, I would get on the bus from here and we'd take a 30 minute bus ride north of here. My, me and my brother and my sister who were, I think my sister might've been 14 at the time.

My brother was probably 12, I was 11 or something like that. We'd get on the bus. This was our summer job. We'd get on the bus, we'd go out to one of the apartment complexes that he had built. And we would, I think my sister would clean with the staff. And my brother and I, I don't remember what we did exactly, except we spent a couple of weeks sweeping the parking lot and then by hand rolling new parking lines. I'm sure they look terrible, but that's what we did for.

like the whole summer. it's just, you you just when your when your parents are in it, you're in it too.

Heather Barber (07:44.482)
That's exactly, and that's actually one of the things, I have two daughters, and they don't get away with anything now. Just because I sold Queen of Raps doesn't mean that they're not doing things for me. Like they're working for me right now. It is, no, this is a family endeavor. This is not like,

Jeff Holman (07:52.861)
yes.

Heather Barber (08:04.449)
Okay, mom makes money this way. No, that's not how this goes. This is a whole family plan here. I think the parents, so let me get on the soapbox for a second here. You know, from the beginning of time, kids have gone to work with their parents. Like my parents spent three years in, or two years in South Africa.

Jeff Holman (08:08.492)
Yeah, yeah.

Heather Barber (08:31.333)
And it was not unusual to see babies, even toddlers on the backs of these women while they're picking vegetables, while they're picking, you know, whatever, cleaning. They go with the mothers and learn how to work. And not only that help, you know, they're cleaning the vegetables, they're peeling the potatoes, they're doing all these different things. I don't know where we got off thinking, like we, my kids just had fall break last week, like.

Jeff Holman (08:45.186)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Barber (08:59.647)
They don't need to go to a trampoline park. That's not what needs to happen. They need to like get real life skills and learn, okay, this is what the plan is. This is what we're doing. They don't need to be entertained. They need to be taught how to work and how to be, you know, efficient member of society. Anyway, that's a soap box for another day, but I think we're doing kids a real disservice by making their lives.

Jeff Holman (09:05.705)
Yes. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (09:24.65)
No, it's a fair point.

Heather Barber (09:28.764)
know, rainbows and gumdrops.

Jeff Holman (09:30.572)
Yeah, no, for sure. I as I was so I have a 15 year old still at home and my other three are out of the house now. And as I was driving him back, I'd taken him to tennis and I'm driving him back. I'm like, hey, we got to go clean the office building like this. That's one of my my kids have all grown up cleaning and probably hating cleaning the office building, right? It's just we do that and it's a building we own and rent out and we clean it and we cleaned it every week for the last 12 years because you know, that's that's what we need to do, right?

Heather Barber (09:57.631)
Great.

Yes.

Jeff Holman (10:00.573)
And he's like, I don't want to go clean tonight. We should have done it over the weekend. I'm like, well, we should have, but we didn't. And now it's, it's gotta be done. He's like, I want to go to the gym. you know, I don't, I'm like, I'm like, dude, I just spent an hour and a half waiting for you at your tennis lesson. Like we're going to go clean now you've had, and he's a great kid, right? He's really good. So I'm not, just putting him on the spot for a, maybe a little outburst in the moment. Right. But that's, I agree with you 100%. It's a soap box worth standing on for sure.

Heather Barber (10:25.939)
Yes. And I feel like especially

parents that grew up working like in family businesses and stuff for some reason go the opposite. Like their kids shouldn't have these lives of working and I feel, my personal opinion is different than that. I feel like kids should learn how to work from an early age and these are the responsibilities. This is our whole family and we're all in this together. We're all on a team. It's not, know, dad bringing in money.

Jeff Holman (10:57.143)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (11:01.793)
and no, that's not how this goes.

Jeff Holman (11:03.789)
Well, it clearly worked for you and your brothers. You guys started, you said, was it 13 years ago or what? 18 years ago. 18 years ago you guys started this. why, so how did you guys come upon this? Was this maybe something your dad said, hey, I saw this business, let's buy it and do it. Or did you start it from scratch? How did that start?

Heather Barber (11:10.485)
18 years ago. Yeah.

Heather Barber (11:23.397)
No, okay, so this is like literally the craziest story you've ever heard in your life. So like I said, my dad had a business brokerage. He actually owned the brokerage that bought and sold these businesses. And so he, my younger brother, so we have three siblings that are very close, very, close. And then we have a huge gap. We have eight year gap and then my youngest brother.

So the three older kids, so my younger brother was 21, I was 23, and my older brother, you know, the Y's older brother was like 24, 25-ish at this point. And younger brother came home from his mission and got engaged, bought a house, going to school, no job. And so my dad's like, why don't you pick out a company and you can run it and that'll be your job.

Jeff Holman (11:51.585)
Yep, I know what that's like.

Jeff Holman (12:13.388)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Barber (12:21.349)
And my brother went through all the listings and stuff. He's like, dad, I really want this inflatable company. And I am talking like giant gorillas at car dealerships. And my dad's like, yeah, that's not going to happen. Not even that, not even as sophisticated as that. Literally like the gorillas and like the hot air balloons. Like that's it.

Jeff Holman (12:28.161)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (12:33.767)
not the slides and the obstacle courses. Okay.

Jeff Holman (12:44.333)
And those are rentals, I assume. People rent those out, you set them up for a while, and then you take them down to the next dealership. Okay?

Heather Barber (12:46.751)
Correct.

Heather Barber (12:50.941)
That's exactly right.

So he's like, I really want this inflatable company. My dad's like, there's no way in hell I'm buying this. And he's like, please dad, please. So my dad went and looked at the numbers and saw that this business was basically these giant inflatables that were 10 grand, 15 grand each. So he's like, okay, well, that's a really good depreciation that I can use this year on my taxes. So let's go ahead and do it. Like full well thinking my brother was going to run this into the ground and it was just going to be terrible.

Jeff Holman (13:13.574)
timing was right.

Jeff Holman (13:21.461)
Yeah. Okay.

Heather Barber (13:24.349)
And so my younger brother who is unreal, like I can't even tell you what an amazing person he is. Like as we speak right now, he's opening up his second Chick-fil-A restaurant. Like he's just unreal. Like his brain just goes.

Jeff Holman (13:38.567)
really, wow. And those are tough to get. Not many people open up one, let alone two.

Heather Barber (13:45.046)
That's exactly it is easier to get into Harvard Business School than it is to get a Chick-fil-A and he has to. So he's a pretty amazing person. So he's 21 and he's, you know, got the eye of the tiger. And in the first year he took it from a hundred thousand to a million with him and a guy that didn't speak English.

Jeff Holman (13:50.187)
Yeah. Wow. That's amazing.

Jeff Holman (14:04.235)
Wait, this is the gorillas. We're talking about the gorillas, not the Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A's do a million bucks. You're telling me the gorilla business did a million. The inflatables was doing a million dollars. Okay, that's some growth.

Heather Barber (14:06.109)
Yes. No. No, no, The gorillas. Correct. Correct. Extremely impressive. I mean, this guy could literally like sell sand in the Sahara. Like he is unbelievable.

Um, so he, he realized there were really only two calls to make because at that time in Salt Lake city, you have to keep in mind, this was like in Salt Lake 2003, 2004, 2004-ish. There were only two major players, Ken Garff and Larry H Miller. So he made two calls and realized it was a lot easier to sell to an entire group.

Jeff Holman (14:35.042)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (14:45.484)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (14:52.809)
than to go individually to these car dealers. So he found out who makes the decisions at these two companies and he was off to the races.

Jeff Holman (15:02.221)
And just for those who haven't, or maybe aren't from Salt Lake City, that's because those groups, they were actual groups. had, I mean, how many dealerships would Larry Miller have across the country? yeah, he's been going, I mean, that was his deal. He built like a billion dollar business out of it, bought the Utah Jazz from that. They owned across the US. Ken Garff, I don't know the size of it, might not be as big as Larry Miller, but multiples, multiples, right?

Heather Barber (15:11.977)
hundreds.

Yeah.

Heather Barber (15:26.129)
It's not, it's not, but at that time, Ken Garff probably had, I don't know, 30 to 40 dealerships. So two major players in the market, the rest were just kind of mom and pop stuffs. So, he, went and did that. And the thing about car dealers that

Jeff Holman (15:33.325)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (15:39.223)
So.

Heather Barber (15:45.48)
is amazing and other people are this way also, is that if they can make one call and get multiple things, they're going to do that. They want their lives to be easier. So pretty soon the car dealers started asking like, hey, can this gorilla hold a banner that says 0 % financing? So my brother Matt said, yes. No idea where to get a banner, no idea what to do, gives them an invoice.

Jeff Holman (16:04.589)
yep.

Jeff Holman (16:13.389)
Not only can he hold it, we can print it for you and we'll bring it next week after we figure out what we're doing. Yeah. Of course, of course.

Heather Barber (16:16.957)
Why not?

That's exactly. you pay for this upfront, you know? So he gives them an invoice and they're like, great, this is wonderful. So he's like, crap, what am I gonna do? And our older brothers, you know, the wise older brother, 24 or 25 at this point, is a real technophile. And so Matt went to Nate and said, hey, I need to figure out how to like...

print banners and what to do. And so to put a bandaid on it, Nate figured out where to buy it. And of course we lost money on the first one and whatever. But Nate figured out, hey, we need to buy this printer. We can do X, Y, and Z. These are the zip ties we need to use. He figured out all the specifics. He's a real operation genius, like absolute genius with this. So Nate started working at the family business, at the

Jeff Holman (16:51.277)
Sure, sure.

Jeff Holman (17:06.21)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (17:11.601)
at the inflation creations is what it was called. And then they started saying, the card dealers said, okay, well, can you guys do vehicle wraps? Now, I just want you to imagine like Salt Lake City in 2005 at this point, like we were not that far off from horse and buggies. Like this is a very unsophisticated market.

Jeff Holman (17:14.31)
Okay

Jeff Holman (17:34.219)
Yeah, I know. This was a little bit beyond, like I remember my dad again in the real estate business years before that, but I don't think people were doing a whole lot of wraps 18 years ago, but he had that magnet sign that he had for a vehicle. It's like the for sale sign size and it's whatever your business name and slap it on, take it off, whatever. I don't remember how long he had that. It wasn't very long, but that's what people did that I remember.

Heather Barber (17:50.099)
Yes.

Heather Barber (17:55.145)
Yes.

Heather Barber (18:02.271)
Correct, correct. And we had seen, my brothers and I had seen in other markets, New York, LA, Chicago, Miami, vehicle wraps, like full bus wraps, full truck wraps, things like that. We had seen that in more sophisticated markets, but there was literally nothing going on in Salt Lake. And so we said, okay, this could be something. This could really turn into something.

Jeff Holman (18:15.468)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (18:24.087)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (18:32.625)
So we got together and at that point I was in and my older brother and my younger brother and then our youngest brother was like in high school at the time.

Jeff Holman (18:44.533)
and to do something on his spring break. Yeah.

Heather Barber (18:47.893)
You got it. you know, free labor is the best kind of labor. And so we came up with this business plan and said, Hey, there's a real hole in the market. We should do vehicle wraps. And the funniest part was like, we didn't know anything about vehicle wraps, like not even one thing, but we wanted to convey that not only did we know what we were doing, we were the authority in town. And so

Jeff Holman (19:06.55)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (19:15.437)
Well, can I pause you there? Because some people may not make the jump. Vehicle wraps, they use the same or similar equipment as the vinyl banners, right? And so you guys had the equipment already. You'd bought it for the car dealership banners held by the gorillas or whatever. So that's why, that was the leap between what you were doing was just simply you had the equipment. How do we leverage that a little bit more or a lot more?

Heather Barber (19:17.994)
Yes.

Heather Barber (19:25.653)
Correct.

Heather Barber (19:41.66)
Exactly. You got it. You hit the nail on the head. is like what we've been doing for years and year and I remind me to come back to COVID where we use our existing hardware and just put in a different material and able to get a whole new business plan, a whole new market out of using the same backend.

Jeff Holman (19:58.645)
Yeah, okay.

Heather Barber (20:04.293)
So we started printing these car wraps and we decided to call it Queen of Wraps for a couple of reasons. Number one, we wanted that authority. We wanted to just like, we aren't just good at wraps. Like we are the queen of wraps. We are it. You know, we are the bomb.com type thing. And the other thing is, and I'm sure in talking to me, this is not a surprise to you or any of the listeners, but.

kind of rule the roost in my family. I'm very Taipei.

Jeff Holman (20:34.156)
I was going to ask how did you get, because you had at least the two, I think it's Nate's your older brother, then there's you, and then what was your next younger brother's name? Matt. The Chick-fil-A and Brian's younger. So yeah, it was interesting to me. As soon as you said, okay, it's me and it was three brothers, I thought, what did Heather do to get Nate, Matt, and Brian, right, to agree?

Heather Barber (20:46.01)
Matt is the one that owns Chick-fil-A and then Brian is my youngest brother.

Jeff Holman (21:03.98)
to let you be the face of it. Was it an easy conversation?

Heather Barber (21:09.095)
It wasn't even a conversation. like honestly wasn't. It's like, okay, here's the plan. Here's what we're doing. And this is how you're going to help. Just like, you know, Sunday dinner. Okay, here are your assignments. Be here at five o'clock and we are doing this game.

Jeff Holman (21:23.596)
So it wasn't that somebody else said, let's talk, how should we do this? How should we? You just said, you know what, I've got a vision. Here's what we're gonna do. Let's get going.

Heather Barber (21:34.25)
Well, we all, okay. We all had like saw the market. It was just, it's not like I was the CEO or I was far from the CEO. I'm just the one with the loudest voice. And so my face is on the side of the building is basically what this comes down to. Yeah. Yes.

Jeff Holman (21:40.876)
Uh-huh.

Jeff Holman (21:49.676)
Got it. You're the spokesperson. Very good. Very good.

Heather Barber (21:54.474)
I've always been like the marketing type person and the branding type person. And so it was the slam dunk, the queen of raps. And honestly, like here's, here's the real honest truth. You're getting the nitty gritty. There is a Seinfeld episode with the whiz and Elaine dates the whiz. And we had seen that like a couple of days before and like the crown with the ting and I am the whiz. I'm like, wouldn't that be awesome? And.

Jeff Holman (22:12.284)
Mmm, yeah.

Jeff Holman (22:21.406)
Yes, yes.

that's where the crown came from. That is so funny. From the whiz.

Heather Barber (22:26.325)
Yep. Yep. So there we are. That's how. And so we started that with a loan from dad. And this was, I want you to keep in mind, 2005, 2006, 2007, like interest rates were 0.5%. My dad charged us 8%.

Jeff Holman (22:36.682)
huh.

Jeff Holman (22:46.154)
Right? Yeah.

Jeff Holman (22:50.142)
I wanted you to feel the reality when the economic situation in the society came back. You this is how you need to plan for this, because it's going to be this at some point. And in fact, you guys may have been impacted by the downturn, the recession. Yeah.

Heather Barber (22:53.289)
Yes. You got it.

Heather Barber (23:01.237)
That's it.

Heather Barber (23:06.025)
Huge, So that was an interesting time. We were so young and so dumb and so stupid, 2007, 2008, like we didn't even know there was a recession going on. We had no clue. We were so inexperienced and young that our competitors...

literally like went out of business. We were the last man standing. We didn't even know it was an option to close the doors. didn't even, we like didn't even register, wasn't even on our radar because we had never experienced anything like that. We just, okay, here's your business. You plan your work and you work your plan and this is what you do. So that didn't even occur to us. And it wasn't until years after we were like,

Jeff Holman (23:56.266)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (23:59.354)
my gosh, we like crossed a threadbare rope bridge with alligators underneath snapping and you know, wanting to eat us. We didn't even know. We were just so ignorant and so young. It also helped that none of us had kids, you know. My younger brother was married, I wasn't. My older brother wasn't married. Like, my youngest brother was in high school living at home. You know, it was just, it wasn't...

Jeff Holman (24:22.186)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (24:27.104)
You were scrappy, you were agile. Yeah, no, and that's, and you didn't have any of the kind of the perhaps debt or the baggage that a larger company would have or the staff that you, how do you keep the staff on? I think some people get tired, right? They get in their business and when a downturn happens, they're like, you know what, I think it's just time. Like it's been a long time, we've had a good run. Let's just succumb right now and call it a.

Heather Barber (24:27.303)
We didn't know. We didn't know what we didn't know.

Heather Barber (24:37.171)
No.

Jeff Holman (24:53.546)
you know, call it a success that we were open for this long and you guys are just getting started. Like you said, you're young, you're scrappy. You don't have a lot of the other obligations. Were you finding success during that time though? Or was it tough? So even during the recession.

Heather Barber (24:58.517)
Correct.

Heather Barber (25:06.229)
huge success, giant success. We grew big time. One of the biggest successes that we had is that the building, so we were in a storage shed behind Miller Honey on West Temple. Just think about that location and so far back and behind a honey production. mean, it like...

Jeff Holman (25:21.462)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (25:25.427)
Okay.

Heather Barber (25:34.12)
It was not glamorous. We knew that we needed more exposure. And so the thing about a downturn that's really interesting is you need to get a bigger piece of the pie. Well, smart businesses start marketing more rather than contracting their marketing budgets.

Jeff Holman (25:36.428)
You

Heather Barber (25:59.638)
they expand that so they need a bigger piece and so their marketing needs to go forward. So we knew the same thing. mean, that was, you know, what business school 101, like that's what it is. You need to get a bigger piece. And this building became available on I-15 and I-80 right there on the corner. And it was vacated.

Jeff Holman (26:14.561)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (26:25.863)
either just prior to 2007 or just like something happened. I can't remember the exact story, but the landlord needed that space filled like immediately and especially in the recession. So we got heck of a deal on it. And it was, it's 17,000 square feet. And it was way too big, way too big for our business when we first signed the lease.

Jeff Holman (26:49.974)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (26:54.609)
And so our original plan, in fact, we built a wall. We split the building up into thirds. And our plan was to take one third and then rent out the sublease the other two portions of the building. Well, by the time we moved in, we tore down the walls that we had just built because we needed the space. That's how exponentially it grew. And it was all from

Jeff Holman (27:05.013)
Rent out, yeah.

Jeff Holman (27:16.301)
Oh, really? Wow. Wow.

Heather Barber (27:23.837)
And, and we're drinking our own Kool-Aid. I'd like to bring this up. Like we are drinking our own Kool-Aid. We have wrapped vehicles. We have banners on I-15, like literally the size of a billboard. And all we did was put up those banners and business just started flooding in. So that's a, a huge lesson that we learned is location, location, location. you need to go where your customers are.

Jeff Holman (27:49.442)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (27:52.874)
And like you said, people are driving up and down I-15. That's where people are in Salt Lake City. They're driving up and down I-15. And so the other interesting thing is we learned very, very, very early on that man cannot live by wraps alone. The margins are razor thin in vehicle wraps. And so

Jeff Holman (28:16.204)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Barber (28:19.003)
Again, using our same hardware, our same backend, we used, we like to call the vehicle wrap the hamburger. So that's get our foot in the door. Most people that are getting a vehicle wrap, it's going to be their first huge marketing expense. So this is a pest control company. This is a plumber. This is a solopreneur. And the first thing they're going to do is wrap their company vehicle. Okay.

Jeff Holman (28:45.226)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (28:46.077)
well, we are going to grow with those clients. So now they need a trade show booth. Now they need banners. Now they need flags. Now they need t-shirts. Now they need, you know, whatever these ancillary products are. And so we call the vehicle wrap our hamburger and then we get those clients. And a lot of times it's

They came to us when no one else would work with them or no one else would extend them credit or different things like this. So they remembered how we treated them. still make so many logos, you have no idea, because people just come to us like, I own Joe's plumbing. Do you have anything? No, I don't even have a website. OK, well, now you need to call this person. We're almost like their ad agency. correct. Exactly. Yes.

Jeff Holman (29:11.197)
Hmm

Jeff Holman (29:30.612)
It's the same as the banner concept. I do inflatables, can I do a banner? Yeah, sure. I'm curious though about this hamburger thing. I haven't heard this before. Is this, is it, no, it's our hamburger. Does that mean like I go into a fast food restaurant, I want a burger, but then it's like, I'm gonna add some fries and a drink and maybe a, so the hamburger, like am I getting that right?

Heather Barber (29:38.901)
Are you ha-

Heather Barber (29:47.433)
and the drink.

Heather Barber (29:52.054)
Correct, so you lose money on the hamburger. Every hamburger money, every hamburger that is purchased at McDonald's, they've lost money.

Jeff Holman (29:54.773)
okay.

Jeff Holman (30:01.78)
I did not know this. I, yeah, no, this is, this isn't a business book and I didn't read. Like I went to business school and I, I've never heard this hamburger, this hamburger analogy. Got it. Yeah. I understand that concept. just didn't, I like, I like the hamburger concept. I'm going to use that.

Heather Barber (30:03.332)
really? Okay.

Heather Barber (30:08.885)
It's a loss leader. The other way to put it is a loss leader. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then we sell them the fries and the drink. So that's another lesson that we learned. So location, location, location. And then the second one is the lifetime customer value. If we just looked at our business by wraps,

Jeff Holman (30:33.27)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Barber (30:39.461)
Number one, our relationships would be nowhere. And number two, these customers aren't worth a lot to us. But if we can get them in infancy, then as they grow that lifetime customer value over 18 years of having this business becomes astronomical. And so we learned that really early on. And I would equate that, not equate, but I would...

give credit to my dad for teaching us this back in the day, back when, you know, we were framing these pictures, when we were doing this cleaning, he didn't just see the customer as what can I get, you know, this pay period or how can I do this? He could see the full picture. He could see, okay, this leads to point D, I want this business, I want this business.

Jeff Holman (31:26.475)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (31:35.934)
And so he's able to strategically leverage those relationships. And he's, feel like my dad is the original Michael Scott, the win-win-win. Like he wants every relationship to be a win-win-win. And so we learned that very, very early on. So when we started Queen of Raps, it wasn't even like, how do we do this? We already knew the play. We already knew what was going on.

Jeff Holman (32:01.249)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (32:03.765)
And so I felt like that really helped us expand into different product offerings using the same backend. So Queen of Wraps actually ended up being five companies. Queen of Wraps is the only one that your average person would know though. The five other vertically integrated companies that help with that stack, with that tech stack.

Jeff Holman (32:17.595)
okay.

Jeff Holman (32:28.554)
Were those like the website design and the logos and the or was it or were they more diverse companies that were that went along with that?

Heather Barber (32:36.629)
So no, not website design. Well logos are our guys would do website design. We would farm out to other people. But like for example, my older brother who I said is like an operations genius. He realized we were paying way too much for material because we were buying them from an in-between source. And he realized that if we bought pallets and truckloads of this material, we could become a supplier and therefore supplying ourselves

Jeff Holman (32:56.798)
Okay.

Heather Barber (33:05.939)
with much cheaper material. So therefore our margins would be bigger than your average company. So he figured out blah, blah, blah, blah, I've got to do X, Y, and Z. And so he lined up truckloads and would sell to other companies this material. some people might, you got it. So some people might say like, why would you sell wrap material to your competitors? Well, I'm paying less for that material than they are.

Jeff Holman (33:12.362)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (33:24.192)
Got it. So a little vertical integration going on.

Jeff Holman (33:36.139)
Right.

Heather Barber (33:36.147)
Like that, it makes sense. So if you look at the entire picture, it makes tons of sense.

Jeff Holman (33:42.314)
Yeah, no price leadership like being able to sell for less and still maintain an acceptable margin that nobody else can beat. Then you can be the price leader in the market. That's fantastic. Well, I'm really curious.

Heather Barber (33:49.332)
You got it. Yep. Exactly. So that's just one, one example of something that we did. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (33:57.643)
Yeah, that's awesome. I'm really curious though, were there, like if there, was there a moment in your business and we could, know, you and I think we have some parallels in how we were brought up and our, maybe our parents and what they did. I think we could talk for a long, time, but I want to be respectful of your time too. I'm curious though about growing that business or you know, some part of either your development personally throughout that process or the businesses.

trajectory, like was there a moment that really kind of flipped the switch for you guys? It sounds like you had pretty good success, maybe even great success right out of the gate, but were there any moments where you said, hey, you we really have to shift how we're thinking or we need to make a change in our, I don't know if you've changed in your team, that's hard when you have a family business, a change in your, you know, the market you're going after. Like what were some of the inflection points though, throughout the 18 years?

Heather Barber (34:48.49)
Yes.

Heather Barber (34:57.595)
So there are many. Let me just say that. There are many. One I want to focus on is more of a personal inflection point. we knew, again, from my parents, from my dad, we knew that we wanted a lifestyle business. So there are

Jeff Holman (35:02.444)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (35:26.921)
you know, back to grad school, like you have a lifestyle business and you have a scalable business, okay? A lifestyle business provided us trips to Disney World, provided us corporate retreats to, you know, Alaska, whatever, this type of thing. So we knew we wanted a lifestyle business. The other thing is our underlying mission, our goal. And...

Speaking of Chick-fil-A, so Chick-fil-A's goal, their mission, if you walk into any Chick-fil-A, is to glorify God. That is their mission statement, is to glorify God. They happen to do that through chicken sandwiches, but their underlying mission is to glorify God. So we knew as a family that our underlying mission

Jeff Holman (36:02.241)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (36:20.109)
was to foster eternal relationships. We knew that was of paramount importance. Money was secondary. We knew that that's what it was. So for me personally, what happened was I was 30. So I eventually got married and

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was 30, I was pregnant and I was working in the business and day to day, like this was literally like what I was doing. I was the director of sales. Like this is what the plan was. I was working in the business and I unexpectedly had, not unexpectedly, but at 36 weeks, I had my daughter and I literally left my desk.

Jeff Holman (36:52.95)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (37:10.907)
exactly as it was because in my mind, you know, in six weeks, I was going to be back at that desk. And this is my first child. Yes, first child. And I was going to be in the hospital bed and this is how old I am working on my Blackberry and like being on the cover of mom CEO magazine. Like this is how it was going to go. I was going to go back to work.

Jeff Holman (37:19.914)
Was this your first child? Okay, yeah.

Heather Barber (37:38.742)
My daughter was born and blah blah blah blah blah. It became immediately clear. My daughter was born with special needs and it was.

really, really difficult. Like I can't even explain to you how difficult it was. And I'm a new mom and I just had the C-section and they're like, here, take care of this baby who has just spent time at primary children. She was life flighted up to primary children's on her second day of life. And she never took a bottle, never breastfed, never anything. And I'm like, what have I done? Like, this is just insane. And basically the entire first year of her life, she lived at primary children's.

Jeff Holman (37:59.425)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (38:21.521)
And so I was with her. I was feeding her. I was pumping and putting it in a feeding tube. And she had a surgically implanted feeding tube in her stomach. It was a complete chaos, complete chaos. So my life was extremely chaotic. And she had a surgically implanted feeding tube for four years. So I was pumping every three hours because she couldn't take formula in order to have enough milk.

Jeff Holman (38:33.846)
Wow, that's so much to deal with.

Jeff Holman (38:46.859)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (38:50.185)
for this child that I was putting it in a feeding tube. I mean, it was just horrific. Like, I can't even explain to you how bad it was.

Jeff Holman (38:56.82)
And I can't imagine that. That's I mean, that's it's so different from, you know, one day you're the office, you're like, I'll be back in a few weeks and then four years or more later. You're and you know, I don't I have four kids. None of them have special needs. They're all great. They all have their own challenges. Right. But but no one that you would classify as special needs. I have an uncle, though, that that's Down syndrome. He's he's he's I mean, in his 60s now. And I look at my grandma who raised him.

Heather Barber (39:03.53)
Yes.

Heather Barber (39:06.879)
four years.

Heather Barber (39:25.181)
It's a lot. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (39:25.324)
Her entire life, right? He was there the entire time she passed away a few years ago. And I know it's a challenge. Like I don't know exactly the challenges you've had, but I've watched family with some of those ongoing responsibilities. I don't even want to call it challenge, although I know it's hard. I don't think my grandma would ever call it a challenge, right? was, there's challenges or yeah.

Heather Barber (39:48.104)
It's just different.

Jeff Holman (39:49.997)
But it's different responsibilities than what you think you're gonna, then when you're like, I'm gonna go back and, you know, I'll be back in the office and I'll deal with those responsibilities soon. That was totally derailing for you.

Heather Barber (39:52.981)
correct.

Yes.

Yes.

Heather Barber (40:02.953)
completely derailing. There's an old, there's an old story.

about like you really really want to go to Italy and and you plan this trip to Italy and you get your passport and you plan out your itinerary and everything and then you get on the plane and the plane lands and says welcome to Holland and you're like no no no I was supposed to go to Italy I was supposed to go to Italy that's where I'm supposed to go but then you live in Holland and you realize like oh Holland has tulips Holland has windmills it's just different

You thought it was going to be one way, but your life is different. And that's exactly what happened to me is, and shout out to my brothers and my entire family because we knew the mission, their niece. So my daughter getting her better was the most of paramount importance. The business was secondary.

Jeff Holman (40:36.928)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (40:40.79)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (40:55.574)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (41:05.173)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (41:05.619)
to all of this. And so my checks kept coming in. I still had ownership in the business. I was still getting dividends. I was not drawing a paycheck because I wasn't working there, but I was still getting dividends and the benefits of the business because of my ownership. And shout out to my brothers who are just amazing, kind, wonderful human beings. Never once did they...

Begrudge me for not showing up every day for not like we would have a board meeting and My daughter would be in surgery Sorry, I can't go we would have a big deadline and they would send out an all-hands email and I would literally show up with my baby because I couldn't hire a babysitter because she had such acute needs Like she would come with me

Jeff Holman (41:41.964)
Hmm.

Jeff Holman (41:56.084)
Right.

Heather Barber (41:59.752)
And yeah, that sucks when you have a kid in a commercial printing shop, but I didn't have any options. Like, do you want me to help? Like this is, and my brothers were so Christlike and so kind and like, Hey, we're all in this together. Let's get this girl better. And so during that time, I stepped back and, coincidentally, not, not planned, not, not anything.

Jeff Holman (42:06.698)
Yeah. Yeah.

Heather Barber (42:29.257)
Like this just happened to be at the same timeframe. My brother, my youngest brother had applied to get a Chick-fil-A franchise and it takes years to get these things. And so blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, and I don't even know what year, maybe.

Jeff Holman (42:39.04)
Franchise, yeah.

Heather Barber (42:48.725)
2012, 2013, somewhere in there. I don't know what year he got this. Chick-fil-A called out of the blue. was like, hey, are you still interested? And so he started down that road. So by the end of these five years, let's call it five years. So my daughter went back. We finally got ready for life and we got it all sorted out. And she went to kindergarten. And then I was ready to go back to work at that point. So about five years into this.

Jeff Holman (42:57.484)
Hmph.

Jeff Holman (43:16.214)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Barber (43:18.293)
My other brother got a Chick-fil-A right at that exact same time and both of us realized like this business is doing better without us.

Jeff Holman (43:31.178)
Really? So wait, you had two brothers, your youngest and your, so that was Matt and Brian, right? I think, did I give them,

Heather Barber (43:37.829)
Nate is the oldest, he's my COO, and then Brian is my youngest, he's the CFO. Those were the two last standing in the business, working day to day.

Jeff Holman (43:41.813)
Right.

Jeff Holman (43:47.1)
okay. okay. So they're in the business. Yeah.

Heather Barber (43:50.39)
So the middle brother and I ended up leaving the business, the day-to-day business, 2011 for me, April 13th, 2011, because that's when my daughter was born and my life completely changed. And then Matt was probably like 2014, 2015, somewhere right in there. And so by then our youngest brother,

Jeff Holman (44:05.707)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (44:17.981)
had gone to school, became the CFO, and really just took this to all new heights, could see like, hey, here's our breakeven. Like he was the one doing all these projections and doing all of this. If we, I totally forget the name, but you know, in grad school, they teach you like, here is the point that you need to make where your revenue, your margins go exponentially. Your baseline stays the same. There you go.

Jeff Holman (44:42.834)
over your fixed costs and your variable costs. You cover all your fixed costs, all of a sudden everything you make above that, it's just variable costs. And so there's a way higher profit margin for that portion. Yeah.

Heather Barber (44:50.941)
is just

complete gravy and you can scale and so he figured out that inflection point and He realized okay. We're really gonna take this off if we get to this point in sales I think it was like six million in sales or something like that Anything above that is just going to be astronomical growth and not only astronomical growth astronomical cash and so we were like

Jeff Holman (45:08.0)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (45:12.405)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (45:17.563)
my brother Matt and I were like, dude, we're just going to mess this thing up. These guys have got this thing figured out. Like we're bogging them down at this point. So we just got out of their way. And of course we went to board meetings and voted on things and it wasn't all rainbows and unicorns and stuff. was, you know, there was some, okay, I think we should buy this million dollar machine. okay. I think we should invest in this, you know, that type of thing. But pretty, pretty hands off until

Jeff Holman (45:22.186)
You

Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Holman (45:34.902)
Sure.

Jeff Holman (45:42.506)
Yep.

Heather Barber (45:47.386)
so then fast forward. So I'm going to, I'm going to skip over lots here.

Jeff Holman (45:52.554)
Yeah, so five years later, right? Your daughter is going to kindergarten. Is this the point we're at?

Heather Barber (45:56.33)
My daughter's going to kindergarten and then let's see 2000, gosh, just recently, so 2024. So last year, my youngest went to first grade. And so I was like, okay, I can go back to Queen of Raps full time. Like I have done it. Like this is, like I paid my dues, I'm ready to go back.

Jeff Holman (46:08.159)
Okay.

Jeff Holman (46:19.274)
Yeah, yeah.

Heather Barber (46:21.789)
And right at that exact moment, in fact, like a week before school started, we got a completely unsolicited offer from private equity to purchase the company, to purchase the majority share in the company. And we all said, yes, like this is what we've been waiting for. This is what we've done all of this for is this payoff at the end. I equate that to

Jeff Holman (46:31.999)
Really?

Jeff Holman (46:41.834)
It was an easy decision.

Jeff Holman (46:47.893)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (46:50.291)
buying a house or like building a house. So many people build a company and then never actually exit. Like that's where the realization of the money comes. And so we had this unsolicited offer from Private Equity and yeah, we sold on December 19th. It went very, very, very quickly. I think August 5th or so is when they sent us the LOI and we closed December 19th. So it was lightning fast.

Jeff Holman (47:00.02)
Right, yeah.

Jeff Holman (47:15.044)
four months or so, something like that. And you guys, August, September, October, November, December, yeah. Four months and you guys had closed and that was the end of last year. Wow. So what has that done for you then to be able to sell that? you guys put, I don't know, if I have my math right, something 20 something, 21 years into this, given the ups and downs and the family situations and stuff like that.

Heather Barber (47:24.243)
Yeah, just barely.

Heather Barber (47:42.537)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (47:43.276)
21 years, that's not an easy run. That's a great run, right? But it's never easy. how did you and your brother, at least one of your brothers, maybe multiples had some other stuff they were doing. Like how did that, how did that work out for you guys?

Heather Barber (47:47.465)
Yeah. No.

Heather Barber (47:59.996)
You know, wonderful. So first, like amazing, wonderful. And everyone took away what they needed. Like here, let me give you some examples. My older brother decided he just wanted the cash and just move on and no equity in the new company. Just, hey, I trust myself, but I don't trust these other guys with my money.

I'm a gambler, man. I rolled 70 % of my equity. I took 30 % in cash. I rolled 70%. I also have a husband who brings in money. And so I don't necessarily need to have all this cash. And also, my estate couldn't absorb that much cash. And then my brother that owns the Chick-fil-A.

Jeff Holman (48:36.011)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (48:40.491)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (48:46.427)
He that doesn't he's he's off doing other stuff. So that doesn't matter to him. And then my youngest brother, like I said, he's significantly younger than us. He didn't want his kids to see him retired. He's like, I'm way too young. I can't my kids need to see me going to work every day. This is not this is not real life. This is, you know, what not what happens. And so he actually ended up taking a position in the new company.

Jeff Holman (49:00.198)
yeah.

Jeff Holman (49:08.843)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (49:15.401)
the new company and he's the director of vice president of acquisitions or something like that. He does some title for this private equity company as part of his deal because he wanted a job. He wanted to actually keep going in this. So we all kind of took what we needed from this and it's been great. mean, it's...

Jeff Holman (49:41.26)
Well, that's an amazing journey and you're leveraging that now too, right? Like I've seen you on LinkedIn and that's how we connected. I reached out and I said, I want to hear your story because I know there was a story behind this next stage that you've jumped into now. Tell us a little bit about what you're onto now.

Heather Barber (49:45.525)
correct.

Heather Barber (49:59.446)
So this is the villain origin story. Let's put it right here then. Yes, this is my villain origin story. So I love my husband. He's so great and he's so wonderful and you know, it's perfect. But December 19th of 2024 was the first time that I had my own money and not had my own money, had a lot of my own money.

Jeff Holman (50:03.37)
Did you say villain origin? Okay, okay.

Jeff Holman (50:27.786)
Yeah, yeah.

Heather Barber (50:29.629)
And the freedom that that has afforded me has been unreal. Not just the financial freedom, but the emotional and the mental freedom that that provides. I do not have golden handcuffs.

I am choosing this relationship every single day. get up in the morning and I am choosing this relationship. This is not because I'm well taken care of and because you we have a house in Newport and you know I drive nice cars and stuff. No. This is I want to be in this relationship and I have two daughters and so this became extremely personal to me. So

Jeff Holman (51:19.199)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Barber (51:22.025)
December 19th, I go and do the holidays and I'm getting my goals for basically the next five years of my life. I'm sitting down in January. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (51:30.804)
Can I jump in here? I think we're going to, I do want to hear about what you're doing next, but I don't want to gloss over what you've just said. You've just, and forgive me because I'm, I don't know if I relate 100 % to what you're saying, but I think a lot of women probably would. Maybe break that down for me a little bit more. Pretend I'm a man and I don't know anything. Because you explained that. I think you probably explained that really, really well.

for people who have the context. You said you don't have golden handcuffs. Normally I would think of that, I'm an attorney and so I think of that in terms of, you know, I have a job and I stay at a larger law firm, which I don't, because I don't have golden handcuffs either, but you know, I stay at a larger law firm that I don't even like and I'm doing stuff with my life that I don't really want to do because I make too much money and I spent too much money. You used it in a really different way, I think, talking about, you know, the value of your relationship isn't tied to the, call it the financial or other,

you know, perks of being married to someone who makes sufficient money for your family, right? You're talking now about, I think, self-worth and your self-image, and not just the money, but maybe the money is one of the factors that helps you to stand on your own. Am I sort of getting it?

Heather Barber (52:49.138)
Yes, and...

Heather Barber (52:54.459)
Yes, yes to every single thing you just said. I'm 44 years old and I'm at a point in my life where people are dropping like flies. Like marriages all around me are just combusting. I got to plug in my laptop. crap, one second.

Jeff Holman (53:10.902)
Yeah.

No worries. is totally fine. This is all real life here. So nobody would think this is AI simulated.

Heather Barber (53:18.91)
Okay.

No, that's for sure. Okay, so why don't I start from... Okay, so I'm 44 years old and I am in a situation where a lot of my friends are getting divorced. A lot of people in my neighborhood, a lot of people in my church are getting divorced. And these are people who have been together 20, 25 years. These are people who...

several of them married to doctors, lawyers, know, whatever, all of these different people and

Heather Barber (53:58.006)
for lack of a better, you know, being tasteful about this. But a lot of these women lead really good lives, like really good lives. And they just stay in these relationships because they're leading really good lives.

Jeff Holman (54:16.842)
because they don't, they're not, meaning from the outside, they're getting what you would think everybody would want in terms of maybe taking care of themselves or perhaps being taken care of, you know, they've got the necessities. They're able to work or not work if they want to, drive the nice car if they want to, have the nice house, yeah.

Heather Barber (54:25.237)
correct.

Heather Barber (54:29.023)
Correct.

Heather Barber (54:34.389)
Correct. Correct. However, and I think it's my age. Honestly, I think like there's kind of like a breaking point in your forties. Several of these relationships that I am witnessing firsthand from very close friends are abusive relationships. Addiction plays a huge part. Different things that...

you would look from the outside and you're like, that really looks fantastic. And then on the inside, like your friend has bruises on her chest. Your friend has, you know, trauma from, I, I am not saying it's anyone, I'm not putting blame on anyone. am not, I am nothing, nothing with.

Jeff Holman (55:07.809)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (55:13.174)
Hmm.

Jeff Holman (55:24.172)
Yeah, no, it's life. And we're not here to condone it or to condemn it necessarily. It's that happens and life, you know, maybe takes us or drags some of us through different challenges. But you're saying that people are staying in those challenges or they have been staying in those challenges and now you're seeing people step up and say, I'm no longer going to deal with this challenge. I'm done.

Heather Barber (55:28.478)
Now.

Jeff Holman (55:54.026)
I'm gonna live my own life.

Heather Barber (55:56.222)
And that might not mean that you have two vacation houses. That might not mean that your kids go to private school. That might not mean that you, you know, are now going to all of these benefits concerts and all you might have a very different lifestyle. You might now be living in, you know, you come from a 6,000 square foot house and now you live in an 1100 square foot apartment with your five kids. So.

Jeff Holman (56:10.39)
Right.

Heather Barber (56:24.435)
That's what I'm saying as far as like these golden handcuffs go. so here, so that's one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum is friends, personal friends that I am seeing that are staying in these lackluster relationships where they're just like, well, you know, it's not that bad. I'm taken care of. My emotional needs are not being met. My mental needs are not being met, but.

My debit card works when I go to the grocery store and my kids have new shoes.

Jeff Holman (56:57.398)
So it's an either or like maybe emotionally I'm not really taking care of, but otherwise I am. And if I didn't have this, maybe I wouldn't be taking care of, my emotion, it's a rough time. I'm in my late forties, and I think I see a lot of the same things that you're seeing. And so I get that, yeah. I appreciate you sharing that because, and you've pointed out that you've got the luxury.

Heather Barber (57:08.349)
It is. Yeah.

Jeff Holman (57:25.67)
of making a choice to stay, know, making it a point that this is not that you're dealing with any of this. I don't have any idea. We haven't gotten into that nor will we, but you've got the luxury of providing for yourself and being able to make the choices that you want to make that maybe some, and having the, don't know, luxury might be the wrong word. Maybe I'll let you summarize it for me. Cause I'm trying to get to a point. Yeah.

Heather Barber (57:48.168)
No, it just gives you more options. And so I came to all of this realization all at once because like I said, I have two daughters and I don't ever want them to be in a position, I don't want any women, like I'm making a blanket statement here. I don't want any women to stay in a relationship.

Jeff Holman (58:09.75)
Sure.

Heather Barber (58:15.131)
that is not mutually beneficial. I want women in general to choose to be in these relationships and having your own money and a lot of your own money really gives you, like I said, that emotional, that mental and that financial freedom

where you say, okay, you know what? Here's something. He leaves the dirty socks on the ground and that annoys the hell out of me. But you know what? I'm willing to put up with that. I love him and I'm choosing this relationship. Or the flip side is, you know, I'm completely alone in my marriage. I'm a single mom in this marriage. I happen to be married on paper, but that's not...

you know, my experience, like I don't see marriage as an actual partnership. so having this money gives women that emotional and that mental freedom, along with that financial freedom. And so I, I really have a fire lit underneath me. Like I want other people to experience this because it has been so life changing.

Jeff Holman (59:14.677)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (59:35.564)
you

Heather Barber (59:42.239)
for me. It's like, it's almost like, so again, we live here in Salt Lake and in the winter there is this layer of just gunk. We live in a valley. It's the Salt Lake Valley. It's so gross. It is so,

Jeff Holman (59:51.946)
Yes, the inversion. I mean, it makes our air quality lower. Like it's the worst in the world when that's happening. Like I've been to Beijing in the winter time and I'm looking at the, whatever you call it, the pollution, right, in Beijing. And here in the inversion, it's worse. For those of you who haven't been here, come here, come skiing. You'll be up above the inversion. It's really interesting. But if you're down in the valley, it locks in the pollution until the storms come.

Heather Barber (01:00:00.765)
It is so bad. It is so, bad.

Heather Barber (01:00:12.264)
It's so gross.

Jeff Holman (01:00:21.803)
Clean it up.

Heather Barber (01:00:22.259)
And it's really, really weird because when you go outside in its inversion, it's clear skies and the sun is shining. And so you're like, it's a sunny day. You just kind of like going about your life. And then if you go, like you said, up into the mountains, you can see this layer of gunk. You can see like, whoa, this is not sunshine.

This, I'm now, it's like you're seeing the sun for the first time, you're seeing the sky for the first time. You were in this haze and what you thought was reality is not actually reality. And that's honestly how I felt.

Jeff Holman (01:01:01.252)
No.

Heather Barber (01:01:05.235)
you know, prior to December 19th, like, okay, this is my reality. This is what's up, whatever. And now I see the light and I'm like, my goodness, I need to get the word out on this. Like we need to get this out here. I have now dedicated the next five years of my life to helping 100 females become millionaires through exits because it has been so empowering to me. That's one reason.

Jeff Holman (01:01:28.139)
Hmm.

Jeff Holman (01:01:34.378)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (01:01:34.611)
The second reason is I have so much press. I'm on a podcast right now. I get asked to do all of these things. I have three brothers that also got rich. No one calls them. No one even cares.

Jeff Holman (01:01:42.24)
Yep.

Jeff Holman (01:01:49.131)
Well, I mean, to be fair, none of them were the queen of raps, right?

Heather Barber (01:01:52.116)
Well, that's true. That is true. However, we all got rich, but that's not a novelty. That's not a story. know, middle aged white guy in Utah getting, you know, selling a company. That's not interesting. The

Jeff Holman (01:02:04.053)
Right.

Heather Barber (01:02:06.741)
24 year old Mormon female founder who sold her company, let's put her on Utah business, let's interview her for this, let's do this. I shouldn't be a novelty. I shouldn't be a unicorn. This should be an everyday thing. So number one is I want to help other women experience this freedom.

Jeff Holman (01:02:15.85)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (01:02:30.099)
And then number two is I want more women in the game. feel like entrepreneurship for women is a slam dunk career. I feel like it is the best career as far as really having it all, taking care of your family, being able to be married, having that flexible time to go volunteer at the school, to drive carpool, all of these different things. gives you that flexibility. and then

Third is that scalability. I think women are extremely entrepreneurial. In Utah, the stats are staggering. It's like 70 % of new business licenses go to females. So they're very, very entrepreneurial. However, I don't know. I haven't quite put my finger on this, but I either think it's lack of confidence or lack of knowledge for that scaling aspect.

So it's okay to have an Etsy shop and like go down and get the ribbon and make the hair bows and put them in the envelope and send them out. But scaling that enterprise is like, whoa, you know, that's crazy. I can't do that. Back to these friends that I have, I have two friends right this instant that are going through divorces and whose husbands are surgeons and both women set up the practices.

Jeff Holman (01:03:40.031)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (01:03:56.628)
did all of the stuff and neither one of them finished undergrad. Both of them supported their husbands through fellowship and training on all these different things. And in talking to these women, I'm like, okay, why don't you start a business? And both of them said, well, I don't have any business training. Like, what about that practice?

Jeff Holman (01:04:15.719)
Even though they'd set up the medical practices. Yeah. No, I totally understand. wife, Brooke is amazing. And she was out, our youngest went to, I don't know, first grade or whatever. And she said, hey, I'm gonna go find a job. I wanna do something. And she actually has like five different jobs that she does. Cause she, everybody wants to work with her. But at one point I said, hey, if you want, you would be awesome at helping to run the law firm.

And she, I will say she is the one who brings the underlying abilities for us to actually scale. Like I could, I could be an attorney, I can practice, but to actually scale as myself alone, that would be almost impossible, right? For lots of reasons. But having her and then the team and the frameworks and the structure she brought has been awesome. I've wondered though, because there is this factor in the law specifically where it says, if you're not an attorney, you can't be an owner in a law firm.

Heather Barber (01:04:43.189)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (01:05:12.659)
And so we've always had this strange dynamic where, you know, she applied to be in the global SACS small business, 10,000 small business program and loved it. we had to clarify for them, well, she's no, she's not an owner, but only because like technically by legal ethics rules, she can't be. I want to be in a position where I'm supporting her to make that exit of sorts.

It's just, and so we've had to kind of divide the business up. And I've said, Hey, I'm not going to enter. Like, I want you to be able to run all the operations of the business as if it's your business, scale it. If you can scale it, run, if you run it. But I don't know, there's that, there's that dynamic. And so I guess I'm what I'm saying is we're seeing it and I'm not sure if I'm holding her back sometimes because she's so talented or if, you know, I'm certainly glad for the, for the talents and everything she's brought to the company, but I think I see what you're saying.

Heather Barber (01:06:12.285)
Yeah, I feel like, well, I mean, to your point, so these friends that these friends whose husbands are surgeons, medical has the exact same thing. It's called a operating agreement or something like that where you have to do that. And like the doctor actually owns the practice because they make all the medical decisions. And then the operating agreement, you know, says we'll take 80 % of the profits or whatever it is, like that type of thing.

Jeff Holman (01:06:32.629)
Right.

Jeff Holman (01:06:38.453)
Sure. Yep.

Heather Barber (01:06:40.827)
So, I mean, there are ways around it, especially for these two women I'm speaking of in particular whose husbands are surgeons. you could do the, the other thing is skills are transferable. Like if you built up a practice, there's no reason why you can't build up a hair salon. There's no reason why you can't build up a furniture store, you know, HVAC, like there's a trade, trade show, whatever. Like there's no reason they're all.

Jeff Holman (01:06:52.64)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (01:07:00.586)
Right.

Heather Barber (01:07:07.955)
Business is business. It's not rocket science here.

Jeff Holman (01:07:09.909)
So what's holding them back or what's holding people back in general, do you think?

Heather Barber (01:07:13.799)
I feel like confidence and knowledge. So I feel like that confidence of, of, well, let me answer that with, with a quote from, from Tiger Woods. So he was playing at something and whatever. And, and they asked him, Tiger, like what happened on, on hole 13? Like you were too over. And he, he said,

Jeff Holman (01:07:17.099)
Okay.

Heather Barber (01:07:43.628)
you know what? I just had a bad day and then I just moved on and I did this. And I know that I'm better than these guys, so I'm going come out tomorrow and I'm going to do it. And at the same time, the women were having a championship. And I forget the golfer's name. I'm sure you like this is an old story, so I'm sure that someone knows this. And like a woman had a problem on the exact same hole.

Jeff Holman (01:08:02.504)
Some of the audience will know, yeah.

Heather Barber (01:08:08.821)
and the lead golfer, the Tiger Woods of women, and I'm embarrassed that I don't know her name. And she's like, man, you know, and took it more personally, like, I failed at this and whatever. And, and, and, you know, her confidence was shaken by that. Whereas Tiger was like, yeah, at a bad moment, but I moved on. The woman internalized it. Tiger did not.

Jeff Holman (01:08:13.449)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (01:08:23.413)
Hmm.

Jeff Holman (01:08:28.725)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (01:08:36.885)
And I think that women have a lot of amazing attributes that men might not necessarily have. And those are great and those are wonderful. But confidence is something that we need to work on. And again, going back when they are kids, back to my parents, like I have three brothers. My brothers are six, two, six, one, you know, they're much bigger than me, much stronger than me.

Jeff Holman (01:08:37.012)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (01:09:06.505)
But when it was time to rake the yard, we were all out raking the yard. When it was time to go clean chairs, we had an upholstery cleaning company, go clean chairs, they would be moving the furniture and I would be doing like the vacuum thing. We were all working. I was not treated any differently because I was a female as opposed to my male counterparts. So I think that again starts in the home, like girls,

Jeff Holman (01:09:10.538)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (01:09:36.71)
step up, you know, let's help our women, let's help our future women step into those roles, get those confidence, get those reps, so when the time comes, they can have the confidence in themselves, like, yes, I built this practice for 18 years, you know, yes, my husband is the talent, but I am really the person who's keeping this all together, just like your wife, you know, my husband might have the law degree, he has the piece of paper.

Jeff Holman (01:09:45.481)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (01:10:02.188)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (01:10:05.993)
but I am running this show. You know, so.

Jeff Holman (01:10:07.371)
Yeah, no, I think I'm really lucky if I didn't have my law degree, she'd probably doing this without me.

Heather Barber (01:10:13.013)
And there are so many women that have those capabilities, they just need to step into that power, step into that confidence, take that seat at the table. So working on that confidence. then number two is the knowledge. I feel like women need a lot more base knowledge before they feel like they're qualified. Whereas men are like, I'll figure it out.

Jeff Holman (01:10:37.641)
which might be a confidence thing too, right? They don't wanna just jump into it until they feel like they're ready. And my wife talks about the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program as being really a big stepping point for her where she gained a lot of confidence to feel like she knows what's going on. Well, so this has been fantastic. How would people, the women listening to the show or maybe some of the men who know some women that should talk with you, who...

Heather Barber (01:10:42.739)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (01:11:06.335)
Who would you say would be at the right stage to reach out to you about what you're doing? And then what's the best way to get ahold of you or get in touch with you?

Heather Barber (01:11:15.305)
So right now, I don't do startups. Let me just tell you that right away. I've been there, done that. I'm way too old. So my ideal client, I will work with women or men because I feel like a rising tide lifts all ships. And so I know that if I work with men, it'll help women. I just have a soft spot for the women.

Jeff Holman (01:11:21.419)
It's chaos. Yeah.

Heather Barber (01:11:41.948)
So my ideal client would be someone who's ready to scale, meaning that they have about 10 employees ish, a million dollars in top line revenue. And they have a repeatable process is basically what I'm looking for. And I like to just come in and pour rocket fuel. Like that is, that is my jam. I love that growth stage. And then once you hit about 15 million.

Jeff Holman (01:11:54.379)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Barber (01:12:12.319)
I don't really have much interest. it's that, that, know, in between stage, that scaling stage that I have a really, I have a passion for and I'm good at. So.

Jeff Holman (01:12:25.701)
Well, I that's a good stage. There's a lot of, I've talked to other owners where that's the hard part, right? Getting to kind of your first million, you can kind of do that on your own without the systems, you know, with a small team, but getting beyond that, do you either have to grow your chaos in some way and manage that while getting, or you have to start putting systems in place. You have to start building processes. You just have to start getting repeatable things. So that's a tough zone for people. it's...

Heather Barber (01:12:30.941)
really hard.

Jeff Holman (01:12:54.539)
Sounds like it's probably a really good time to have somebody who's been there step in.

Heather Barber (01:12:57.511)
It's a tough zone. And the funny part is a lot of entrepreneurs I would call mavericks, like the maverick, I'll figure this out. I don't need a coach. I don't need a consultant. And so here's my third caveat. So they need to have about 10 employees. They need to have a million dollars in top line. And third, they need to have worked with a consultant before because

Jeff Holman (01:13:06.315)
Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman (01:13:10.089)
Right, right.

Heather Barber (01:13:25.127)
I don't want to be breaking in any horses. Like this is not, they need to know my value before I walk in the door.

Jeff Holman (01:13:27.402)
Yeah, yeah.

That's funny. I don't want to break any horses.

Heather Barber (01:13:35.117)
Yeah, it's hard to be the initial, you become the focal point of like all the rage and the hatred of that scaling because there are a of growing pains in scaling and so they have to have worked with it. Yes.

Jeff Holman (01:13:46.097)
yeah. Yeah, that's like, sounds like being a parent. You're being a parent to a teenager. It'd be nice to be a parent to someone who's been a teenager before, I guess. That might be easier. So.

Heather Barber (01:13:55.71)
Wouldn't that be amazing? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly. those are the, those are my three qualifications for people that I work with. And yeah, that's what I'm doing right now. My company's called Buy Scale Sell. You can find me at BuyScaleSell.com. I'm really active on LinkedIn. I post every day, just random, seemingly random. My brain is always going, you know, a million miles an hour. And so they connect to me, but other people might see random.

Jeff Holman (01:14:23.104)
Yeah.

Heather Barber (01:14:24.521)
but different thoughts on business and entrepreneurship and women in business, leadership. And like I said, I've literally dedicated the next five years of my life to helping other people get to that exit because I'm just a fan, man. This has been wonderful for me and life-changing and I want other people to feel that.

Jeff Holman (01:14:41.482)
Yeah.

Jeff Holman (01:14:50.911)
I experienced the same thing. Well, that's so, I love the offer and it's been such a, I found you on LinkedIn. mean, of course, after seeing, driving by that building so many times, found you on LinkedIn when you started speaking out about the Buy Scale Sale. I messed that one up, but we got to repeat it a couple of times. Buy Scale Sell, that's where to find you. After seeing you start posting about that,

Heather Barber (01:15:08.083)
Buy Scale Sell.

Heather Barber (01:15:15.785)
Yes.

Jeff Holman (01:15:19.115)
That's when I'm like, this is a really interesting story. So it's been fantastic talking to you. I've taken way too much of your time. Your cleaners have probably come and are already going at your place. So I'm glad that we, I haven't interrupted that, guess. But thank you so much for taking the time to be on here, Heather. It's really been a pleasure. And I think our audience is gonna get a ton out of this.

Heather Barber (01:15:42.953)
Thanks for having me.

Jeff Holman (01:15:44.297)
Yeah, it's been fun. And for the audience, thank you for joining us again on the breakout CEO podcast. It's been a pleasure and we'll see you next week.