Welcome, welcome, welcome to episode three of 2025 of the Home Services Home Show, where you learn everything you need to—and a whole lot you don’t.
Yes, hey, one of the questions that we got—what’s that, what’s that, Producer Shane? Or what? Four? Four episodes? This is number four? Oh, you’re an overachiever, Larson. I said we were committing—committed—committed to giving the people what they want. Yeah, there’s four already. All right, cool.
One of the questions that we’ve had a couple of times is, you know, we say that between the two of us we’ve got 50 years of construction experience, and, you know, what are our stories? Because, I mean, honestly, we could be making this stuff up, right?
I wouldn’t put it past me. I’ve seen you in moments—you can make some really good stuff up.
But yeah, I’m kind of good at it. But we are not, so, yeah, I’ll give a little bit of my background.
Getting Started in Construction: Family Roots and a Love for Building
I really truly first got interested in construction because of my father. My father wasn’t in construction, but I guess if you—he probably coined the term “jack of all trades.” He could do anything. My grandfather was a farmer, and he had a side business and he built pole barns—a lot of pole barns. And my father helped him build pole barns. And so my dad knew a lot about construction.
And when I was 15 years old, we undertook a remodel—an addition of our house. And we took our house from 1,200 square feet to 2,400 square feet. And me and my father did the vast majority of the work ourselves. The only thing we didn’t do was lay the block for the basement, pour the cement in the basement, we did not do the roofing, and we did not tape the sheetrock. We put the sheetrock on the walls—we didn’t tape. That’s the worst part. And it takes a true artist to do that good.
So that’s really what kind of sparked my interest in construction. I absolutely loved—I loved doing it. I was paid really, really well by my father. Three meals—I got three meals, I got a bed, and he let me go pick out whatever pair of basketball shoes I wanted. I was like, oh man!
What shoes did you pick?
I actually picked out—this would have been in 2000—or 1996—Barkleys had just come out, and I still remember to this day they were $140.
Did your dad have a coronary?
No, he didn’t care. He said, “Whatever shoes you want.” I was like, “Cool.”
I know your father—I’m surprised he didn’t have a coronary.
But I think he got a lot of free labor out of me, so $140 was a good deal. So I got the most expensive pair that were literally on the market at that time, and they were the heaviest, worst basketball shoes ever. But I was not going to say anything.
First Jobs and Learning the Business
And then, uh, Linda’s Construction—summer job doing gutters. Installing—for you, right?
Oh, installing. Yep. Installing. Crew lead. Installed thousands and thousands of feet of LeafGuard gutters, and, um, moved into sales and sales management, and I’ll leave it at that for now.
There you go.
That’s how kind of it all started for me.
From Architecture to Operations
Got it. Yeah, and for me, it was—you know, I went, you know, through high school, was always hands-on, you know—the wood tech and metal tech. And I actually went to school for architecture. Went two years, architecture—I thought I wanted to be an architect.
And so I started with two years up at Green Bay, and—and I loved, you know—I, so, from the very first nail, foundation, to the last nail on your trim, I can tell you every nail that goes in a house. But I couldn’t get locked up in an office all day long—it wasn’t going to work.
So, out of college, worked at a foundation company—precast foundation company. Went to Lindus—that’s where you and I met. And, you know, we were both…
You selling to them?
No, I was—I was in operations.
Got it.
So I oversaw the guys that actually made the precast foundation walls, and I did the drawing and then oversaw production. So it was a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot.
But I didn’t really learn everything I needed to know until we got to Lindus.
Learning Everything at Lindus Construction
You know, when you—when you—I got into sales at Lindus back in, that’d been 2000—my daughter was just born in four—well, five. 2005.
Yep.
So in 2005, I started there a little bit before she was born. And then, uh, we crushed it, right? We won every contest. I felt bad for everybody else. Like, if there was a contest that Andy put out—no chance. Might as well stay home.
It was—you got the LeafGuard side, I got the conru side, everybody else lost.
We had a lot of fun. But we—we learned, I think at Lindus, we really truly learned what it meant to take care of people.
Yeah, I was going to say—the knowledge behind doing the work is one, we learned a lot of that there. Learned roofing, learned siding, you know—all the little things that make it work so you don’t have problems in the future.
Because Kev—Kevin—was an absolute—there was “not doing it right” wasn’t an option. Like, he—his name was on the door. And, I mean, he literally, truly wouldn’t let it go unless it was perfect.
No, and he was always trying to come up with different, better—going against the status quo, I guess you’d say. I mean, I remember some specific codes that he had changed in different cities because he’s like, “No, there’s a better way. This is a better way to do it. We should be doing it this way.” And, you know, when they would see it, say, “Okay,” they would change their building codes.
He—he was very passionate about that.
Codes are the minimum.
Yeah. He never wanted to do the minimum. And he instilled that into us—from the production folks at Lindus, but also the salespeople. Like, he drilled into our heads that the minimum is not what these customers deserve. That’s what they’re paying for. And he was very passionate—to say the least.
So passionate that most of the time when he was in the office, I didn’t want to be there.
His passion exuded…
I love Kevin.
…through office doors and walls.
And he’s a passion—and he passed it on to his boys. I mean, absolutely—Adam, Alex, and Andy—they got the same passion and conviction. And that business is amazing for that reason.
Returning Home and Starting Over
Correct. But so, you know, our—our time there ended kind of, you know—so how we transitioned to where we got now is, uh, I lost my father at 52, and my mother—both to heart attacks. And we were working together, and—and I said, “You know what? I got to get back home.” And home was, for my wife and I, was the Valley.
And I—and I remember going to tell Emily one day…
The Valley is Appleton–Green Bay, if people—if you don’t know where that is.
So the Valley is like a term for you that some people don’t…
Correct. So I—I’m talking to Emily Lindus, and she’s like, “Well, we’ll figure something out.” I’m like, “I don’t know what that means, but I got to get back home.”
So they—we—we moved in 2000, end of 2008. You—you helped me pick up my U-Haul, and we drove across in an ice storm. Drove—drove it—drove an ice storm, too.
Founding the Keeney and Larson Companies
And, uh, we moved over, we took our two little kids, and we opened a gutter business in 2009. If you remember, the economy wasn’t amazing—the worst since the Great Depression, in fact.
Great time to open a company. A gutter company at that.
Idiot.
And I remember Nick, one of my best friends from high school—I wanted him to come work for us. And I said, “Nick, I want you to come work for me.” And he said, “What are you doing?” And I told him. And he’s like, “You’re going to try—you’re going to try to sell a gutter for $3,000? Good luck.” He says, “Call me—call me when you have a better idea.”
Okay. Right.
And now—now he works for us, and he’s one of—one of our employees. He’s one of our best.
But, uh, yeah, so we opened in 2009. And—and we learned that—we took Kevin Lindus’s idea of, “If you’re going to do it, do it right,” and—and when you can make a go in an economy like that, don’t forget where you came from. And in the good times, keep that passion. And that’s really how we built our businesses.
And—and, you know, you—you did the similar thing. When you moved, you moved not long after me to do the same thing.
I did. I moved like six months—six months later. A little different path—I actually went to Milwaukee and helped run an office down there and actually opened my own in 200—end of 2010, beginning of 2011.
But we started off doing the same stuff.
We started off with Leaf Guard—Leaf Guard, yeah. And I would say we transitioned in 2012. We transitioned into doing roofing. Um, it’s really not something I actually even wanted to do.
For us, it was like customer request. Like, we just kept getting asked and asked and asked.
—Well, they enjoyed the experience we gave on gutters.
—Yes.
—But we weren’t roofers.
Now, I sold roofing at Lindus Construction. I had actually physically done some roofing—I knew how to roof—but, you know, not enough to where I was like, “Oh, I want to do a whole bunch of roofing on other people’s homes.”
Because my whole thing is: I want to deliver somebody the best product, the best experience, and I just—I want everything to be perfect and everybody to be happy. I want to take any variables out of it. And if I wasn’t an absolute expert at it, I didn’t want to get into it.
But over time—and me just referring out other roofers—we were actually approached by GAF, and you were too, to start roofing. And for starters, we needed to find really, really, really good roofers.
And we both did.
—Very, very fortunate to find very good roofers very early that have become friends and family.
—Yes. I mean, they’ve been at our last couple Christmas parties.
Yeah, I love it when we’re at Christmas parties and your roofers are there and our roofers are there. It just makes you smile—the fact that they feel thankful to be part of the family.
—Mhm.
But it was amazing transforming into a unified brand. Like, you know, as our businesses grew—we were the best of friends—but how our businesses stayed so similar, like it was almost like a mirror image.
And then I would say—what?—probably in, well, we added insulation in ’13, ’14. But really like that later teens—’17, ’18—we really started making our businesses almost identical.
—Well, we knew what we wanted them to be, right?
We knew that we weren’t just a gutter company. We were more than that. We were roofers, and we were—I call it “home performance work,” insulation, right? That’s layman’s term.
But we knew we were more than that. We knew we were experts from the attic up, and we knew that a gutter company name just didn’t do it justice.
And that’s when we changed to: Larson Home Services.
—The Keeney Home Services. Identical.
And our salespeople started training together. Production people started working together. Leadership teams started communicating and consulting with each other. So we kind of like started to almost become one company without being one company.
And then probably the—you know, I’ll say it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us—was COVID. It really took those businesses that we were kind of dabbling in together—like, “Hey, we’re utilizing some resources,” and that kind of thing—and COVID said, “Hey, you’re stronger as a group.”
My wife always used to say, “Hey, we’re stronger as a group.”
—Still says that.
—Usually when we’re crossing the street.
—When we’re all, you know, on vacation somewhere.
—About to walk into a bar.
—Probably walk into a bar.
But when COVID hit, it really made us take our group—the Linus Group—you and I…
Yeah, I mean, because besides what COVID really was—for a small business owner, it was terrifying. It was scary.
—It was so terrifying.
Do you remember like during COVID, for three weeks or so, every single night we had Lindus Construction, you, me, our buddies out in Omaha, our buddy in Iowa, our buddy in Cincinnati—we all had similar businesses—and we would do a conference Zoom call every single night with wine, or whatever. It was a cocktail or wine night.
And we would have drinks and talk, because it was almost like a counseling session. Like we needed to talk.
—“What’s the new news today?”
Yeah, because at some point it’s like, okay, COVID’s here, people are dying, you can’t go in people’s houses—
—How are we going to work?
Well, and I think the other part of that was Rodney Webb, right? Who’s been a sales trainer for us at this point since the early-mid 2000s.
He’s had more of a footprint in our businesses in the Midwest—at Lindus and us. He was instrumental. He’s like:
—“Don’t panic. Take care of people. They want to get taken care of. It’ll be okay.”
And Rodney—Rodney was a beacon of peace and calmness in that tremendous time.
So it did two things for us. I mean obviously COVID was not a good thing—it was a really bad thing. But for our businesses, it made us come together more.
—Yep.
And little did we know it would be our busiest year.
—Yeah.
—Ever, pretty much.
—Because people were staying home.
—It was a launching pad, for sure.
And if you’re not going to work and you’re sitting in your home every day, all the little things can really start to become visible—and really bother you.
So that worked out. That worked out.
Making the Journey Official with the LKHS-Milwaukee Branch
Then we really started sharing resources, right? We started sharing accounting, we started sharing HR, marketing—and the sales managers really started getting together. And that’s when we were like, this is really becoming one brand.
And I think that’s kind of where we got to today with the LarKeney brand.
Actually, about a year and a half ago, we officially joined forces as one company with two different names. And then we spawned a child—Milwaukee: Larson Keeney Home Services—in our Milwaukee office.
Last year was our first official year having an office there. We had always done some work there—we didn’t actively seek it out, but we would do work there because we’d do a great job for somebody up in Green Bay or Madison, and they’d refer us.
We had a buddy there that had the Gutter Shutter business—Ernie. Our buddy Ernie had the Gutter Shutter business. We asked him to join us, and now we’ve got Larson Keeney in the Milwaukee area. And you know, we’re expecting big things out of that.
There are more homes there than there are people in either one of our markets. So there’s a lot of homes to be fixed, a lot of people to help. We’re really excited in Milwaukee.
Growing North: Expansion into Northern Wisconsin and Minnesota
Milwaukee is a great addition. That’s going to be fun to watch.
Then we also started focusing up north: La Crosse, Wisconsin, and Rochester, Minnesota.
We’re in Rockford, too. We don’t have an office there, but it’s only an hour away. So our footprint is getting bigger.
The “Tight Top” Mentality: Growth Without Losing Quality
We really took the “tight top” mentality, right? The idea is that we need to keep the bottom of the pyramid as tight as possible because as we expand out, there’s going to be more wobble.
If we can keep that bottom super tight, by the time we get out to those other markets, we need to make sure that the same quality Kevin taught us back in the day can be delivered every single day under the Larson Keeney brand. That’s important for us.
Always Do the Right Thing
There’s a story Kevin used to tell that I think about all the time.
They did a steel roof. It had some scratches. The homeowner said, “You did a great job, but there are some scratches in my new roof.”
They offered to take $10,000 off the price and call it good.
Kevin said no.
Because when someone asks that homeowner how the roof is, they’d say, “They did a great job, but they left scratches… but they gave me a discount.”
That’s not what he wanted.
So he tore the entire roof off and redid it completely.
Even though giving $10,000 off would have been cheaper and easier—he didn’t take the Easy Button.
Response to a Roof Collapse on a Mobile Home
I relate that to a scenario we had this fall—you probably know where I’m going.
We were working on a mobile home. The shingles were a little too heavy for it, and the roof started to sag.
With that type of mobile home, we couldn’t fix it.
Then insurance said, “We’ll only give you what this place is worth,” which wasn’t even close to enough to fix it.
So… we sucked it up. We did the right thing.
We ordered her a brand new home.
I went with her to the mobile home dealership, we picked it out together.
She’s now been in her brand new home for three weeks.
I’ve never seen someone more happy and more excited.
One Brand, Dedicated to the Customer Experience
We did the right thing. Always do the right thing.
When we talk about the LarKeney brand and experience, that’s what gives me pride—when I wear the shirt in public, or we see the trucks.
Our employees take pride in where they work. That’s what it’s about.
Nancy—she’s awesome. She thought she was screwed. She didn’t think there was any way out. That was the only option.
Legally, we didn’t have to help her.
But that’s not who we are.
Morally and ethically, what do you do?
Her home wasn’t much—but it was her home.
She had it done up very nice. And we wrecked it.
Now? She’s got a new one. Good for her.
She picked everything out herself. Got her first dishwasher ever. That was an upgrade!
Teaching the Culture, Living the Mission
That’s what we’re trying to teach—the same thing Kevin Lin taught us back in the 2000s:
Do the right thing. Always put the customer first.
Truly create an environment where people can be successful and proud of it.
You’re starting to see the fruits of those labors now.
We’re teaching that culture to every production employee, every sales employee. That’s the cool part.
That’s what our salespeople hang their hat on.
They know: when we work on someone’s home, no matter what happens, it’ll be done right.
They’ll be happy in the end.
What You Do After the Mistake Defines You
We’re not perfect.
We make mistakes.
Things happen.
But what do you do after the mistake?
Do you run and hide? Say “not our problem”?
No.
I’d rather lose money and have someone happy and healthy in their home than make a quick buck and have something not right.
Not worth it.
Not at all.
I’ve got to be able to sleep at night.
I’ve got to be able to look my kids in the eye.
Life Lessons You Can’t Learn in School
My kids are older than yours—21 and 19.
I remember you were in my office one day and my son was there. He’s going to school for business. He said,
“Dad, they don’t teach us this stuff in school.”
And part of me was like, I wish they did.
But you can’t teach this unless you’ve lived it and truly believe it to your core.
That’s the cool part.
A Journey of Friendship, Growth, and Shared Success
It’s a neat story—how we both got here.
We didn’t know each other beforehand.
Now, you’re almost like my brother.
We have two amazing businesses.
One brand.
Over 100 employees across the brand—probably almost 110 now.
It’s a big responsibility to keep it right.
Kind of a fun story.
Wrapping Up: Lessons Learned and Looking Ahead
Memory Lane! So to the person who sent in the question, “How’d you guys get here? You’ve got all this experience…”
That’s how we got that experience.
It hasn’t always been easy. But I think it’s as good as any college course you could’ve had.
My wife wanted to leave me—Shane, just remember: If you go and work 15–16 hours a day, six or seven days a week…
Someone might get a little jealous of your time.
That happened to me early on. But Andre and Amy have been super supportive. They’re our biggest cheerleaders.
It’s been a really fun ride. I wouldn’t change anything. Coming up on 15 years. Wouldn’t trade it for anything.
See You Next Time
Alright—well, there’s going to be one of these popping out every single week. Keep the questions coming.See you next time!
