Inspiring Conversations with Matt Whisenant of Ready to Roll Garage Doors

Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt Whisenant

Hi Matt, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
My degree is in journalism, and I used to be a sportswriter for a few years right out of college. I was the athlete that wasn’t good enough to be a professional, so I wanted to stay close to sports. What I realized pretty quickly, is that what I truly missed was the teamwork and competition side of athletics. This got me into the leadership side of the restaurant industry, where I would work for about 18 years. I was fortunate to have really good leadership for the majority of my career, but when Covid hit, my boss was laid off. I realized that it was time for a change away from my director role, so I started to look for career ideas that worked well with what I had built my restaurant career off of, which was people development, customer service, along with systems and processes. After a lot of research, I started to realize that a lot of home service-based businesses struggled with lack of care, rude employees, failure to do simple things like return phone calls, etc. These are all things that I truly loved to focus on and develop, so starting to look for businesses where we could take training and development, care for the customer, and really working off an educational approach when speaking with customers became the focus. We know that communication is key in any relationship, and we want to make sure if anything, we overcommunicate in certain situations. We have both a gutter installation company (which we started first) and then started Ready To Roll Garage Doors after we put some time in getting the gutter business rolling (no pun intended).

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think if any business owner tells you starting from scratch led to a “smooth road” there might be some untruth to that. The biggest thing that we knew going in is that marketing and sales would be our greatest learning curve to overcome. Those two areas are where we have gained the most knowledge.

We’ve been impressed with Ready to Roll Garage Doors, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
At Ready to Roll Garage Doors we do all things residential (and some light commercial) garage doors. We do service, repair and replacement, so pretty much anything that has to do with your door, motor, or components. The things that we do differently than a lot of competitors is that we take a very educational approach and give options, so you can make the best decision for your home. We don’t subcontract any work, so all work performed by Ready to Roll Garage doors is done by our in-house team. I think a taboo thing to say in today’s world is “we take pride in our work” because you shouldn’t be in business if you don’t. We take it to the next level with the care we can ensure is being taken since the only work we do is performed by our direct team. We do a monthly give-away for veterans in need which stems from our operations manager Jake’s time as a US Marine. We offer good, better, best options on almost anything we sell, which allows the homeowner to make the best decision.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Most folks that get to know me know my love of sports – and there are so many sports that I love. What a lot of folks don’t know is that I thought from a very early age that I would do something in sports media and went to school for that exact thing, even working in that field for a few years out of college.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.callreadytoroll.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/readytorollgaragedoors/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61568344305771
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/ready-to-roll-garage-doors-raleigh-2