Today we’d like to introduce you to David Scarberry.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I guess my story starts out when I was growing up as a kid at my parent’s house. I had a large family and my father did upholstery work and then later on my brother did upholstery as well. I’m not sure why but I knew that was not what I wanted to do so decided I would go to college and figure it out from there. I started out as a pre- med student with the plan of medical school etc. but after a couple of years of college I knew that I was not on the right path for me and I ended up graduating from Oklahoma State with a degree in Economics. I even studied international economics abroad at London School of Economics for a semester. After college, I had a fairly successful career in the Mortgage industry for 14 years. I eventually opened my own Mortgage Company in Tulsa, OK and did that full time for many years until 2003 when I moved to the Dallas, TX area. My sister had moved to Dallas years earlier and after talking to her about the average value of houses in the DFW area I decided that I could probably do pretty good in the Mortgage business here in DFW.
Fast forward to 2008, I was a single father and had just bought a house for my 6-year-old son and myself in June and on Sept 30th I was let go from my corporate job. They let me go on that specific date so they did not have to pay me the commission I had earned during the 3rd qtr. of 2008.
At first, besides my ego, I wasn’t that bothered about losing my job. I had a proven record in the mortgage industry and prior to this I never had any problem finding a job! This time was a little different as it was right after the housing market crash of 2008 and I could not pay anyone to give me a job. I was begging for even entry level positions at entry level pay thinking that would be a no-brainer to hire someone with 14 years’ experience to do entry level work at entry level pay but it didn’t happen!
I still wasn’t too concerned as I had started a successful mortgage company before so I knew I could do it again. SO I submitted an application for my Mortgage Brokers license to the State of Texas and while I was waiting on my license to get approved I had to start doing odd jobs for cash, just so my son and I could eat. I think the first job I did was painting a neighbor’s house, then I landscaped a friend of my sister’s yard, build a couple of fences and then it seemed like I just started getting calls out of the blue from people I didn’t even know. I guess they probably heard that I worked hard and cheap so I found myself multiple calls for the jobs I just mentioned plus others like trimming trees, mowing lawns etc. One phone call I received they asked if I knew how to stretch carpet. I had never done any carpet work but thought to myself “how hard could it be” so told them I could do it. So I rented a carpet stretcher or kicker or whatever they are called and went to do the job. It all went fairly well and just when I thought “I have this” I kicked that stretcher right through the wall of their master bedroom! So then I had to learn how to do sheetrock work to fix the hole I put in their wall!
This is how my life went for a few months, just doing odd jobs for cash & barely making enough money for just the basics like food, electric and phone. I didn’t make a mortgage payment for probably six months but the servicing company worked with me so I didn’t lose the house that I had just bought months earlier!
When I was home for Christmas that year, my Dad gave me a sewing machine in case I wanted to give Upholstery a try. I accepted the machine and was grateful for the gift but I had no intention of using it as I was going to start another Mortgage Company just as soon as my Broker license was approved.
In January of 2009, I found a Mortgage company that would let me run mortgage loans through their company as a contract person and get paid straight commission on any loans that I closed through their company so I was off and running. I set up my home office and started making calls on mortgage leads the same exact way I had started my mortgage company in Tulsa years earlier only thin time I was not having much luck.
After two or three weeks of making calls I think I might have taken one loan application and I’m not 100% sure I even had one!?! I just remember being discouraged and decided I would start spending half of my day trying to get mortgage loans and the other half a day I would try to get some Upholstery business. I wasn’t even sure how someone would go about getting upholstery business and I certainly had no intention of doing Upholstery for a living. I did not even know how to spell Upholstery much less how to do the work but I was broke and had to do something. I ran some free ads on craigslist and started hanging flyers on the cork boards at every Racetrack that I drove past in the area. At that time, they had a community bulletin board for people to hang business cards on back by their restrooms. So I started doing the exact same things to market both mortgage loans and upholstery work. Cold Calls, Flyers at race track and Craigslist ads, and anything else I could think of to get the word out that was free or very cheap. I decided that I would work both businesses for 1 month and see where I was at after a month. I thought to myself that after a month I should have at least a couple of mortgage loans going or at least a couple of credit approved applications. From a credit approved application, a mortgage loan takes around 3 weeks to a month to get closed if everything goes good. So this was going to work out great, I would process and submit the loan or loans that I generated and work the upholstery jobs while I was waiting for the loans to go through underwriting. That way I could eat and get by from the upholstery jobs until I closed the first loan and then I would be home free. I would take the money I earned from the loan and purchase some good quality mortgage leads, start working the leads and the rest would be history! This would be the beginning of the rest of my life as they say! Boy was I wrong!!
At the end of one month, of working mortgage half a day and upholstery half a day, marketing both in the exact same way, I did not even have one single loan application but I did have two full pages of upholstery jobs, possible jobs or names of people looking for someone to do an upholstery job for them. This was the moment in time that I realized I was no longer going to be a Mortgage professional and that I was going into the Upholstery business!! That was when and where it all began!
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The biggest struggle I had was learning how to do the actual Upholstery work. My Dad and Brother both did upholstery work but I had never done any myself. Teaching myself how to do the work was a long and painful process. I called my dad on a daily basis!
Every time I would get a new job in the door I would call him hoping that he could somehow teach me or show me how to do it over the phone but that is impossible to do.
I bought an “upholstery for dummies” book at one point but when I tried to start reading it was like reading Greek! I couldn’t understand what they were trying to say as I did not know even basic terminology of the industry. Needless to say, I did A LOT of praying those first few years!! 🙂 I am so happy and grateful that I am no longer in that “learning by trial and error” stage of the business!!
Please tell us about Freedom Upholstery.
We offer professional Upholstery Services. We recover everything from Furniture, Boat interiors and auto interiors to restaurant booths, dentist chairs, chiropractic tables and custom motorcycle seats, we also do specialty items like padded gun cases, Leather chaps, gun holsters & saddle bags. Last year we even had an opportunity to re-cover the padded rails that go around the outside of a hot air balloon! So we really can do a wide variety of work.
Originally, when I first got started and for probably the first three years my main line of work was Boat upholstery and custom motorcycle seats. I only did furniture in the fall during the off season for boats. Then we had those three years that we didn’t get much rain. The lakes dried up and so did the Boat Upholstery jobs so I had to start doing a lot more furniture which is what I would say is our bread and butter work now.
I am proud of where I’m at with my company today compared to when I started. My background and all of my professional experience prior to opening Freedom Upholstery is from a completely different industry. When I started this company I literally did not have a clue of how to do the first job that came in the door but I had no other options but to figure it out. I think I prayed more those first few years than at any other time in my life! 🙂 It was not much fun and quite stressful but I am now past those days. I’m extremely proud of all of the customers that have decided to give me good reviews online and say nice things about myself, my company and /or my work. Doing a good job for the customer, someone who has hired me and trusted me with their project, is always a top priority to me. When you’re in business there is no way to make 100% of your customers happy. I mean let’s face it, some people are not happy unless they are unhappy! That is part of life and doesn’t change my goal of doing a good job for every person who hires me. I want them to be proud of the job that I’ve done for them. Seeing my customers face and knowing that I have met or exceeded their expectation on a project is what makes me happy and is probably the only thing that kept me going and doing this kind of work in those first years of being in business.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I cannot think of one specific memory that I would call my favorite but my favorite memories from childhood are all times that I was together with my family. I had a fairly large family growing up and my best memories are of family outings to the fair, or camping out or even just birthday parties where my family would get together and have a big meal, play cards for hours or just sit around talking and listening to stories that my parents or grandparents would share with us about their lives growing up. Other favorite memories are building things with my father. He and I would sometimes spend hours every night in his shop restoring cars or building smaller projects for boy scouts or science fairs or most of the time just for fun. My father is definitely where I learned to use my hands to fix, repair or create things from scratch!
Contact Info:
- Address: 603 S Alder Dr.,
Allen, TX - Website: www.FreedomUpholstery.com
- Phone: 214-912-6487
- Email: David@freedomupholstery.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FreedomUpholstery/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/freedom-upholstery-allen
- Other: https://business.google.com/b/103370291141315901560/dashboard/l/16393733000753479629
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