The Truth About Pricing, Growth, and Profit in Window Treatments with Anthony Ngucaj

TRANSCRIPT

William Hanke (00:00)
Welcome to another episode of Marketing Panes, the podcast where we talk with real window treatment and awning professionals about what’s working in marketing, what’s changing in the industry, and how to grow smarter. Today’s guest is the founder of Skugga a custom window treatment company serving both residential and commercial clients. He built his business from hands-on experience in construction and installation and has grown Skugga into a company focused on clean,

modern solutions. He’s worked on everything from smaller residential projects to large scale commercial installs, including projects with up to a thousand roller shades.

What makes his story especially interesting is the evolution. He’s gone from competing on price through platforms like Thumbtack to developing a more strategic approach around pricing, efficiency and scalability with clear goals on building a business that doesn’t rely on him being on site for every job. At the same time, he’s balancing that growth with family life.

including being a dad and thinking intentionally about what kind of business he wants to build long-term. This conversation is about growth, mistakes, pricing reality, and what it takes to transition from installer to business owner.

Welcome to the show, Anthony Ngucaj

Anthony Ngucaj (01:26)
hi, how are you?

William Hanke (01:27)
Fantastic, I’m really happy to have you here today. Let’s jump in and talk about the beginning, like the origin story. How did you get into window treatments from a background in construction?

Anthony Ngucaj (01:40)
I have necessity to be honest with you. Our shade guy, Steve, who’s my mentor now, whether he realized it or not, but he is. so we will finish our projects and my dad’s name is Bill and the interior designers say, okay, Bill, you did a great job. Now we need shades, we need to sleep. And so my dad be like, okay, let me call Steve. Steve will be…

available and everything and, and, but I guess he grew. it came to a point where Steve wouldn’t just be like, okay, I’m coming. He’d be like, wait a minute. How many shades are and how many are motorized? You know, he will have a minimum. then once the, if everything went okay, he’ll come. So at a time came where he wasn’t available, nobody was available. And then, I spoke to him and I said, Hey, we’ve got a problem here. You know, you know,

William Hanke (02:18)
Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (02:30)
we’re completing 99%. We gotta take the extra 1%. I have some experience, I worked in hotels, you know, and they teach you everything, shades, AC, elevators, whatever. And I said, you know what, I’m gonna do it. And so that’s how I got into it, necessity.

William Hanke (02:45)
Nice.

Yeah, that’s great. You mentioned working with your dad before you started your own thing. What made you want to branch out and kind of start your own business?

Anthony Ngucaj (02:57)
⁓ well, I did have an honest conversation with my dad because I’ve been with him since I was 15 years old, know, immigrant family, know, home, what you call it, family business. And I started as a translator. Okay, dad, you know, the customer said this, this, this. Okay, miss, my dad is saying this, you know, it started like that. then

William Hanke (03:08)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (03:22)
I

passed, started managing multiple projects at the same time for everything, everything. And then before you know it, I graduated my college in 2014 or so. So I was maybe 22 or something like that. And then some more time passed. The problem with having a family business is you get comfortable fast, you know, because you get into this assumption that, okay, I’m going to take over.

But as time passes by, it’s kind of like, okay, I need to do my own thing. Do I have a future here? I had a conversation with my dad about this. It was uncomfortable. And we got to a point and we said, listen, you know what? I got to do my own thing. I’m married now. And so, that’s how I got started. It was a little uncomfortable in the beginning for sure. Because as you know, I started from thumbtack and it was just these…

Tiny projects, one shade here, 50 bucks there, you know. And, but over time it just, as you said, evolved.

Yeah, that’s how I got started. You were about to mention the early grind. Then it was, it was tough because my first customer, I lost her because we had completed the project. did an entire renovation, entire house, beautiful house. And then I go up there and I’m like, Hey, how are you guys doing? I’m here to do your window treatments. They looked at me like I came from the moon. They’re like, Anthony, what are you doing here? Yeah. I’m like, what I’m.

William Hanke (04:53)
Thank

Anthony Ngucaj (04:56)
I mean, here, do your window treatments. They’re like, okay, I guess do your thing. I don’t know. You know, and they were telling me stuff I’ve never heard of cellular shades. All I knew was roller shades. That’s all I knew. They were telling me cellular shades, Hunter Douglas, Gerber, something like that. I’m like, wait, what, what is cellular shades? I thought, I swear to God, I thought cellular shades was with the phone. I said, it must be something you can control from your phone. You know, but,

William Hanke (05:09)
Okay.

What the hell?

Fair enough.

Anthony Ngucaj (05:25)
I lost her because to be honest, she could tell that I had no idea what I was talking about. So that was embarrassing. But then some more time passed and I met and I had my first customer and I don’t remember her name, but she was maybe in her sixties who had been in early seventies and she had a problem with her vertical blinds. Right. And still, I mean, I was just like figuring it out and

And I had told her, listen, miss, you know, I’m all about customer service and I’m trying to save you money. And I’m going to do the minimum that I can, you know, so you don’t have to buy a new shade or something like that. Cause I’m not here to upsell. I’m here to take care of you and your needs, you know, as I went by the time I, by the time I went through, had gotten there three times. Very nice lady paid me every time.

And then it got to a point where I called Steve and I said, Steve, man, listen, I’m trying to fix this vertical line and it’s giving me a freaking headache. And then Steve was like, we should have come in sooner. I will tell you, waste your time. Just tell her, buy a new track. It had head rail. And then that’s it because, the clips, the carriers, whatever that carried the vines, right. They were broken. And because these were old fashioned ones to replace them.

It was it just it was impossible, you know And so by the time I told her this she said okay send me a quote and like I didn’t add anything on top I just told her listen this size cost this much. just sent her a link and everything And then she said look, you know what to be honest you we spent so much money at this point that We’re just gonna leave it as it is, know what?

William Hanke (06:54)
Right.

Anthony Ngucaj (07:18)
Thursday, I, to be honest with you, if I could have not charged her, it would make me feel so good. You know why? Because she reminded me of my grandma who had passed away maybe like two, three years before her. Very nice lady. but everything’s a learning experience over time, you you evolve and you got to adapt that business to be honest with you. ⁓ well, business like that. ⁓ I know, ⁓

since a very young kid I’ve been in the business world. And I’ve seen two different types of business professionals, business owners, right? There’s the first type where it’s they’re strict. It’s, this is what I do, know, have a nice day. I’ve been doing it for 30 years, have a nice day, right? And then there’s the other one, which I’m not gonna lie, it’s more of the modern generation, right?

where they analyze trends and they see, okay, I spent X amount of time doing this activity. Maybe I should switch around and do something else instead within the same market, To be honest with you, the way that things are flowing, things are changing so fast, technology, AI, you have to.

you will be left in the dust and they’re gonna be like, what? Skugga who? You know? You know? They’re gonna be like, what? Nah, must adapt. You have to go with the flow. And I don’t remember the scientist’s name, but he said, survivor of the fittest, Charles Darwin. Talk about evolution. He said survivor of the fittest. When he said that he didn’t mean the strongest or fastest, he meant who can fit into any given…

William Hanke (08:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (09:08)
situation best. That’s what that means. It’s about adapting to any situation, to your customers, to the market. It’s a lot, you know, it’s been a man. It’s been a journey.

William Hanke (09:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So speaking of the early grind and kind of getting those first customers, ⁓ tell me about the name Skugga. Where did that come from?

Anthony Ngucaj (09:31)
Gosh, that’s hilarious. First of all, that’s where when I first got the idea of opening a window treatment business, I told my wife and I said, you know what? ⁓ That’s it, I’m done. I got to do my own thing. And what I do know is Steve, he makes a lot of money, know, he’s not very rich, but he’s doing okay, you know? Maybe I should do that. I’m good with my hands and this and that. We had a little discussion and then she said, you know,

don’t know what you’re gonna do you’re gonna sell shades Anthony you’re a nerd what are you gonna sell? said listen man I gotta make some money and you know what whatever and whatever whatever she said you know all right you know what if you’re gonna do this let’s do it properly set a name I said I have no idea what I’m gonna do to call it Anthony’s blinds you know there’s so many Anthony’s out there and and then it came to us just so random

William Hanke (10:20)
You

Anthony Ngucaj (10:25)
I said, yo, you’re taking a master’s degree in Sweden, kind of, right? And she said, yeah. I said, what’s shade or blind in Swedish? know, it’s so random, you know? And then we looked it up and she said, oh, it’s Skugga I said, oh, okay, you know what? That sounds kind of weird, but it sounds unique because what does Google it? What’s Google? It has no meaning to it.

William Hanke (10:40)
Yeah.

Right.

Anthony Ngucaj (10:52)
Right? What about

William Hanke (10:53)
Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (10:53)
Yahoo? It’s Yahoo. It makes no sense. Right? It’s actually kind of funny. Right? So I said it doesn’t need to mean anything. Doesn’t have to sound cool. It just has to stick to somebody’s brain. And it’s short. And we say, hey, let’s do it. And Skugga means shades in Swedish. So if you see Skugga blinds or whatever, a Swedish person is going to be like, what? Did he really name his company Shades? That’s where that name came from.

William Hanke (10:57)
Yeah.

That’s great. Yeah.

That’s awesome. I love that. I love that. It’s original, which is great. Easy to remember. It’s fantastic. So

I know that you’ve worked across thumbtack we mentioned, getting referrals, and even some large commercial jobs. How do you think about pricing differently depending on the type of customer?

Anthony Ngucaj (11:43)
Well at this moment I’m still in the growth stage and And so what from what I’ve noticed there’s almost two paths that you kind of have to take when it comes to growing You know what window treatments right you have for one path which is to

Do it individually, right? You talk to them individually and you say, hey, what’s your budget? And read the personnel, you know, kind of get a feel and give them a range and, you know, and see if you can hit some kind of middle ground, right? Or there’s option two, but that’s when you’re larger, right? You can say, hey, this is our prices. We can give you a small discount for that. You know what I mean?

Right now, I’m not at a point where I can just say, hey, this is our price, we charge whatever, Have a nice day. You know, I’m at a point where I’m still trying to make connections. so because that’s to be honest to you, to have any business sustainable, it don’t matter, podcast, supermarket, construction, it don’t matter. It’s about relationships. Right. Because, you know, you can only get so many customers, you know, I don’t know.

passing out ads, right? But you gotta get like in our instance, right? In the window treatment, you gotta get a contractor. You gotta get deals with designers or maybe window companies. man, if you can hit a window company, because as soon as you install in your window, guess what? You need new shades, right? It must have, it’s about relationships. That’s what it’s about. So right now I’m in the phase where I’m trying to establish relationships.

William Hanke (13:04)
Right.

Anthony Ngucaj (13:30)
And then I can maybe get to a point where I can say, okay, this is our prices, you know? That’s where I’m at right now.

William Hanke (13:38)
Yeah, definitely makes sense. know that you mentioned thumbtacks, some of those types of things. How do you decide which jobs are worth taking and which ones are not?

Anthony Ngucaj (13:49)
You know what, I would say experience because when I first started, I would just take anything, pretty much anything. I would say out of whatever one shade, 60 bucks, that’s $60 and a half. Right. Well, now I have a lot going on, a lot. I’m a first time dad, right? Generally I’m running on what? Four hours of sleep.

man, if I get six hours sleep, that’s almost like vacation, you know? And so, said to myself, okay, so let me get something right. First, I have my son’s unpredictable sleep schedule, right? Which sometimes he sleeps at 9 p.m., sometimes he sleeps at 2 a.m., right? And so there’s that. And then there’s this, trying to grow this business, right? And then there is…

William Hanke (14:14)
You

Anthony Ngucaj (14:42)
Now I’m training for a New York City Marathon. This year, I’m running it this year. And so I have been training for a while now. When I first started, was like one mile here, two miles there, which is like, whatever, 15 minutes, 30 minutes max, right? But now I’m at a point where I’m doing seven miles, eight miles. And so my work day will start eight, nine AM, something like that.

And so if I’m doing six miles, that’s an hour, right? So if I gotta be somewhere eight, then that means that seven, I gotta be on my way anywhere. So that means that maybe 5.30 in the morning, I gotta be up, spend an hour, 6.30. Disgusting, I know, forgive me. No shower, no breakfast, nothing. Just change the shirt, you know, and maybe my face a little bit and then continue. And so…

William Hanke (15:31)
You

Anthony Ngucaj (15:39)
What I’m getting at is that I realized with all this going on, time is so valuable for me. I’m not like an important guy. not trying to make it, but it’s just, I got to make it count. I got to make it count. You know, ⁓ especially now that I started selling, I guess with our language, it’s, I’ve become a dealer. I realized that there’s significantly more money when you do provide.

and install, right? Because you can easily go to one job and I’ve done a project, just one shape and made $300 profit, right? Because I provided the product and I installed, right? Because if I just did installation, how much I’m gonna charge? How much, how high can I go for one shape? You know what I mean? So I gotta justify, right? You gotta provide the product. And so…

William Hanke (16:25)
Right.

you

Anthony Ngucaj (16:38)
I said to myself, okay, so I can spend a day, even one day, telling you, it can take five minutes, right? Or it can take two hours. You don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know, you know, until you get there. I have a customer tomorrow. Yesterday, he texted me, hey, how long is it going to take? I said, I don’t know. It’s going to take anywhere from one to three hours. I don’t know until I get started, right? And so now,

What happens is that, okay, even once you can take me one to three hours, do I really want to spend one to three hours for $60? Right. And so maybe I don’t, maybe I use that time to stay home or go outside and just make phone calls or go on social media, reach out. Hey, does anybody has any extra work or just get on the phone and maybe optimize the business internally.

Right? Maybe mess around with the profile or make some focus of designers and techs. Hey, I just want to say hi. Let me know if you need something. But even though it’s not physically working, all that takes time, you know? And so within one hour, it’s either make 60 bucks or make nothing that day. that one conversation could land you hundreds of dollars or in the thousand.

William Hanke (17:35)
Yeah.

Sure. Yeah.

Right.

Anthony Ngucaj (18:04)
You know, it be like, you know what? Yeah, it’s nice time to you. Why don’t we catch up? I actually have a project I want to bring you on board. You know, I don’t know, shades or whatever. And so, yeah, that day you didn’t work, but that day that you spent on the phone made you like a thousand dollars, $2,000 where you will be spending that time making 60 bucks. You understand? So time is very big, man. You’ve got to choose your time very carefully. Absolutely.

William Hanke (18:21)
Right.

care.

Yeah, for sure.

Along those lines, any mistakes that you’ve made around pricing that you’re willing to share?

Anthony Ngucaj (18:37)
Hey

Yeah. You

guilty.

fell into the trap of AI. I started using AI. ChatGPT is my best friend. I’m telling you. Because now…

I have to do a quote for example, right? And if I’m mid install, I can’t do that quote. And so I have already contacted my suppliers and they give me price lists, right? And then before it was just like, I don’t know, 20 bucks per shade, just install, right? And then as I grew, I said, wait a minute, hold on.

Sometimes I’ll do work for my suppliers, right? To, you know, if they have too much work, I’ll take it on. And then I would say, hey man, like, so how much you pay? You know, I don’t really care. He’s my, he or she is my supplier. I’m not going to nickel and dime them, right? Whatever they can pay. And so they’ll be like, Hey, we’ll pay you $30 per shade. And I’m like, wait, what? mean, thank you. But what? You pay me $30 per shade. So then in my brain, I’m like, wait a minute, I’m charging people 20 a shade, you know?

William Hanke (19:44)
You

Anthony Ngucaj (19:50)
So what advice can I give? Do your research. And you know what? Don’t be scared. Use ChatGPT. Use whatever you got on know Gemini or whatever AI you got. Do your research because you know what? Before you know it, you have done, I don’t know, you could do say, you just say, okay, you know what? $20 per shade. I do five shades, whatever. takes you an hour or so. You made, what’s that? A hundred bucks or whatever, right? Where the…

Another individual who’s done a little bit of research, right, who had made two, 300 just because they priced it properly. And another thing, reach out, don’t be scared, don’t be ashamed of reaching out. Steve, going back to Steve, can’t stop talking about him. I call Steve and he says, Steve, I got this project. What do I do? And I said, how much would you charge?

Steve doesn’t care because he’s been doing it 40 years. He’s not scared of me taking away his business, you know. So he tells me, okay, I don’t know what you have in mind. I told him, oh, $20 per shade. He’s like, please don’t tell these prices to nobody. You’re gonna kill us. Don’t tell nobody $20 per shade. You’re gonna kill us. You’re gonna kill the industry. And I said, what am I supposed to do? You know? And he’s like, no.

William Hanke (20:50)
Sure.

Hahaha

Anthony Ngucaj (21:12)
You’ve got to be realistic. You’ve got to get on the target on the market. And I charge I don’t know whatever you charge like $30, $40. You know what I mean? And so reach out, man. For sure. Reach out. Don’t be ashamed. You know, don’t be like, you know, especially if you’re somebody that’s intelligent, intelligent people. have a downside because we think we know everything. So we don’t reach out. You know, we’re like, yeah, whatever. I can figure this out.

William Hanke (21:20)
Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (21:41)
But you know what? No, you don’t know everything. I’m sorry. That’s the most realistic thing. It don’t matter how many degrees you have, right? There’s always somebody out there that knows more than you. It don’t matter. There’ll be 40 years in the business or 10 years in the business or one year in the business, right? Just reach out, you know? It’s gonna be all right, you know? And in…

William Hanke (21:46)
Yeah.

Yeah. I think smart

business owners have coaches. All smart business owners have a coach, right? There’s some sort of coach in the background helping them make decisions, make smart decisions. And the smart ones are definitely seeking out those types of people.

Anthony Ngucaj (22:08)
Absolutely.

William Hanke (22:18)
Yeah, very cool.

when did you start to feel like you finally figured out the pricing for your business?

All right, Anthony, before the break, I asked you, when did you start to feel like you finally figured out the pricing for your business?

Anthony Ngucaj (22:36)
let me think about this very fast. Maybe you’re going to laugh this year, this year, January, right? Because of I started selling, I started selling products. My manufacturer told me in my supplier to me, you got to start selling, man. You want to make money, you got to start selling. Bob was another one of my mentors.

William Hanke (22:45)
It’s okay. Yeah, that’s okay.

Anthony Ngucaj (23:01)
I’m new with him, right? But he told me the same thing. He’s like, listen, you sound like you got

with installs. You got some kind of network going on. If you want to upgrade, you got to start selling, you know? So obviously when you start selling, it changes the game because then you’re like, wait a minute. What do I do? Right. A customer asks, hey, send me a call for this. And you say, okay. ⁓

Sure. Not a problem. Step aside or whatever you do or the next day or whatever. And it comes down to crunch the numbers, right? You say, okay, wait a minute. ⁓ Okay. So how much do I charge for product? How much do I charge for install? Right. And, and then you have, I’m experimenting. There’s two ways to go about it. You can include the install into the price, like a bundle, right? And just be like, ⁓

product is 300 bucks installed, right? Or you can separate it, right? Which I’m kind of more of a, I’m leaning more toward this way. I’m not going to let you. You can say, okay, this is the cost of our product and this is the cost of our installation, right? I’m leaning more this way, right? Because this way, I just want them to buy my product, the Bansi. You don’t gotta use me for installation.

Right? We’re all professionals here. Anybody listening, they know it’s the truth. If you sell, The installation fee is already included in the product. It’s already included. So when you can go even Home Depot, the large pick box stores, they will do an entire house for like a hundred bucks. You ask an installer to install, I don’t know, 25 sheets for a dollars. They’re going to be like,

Have a nice day. You know what? You can do that. If your margins are large enough, you can do it. You can say, you know, sure, I’ll include installation to help you out. Right. But all that comes out in the very end of the day, you’ve got to get those numbers on point. Right. And that’s what it is. You’ve to do your research. And if I can say when? Now.

William Hanke (24:55)
Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (25:22)
this year, January, I’ve become more aggressive in selling. And that’s when I can say, okay, my numbers are almost on point for sure.

William Hanke (25:30)
that. You’ve also talked about wanting to grow the business beyond being physically present, And having requiring you to be part of it. What does that next version of your business look like to you?

Anthony Ngucaj (25:41)
I’m a people person. I love people and every day, even when I go to any one of my tools, doesn’t matter if it’s, if it’s, I don’t know, even like one vertical blind, anything doesn’t matter. The profit is almost non-existing to me. I will always treat each and every, customer the same way I want to go to sleep.

without a in my mind that I have done the best that I can in this project. But I’m a business owner. This is my business. I know what I want. And only I can deliver what I want. The thing is now when I’m trying to get away from being a physical business, ⁓ I want to, at end of the day, make money.

but I can only install one place at a time perfectly, right? I can’t split myself into two, But I can sell 10 shapes to 10 individual people. And even if I make only a hundred bucks per transaction, that’s already made a thousand OPS. understand what I mean? So just for me, it’s better. I decided that, you know what?

William Hanke (26:38)
you

Anthony Ngucaj (27:01)
That’s the way to go is to, you know, selling. So, but that’s where I started joining Facebook groups. And I want to go national to be honest with because I can say, hey, I want to sell somebody in, I don’t know, don’t know, California, whatever, right? Why not? And just reach out to anybody over there in groups or anybody in the network, say, hey, I’m bidding on the project in this area. Is anybody interested?

William Hanke (27:15)
Okay.

Anthony Ngucaj (27:31)
Right? And if I see that the mark, this is why I’m more of a family separating product with installation costs. Right? If I see that the budget is kind of tight, right? And I like the installer because they do good work. You never want to undercut your installers like ever. Right? If I see that there’s no room for me, right, to add on top for installation, I’ll say, you know what? I’ll go to install. You know what? Just give me your price.

And it is what it is. I’m making my money from the product. You make your money from the installation. You know what I mean? And that’s, I think that’s the goal to be honest with you. Yeah.

William Hanke (28:09)
Yeah. Now I know that

you’ve tried to bring in installers before, and it didn’t go over as well as you wanted to. Tell me a little bit about that.

Anthony Ngucaj (28:18)
Yeah, for sure. you know, here’s the thing, because one more time it does go to being a business owner. You know the results and the quality that you want, right? And you will be and provide the best that you can because you have a lot to lose. Okay. That’s a lot to lose. ⁓ But as an employee, doesn’t matter if that employee is the best of the best. What they got to lose. You know what I mean?

They got nothing to lose. And so ⁓ I used to pay people per day because, know, from construction background, right? I used to pay per day and I would say, hey, man, listen, I paid you this much money. That’s it. And I will have discussions, the goals and say, hey, listen, we’ve got to meet a quota. 30 shades per day, 40 shades per day. I don’t care whatever time it takes you, two hours, takes you 10 hours. don’t matter.

Just meet the quota and you can go home. It’s not a problem for me. I’m not like a super greeted guy, right? And so time had passed, time passed. And this guy was like very smart, very smart, very efficient. But when I was there, you know, because I do the installs myself, right? I hire when I need to, right? And so when I’m gone, because I had trained him, spent so much time together, I said, listen, I can’t be here.

But I brought you a helper, right? You guys can work together. You know the building already. We’ve done 600 plus shades of that same thing. You’re basically a robot. You don’t need to think, you just do it, right? And you know what we’ve got to do. You know the quarter, you know everything, right? And that’s fine. But I have had days where the quarter might be 30 shades per day and he’d be like, I came late, I’m sorry. And I had to leave.

So I only did 15 shades, you know? And I’m just like, man, like this guy’s good, but when I’m there, no? So even Steve, he says, you pay them wrong. You cannot pay per day because they have nothing to lose. One shade, 10 shades, he still make the same amount of money. You gotta pay them on performance, you know? So that’s what I’m gonna do going forward.

William Hanke (30:21)
Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (30:42)
downscaled, right? Because I’m trying to optimize everything. And now I will upscale again. But I’ve noticed that follow installers, I’m not gonna tell them, hey, you know, I pay you 200 bucks a day. No, no, no. I tell them, listen, this is how many shades, right? You give me a price, right? They have a lot to lose. know, if they don’t do a good job, they lose me.

One more time, I’m a nobody, but I’m just saying, right? In the network, right? And they look, say, for example, a customer, if that was only their customer, you know? And so it’s different. So that’s why I’m saying it’s a little tough to bring people on board and expect them to give you the same quality that you expect because it’s not their business. It’s just how it is. It’s a fact. It’s sad, but it’s the truth. These are the facts. Yeah.

William Hanke (31:41)
Yeah. Yeah. And if you’re, if you’re wanting to move towards a national approach, you know, you kind of have to have those expectations in there from what your costs are going to be, as well as the expectation of what they’re going to output at the end of the day. So, especially when you can’t physically be there because it’s on the other side of the country or something like that. What challenges do you think that you’re going to run into beyond that?

Anthony Ngucaj (31:53)
Yeah.

William Hanke (32:07)
as you try to scale beyond just the local and towards the national side.

Anthony Ngucaj (32:12)
and trust. Trust is big. Trust is big, you know, because my dad was living business for so many years and every other person every now and then say,

how do you know they’re not going to take your customer? You know what I mean? How do you know they’re not going to undercut you and just take your customer away? Yeah, that’s a risk. It’s the truth. It is a risk.

But you know what’s the risk of business, you know? And the thing is that, so say I were to, I don’t know, I don’t know, undercut Steve, for example, right? Say I went to meet one of Steve’s clients and just be like, hey, you know, I know he’s charging you this much, but would you give me the job, right? I’ll give you a lower price, right?

Sure, maybe I’ve gotten that job, but I’ve lost Steve. Invaluable experience, crazy connections. He brings me on to large scale projects when he needs help. You know what I mean? So yeah, maybe I made a little extra money here from this person, but I’ve lost thousands of dollars, you know, and hours of mistakes, you know? So yeah, that’s a real thing,

There’s a lot of risk.

William Hanke (33:33)
I wanted to ask you while we’re on this subject around your mindset.

So how has your mindset changed when it comes to control versus delegation?

Anthony Ngucaj (33:43)
if I am, I believe that let me try to answer in a belief, in a way that I think you’re saying it. first of all, control. You can only control so much. I’m not going to allow you. You can only control so much. can tell somebody, Hey, I want you to do this, this, this, this. And they’re going to say yes. Right. But we thought you being there. Right.

What you’re going to do? You’re not present. You’re not there. You can only do so much. Right? So you’re going to have to take that responsibility upon yourself and say, Hey, if this person messes up, hopefully I have one or $2 extra in my bank account to maybe refund them the whole service. You know, because reputation is massive in any business. You can, it’s okay to lose money. You’re going to lose money.

But you can always make it for men when your reputation goes down. Very hard to get that back. Very hard.

William Hanke (34:41)
Yeah,

yeah, definitely makes sense. And it’s something that every business owner struggles with, I’m sure.

a

fun questions for you. What’s one tool or habit that’s made your life easier since you started your business?

Anthony Ngucaj (34:52)
hehe

it one more time. can’t say enough. not going to let you. AI chat GPT. I’ve been driving. I remember driving back from a customer’s house to my house. And I believe or not, I lot of jobs in Jersey, which is hour to two hour drive back home. And within that hour remaining time that I had to get back to my house, there was times where I have like three customers contact me at the same time. You know, send me a right?

And I say, okay, so now what I’m going to do if I’m driving, right? It’s impossible, right? But I said, within that one hour, a lot of things can happen. So why would I lose that opportunity? I’ve already uploaded price lists into my AI. And then I just copy and paste or screenshot, whatever, because sometimes the customers give us dimensions, right? And I would say, hey, these are the measurements. They’re looking for this. Give me a quote based on this person’s price list.

You know? And then so that’s it. Copy and paste, copy and paste, copy and paste. know? Three quotes within 30 minutes. That’s it. Done. You know? AI, you got to get it. It has to happen.

William Hanke (36:06)
You

Yeah,

that’s great. I think most people are probably at least starting to dabble in that world now. And it can definitely really make things a lot easier if you’re careful, right? What’s something that you think most window treatment pros over complicate?

Anthony Ngucaj (36:27)
know what, ⁓ I don’t know, but my gut is measurements. You’re gonna laugh, but it’s the truth, Measurements. When you go and you take measurements, you’ve got to have confidence in yourself, right? Because there’s 10 million reasons, you know, that can go wrong. And you can say, if you get distracted, right, or

you’re driving back home and you already got your measurements and everything and then you say, ⁓ what happened if, man, did I forget this? Or maybe I took the measurement from the wrong, maybe if I had moved and maybe one eighth, what about that little crack up there, you know? And it starts messing with your mind, you know? And then you’re like, wait, maybe I should go back and take those measurements again, right? But you’re gonna go crazy, no.

William Hanke (37:14)
You

Anthony Ngucaj (37:23)
You take your measurements, you double check and that’s it. Move on to the next window or whatever. And the next and next and next, because there’s 10 million things to be honest. They can go wrong and so many factors, you know, but whatever it is, that’s it. It is what it is. Have confidence in yourself for sure.

William Hanke (37:42)
Yeah, yeah,

that’s great. That’s great. Yeah. What’s one thing that people would be surprised to learn about you?

Anthony Ngucaj (37:51)
About me, I don’t know, actually, but for whatever reason, a lot of people are surprised. My wife is Peruvian. They expect another Albanian girl, you know, and I’ll tell people, yeah, my wife is Peruvian. They’re like, what? And they’re like, you speak Spanish? I’m like, I don’t really have a choice. When I go to her family Christmas, all I hear is my name in Spanish. And I’m just like, what are they talking about?

William Hanke (38:03)
Hahaha

Anthony Ngucaj (38:19)
so i gotta know you know yeah yeah it’s a silly thing but yeah

William Hanke (38:25)
love that.

That’s great. That’s great. You’re dumped into it whether you like it or not at that point. Anthony, where can people learn more about Skugga Blinds if they want to connect with you?

Anthony Ngucaj (38:38)
You know what, you could just go check out our Instagram and over there you see pictures of photos and I think I have some videos up there, right? And you could just message us and just say, hey, reaching out, we’re interested or maybe collaborate and we’re here, whatever, know? Reach us over there and it’s not a problem. We will help you to the best of our ability for sure.

William Hanke (38:48)
Okay.

Yeah.

I love that. We’ll make sure to link that in our show notes as well, just so everybody can connect with you easily. ⁓ For someone that is listening and maybe they’re stuck in that installer mindset, what’s a piece of advice that you’d give them to help them start thinking bigger?

Anthony Ngucaj (39:19)
I’ll tell them

my supplier told me and what Bob told me. You gotta start selling. You gotta start. I’m so serious. It has changed my life and I’m still new. But I see a pattern. I’m telling you, It’s very hard to scale with an installation only, right? Because that would mean you would need an installation team.

and installers to find good installers, it’s not easy. It’s not easy, telling you, because in one hand, what are you doing? I’m coming from a construction background, right? What are you doing? You’re putting brackets from one side. Like it looks like a joke, right? Brackets, right? In the construction industry, if you can’t put up brackets, maybe you should stay home, to be honest with you, right? But it’s more complex.

William Hanke (40:14)
You

Anthony Ngucaj (40:18)
I’m telling you, I’ve brought in team members from my construction side and they’re just like, wait, what? This is not as easy as I thought it was going to be, you know? And so it’s tough, you know, you’ve got to find somebody that’s, you’ve to be patient, you’ve got to be technical, but you’ve got to be, you know what? Not just that. You’ve got to learn efficiency, The instruction manuals, I’m not going lie to they’re not always very, very helpful, right?

William Hanke (40:18)
Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (40:45)
you’ve got to be able to notice patterns as an installer, you know? And I’ve learned that from the large scale installations, right? In the thousands, right? Because to be honest with you, look, you won’t feel it if you save a minute here and there in 20 shades, right? But when you’re doing the hundreds of shades, I’m telling you, for example, 1,000 shades, right? If you can save one minute, just one minute per…

installation per shade installation, you have saved 1000 minutes in total. And that’s a lot of time. That’s a lot of time and therefore a lot of money extra to go in your pocket. But you gotta stop, man. It’s tough to scale just installations only. It’s very tough. Very tough. Yeah.

William Hanke (41:35)
Yeah,

yeah. Well, Anthony, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and insight today. I appreciate it. It’s been ⁓ a pleasure speaking with you.

Anthony Ngucaj (41:43)
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. It’s really, it was a pleasure and if anything an honor. I appreciate it so much.

William Hanke (41:44)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anthony Ngucaj (41:52)
Thank you.

William Hanke (41:52)
Well, that’s

a wrap for today’s episode of Marketing Panes. Anthony shared a real look into what it takes to grow a window treatment business from pricing and competition to scaling systems and thinking beyond the job site. If you’re in the industry and thinking about your next step, whether that’s improving your pricing, building systems, or just getting more control over your time, this one should give you something to think about.

If you found this helpful, share it with someone in the industry who’s in the trenches right now. And as always, follow Marketing Panes for more conversations like this where we break down what’s actually working in real window treatment businesses.