ENTREPRENEUR HIGHLIGHT
Daniel Felt
Daniel Felt is a driven entrepreneur and business leader with a passion for building and optimizing companies.
He is the owner and founder of Kura Home Maintenance, a company that provides routine home maintenance services to residential clients. Daniel is also a dedicated family man and finds inspiration in his wife and three children. He attributes his strong work ethic and never-quit mentality to his athletic background and the values instilled in him by his parents.
His superpower? The ability to perform repetitive tasks with unwavering focus and dedication, a testament to his mental and physical endurance.
“I think about the future me in five years and ask myself if I'm making him proud. And then I think about the younger me, the one who was figuring things out, and I want to make sure I'm setting a good example for him too.”
BRILLIANCE SNAPSHOT // DANIEL FELT
Who are you?
Owner and founder of Kura Home Maintenance.
What do you do?
I do a lot of really fun stuff. I build companies, I implement systems and processes, and I equip people around me to be successful in their roles.
What's your unique super power?
Doing the same repetitive tasks thousands and thousands of times over and over. I have a high level of mental and physical endurance.
What were you/team seeking a boost with?
We had a really great business idea that we didn't know how to tell people about. And so we were looking for an affordable, cost-efficient way to get the word out about a service that I believed could benefit thousands and thousands of people.
Who motivates you to keep going?
At the end of the day, I want to be able to look myself in the mirror and be proud of the work I’m doing. I think about the future me in five years and ask myself if I'm making him proud. And then I think about the younger me, the one who was figuring things out, and I want to make sure I'm setting a good example for him too. It’s all about impressing myself, past, present, and future.
Q: Can you provide a brief overview of your career journey and how you arrived at your current position?
A: I went to Mankato to study elementary education and swim competitively. I soon realized that teaching wasn’t the right fit for me, and I switched my degree to business marketing. After graduating, I worked for a company that sold eggs, where I honed my skills in creating systems and processes. In 2014, I joined my brother’s home service company, where I helped them grow from eight to sixteen trucks in two years. Through my experience in the home service industry, I noticed a gap in the market for routine home maintenance services. I launched Kura Home Maintenance in 2016 to address this need.
Q: What key experiences or milestones have significantly shaped your professional development?
A: My upbringing in a large family with limited resources taught me the value of hard work and the importance of finding rewards in everyday tasks. My competitive swimming background instilled in me a never-quit mentality and the importance of always striving for improvement. Listening to audiobooks has also been instrumental in my professional development, as it allows me to stay up-to-date on best practices and gain valuable insights from successful individuals in various fields.
Q: What does a typical day look like for you?
A: My day usually begins with exercise and catching up on emails. By 7:30 am, I’m at my desk, attending to calls and emails for my four businesses. I prioritize spending quality time with my family in the afternoons, and I typically wind down around 3:30 pm. I believe in maintaining a healthy lifestyle, which includes a whole-food diet and practices such as sauna and cold plunging.
Q: How do you describe the work of Kura Home Maintenance?
A: Kura Home Maintenance acts as the “perfect homeownership button,” taking care of all the routine maintenance tasks that homeowners should be doing but often neglect. We visit our clients’ homes quarterly to ensure that everything is running smoothly and efficiently.
Q: What was the spark that catalyzed you to move forward with this mission for Kura Home Maintenance?
A: I always wanted to build something impactful. When I realized that there was a need for a reliable and trustworthy routine home maintenance company, I knew that it was the perfect opportunity for me to create a valuable service for homeowners.
Q: Can you tell us a story about Kura Home Maintenance that inspires you?
A: We have received numerous calls and emails from clients expressing their gratitude for the work that we do. One story that stands out is when we prevented a client's basement from flooding because our technicians noticed a potential issue during a routine visit. I am proud that we have built a company that not only provides a valuable service but also gives our clients peace of mind knowing that their homes are in good hands.
Q: What do you hope for your customers?
A: I hope that our customers have a positive and seamless experience with Kura Home Maintenance. We want them to feel confident that their homes are being well-maintained and that they can always count on us for reliable and trustworthy service.
Q: Why did you choose to work with Sharp Creative?
A: We had a great business idea but struggled to convey its value to potential customers. Sharp Creative's approach to branding resonated with me, and I believed that the Spark Brand Workshop would provide the clarity and direction we needed to effectively communicate our message.
Q: You completed the Spark Brand Workshop with Sharp Creative. How did the brand workshop help you?
A: Man, that brand workshop made me think harder than I probably ever have. All the post it notes and all the questions and the deep insight. I was being asked questions that I didn't even realize need to be asked. And so that made me think really deep about what I actually wanted our brand to be. I would have never got there without taking the time to sit down with you guys and actually go through it and put it on the wall and just stare at it. I realized who we actually are as a business and how we want to portray that message.
Q: What was business like before and after working with Sharp Creative?
A: Before working with Sharp Creative, our marketing efforts felt scattered and ineffective. We were unsure of our target audience and lacked a clear brand message. After completing the Spark Brand Workshop, our marketing strategy became much more focused. We had a defined target audience and a clear understanding of how to reach them.
Q: Has Sharp Creative helped you outside of the brand workshop?
A: Yes. Yeah. There are many ways. They've given me better business ideas to go about things that have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue for me just by talking to someone who has a different clear understanding of my business and consulting in that. So yeah, I'm extremely thankful that I continue to stay in touch with everyone at Sharp and that I can ask them questions and see and say, hey, here's something that I'm thinking about or here's a challenge that I'm having, what do you think? And from that, that's one of the main reasons why we've successfully launched into eight different states. It created thousands dollars of passive recurring revenue for our business on a basis that would not have been there if it wasn't for the conversations that we had after going through the Spark Brand Workshop.
Q: Did your business grow as a result of the recommendations from Sharp Creative?
A: Yes, our business experienced significant growth in the two years following our work with Sharp Creative. We expanded from three trucks to ten crews, and our workforce increased from three to twenty employees.
Q: How is working with Sharp Creative different than working with other marketing agencies?
A: I would say every single agency that I've worked with, besides Sharp, immediately wants to go quick. Now let's start, let's run ads, let's do this, let's do that, let's do this, and they try to just throw you on the bike immediately. Let's go, it's an urgency and everyone just feels like we got to go, we got to market, we got to put the ad in place. go, go, go. The largest difference about what happens when you go through Sharp is they stop, they slow down, they say let's figure out our message before we put a megaphone on it. Let's figure that out. out and it saves you so much time, so much money and so much frustration because you're not testing and measuring, you're not building the plane as you're flying it, it's fully put together on the ground and you know what's going on and you know what you want to do and from there, you can push the throttle. So it's a significantly better approach financially and time-wise because you're not trying to test and measure and do run all these different ads. You know what you want to say and you know how you want to grow your business and you just have to implement it.
Q: Have you had a recent moment in your life where you've been struck by lightning and you've just seen a vision?
A: The birth of my daughter eight weeks ago was a profound moment. It made me think about the legacy of Kura Home Maintenance and my desire for the company to thrive for generations to come. This led me to share the Sharp Creative brand document with my leadership team, reinforcing our commitment to the company’s long-term vision.
Q: Will you list some adjectives that describe working with Sharp Creative?
A: Intriguing, fulfilling, satisfying.
DELIVERABLES
The direction to build a legacy
Spark Brand Workshop
Marketing Strategy
Brand Consultation
Social Media Plan
Scaling Strategy
Direct Mail Campaign