Lexington, KY - Brock Bailey took a break from his father's Winchester mechanic shop in the early 1990s to talk to a traveling salesman offering him a satellite dish. That time out from under the hood led Bailey to not only finance the $1,200 cost of an 18-inch RCA dish, but to a new career that eventually had his dad working for him.
The salesman delivered the dish to Bailey's house a few days later, but said it would be a week or two until his guy could come install it. The next day when the salesman called to give an update, Bailey told him he'd already installed it himself in 90 minutes and it was working just fine.
"Believe it or not, it was so much simpler," Bailey said from his store, The Dish Outlet, on Palumbo Drive, where he's been since the mid-1990s. "There was an 18-inch dish, you would mount that southwest. You had one (coaxial) if you wanted one box. You had your left and right and up and down; I found it fairly quick."
The salesman was so impressed with how easy and quickly he was able to install it, he put him in touch with a Cincinnati company that hired him as a part-time installer.
After making more than his dad ever could afford to pay him working part-time, Bailey started the Dish Outlet and covered the Lexington area, installing dishes. He soon realized, however, the ever-evolving world of technology mandated continually changing his business model too to keep his small business afloat.
"Up until '99. it was like a license to print money. We were doing unbelievable. And then the whole Internet thing spawned, and (cable companies) started doing the installation of the modems over cable, and then it really cut into it. And then Windstream came into (the market), and we really had to diversify and get into the other stuff," he said. "It's not like we failed with it, but it's just like anything else: When you've got competitors and technology changes, we have to follow suit. We've got no choice."
Bailey took the path of doing what he knew - and in this case what he liked also - as he added home entertainment installation to his business' repertoire.
"We do a lot of flat-screen mounting and audio, where we used to do mainly satellites. In our heyday," he said," we used to do 300 satellites in a month. I was running 10 guys, 10 trucks. The business is definitely not what it used to be, but
it's like anything when the market gets
saturated."
"Whichever way the technology goes, we try to keep up with it, but it's tough. There's just always something," he said.
In 2008, he began carrying and installing surveillance cameras that can be viewed on in-home or office televisions, computers at and away from the cameras' locations and even on smartphones.
"It almost makes sense to put one at the front and back doors of your house. They're so affordable," he said while showing a live shot of the store's parking lot at Palumbo and Codell Drive on his iPhone, which also allows him to zoom and pan the cameras.
Recently Bailey decided to cut his showroom in half and get rid of an in-store mock living room that he'd used to display surround sound and component storage options. He realized customers had done the research or didn't need the visual representations. They knew what they were looking for, and he was able to cut overhead and not have to change out the display to keep up with technology.
The reconfigured showroom has less of the home feel, which isn't all bad, he said, as he used to employ both his mom and dad as well as his brother, Joel, who still works with him full-time, along with four installers and a receptionist/office manager. Both parents still come in occasionally, but both have retired.
"Literally, it was a family affair. If you came in, you could hear yelling at any time. Always my mom would go, 'Hey, there're customers up front,'" he said, laughing. He enjoyed working with them, but from time to time the familiarity and family dynamic made owning his own small business awkward.
"It's been nicer since dad retired," he said. "I owned it, but he's dad. He just walked around, people thought he was the owner, he didn't tell them any different. It was fine, I didn't care."