The Grit Blueprint

RESCUE!® scanned an insect's retina to design the pattern on its Indoor Fly TrapStik. Then the team put the simplest possible message on the box. I'm live at the Do it Best Fall Market with Alyssa Ando, Director of Marketing at RESCUE!, who has spent 21 years, in her words, making bugs sexy. RESCUE! is a family-run company that does its own engineering, R&D, and manufacturing in one...

Forty feet of brushes and rollers can stop a customer cold. A.J. Ernst says the right recommendation usually comes down to two or three questions. I'm live on the floor at the Do it Best Fall Market in Indianapolis with A.J. Ernst, Director of Sales at The Wooster Brush Company. Wooster has made paint applicators since 1851, and that's their sole focus. A.J. shares the questions a store...

This house sits on the side of a cliff above Lake Burton, on a massive sheet of bedrock. Chuck Vazquez let the terrain decide how to build it. In this episode of Behind The Build, I'm on Lake Burton near Clayton, Georgia, with Chuck Vazquez, Founder of CK Builders. The lot called for a ranch with a basement: three bedrooms on the main floor, a bonus room downstairs, and a little under 3,900 s...

One phone call turned up three projects a dealer's sales team didn't know existed. Two weeks later, according to Ryan Dempsey of SalesJack, that rep had won an extra $250,000 in sales. On this episode of the Grit Blueprint Podcast, I'm live on the show floor at the Do it Best True Value Market in Indianapolis with Ryan Dempsey, Founder & CEO of SalesJack, a sales platform built...

Drywall has owned the garage for decades. Joel Koops says Trusscore installs three to four times faster, and the installed cost lands close to finished, painted drywall. In this episode of the Grit Blueprint Podcast, I'm on the Do it Best Fall Market floor with Joel Koops, Executive Vice President and Co-Founder of Trusscore, talking about how garage wall panels made from PVC went from barns...

I found Trusscore on the show floor at IBS 2026. Now it's on the walls of Ben's office. This episode of Building Grit starts at the Trusscore booth at IBS 2026 with Joel Koops, Executive Vice President and Co-Founder of Trusscore. Joel says Trusscore goes on three or four times faster than drywall. It's waterproof, chemical-resistant, and you can wash down your garage after it'...

Your sales team just made a promise. Now operations needs to deliver. In this episode of the Grit Blueprint Podcast, I’m in Clayton, Georgia, with Ron Herrin, VP of Sales, and Lee Allen, VP of Manufacturing & Procurement at Tucker Door & Trim, talking about the relationship between sales and operations, what happens when things go wrong, and how communication and experience help teams keep...

Do it Best and True Value members: Use code 'Pink Hat' for a one time 5% discount on your order from Service Partners, through October 31, 2026! Call or visit Service Partners website: https://www.service-partners.com/ Today I'm joined by Chuck Lencheck of Service Partners, live on the shhow floor at the Do it Best Fall Market, to talk about the insulation products, service, and add...

My dad’s lumber yard spent two years supplying a 30,000 square foot custom home in Alpharetta. I have one photo to show for it. I joined Megan Kacvinsky of Point to Point and Vardhan Mehta of ACELAB as a guest on Inside The Spec to talk about what that missing proof costs. We get into building materials marketing that shows the work, brand strategy for manufacturers who are tired of competing on p...

Most contractors lose market share slowly enough that they don't notice.  Greg Rowland noticed. When the suppliers in his market started installing siding themselves, the scope he had built a company around started shrinking. He didn't fight it on price. Instead, he added the services his customers needed. Roofing, then windows and doors, and turned GR Exteriors into a turnkey business t...

A window that is off by a quarter of an inch does not tell you on install day. It tells you three winters later when water is leaking in. In this episode of Behind The Build, I'm in Monroe, Georgia with Tucker Door & Trim, a two-step distributor that manufactures windows and doors inside a 290,000 square foot facility.  Chris Kotlowski walks us through the entire process of how windows ar...

Building industry companies don’t lose customers because their people stopped caring.  They lose them because growth added more approvals between the person taking the order and the one installing it, and their people don’t feel empowered to fix the problem if a job goes sideways. In this episode of the Grit Blueprint Podcast, I sit down with Jonathan Harvey, co-owner of HarLand Windows & Door...

Most people never see the building where their doors get made. This one is 290,000 square feet, and they are adding another 100,000. In this episode of Behind The Build, I’m at Tucker Door & Trim in Monroe, Georgia, with Jason Gert, Production Manager, who has been there 28 years, walking the full floor from the custom millwork shop to the exterior and interior door lines. We see SDL bars appl...

Most businesses die in 5 years. Lummus Supply Co just turned 101. In this episode of Behind The Build, I'm in Acworth, Georgia with CEO Will Lummus and his team to see how a fifth-generation building materials and millwork business supplies some of the finest luxury homes in Atlanta. We're talking a 29,000 square foot house, million-dollar window and door packages, and a machine that dri...

Lew Oliver helped design Trilith, Serenbe, and Vickery, some of the most sought-after walkable communities in Georgia. His next act might surprise you: modular homes. In this episode of Behind The Build, I'm in Clarkesville, Georgia near Lake Burton with renowned town planner and designer Lew Oliver. We talk about the Lew Oliver MOD collection, modular homes designed with the same classical d...

Watch us install a brand new Plastpro Nova 90 fiberglass double door at Grit Studios, our in-person podcast studio, start to finish. Michael Tull of Tull Sales walks through the full process of replacing an old steel door with a new outswing double door, including the mistakes that cause warranty claims and how to avoid them. The new front door completely changes the look of the studio where we fi...

I'm Stefanie Couch, and this is Building Grit, the behind the scenes story of how we're building Grit Blueprint into a category of one in the building industry. This episode is the most hands-on chapter yet. We're building our podcast studio from the ground up at Grit Studios in Clayton, Georgia, and I'm taking you through all of it. We start at the front door. Michael Tull of...

When I first met Gina Schaefer, I knew she was one of the more interesting people in our industry, and this conversation proves exactly why. Gina is the founder of A Few Cool Hardware Stores, and she built a $55 million independent hardware store business after getting laid off three times in four years. She walked into a rundown Washington, D.C., neighborhood that no one believed in, opened her f...

Sales is not about pressure. It is about people. In this Grit Blueprint Podcast conversation, recorded on the floor of the Do it Best True Value Spring Market in Denver, I sit down with Sarah Krey of Do it Best Corp to talk about the human side of winning in the hardware industry. With 25 years in home improvement and a shelf full of honors, Sarah brings a rare mix of competitiveness and warmth th...

Inside Luxury Real Estate in the Appalachian Mountains | Burton at Lake Burton I'm Stefanie Couch, Founder of Grit Blueprint, and in this episode of Behind the Build, I'm taking you deep into the Appalachian Mountains to the shores of Lake Burton, where a remarkable luxury real estate project is coming to life. Welcome to the Burton, a brand-new community in Clarkesville, Georgia, where...

What does it take to run a building materials company for 100 years and set it up to win for 100 more? That is the question at the heart of my conversation with Will Lummus, fifth-generation CEO of Lummus Supply, recorded inside one of the tiny homes his team built in their Acworth, Georgia, showroom.  With consolidation accelerating across the building industry, Will makes a strong case that the...

Technology is moving faster than our industry has ever seen, and on this episode of the Grit Blueprint Podcast I sat down on the floor of the National Hardware Show with Adam Gunnett, the VP of Business Intelligence and Strategy at Busy Beaver Building Centers. Adam has done something rare in independent retail. He took a 19-store neighborhood hardware chain in Pittsburgh and built it into one of...

What does it really take to carry a legacy business into its fourth generation without losing what made it special?  In this Grit Blueprint Podcast conversation, I sit down with Brookelyn McClellan of Hardware Sales, a Bellingham, Washington institution that began selling dynamite to loggers and miners back in 1962 and has grown into a multi-million dollar retailer with its own e-commerce engine. ...

What does it really take to grow a career inside one company for 25 years? In this episode of the Grit Blueprint Podcast, I talk with Sarah Lee, VP of Purchasing at Blish-Mize Co., who answered that question by living it. She walked in the door as a receptionist in 2001 and worked through the catalog, advertising, and purchasing departments before becoming the first female merchandise manager and,...

This is where Building Grit begins.  In this first episode, I hand you the keys to Grit Studios on day one and let you see the messy, exciting reality of building industry entrepreneurship from the inside. We just signed the lease for this space, and you will catch the very first moments: taking down old shelving, lighting candles so it feels like home, and planning out every corner. I show you wh...