Garage to Garage: Matt Kaulig Built a Business Empire From Humble Beginnings

Matt Kaulig, a native Ohioan, is a renowned entrepreneur, businessman, and emerging NASCAR Cup Series team owner. While he has become very influential in the world of business, he came from humble beginnings.

In this three-part series titled Garage to Garage, Racing America On SI was granted exclusive access to Kaulig, and some integral members of his Kaulig Racing team. The purpose of this series is to chronicle Kaulig's journey to creating an ultra-successful business, his incredible history of philanthropy, as well as his journey into NASCAR team ownership.

To properly tell the story of Matt Kaulig, you have to go back to where it all began. Kaulig was born in Columbus, Ohio, but would move to Cincinnati, where he would spend his formative years. His father worked for a brake parts company, and that job led to the Kaulig family moving around to several destinations in his teenage years.

Kaulig would attend three different schools during his High School tenure as his family moved from Naperville, Illinois, to Philadelphia, and then back to the Chicagoland area, where he would graduate from high school.

The 18-year-old would find his way back to Ohio as he enrolled in Business School at the University of Akron, where he also played quarterback on the Division I football team from 1992 to 1995. Kaulig's first job out of college was a sales position where he sold a slew of home improvement items. He was a natural.

After four years as a salesman, and an additional four years as a sales manager at that company, Kaulig discovered LeafFilter, a product that would change his entire life.

"I came across this product called LeafFilter, a gutter screen that keeps all of the leaves and debris and all of that stuff out of your gutters. And so, I literally quit my job and started selling that stuff out of my house back in 2005," Kaulig recalled in an exclusive interview with Racing America On SI.

It was a bold move for Kaulig, but it was a decision he felt he needed to make. As he emerged as a successful salesman for another company, Kaulig often found himself coming up with creative ideas of how to push sales further. However, he often felt that his ideas were met with resistance as the office had a "This is the way that we do it, just do your job" vibe.

Kaulig isn't wired to just mindlessly do his job, and he felt he had the experience he needed to succeed on his own.

"The thought process was, I knew what I was doing," Kaulig explained. "I mean, I guess it doesn't sound like eight years doing something maybe doesn't sound like a long time, but that's a long time. I felt like I knew what I was doing."

It also didn't hurt that Kaulig had found a product that he truly believed in with LeafFilter.

"I started my own thing. It really wasn't to get rich. I just thought I knew -- [LeafFilter] was a great, great product and I had never seen anything like that," Kaulig said. "For eight years, I was in the industry, and selling different products and it's just the greatest thing ever to me."

Kaulig's basement and garage would become packed to the gills with the product as he traveled far and wide to unload LeafFilter wherever he could.

"For a couple of years, I just sold LeafFilter out of my house. You know working flea markets, and home shows and advertising it, and doing all of that stuff. Started growing the business," Kaulig said.

Just a couple of years into owning his own business, Kaulig, like many in the country, would be stress-tested as the United States suffered a massive economic downturn in 2008 just after Kaulig had expanded his business from one office to four.

"So, I had four offices [back then], we went that whole year and then things really started getting bad with the economy, banks, and all of the loan stuff right at the end of 2008," Kaulig detailed. "Yeah, I was faced with a decision of what to do in 2009."

Needless to say, if you had any question as to whether Kaulig responds with fight or flight in high-stress situations, he's a fighter.

"Then it was like, alright, what do you do? And so, I decided that actually -- people were scared, and I'm more of like an entreprenuer, and more of a, I would say, risk taker, so, I opened up three more offices. I heard somewhere that the government jobs were good when the economy was bad because Washington isn't shutting down, right?"

Kaulig's courage to strategically expand his sales operation during the recession, and his ability to lead his team and encourage them to blank out the financial noise in the media at the time, led to exponential growth. By 2015, the businessman found himself in a unique position.

"I eventually became the biggest dealer. I didn't invent the product or anything, but there were 90 dealers when I first started with LeafFilter. And then, just started growing in the Midwest, and then started growing Nationwide. Eventually, I got big enough where I was the largest dealer. And then, eventually, I took over the company, and then bought LeafFilter, and then bought the manufacturing rights, and then just took over everything," Kaulig explained.

Now, Kaulig's LeafFilter operation boasts a company footprint of 150 physical offices combined in the United States and Canada, and the business is expected to clear $1.8 billion this year.

Quite a stark difference from the days of selling the gutter screens out of the garage at his personal residence.

"I think I made the right decision by quitting my job and selling gutter screens out of my house," Kaulig quipped.

Unquestionably, it was the right decision, and with the successes of his business, Kaulig had the financial freedom to pursue philanthropic initiatives close to his heart, and in 2016 he pursued a new high-speed passion project -- Kaulig Racing.

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