Today's Guest

Scott Selzer is the CEO and Chief Product Architect of StruXure. Founded in 2011, Scott set out to design a better pergola to improve the outdoor space for one of his clients. A middle-school teacher at the time with a part-time remodeling business, Scott created his product, a pivoting louvered-roof structure that the user could control, when he couldn't locate one on the market. Scott has since led StruXure to nearly $100 million in revenues and the company was named to the Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Companies list for the seventh consecutive year in 2021. In early 2022 StruXure was acquired by the Azek company (NYSE: AZEK). Scott shares his journey into entrepreneurship and how he leverages diversity in his team to accelerate growth.

Episode Transcript

(Please excuse grammatical errors due to transcription)

Gordon Henry:             Hey, hey, this is Gordon Henry at Winning on Main Street, and this week we're fortunate to meet Scott Seltzer. Welcome to the show, Scott.

Scott Selzer:                 Hey Gordon, nice to be here.

Gordon Henry:             Great to have you. So quick intro on Scott. Scott Seltzer is the CEO and chief product architect of StruXure. That's spelled S-T-R-U-X-U-R-E. Founded in 2011, Scott had simply set out to design a better pergola to improve the outdoor space for one of his clients. He was a middle school teacher at the time with a part-time remodeling business. Scott created his own product when they couldn't locate one in the market. A pivoting, louvered roof structure that the user could control, which today they call smart pergolas and smart cabanas, because they can be controlled by the user's phone.

                                   Scott has since led the company, creating more innovative outdoor living experiences across North America and beyond. What should listeners get out of this episode? That you can make a change in your life, as you'll hear Scott did, and that there's often a better mouse trap out there for a product or service if you listen to customers and give them what they're asking for. And in so doing, you can shake up an entire industry and you're going to hear Scott has done just that.

                                   So Scott, thank you for joining us on Winning on Main Street. Before we dig into your career, maybe we can get to know you a little bit personally. Can you tell us a little bit about your backstory? What led you on this particular career path?

Scott Selzer:                 Yeah, I mean, entrepreneurs come from a bunch of different backgrounds. I just happened to be an educator, and with education you have a full summer and it's like, what do you do? So I think it was that first summer that, both my wife and I were teachers, so she came home, I was going around doing stuff in the house. She's like, "You need to get out and do something." I was always handy and for high school and college I worked for some builders and remodelers, so I was always handy. So I was like, you know what? That's what I'm going to do. There's a little niche there. So we started a company called Schools Out Construction. So when school's out, I got a couple other handy teachers together and we were doing construction. So this was the early 2000s and it was working really well for us at that time.

Gordon Henry:             Got it. So you're doing your school teaching, you have some time for it, you're a handy guy, and what happens next? What do you do to break into what you're doing now?

Scott Selzer:                 You kind of mentioned it in the opening there. I had a client that had some water penetration issues down into his kitchen and it was pouring in after it rained. Big rains every time. And so he didn't want to rip up his whole patio and do that and he's like, "Can I just cover it?" And of course I said, yeah, we can cover it and here's a patio cover option here. We can do a hard roof and we can do this hip roof and we can do a bunch of different things for you. And he's like, "No, no, no, Scott." And he literally put his hands up like this and he's like, "Is there something that just opens and closes and pivots?" And I was like, I don't know, but I'll go figure it out. So I did what every American would do, I went and Googled it.

                                   I found out about the concept, which the concept is not new, it's about 45 years old now. It came out of Australia. And so by the time I found it, the patents had already ran out from the Australian louvered system. So I saw a great opportunity to go, hey, you know what? Nothing's patented here in the US. Let's come up with a better mouse trap and give what people really want, which is the ability to control your sun and shade and to close it down if it's going to start to rain and keep you from getting wet. So that's what people want. Pergolas traditionally are beautiful, but they're not functional. So this was a way for us to have a functional pergola and that's what we're doing today. So it gets me really excited.

Gordon Henry:             So did you immediately go into it as a full-time gig or did you still teach and do this part-time?

Scott Selzer:                 So when I actually found out about that opportunity, it was about the time that I was going off on my own. I was kind of retiring from teaching, if you'd like to say that. That was right before 2008. So it was like everything was great and then the fall of 2008 happened. It was right about that time where this homeowner gave me the idea and I found it. We took it to that spring home show in Atlanta, which everybody was pulling out of. It was the spring of 2009 and we sold 35 systems off that. And I'm like, okay, this is a great little niche, let's go with it and let's build this company.

Gordon Henry:             What I love about your story is that so many kids are trying to be the next Facebook or the next TikTok, but you talk took something so basic and necessary, basically a roof, and created really a high tech, futuristic version of that.

Scott Selzer:                 Yeah. Well, I always equate it back to, pergolas and arbors and cabanas have been around for thousands and thousands years. It goes back to ancient Rome and all that type of stuff. And it's kind of like the same as Henry Ford's car and Elon Musks' Tesla. What's happened is it's technology. So that's what we've been able to do and we're continuing to do that is as new protocols come out and all those type of things. Home automation is exploding. How do we become that? Because we really have an ecosystem in the backyard and we have the framework. Obviously, we call our company StruXure. It's spelled a little different with an X, like you mentioned. But we are the framework of the backyard. So putting on all these different accessories. Do you want heaters? Do you want fans? Do you want lights? Do you want motorized screens? Because people really will stay outside only if they are protected and they feel comfortable. When you start to get cold or too hot, you're going to go where? You're going to go back indoors. So we want to bring the people from the indoors out.

Gordon Henry:             So it's one thing to have this nifty idea and maybe a little bit of technology to make it work and a couple of orders at a trade show. It's another thing to build a company. And if I got this right, you've built one of the fastest growing companies in America. You've made the Inc. 5,000 fastest growing companies, not just once, I think multiple years. Take me through how was it to build the company to such a successful level?

Scott Selzer:                 I always say, not too bad for a teacher. So we've been on the Inc. 5,000 list until we just was recently acquired at the end of last year by the AZEK company, which is a buildings company. They're a publicly traded company, and we fit really great into their portfolio. It's been a great year. But before that, kind of getting back into more entrepreneurial stuff, it was, yes, obviously I never went to, I didn't have an MBA, I never went to a business class. I was a teacher, right? But a teacher is much ... 35 kids in a classroom. Now, I have a class of 200 kids or 200 plus, wherever we're at today. It's treating people how they want to be treated. It's very simple. I think the basics of just being an entrepreneur and being a real good leader is bringing in really good people, listening to them and giving them clear directions and going and doing it.

Gordon Henry:             I'm always interested to hear about some of the things that maybe went wrong as well as everything that went right. Can you share any stories about any mistakes that you made, particularly at the beginning of the journey that you learned from?

Scott Selzer:                 I mean, mainly, it will go back to people. Is getting the wrong person on the bus, or in our case, the rocket ship. We had a lot of those where people always talk about, you need to hire very slow and fire very fast. And that is so true because in the early days, I mean, even we've seen the last couple of years, it's hard to get people. I mean, nothing's really changed for me in the last 10 years. It's hard to go get really good people. So as we kind of grew in traction, yes, we were on the Inc. 5,000 list for seven years in a row. Would've done eight, but we were in the middle of am MNA transaction, so it would've been eight years and we would've done it nine but now we're publicly traded. So it's a little bit different, but it really comes always back to the people. So yeah, I had a couple rotten eggs along the way, and I mean I think everybody does, but I think it's identifying it as soon as possible and cutting out that rotten culture out of your company and keep going.

Gordon Henry:             Were there any particular people who helped you along the way? Do you have any mentors or people who were particularly significant in helping you grow the company?

Scott Selzer:                 Yeah, actually my dad's been a great mentor. He was in the business world for 40 plus years, in manufacturing too, so that really helped out as we started to build and make our own pergolas and cabanas. It was kind of funny because as a kid, actually, I was born in Taiwan. He was managing an electronics plant over there at the time. And so it was one of these things where he was always traveling. We'd be back in the States and he's traveling to the far east and he was gone all the time. I'm like, I'm not growing up to be a businessman. So whenever you say that, that's when God starts to laugh at you.

Gordon Henry:             Got it. Got it. I've seen some comments you've made in other interviews about the need for a diverse team, and I was wondering if you could comment on that. You've talked about diversity, but not just the way, sometimes people talk about it in terms of what the person looks like, but also attitudes, knowledge, thought process. Could you comment on that?

Scott Selzer:                 Yeah, I mean, I don't care what you look like, where you come from, it is more, what can you bring to the team? And what I like is, you don't need a bunch of yes people. I'm looking for people that will challenge what I'm trying to do, in a respectful way. So I think having diverse people around you that are helping you shape and mold the company, that's huge. It goes back to the culture of the people. People want to do something bigger than themselves. They want to be part of a winning team. We just had a very successful dealer summit and I get up and I do a keynote speech and I was talking about, sometimes it feels like you have all of these books that are out there, business books and all that. And yeah, failure's a good thing, and I get that failure's part of success, but if you keep failing and failing and failing and you're not changing your course, then you're just a loser. Don't be a loser. So that's kind of back where it's coming from. So surround yourself with winners and you're going to win.

Gordon Henry:             Sounds good. Well something's worked there for sure. And you've obviously figured out a unique way to do it. What's inspiring you right now in the industry? Has the product or delivery or the service changed in this time period you've been running the company?

Scott Selzer:                 Yeah. Obviously, we've talked about technology. I'm a product guy. We're a product company and my whole thing is, let's come out with the best products all the time. So it's evolving. We're seeing home automation, we're seeing the technology of all that evolve. It's keeping up with the product to be that ecosystem in the backyard. Obviously, I've sold and had that experience, which was an awesome experience, and I'm kind of on the flip side of it. I might not have that CEO title anymore, general manager's just fine for me. But what I'm doing now is being able to grow some really cool teams. So we have a new product development team that we're really focusing a lot of effort and money into, and that's going to pay off over time. Obviously, we have a lot of cool things coming out. So it's design of your product, it's the technology behind the product and it's just the quality of it. So it's why somebody buys an iPhone over an Android. It's the same stuff. We're Apple.

Gordon Henry:             Would I be correct in thinking that during Covid you probably did well because so many people were upgrading their homes because they were home a lot?

Scott Selzer:                 Yeah, correct. I mean, I think you saw that with all the home service companies and so forth. So any of the manufacturers behind that definitely had a Covid bump. But I think what was different was that we were already growing. We were growing a hundred percent a year doing some crazy numbers and we've continued to do that. Even this last year where you're seeing a lot of slow down in the residential part of it. And I think it's because the industry. The industry is still new. People don't know about the product, and it's getting those champions.

                                   And so when I talk about getting people around us, it's just not here in the manufacturing and what we're doing. Well. we have multiple manufacturing plants, mainly in Georgia and Los and Las Vegas and that gets us both on a bicoastal type of getting our stuff out to the local people that really matter, and those are our dealers and we have a lot of champions there. So it's bringing on really good people there as well. But they're still growing their markets. So even whatever's happening in this economy or where we're at, the cool thing about our product and where we're placed is I think we can continue to grow.

Gordon Henry:             And about how big is the company now? I know you became part of a bigger company, but are you able to tell us what's your unit, your division structure, revenue wise today?

Scott Selzer:                 Yeah. We're going to be just a little lower than about a hundred million. Actually, if you look at it, we do a fiscal year now, so it kind of just ended. We were around 75 for that, if you go back a quarter. But if you go back from there, the last three years it was like 23, 45, 75, and then we're going to 100 and whatever.

Gordon Henry:             Amazing.

Scott Selzer:                 It's easier to do those quick growths. Three to five is easy, or five to 10 and all that type of stuff. Which I could argue both ways. You just didn't have the resources to do that. But as you continue to pick up steam and continue to bring in really good talent, the sky's the limit, right?

Gordon Henry:             Amazing. Well, I mean, you're a guy who was a school teacher 15 years ago and then you became a CEO of a company that's now doing a hundred million dollars of revenue. That's what many of the people who listen to the show would dream about doing. What do you think are the ingredients to being a successful CEO, and how is that different than the other jobs in the company?

Scott Selzer:                 It's having the vision and then getting people on board with that vision. When you see me and I'm doing podcasts or I'm doing things, yeah, I might be energetic, but I'm one of those that if I see people I might want to go the other way type of person. It's because I love structure and what we're doing. It always comes down to little things. I'm very detailed. It comes back on the product. The product's got to be perfect. All the little details. Setting up all the different operations within the company, finding the right people and then not micromanaging them but letting them go and trusting them. That's, I think, been my biggest success, is just bringing in the right people, doing all the little small things that add up to really big things. Because people are like, man, what are you doing? What's the one big thing? It's like, I don't know if there's one big thing. It's all the little decisions that you're making along the way that make the biggest impact.

Gordon Henry:             Yeah. Now, you told us that you sold the company. You're obviously still there, but you sold the company, worked out an exit to a publicly listed company. And again, many people who listen to a show like this think, boy, that's what I want to do someday is grow the thing. Give us your thought process on that? How did you begin to think about that? Or maybe they came to you and then how did you pursue the exit?

Scott Selzer:                 Well, first of all, if you're starting up a business to exit, unless you're a serial entrepreneur and you've done it many times, that's not the right reason. You got to love what you do passionately and be willing to go down with the ship at any moment. So to me, I loved what I was doing and I always knew we had a great product and I knew we were building a great company and I knew the time would come eventually. Again, people want to say we had overnight success. I mean, it's been over 10 years, so it's a 10 year overnight success type of thing. So it wasn't like I went from teaching and then boom, I just sold my company. It was a lot of time, a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of those type of things. But eventually what started to happen was I had, I think, and this happens in a lot of companies. Hey, let us partner with you and it's a bigger company coming in.

                                   And what that means is, hey, let us look at you. Are you the right type of company? Would we like to acquire you someday? So we went through many of those type of situations. I think it was summer to fall of 2020 and we had about four publicly traded companies wanting to come and partner or even be as bold as, hey, we'd like to come and acquire you. And that was when I was like, well maybe this is starting to become the right time. You have that many people coming to you. But let's do it on my terms. Let's do it on our terms. Let's not just take whatever number they threw out. And they threw out some great numbers in 2020. And I was like, you know what? And I had great people, Nathan Collins, our CFO, [inaudible 00:20:07] in our operations and dealer support. Those two guys, we kind of came together and said, if we're going to do this, let's do this right.

                                   Let's go find a really good investment banker and let's get our numbers in order and let's get the business looking it's supposed to be. And we actually ended up, one of those four was AZEK, so they came to us first and then we said no to them, and then we went and got an investment banker and we went through the whole thing and we had, I think it was 17 offers all over the board. AZEK always kind of was our front runners as we were looking at it. I think it really came back to culture. Their first thing is always do the right thing, which all six of our core values, it all comes back to always do the right thing. So I think culture and where we were, it really couldn't have happened with better timing and with the better group than the AZEK company.

Gordon Henry:             Had you brought in any investors along the way, or you basically had the equity yourself?

Scott Selzer:                 I think I took my only $5,000 early on and put into the business. And that kind of got us a little ways into it to where we needed a little bit of investment. My dad and my uncle put some money in. About three or four or five years later I bought them back out. So then I still owned a hundred percent of the company when I sold it to the AZEK company.

Gordon Henry:             Terrific. Now you're obviously still there. What's your plan going forward?

Scott Selzer:                 I mean, this was really my speech at the Dealer Summit. People ask me all the time, well, are you on a beach? Where are you? I mean, I'm almost more passionate about it now that I sold it and it's like, it's got to do well and I want it to do really well. And so I'm flying all over the place, meeting with dealers, doing all those times. But the only thing there is to do once you do this is to take structure to the next level.

                                   So, okay, we can be a hundred million dollar company. How do we become a 200? How do we become a half of a billion dollar company? How do we become a billion dollar company? So I think that's driving me today. What I think the AZEK company does a really good job is they find great entrepreneurs and then they let them be entrepreneurs. A lot of people, because we kissed a lot of frogs, they might have said that, but I know that's wouldn't be the case. So AZEK's been a great partner and I look forward to continuing to grow new product development teams, marketing teams, and really take this to the next level.

Gordon Henry:             That's great. Before we go, I have a couple of questions I'd like to ask you. Again, bringing it a little bit more back to your own philosophies around business. Is there any particular quotes or thoughts you have about business in general that sort of guide you? You mentioned doing the right thing. Anything else that you would share with people about, here's how you should think about running a business?

Scott Selzer:                 Well, I mean, that's a core value is when you're looking at always doing the right thing, sometimes that's not the easy thing. Most of the time it's not the easy thing to do, is the right thing. And sometimes it's a gray area. A lot of people don't want to tell you that. And an entrepreneur, there's no, oh, let me get out my entrepreneur bible and figure out what I should do next. No, you got to go with your gut. It's such a gut thing. But I think what drives entrepreneurs is like ... And I had this all the way up until I sold. I could lose everything tomorrow, but you got to be okay with losing everything tomorrow. If you're not, you're going to be scared. And if you're scared, you're dead. So I mean, to be a really good entrepreneur, you have to just go for it and you've got to find a lot of really good people and surround yourself with good people and go for it.

Gordon Henry:             Was there anything in particular you did to build the culture around you at the company? Like hiring philosophy or training?

Scott Selzer:                 Yeah, like I was talking about, we have six core values. I can go through all of them, but it really came down to doing the right thing. I think having a leader that not just says ... Everybody can put them on their wall and they can talk about them, but if you're not living that as a leader, and I take it from a leader, it's that servant leadership I think a lot of people are missing. If you just are, Hey, go do this, do that, do this. It's like, well let's do this together, let's figure it out.

                                   I mean, it doesn't matter what has to be done. We just had a show. I'm sweeping floors, picking up stuff, doing whatever it has to do. It's not like, I'll be up in my suite, or something. It's like, no, you got to get in there. You've got to be part of the culture, not dictating what the culture's going to be because guess what? You can have all these beautiful things on your wall and telling everybody what it is, but people are the culture. It's what they're doing when nobody's looking.

Gordon Henry:             Right. Fantastic. Is there something that maybe people don't know about you that they should know about you?

Scott Selzer:                 I don't know. I'm pretty transparent. I don't know if there's really anything I'm hiding or I've never told anybody. It's one of these things where it's ... I'm guessing that most of your listeners are entrepreneurs and trying to do stuff. What I would say to them is, if you are super passionate about it and you can lose everything tomorrow and you still want to do it, go do it. Just do it. I mean, Art Williams. If you don't know who Art Williams is and you're a just do it Nike person, well, he was that before, right? He was the do it speech. Go and Google Art Williams, check him out. If that doesn't get you going, then you're in the wrong business.

Gordon Henry:             Okay, well that's a great recommendation. And I did want to ask you about books to recommend. Are there any books, business or other kinds of books that you've read that had an impact on your life that you might recommend to people?

Scott Selzer:                 Yeah. Somewhere I read, probably about five years, maybe it was longer than that, five years ago when I was doing all this. It's kind like this self taught MBA where, hey, you read 60 books a year. That's what good CEOs do. That's what good entrepreneurs do. And so I've tried to do that. I don't. I read, but I don't read like that. I listen. You've got to be multitasking, you've got to be doing stuff. You're on planes, you're in cars, you're doing different things. So listening to podcasts. I listen to a lot of books. I think it's more of the stories in the books that I like too. It's listening to the Elon Musk book or it's listening to Steve Jobs. I think I learn more than if it's just somebody talking about, hey, how do you do this in business? I learn more through the stories of the entrepreneurs. And that's what I'd say. That's why people are listening to your podcast, right?

Gordon Henry:             Right. So you mentioned Elon Musk, you mentioned Steve Jobs. If you had the opportunity to have, let's say, breakfast with somebody today and you could pick anybody, who would that be?

Scott Selzer:                 Definitely, it would be probably Elon. I think he's obviously, in our generation, you don't really see anybody that's done everything that he's done. And he's got a different mind, right? I mean, that's what makes him Elon. So I think it's just sitting down with him and picking his brain on some different things. So definitely. It's funny, and I don't see it at all, but I'll be in different places and they're like, you look like Elon. I'm like, we'll, you get me at different stages. And I was like, okay, well, I mean, what Elon are we talking about here? I don't know. But that's another story.

Gordon Henry:             Great. Well Scott, thank you so much for joining us today and coming on the show. And congratulations on your incredible success. What a run. And the successful sale of the company. Although as you've said, you're still right in there working with everybody. But congratulations and thank you.

Scott Selzer:                 Appreciate it. Thanks, Gordon.

Gordon Henry:             And thanks to our producer Tim Allman and coordinators Diette Barnett and Daniel Huddleston. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please tell your colleagues, friends and families to subscribe. And please leave us a five star review, we'd really appreciate it. It helps us in the rankings. Until next time, make it a great week.

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