Epic Entrepreneurs
Welcome to Epic Entrepreneurs! What does it take to build a real and thriving business in today’s world? As entrepreneurs and business owners, we went into business to have more freedom of time and money. Yet, the path of growing a business isn’t always filled with sunshine and rainbows. In this chart-topping show, host Bill Gilliland; author of the best-selling book “The Coach Approach” leverages his decades of experience coaching proven entrepreneurs to make more money, grow the right teams, and find the freedom of EPIC Entrepreneurship.
Epic Entrepreneurs
How Carolina Outdoor Lighting Built A People-First Business with Maja Potocki
What does it really take to turn a two-person hustle into a durable, people-first business? We sit down with Maja, co-founder of Carolina Outdoor Lighting, to trace the arc from answering irrigation clients’ lighting requests to building a design-led brand known for craft, culture, and steady growth. From the first two-day crash course to a recent acquisition in Brevard, Maya shares the decisions that mattered most—and the ones she’d make sooner if starting over.
We get practical about hiring early, even when it dents short-term profit, and why the right attitude beats prior experience in a niche trade like landscape lighting. Maja walks us through the company’s weekly LIONS rhythm—last week, issues, opportunities, next week—and how it keeps projects moving while opening space for personal vision work. You’ll hear how she and Jason divide roles—she leads operations and people; he leads field design and technical excellence—to reduce context switching and keep both the business and the craft moving forward.
If you’ve ever believed the myth that running a business means more freedom, Maja offers a grounded counterpoint: responsibility grows with the team, which is why planning, process, and values matter. We dig into core values like integrity, excellence, and creative innovation, plus the tangible tools that lift morale—ongoing education, certifications, and simple recognition rituals that make good work visible. We also explore the lessons from acquiring a competitor: gaps you only discover mid-integration, the questions to ask next time, and why fear, when paired with a solid plan, can be a reliable compass for bold moves.
Looking to grow your company without losing your soul? This conversation delivers a clear playbook: hire sooner, plan before you implement, teach constantly, and let your values steer the hard calls. If the next step still feels scary after you’ve planned it, that might be your signal to go. Subscribe, share this with a builder in your life, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway—we’d love to hear what you’ll try next.
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Bill
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Bill
Hey there. Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. And I am super pumped today. Usually I'm talking to people that I that I've never met or met briefly. Today I'm actually talking to a friend. So it's going to be a lot of fun. It's just going to be friend to friend. We're going to have it. I'm Bill Gillilan. I'm your host. I am the principal at Action Coach Business Growth Partners and one of the founders of the Asheville Business Summit. But today we're talking to my friend Maya Pataki of Carolina Outdoor Lighting. So, Maya, tell us a little bit about you and Carolina Outdoor Lighting.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Hi, Bill. Thanks for having us on or me on. So yeah, I'm co-founder of Carolina Outdoor Lighting. I started the business in 2017 with my husband, Jason Warren. We were, I'll tell you, I'll tell you how we started because I think it's a pretty cool story. But uh in you know, 2017 and before, I was working for a friend of mine named Brandon Laughinghouse, who at the time owned an irrigation company called Asheville Irrigation. And I was the office administrator. I did everything in the office while he and he had a team in the field. And Jason at the time was a landscaper, a, you know, not a guy in a truck. He had a couple employees, but he wasn't experiencing the growth that he wanted to just from landscaping, although he loved it. Um, and for some reason, people think irrigation and lighting go together. So all of the irrigation clients that we had with Asheville Irrigation were calling when they wanted lighting jobs, when they wanted lighting installed at their home. And one day I picked up the phone and it was an irrigation client of ours who wanted lighting. And I turned around and I said, Brandon, it's another lighting call. And he just did not want to do it anymore. I mean, lighting is you can install, I always say this now, anyone can install lights, but not everyone can do it well. Um, because it's it's design. So Brandon was installing lights because he was trying to serve his clients. And when he got this call, he said, I'm tired of doing lighting. You and Jason should start a lighting company. Um, so so I kind of turned around and I said, You know, if I start a company, I'm not gonna work here forever. And uh he was like, Well, that's what I want for you. I want you to do something bigger and better for yourself. Since then, he's to he's he's sold his company to our to the lead tech. Um, and now he does all kinds of growth and personal development and mindfulness stuff. So um it kind of really speaks to who he is to push his team to owning the business and starting another one and really helped us grow personally. So yeah. So in 2017, we went to Florida and did a two-day training, all things lighting with crash course, and came back to Asheville and started started in May 2017.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So you got all the technical stuff. I mean, you guys were already doing something similar. You were in irrigation, Jason was doing light, I mean, uh landscaping. So yeah, no, I mean it makes a lot of sense. That's cool. Yeah, let's um let's switch gears just a minute. And tell me what you would do if you had to start over from square one in business.
SPEAKER_01:Um, well, I think I would have tr pushed myself to transition out of doing everything faster. Um, it was just Jason and I in the business for the first few years, and uh we both were wearing every hat. And for the first few years of business, I thought that that was okay. Um I was just busy all the time. We both were. I was doing the installs with him, not always, but a lot of the times I was in the field, and then I was um I was installing, not as much as Jason, of course, but then coming back and invoicing, and we weren't doing a lot of growth, business growth things. Um, we were mostly just just doing what was coming on our plates in the moment. We weren't building policies, we weren't building procedures, we weren't documenting. Um, so all those things I would have just realized that business is more than just doing the everyday stuff faster. And I would have hired an admin faster. Um, I we would have I would have hired a team faster.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you would have got some help instead of just trying to do it all yourself.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Absolutely. I remember when I kind of not rock bottom, it's a little bit exaggerated to say it that way, but we were exhausted. And I mean, just doing everything was is exhausting. So I would have I would have hired a business coach sooner. Yeah. Um, I would have done all the things that I'm doing now then in terms of growth.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I love that. I love that. So what are a couple other learnings that you've had as an owner and an employer?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. The people, um, for me is the most important. You know, it goes with what I I would have done that sooner. I would have hired a staff sooner, even if it would have made me meant me making less profit. Um, I put my people before profit now. Um so yeah, the learnings are just invest in your people, absolutely. Um, you know, they they say I don't know if it's action coaching or in books I read, but the people will build the business. Um, and that is that is true. Um a huge learning for me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, build your people, but they'll build the business. Absolutely. Yeah, it's yeah, your focus of a of an of an owner or or CEO has to be to build the people. I mean, you know, you because otherwise you're gonna you're still gonna be doing everything yourself and still have and have employees that you're you think they're doing it if you don't build them. So hey, what are some of the misconceptions about running a business?
SPEAKER_01:Hmm. I don't know. Is it a misconception that it's easy?
SPEAKER_00:I think a lot of people have that misconception. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because, you know, and and I don't what's a misconception? Um I don't know. I I know I used to think that, hey, I'll just work for myself, I'll work from home, I'll make my own money, I'll make my own schedule, it'll be fine, everything will be fine. But really, it's um I am constantly working in the t in the sense that I have and I don't mean this to sound bad because I I enjoy this part of it, but the weight of having a whole team on my shoulders and mine and my husband's shoulders. Um it is it is challenging to to know that I'm have all these families that rely on our business. Um so I mean it's the misconception is that it's easy, or I don't know. Do people think that?
SPEAKER_00:I think they do.
SPEAKER_01:If they do, then that's the misconception I choose.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I we get that. That's probably the number one thing that we get that it that people think business ownership or having your own business looks easy. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And you know, I can't take off whenever I want because I have to make sure all the, you know, all the ducks are in a row. And if something is goes wrong and it's happened hundreds of times, and and we joke, almost every time we do go out of town, we spend a lot of time on the phone putting fires out or figuring things out. We're if if we were in the office, this might not have happened. I mean, it's that's not necessarily true, but um, but yeah, it's it's the constant weight instead of leaving your work at home. I, you know, in my case, I literally work my office is it in is in the basement of my home, so I am never leaving work.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And you know, I come downstairs to to, I don't know, do something in the basement and I walk by the office and and quickly, like, oh, I can answer that email quickly. Oh, I can do this quickly, and you know, it's constant. But it's a good thing. I I enjoy it.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, yeah. Sit down at your desk, and next thing you know, you've been there two and a half hours or something. Yeah, it's crazy. Absolutely. It's crazy, yeah. So what do you attribute your growth to?
SPEAKER_01:Hmm. Um, staying focused on what my passion is for me. Luckily, Jason and I are two people and we're co-founders. So I can, and it's it's really helpful. It's like two people in one in the sense that I take the office side of things and Jason takes this field side of things. Um so I'm able to focus on my passion of business growth and growing the people. And Jason focuses on the growth of the actual design aspect of the landscape lighting and the technical side of it. So I don't have to put my energy in that. Um, and he doesn't have to put his energy in in this part. We both kind of we it intertwines, of course, because I know all those aspects and just as much as he knows these. Um, but I think it's been really helpful and a lot of growth has happened in staying focused in my to my passion of growing the business and growing my people, hiring the right people, taking care of them while they're here. And I mean, and and really um business uh action coaching. I mean, not I know this isn't a commercial for you guys, but um but doing weekly meetings, making sure I'm doing the work, the hard work, working on the business instead of in the business, and sitting down and carving out time where I can read through my notes, um, on read books, you know, read read my notes from my books and implement the things that I'm learning.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I know I love that. I what I particularly like is the division of labor.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's huge.
SPEAKER_00:Like where you like you're doing your passion, which is people running, you know, growing the business, he's growing, you know, getting better at design, getting better, doing larger projects, doing more technical things. It's it's building that side of the business. It's it's it's it really fits really well together. So I love that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I can't imagine I meet people who, you know, are a single man or woman or you know, building a business on their own, and I just I don't know how they would do how they do that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well you can't I you know I have this saying can't do this stuff by yourself. So you have to have you you can't do it all. You're only you're not gonna be good at everything. And so there's no yeah, there's no use getting into it. So I love I love that. So you've done a great job with people. What what do you look what qualities do you look for in employees?
SPEAKER_01:Hmm. Good question. Um I don't hmm. Um easy to talk to, town to earth, people. I don't care if they have well, when we hire people, nobody ever has experience in landscape lighting. So that is not the challenge. When I hire people, they don't have to even have manual labor experience. You know, we say uh landscape lighting, the technical part of it is it's not difficult. I mean, you have to want to be outside and work in work on beautiful homeowners' properties. Um so really I look for people that are kind, outgoing, that we get along with when we sit down for coffee for an interview. Um, again, easy to talk to, you know, just just easygoing people because they are they're customer facing. So they have to be likable. They have to fit within the team and our company culture. And you know, we're not we're not corporate, you know, suit and tie kind of business. We're just relaxed and honest people.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, I love it. Love that, love that. So, as you know, B Epic is a acronym. I'm gonna ask you your thoughts on it. This is sort of a quick fire round, so maybe a word or two about each one of the things. So the B and B Epic is bring the energy. So give us a thought or two about energy.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I mean it's it's in our company culture that when someone walks in, hey, what's up? Come on, wake up. You know, we are always kind of trying to wake wake everybody up and and you know, we're always checking in if they don't bring the energy. What's going on at home? What's happening?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, I love that. E stands for education.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, I love that one. Yeah, we're sending all of our team reset now. We we just got an educational grant. So we're sending one technician to a design training in New Mexico this November, uh, another technician to California for uh I won't tell you the acronyms, but uh technical installation certificate. And our admin is doing a train the trainer certif uh course. So I mean, education, continued education is important to the owners and also our team, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, you gotta build the people like we talked about earlier. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How about P for planning?
SPEAKER_01:Planning. That is one of the most important things I am learning quickly. You doesn't you have to plan before you implement. Um, and if you don't, then you'll regret it.
SPEAKER_00:All right. So I is inspiration.
SPEAKER_01:Hmm. You tell me, you inspire me.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, one of the things I always say to when I was interviewing uh actually Brad on here, and he he um you know, I asked him like uh who inspired him. He said, That's the wrong question, Bill. And I'm like, really? And he said, Yes. So he said, How do you become an inspiration?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:For others. So yeah, I mean, I I mean what you said about like getting your like, what's up? What's your team? You know, that's uh that's how you are an inspiration. I mean, because you show up, you know, you show up inspired. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think inspiration also comes from our weekly meetings. We do we do a Monday morning meeting of every Monday, and um we have a lions sheet, which people probab probably might not know, but um Lions is last week, issues, opportunities, and next week. And every week we all present our lions, and I do my lions, but I also try to always add something different. Um, this Monday we talked about what's your passion and your focus, and I asked everybody to tell me their vision, and it's due next week. So, you know, inspiration for me is really going beyond just this is what we're doing this week, and this is what you could have done better last week, or this is these are opportunities. It's beyond the lions, it's it's going beyond what other business owners are probably asking. And and when I asked them your vision and your passion, it wasn't necessarily within the company, you know, because they they might not work here forever, and that's okay. So, what is it that you want in the future, and how can working here help you get there?
SPEAKER_00:That's a great question. I love that. What do you want and how can working here get you there? Love that. All right, see as commitment.
SPEAKER_01:Commitment. Um, you know, we don't what I don't expect everybody, all my my whole team to work here forever. I would love them to because we have an amazing team and they know that this is potentially a career, career path for them. Um, but I do ask that everybody is committed while they're here and give their 110%. While you're here, just knock it out. It's gonna be difficult if you if if you're half-assed things while you're here. Let's just commit to doing a good job, being team focused, which is one of our core values. Commit to our four core values, and and let's go.
SPEAKER_00:What are the four core values?
SPEAKER_01:Uh team focused, uh, integrity and honesty. We strive for excellence and we're creative and innovative.
SPEAKER_00:Love it. Love it, love it, love it. So, what advice would you offer other business owners who are looking to grow?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I don't want to sound redundant, um, but it is really the things that I learned early on. Um, hire, hire good people and focus on those people and take care of them. Make sure they're valued constantly. An appreciation box. And it's it's it's so not it's not silly, it's real and it really works. Um every week everyone's excited about who did I get appreciated this week? You know, and and you know, just value your people and make sure they they feel valued.
SPEAKER_00:It's yeah, no, no.
SPEAKER_01:Be excited to work the next day. People. Focus on your love.
SPEAKER_00:So, what's the next big thing for you guys?
SPEAKER_01:Um well, we recently just merged or purchased another lighting company um out of Brevard, who is a friend of ours and he's ready for retirement. So we're working with him. And so our next big thing right now is smoothing out that transition uh where we're acquiring all his clients and um and making sure that that transition is smooth.
SPEAKER_00:It's always fun to buy another company. Uh yeah, yeah. You'll learn a ton, I promise you. I already have. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What we didn't ask, what we didn't decide, now we have to decide after and all the things.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. It's uh it's a it's it's always it's always fun. It's and it's always different, really, but that you still got to ask the same questions. And you'll know a lot, you'll know a lot more about the next one. Yeah, I've got a uh client that that's sort of her gross strategy is just to buy other companies in her industry in her in her industry, and that's it's a quick way to go. Um and it and it's you know, the every time we do another one, we learn more. So it's uh it's a good idea.
SPEAKER_01:Another piece of advice that I just thought with this, with this uh where we're going now is if it's not scary, then you need you need to find something that's scary. I've done so many scary things recently, and um every time I'm like, oh God, this is this is scary, then then that's kind of my cue that okay, let's go for it. Of course, with the planning aspects, you have to be smart about it, right? Yeah. Plan, and then if it's scary still, then great, let's go.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. Most of the great stuff and great decisions that I've ever made are bring up some sort of fear or and excitement. It's usually both fear and excitement. So I love that. So, how's the best way for people to get in touch with Carolina Outdoor Lighting?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um, through our website, which is CarolinaOutdoorLighting.com, or my my email, which is Maya. And here we go, is a little trick on how to spell my name. M-A-J-A at Carolina Outdoor Lighting.com.
SPEAKER_00:Well, this has been unbelievable. Thanks. That's fantastic. Uh really appreciate I really appreciate you being part of the greater community, part of the Action Coach community, and part of and and and the dent you're making in the world. And uh and I know that uh we're going to continue to to grow this thing and be massively successful. So really appreciate what you're doing in the community.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. Thank you so much, Bill. That was fun.
SPEAKER_00:And until next time, all the best.