Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast. The show was created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over one million and annual revenue. I’m your host. Brandon Pierpont, founder of painter marketing pros and creator of the popular Pc. A educational series. Learn do grow marketing for painters in each episode I’ll be sharing proven tips, strategies and processes from leading experts in the industry on how they found success in their painting business. We will be interviewing owners of the most successful painting companies in north America and learning from their experiences in this first episode of the P. C. A. Vendor series we are hosting.

Chad Shurmur chad is the creative director of the painting contractors association. The P. C. A. Formerly known as the painting and decorating contractors of America. He oversees all of the content development and marketing initiatives of the P. C. A. And he is known as the General integrator of all things. Pc A chat will be discussing trends he sees in the painting industry and how painting company owners can take advantage of these trends and he will also be providing an overview of the P. C. A. Its benefits and how existing members can get even more out of the association.

Additionally, chad will be unveiling top secrets about the pcs future initiatives for all listeners. If you want to ask chad questions related to this podcast or the P. C. A. In general, you can do so in our exclusive painter marketing mastermind podcast forum on facebook. Just search for painter marketing mastermind podcast forum on facebook and request to join the group or type in the U. R. L. Facebook dot com forward slash groups forward slash Painter marketing Mastermind again that you are L. Is facebook dot com forward slash groups forward slash Painter marketing mastermind there.

You can ask chad questions directly by tagging him with your question chad. Thanks for coming on the show man and kicking off this vendor series. So great to be here and to be on your podcast specifically Brandon. You know, we have a whole network of shows that we put out on our podcast and I’m not sure if you’re aware but you’re one of the top performing podcasts. So I’m happy to be here. I I appreciate that chad and I will have your uh your fee, your referral fee sent in the mail.

Thank you for the plug. So chad I guess get us started. Um let’s learn a little bit more about your background how you got into the P. C. A. I do wanna kinda, I do want to kind of talk you up I guess a little bit to speak a little bit because you are you’re the guy behind the scenes right? And I think a lot of people who are listeners to my podcast all the other podcasts at the P. C. A. Streaming don’t necessarily know who you are but you’re actually the one who’s making all this happen.

So let’s let’s kind of hear about your background and how you got into this. Yeah, so my background is I come from video production. I worked in Los Angeles for some time and um it turned out that I had to have some surgery. So I came back to ST louis and I did not want to go back to L. A. And I saw a job ad for the P. C. A. And they wanted to do a training series called the trade best practice series. That’s what I was initially brought on for.

And from there just doors opened and I’m always a yes kind of person. And so when the door opens, I’m gonna walk right through it and that led me to being, you know, the creative director and our executive director’s right hand man, so to speak. I love it. So I wanna kinda dive in here with Pc Overdrive. So can you tell us what Pc Overdrive for anyone who’s maybe listening through one of the public channels or through the Market master. Um you know, Panty marketing Pros stream.

What is Pc Overdrive and what have you done for that? Yeah. So Pc Overdrive came out of um way back in the day before we had Overdrive when a user could log in and watch videos, right? But I saw that the quality was really poor. Um like it could only handle 100 and 44 bits and that’s really quite low. Um because we’re all used to at least HD now or four K and so that was just not going to be tenable for the future for the organization. So I looked at what, what are some better solutions?

So, um we created Overdrive which hosts um all of our podcasts, webinars, live events, original series that we put together and member profiles. I love that. And I kinda wanna brag a little bit more about you. So how many streams, you know, we’re filming this near the end of end of november 2022 filming a little before you release it. How many streams on Overdrive have you guys had a year today? You mean total downloads, downloads? Um well I look at everything um um I look at everything holistically, so I look at our public feed, I look at overdrive and when you combine everything, we’ve done over 1.2 million for the year, that’s incredible. Congrats.

I know you’re, you’re aiming for that million this year for the park and so I’m really excited that we hit that number. Our podcast channel is now in the top 2.5% globally. So I think that that’s huge. Um Nigel had this concept of 103 xING things. He’s always like, how can we 10 X and um I’m proud to say that I did 10 X the podcast in more than one way. That’s incredible. Who is Nigel for anyone who’s listening and doesn’t know. Yeah, so Nigel, um he is our executive director, he’s been our executive director for three or four years now.

Um he, you know, came up through the organization as a painting contractor, served in various leadership positions and now is, you know, kind of directing the whole ship here. I love it. So chad you are in a pretty unique position, you know, you’re, you’re largely driving uh these podcasts, choosing choosing what episodes and series to create which ones to promote. And that gives you a lot of insight because you have all the data in terms of, of who’s listening to what, what the engagement is, what are you seeing in the industry right now, obviously a lot of, a lot of the listeners are some of the more um forward thinking, we’ll say forward thinking, painting companies in the country, what are people interested in right now?

Well, the biggest thing right now that I’ve seen is a shift from piecemeal ng, your business together, um having band aid, so to speak. Um and shifting this to more of a holistic, how can I professionalize my business, how can I make my business work for me? And um again, another shift from being self employed to being a business owner. And that mindset shift is completely different and you’re gonna approach your business in a different way and you’re seeing that through the content, People are engaging in the questions how how exactly is that coming through?

Yeah, I’m seeing that in a shift of um episodes if we want to get to the granular level like how can we keep this as an overarching theme as a through line through every single piece of content that we put out there. So people who are listening to this obviously listen to the pain market mastermind podcast and that’s great. Thank you for listening. What other podcast should they listen to? Because maybe this is the only one that they stream but on this theme of being holistic, what other episodes or series would you recommend?

Oh wow. I could just go through the whole list. Ask a painter nick Slavic, ask a Painter has been around for years. That’s one of our flagship shows. I really like um advice from a young tradesman with Noah Cantor and he approaches it as a solo preneurs and you’re kind of tracking his journey and his growth and seeing what works for him. And he’s asking all the right questions and let’s see P. C. A. Today, that’s our show where we talk about all the latest um events, articles, what to watch on Overdrive.

We do that every other week. And that is a fun show as well. So one thing that I’ve done is since we we have more than 10 different podcasts now is on overdrive. We sectioned it out into contractor hosted podcast and business advice podcast. So um a lot of our industry partners are either starting to pop podcast or they have a podcast that we’re now carrying on the platform. So from the business side we have obviously painter marketing pros, the mastermind podcast here. We have estimate rocket, we have contractor evolution with Breakthrough Academy um elite business advice with chris moore and we actually shoot that in house.

Um we have nice job podcast and we also have coverage from Benjamin moore from a contractor perspective. We have advice from a young tradesman that I mentioned earlier, Ask a painter with Nick Cevik the paint ed show with to Orlando takes and we have brothers of the brush, which is actually a UK contractor man. That’s awesome. I had the opportunity to meet Noah at Nick’s Slavic ask a painter live went to retreat as last one. That was delightful. That was that was a great guy, definitely very passionate about the trade and about what he does as a solo preneurs, it is a different approach.

I feel like so much of this educational material, like you said holistically, how do you grow your business, How do you put the systems in place? How do you market, how do you sell, you know, how do quality control? He’s definitely approaching from a different angle, which is kind of more of the lifestyle kind of business I guess. And if you’re really truly passionate about the industry and just serving and painting and and being in that role highly recommend his show. So let me ask you this chat, who, who is the painting contractors association shifting gears a little bit from overdrive to the actual association for people who are listening again on the public feeds and are not necessarily a member yet.

Who is it for? I would say that P. C. A. Is for anyone who is serious about improving their business. Um whether that’s scaling whether that’s actually creating a legacy and eventually getting out of the business or even as a solo preneurs or it is for anybody who is serious about improving their business. If you’re happy with where you’re at, you don’t need the P. C. A. You know, because why spend $400 a year if you’re not going to use it. I think that we calculated our value to be over $8000 with all of the value props that we have.

Um so this is a tool that you want to use and if you’re happy with where you’re at and you don’t want to grow, then don’t be part of the P. C. A. Yeah, I think that’s important. I think that that points important, right? Because you don’t want to. So so often people are just kind of forced forced fed different ideas, right? You need to go do this. You need to go do that. But but maybe someone who’s who’s happens to be listening um because generally people listening to this podcast, they already are members of the PcR or would be a good fit for it.

But maybe they just happen to stumble upon this and they aren’t really happy really content. They’ve been doing it for 10 plus years and they have no interest in changing then. Yeah maybe the Pc is not for you. But if you’re serious, whatever that looks like and getting better at your craft, getting better at your business um growing or even staying the same but maximizing your efficiency and your profit margin. And the Pc has a lot of opportunity there. Absolutely. Let’s talk a little bit about the specific benefits.

So dive again. Right? So it’s who’s if you’re serious about your business in any in any which way in terms of growth you want to grow is ultimately when it comes down to what are the specific benefits of joining the P. C. A. We have a number of resources available. Um One is our education, we have painter training that’s available to all of our members and they can run every single one of their crew members through the painter training and they end up with a certificate, we have that extra.

That extra is completely folded in membership for however many painters they have. Can take it. Exactly and it’s $99 per person if you’re not a member. So think of it this way you run what four people through that pays for membership in itself. Yeah and and the painter training is it’s really in depth that covers the foundations in our trade best practice series. And then there’s levels one through three interior and exterior. So there is so much mastery that your person can take away and bring to the field and it’s designed to make your crew people, your crew members feel ready faster.

Do you guys ever have subcontractor? Uh, painters go through that? Um, that would be, uh, I don’t know for sure. Um, because if a painting contractor has a subcontracting crew, they might put them through. I’m not sure how that looks on the back end, but I’m, I wouldn’t be surprised that people are using it that way. Yeah, I think they should, one of the things I love about that is, it shows you’re investing in your employees, right? Because even if you’re just, if you’re just having them take the time to go through that, obviously I would recommend you pay them for their time to go through that.

But it’s showing you care about about their performance and their future. And I think it could also be, it could also be a marketing tactic or strategy, um, would be a better word there for hiring right for hiring or even bringing on subcontractor crews, you’re gonna pay for continuing education for them. How many painting companies are offering that, how many painting companies are saying, hey, we’re gonna, we’re gonna offer you educational resources so you can grow in this business and you know what else it does too is since there’s different levels that you can go through?

You can tie wages and salary increases to as you go through each level and become more proficient. I love that. Yeah, they get better and they basically weren’t a race. Right? So we have the, please, Oh, I was just gonna say so, you know, we have the painter training that’s designed for the painter. Then we have the business accelerator program, which is something that was launched earlier in 2022. We’ve had two groups go through so far And this is um, it might take a few different flavors down the road.

But currently it’s a class of 10 people and there’s video modules that they do on their free time. But they come together once a week as a group, as a peer group to be led by a facilitator and they have coaches come in so they’re hitting Um, how can I improve my business from every single angle? So that is the business accelerator program. It is, there is a fee associated with it. It’s 153, but it provides a lot of value to companies who are in between the $500 million dollar mark and it helps them just kind of fast track the growth of their business because you’re learning from people who have already been there. Yeah.

All right, I’m gonna dive more into that. But I want to make sure we kinda outline all these things. So we have the painter training, we have the Business accelerator program. What else do you get being a member of the P. C. A. Yeah, absolutely. So we have a recruitment platform where you can post job ads and you can decide where you want it to go think of it as like the google news of job recruitment. So it’s going out on indeed monster CareerBuilder everywhere. And you can see um from a painting perspective, like someone who’s looking for a job, you can go on the recruitment platform and see only painting type of jobs if you want to apply.

Um We also have health benefits. So PC. A members. Um, I’m sure that, you know, this Brandon, but as a small business, it’s hard to get health coverage. Um, it’s you’re either priced out or you’re just denied completely. Well, P. C. A. Has partnered with the health benefit alliance and were able to give our members healthcare coverage that they can pass down to their crews. And what’s great about this is that they can customize it to their own needs. That’s insane. So that that right there is already just unbelievably valuable.

It is tough especially as a small business to be able to offer benefits to be able to offer health care coverage can be exorbitantly expensive and just for joining the PC and essentially have an affordable option to do that Right. And then on top of those other resources that I mentioned we have safety templates from Federated. So when you’re creating your safety plan I just learned this from doing an interview with someone a member in California. But they’re required by law to have safety meetings every 10 days.

And so to get your safety plan started with these templates that Federated has is just a um awesome resource. On top of that P. C. members get PC overdrive completely free 600 plus hours of content there. Um they get discounts on our store items sometimes up to 50% off of some products and um you know discounts on events. And finally we have you know monthly virtual events that we host to. Okay so there’s a lot to unpack their number one for painting company in California. My hat is off to you how you start and and run and grow a profitable business in California is a little bit beyond me.

That is a tough state but the I want to dive into these networking and these events. Right? I think that’s for me that’s actually probably the biggest benefit of the P. C. A. So I want to explore that. Yeah so our biggest of it is expo that’s our annual event and each year it’s held in a different destination city in 2023 we will be going to Albuquerque New Mexico. And one thing that I’m really excited about um you know everyone talks about the networking opportunities. So we have brain melds um in the mornings we have keynotes, we have different sessions that you can attend.

But one of the things that I’m really excited about is a new panel discussion format that we’re doing called fix my Business and so you’re gonna see someone’s business problems being solved in real time by a panel of experts, wow, that’s a heck of a case study right there? Real time case study, yep. So this um the monthly virtual, you said there’s a monthly virtual meeting, we host different webinars um or virtual events that we stream live on pc Overdrive. They can range from, you know, stuff from an industry partner talking about their own expertise um on a subject matter or stuff that we here we do a lot of social listening on uh on social media facebook in particular and we see what’s trending and we put together like a panel of experts or it could just be one expert and they come on, they do a little presentation, answer some Q and A. And then we make the replay available on Overdrive.

That’s not bad. I want to dive into this business accelerator program. So you and I have talked offline about this. I think it’s it’s awesome. You know, one of the things that I have found even in my own business is oftentimes it can be kind of information overload, right? You’re trying to learn this and learn that and how do you actually incorporate it all and it can overwhelm you. Right? And I think this, this system, this way to tie it all together and kind of hold your hands step by step as you grow is just unbelievable.

So what, what is entailed exactly with the Business accelerator program? So the topics, so basically it’s a 6 to 7 week course kind of, depending on the time of year, um the group that we did in december ended up being six weeks because of thanksgiving and christmas, right? But the other ones are about seven weeks, the first week is an intro course, you get to meet everybody. Um and then the other topics that are covered throughout the remainder of the, the course time is the mindset, having that mindset shift, visions, value, strategy, finance, sales, and marketing operations, and finally leadership.

And these are all covered, yep, those are all the topics that are covered. Okay, and what’s the format? Is it, as you’re watching videos, you’re working together, what does that look like? So it is um in your free time you’re watching these videos going through the modules and then when you come together it’s more of a discussion and you can talk about your pain points where you’re struggling in your business and then other people are going to chime in as well. Furthermore, you have a facilitator that’s with the group, the whole six weeks, whole seven weeks, but then each week a different um subject matter expert may come in and do kind of like a live coaching session.

Okay so this is it’s there’s coaching um And then all the collaboration, it’s almost like I think you might have even said this like the virtual brain mode, right? Like the brain knows that you have at the pc expo where everyone sits down at the table, there’s a topic, there’s a moderator and essentially the different business owners are helping each other. Right? I have this issue. I have this issue too. And here’s what I need to fix. Great thanks. Right, collaboration. It’s that same concept but it’s a lot more structured because you’re you’re having a facilitator take you through the whole thing and so your week by week you’re basically focused on a different aspect of your business.

Everyone collaborating on how to do that better. Awesome man. Um All right, so what the pc a we’ve talked about the PCH overdrive and and how the streaming has over 10 X so far. Which obviously speaks to the content and the value of it. What growth overall, what transformational changes has the pc experienced over the past 1 to 103 years. Just generally whether that’s membership programs etcetera. Yeah, I would say that this is funny that you asked us, I just looked at uh marketing um survey where they talked a whole bunch of different associations and got benchmarking tools.

So I was just looking at this and we’re hitting all the benchmarks for trade associations. So in terms of growth were right where you know the median trade associations associations at obviously I want to see bigger growth. Um that’s our focus for 2023 is look we have all of our value props, we just got to spread the word about what the benefit of P. C. A. Is. And you know, one of our members really kind of hit it on the head and he said pc is a tool and if you don’t take it out of your tool box you’re not gonna get any benefit out of it.

So it’s something that you actively have to use. Um You know we cannot we can inspire you but we cannot motivate you to take that step that has to come from within that’s why you know going way back what who is P. C. A. For it’s for someone who is motivated to make changes in their business and we have all the tools there for you. Um Some other things are you know obviously the content development piece is something that has increased over the 1-2 years. Um so we’ve had a lot more brand awareness for sure membership increases.

Um I would say there seems to be a shift um in terms of the demographic a little bit um I was talking to a few industry partners and they noted about our expo and how it seems to be a younger crowd and more diverse crowd. Um Obviously I’ve only been here for about four years, so I’ve seen a little bit of that, but people who have been around longer have noted that demographic shift. Yeah. And I think that’s indicative of the industry as a whole, right? Jason Paris talks a lot about that, about kind of the rise of incoming talent and how this industry is changing.

It’s ripe for disruption and you can you can be a leader in it and you can grow with it or ultimately you may struggle over the next, you know, 22022 to 240 to 2400 years as it transforms. Yeah. Absolutely. So what what um here’s where things are gonna get really interesting chad gonna push you a little bit, we’ll see what you’re what you’re willing to share. Are there are there any top secret initiatives, things that that you’re working on that you’re thinking about working on of the P. C. A. Over the next, let’s say, 2360 to 210 years that are not public information that we can start talking about?

Well, um I have mentioned the fixed my business expo, which I’m really excited about. I’m really excited about business accelerator. I think that this is really going to help spearhead and fast track the growth of so many companies. So I encourage people to look into that and to join groups as they become available um As far as the 215, 53-25 years, I think that we’re going to keep focusing on content. Um We have a pretty good pulse on what works, what doesn’t work. So we’re probably going to tighten our reins a little bit instead of doing this past summer.

We, I was all over literally from coast to coast, all over the country, so we might tighten our reins on um um not doing as much, but yeah, there you go. Um one thing that I do want to point out there and you kind of alluded to it earlier is we’re going to experiment with virtual brain melds. This is a really popular thing at all of our events, The round tables, the speed dating style where you’re going from table to table. And so I want to experiment with that in a virtual perspective.

Um so what does that look like? What does that feel like and how often do we offer that to our our people um whether they’re members or followers on social media? Yeah. Yeah. Well I love that, you know, I had the opportunity to host a few of those at the expo um in March of 299. I look forward to hosting some in 26 and they were great, you know, that people are very excited about them. I saw some breakthrough. They were fast, You know, they’re I think they’re like 15 or 20 minutes.

I mean they were they were pretty fast and people would move. But the breakthroughs I was seeing happening just that amount of time per table was pretty incredible. So I really look forward to a little bit longer virtual sessions where people can dive even a little bit deeper. Yeah. Um a couple of other things I wanted to point out and this is where I’m going to turn the tables on you and talk about your facebook group because this is something that we’re, you know, launching with you um and we’re promoting with you um the facebook group for deeper engagement of the podcast because right now it’s kind of like a one way street.

So how do we get more, you know, audience participation and get these questions flowing and really provide value. Um So talk a little bit about that because that is a blueprint that if successful we want to replicate. Yeah, I am very excited about that. About partner with the P. C. A. On that. Um to it’s almost like taking the pa podcast offline. It’s actually not offline, it’s online, but driving that engagement. So making it a two way conversation and that was what I put in the intro to this.

You know, people listen, they stream this podcast has been fortunate enough to be very popular and a lot of the podcast on pc overdrive, very popular, but you’re still getting your getting information kind of one way right? And I know for myself when I listen to podcasts, I usually have some kind of follow up question or I wish that they had dove deeper into, into this topic or that topic? Oh man, they’re so close to answer my question, but they didn’t and I would just love to have the opportunity to get my question answered even if I can’t come log on that podcast.

So that’s what the pain marketing mastermind podcast for them on facebook is for. Uh it’s a bit of a beta. So we’re kind of rolling it out, seeing how people like it. We’re providing people the opportunity to actually dictate the podcast to actually help the roadmap. So before we have guests while we’re creating series will say, hey, what do you want to learn from Jason paris? What do you wanna learn from brad Allison? What should we cover in this industry partner series? Who do you want to hear from?

And actually pull the members? And there’s been a lot of engagement in that so far. Uh and then we’re gonna do live live virtual brain modes of sorts and follow ups the series. So hey, did you listen to this, this whole series by Jason phillips? Well, guess what? We’re going to have them, come on for 60 minutes or 90 minutes we’re gonna be discussing this series. Come join us, ask questions, ask follow up questions. How does it pertain to your business? What did we not cover that you wish we had covered, etcetera.

So this is a way to have 10 X the listenership and this is a way to now get that dialogue going uh in a in a more in depth manner. And I don’t know if you’ve ever talked about this on any of your shows but how did your podcast come to be because we were joking you know a few weeks ago when we connected and you’re like you know we almost didn’t do this podcast. Yeah we almost didn’t. So the podcast came to be I guess season one officially the podcast was sort of the podcast sort of not the podcast basically we ran a webinar series and ran it through the P. C. A. Conducted all different kinds of topics making your company more visible improving your sales system, facebook, you name it, we covered it.

And uh the I guess a lot of people ended up listening to it after the fact. Right? So so very few people actually were showing up to the webinars which was sort of disheartening but then we figured out that people are still driving value and I still have people um pretty regularly telling me they listen to the webinar from a year and a half ago. Um So that’s good the, but what we realized hey they actually really like listening to it. They don’t always have the time to show up you know get the zoom going and be a part of it.

But they really like listening to it and that’s where we came up with this idea for, let’s actually have a podcast. What do people love? They love Nick Slavic Sascha painter live, they love this stuff. We’re actually learning from people in the trades, who are doing what you’re doing, this sort of peer to, we’re learning and that’s how we develop our market mastermind podcast. Season two where we, um, just interviewed different painting company owners that we’re all doing over a million a year in revenue and dove deep into their business and tried to make it as applicable and relevant as possible to the listeners and in this third uh season, obviously we’re doing that as well, but we’re also adding more in depth series.

Jason paris has his four part series on the industry as a whole. Jason phillips has a, a six part series going really building from the ground up and building a people company and leadership and everything you need to do to have that team in that vision. Um, and brad Allison’s doing a four part series on how to start a big and profitable company, fast from scratch. And then we have this industry partner series as well as a few other series that are already being developed. So yeah, I’m super excited about the podcast man and I think it’s the state of the kind of the world, you know, people like podcast.

Yeah, and the thing that I like about working with you is you’re never like content um or satisfied you’re like, how can I make this better? And yeah, and you’re always asking how can I improve? What about this? And what about that? And I want people out there to realize how engaged you are, not with just your own content but with P. C. A. In general. Yeah. Well I appreciate that. And uh we’re working on a marketing committee um for the Pc. I kind of revamping that and growing the pc and I’m honored to be participating in that.

So yeah, I I appreciate chad. Um but enough about me, let’s let’s move on. Uh so so I kind of in that in that manner, right? How can we how can we make it better? How can we get treated? What do people want? How can people who are members of the pcr just listeners to this um podcast. How can they actually influence what the P. C. A. Does? If there’s something that that they wanted to do and you haven’t listed it or maybe they don’t do it?

How do they affect that change? Yeah, that’s a really good question because, you know, we always want to make sure that we are serving this community. And so if there’s something that we’re not covering something that we’re not talking about let us know on P. C. A. Today we have our own email that we put out there in our show notes for everyone um if they have suggestions. Um, you know, one thing that we could be doing better on um, in our facebook group is polls and that’s something that I’ve asked our marketing team to um, engage the group more on what is it that you want to hear?

Um, because we have no shortage of ideas on this team. So it’s all about execution. You have an idea, we will execute it. Um, so yeah, get in contact with us either through Pc Today Support at p C A paint ed dot org. That’s a great email to use. Um, it goes to our, our front end team at the office Marcia and Garrett and um, you can even call. So there’s a lot of different ways that you can get a hold of us. But you know, Nigel always puts it this way.

Don’t tell us what we’re doing well because we know that we’re good at what we do, tell us what you want to see improvements on or what we’re not talking about that. So there’s support at p c A paint dot org. What is the best phone number that people can use if they want to call you? Yeah. Let me pull that up right now. And they can also plug comment and tag you directly in the painter marketing Mastermind podcast form on facebook. Absolutely. Okay. The best number to reach us at is (314) 993 7322, perfect. 3145147322.

Don’t be shy. Marcia brad chad are very nice people reach out. They do not bite. No. Yeah so chad I wanna I wanna dive in. You said uh you said this isn’t gonna happen by osmosis. Right? So kind of circling back you get out what you put in. I mean that’s life in general. And for everyone who’s listening as a business owner you already know that. You know you don’t need to be told that because you’re running a business and you already have figured that part out.

Um business ownership and entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart is what I like to say. So for people who are listening who are members of the P. C. A. Or even people who are considering it where missed opportunities. Where where do you see from the membership base that that people maybe aren’t capitalizing as much as they could or what what would you recommend? People sort of make sure that they capitalize on while they’re in the P. C. A. I would say I would look at it this way.

This I would kind of create like a road map so to speak. If if it were me this is how I would approach my PC. A journey. I would start with the podcast. I would find out. Um what’s resonating with me. Then I would try to attend some of the events whether it’s expo or it’s some of these regional events um or a masterclass by Nick Slavic, that’s where you’re really going to do deeper dives from there. Look into some of this further education, whether you’re at a point where you want to start formally training your crew or you want to make the investment in your own business through business accelerator, that would be the next piece.

And then finally as you mature as a P. C. A member, you take take take in the early stages, right? But then as you mature as a business owner and as a leader it’s time to give back. And that’s why I encourage a lot of our members who um you know have been in the business for 25 plus years that you know are getting close to retirement. What’s the next step for them? Well, it’s about inspiring the next generation and making you know, short cutting their their path to success because if we all come together we’re going to professionalize this industry and change, you know, some of the stereotypes that are out there.

Yeah, professionalizing, professionalizing it, raising it up and I think with this idea of giving back you give and you receive more is generally how things work. So you give, you become a mentor, you offer your advice, you participate in facebook groups to help people, you end up receiving a lot of help you end up becoming known in the community and then when you run into issues, people are gonna jump at the opportunity to assist you. So I think that’s a really big point. Yeah. One thing that I forgot to mention um as a new initiative um is painted forward.

So in 2022 we launched our first painted forward event that was held through october and november close to 40 member companies participated. And if you think about that with the average crew size, that’s about 400 people that participated in um community service type of projects for homeowners or for nonprofits, That is cool. And what is, what is painted forward exactly for people who don’t know. Yeah, so paint it forward was um away for one of our members, josh Abramson of Albright painting, he’s based in Los Angeles and he was looking for a way to give back to his local community.

So he actually created the program and he’s been doing it for years and years and years. We have taken that program that blueprint and then scaled it nationally so that all of our members could participate. And in fact, I believe that in the future um our awards at expo paint it forward is going to have its own award category. Um it’s gonna be, it’s gonna replace the humanitarian award essentially. Oh, that’s awesome. So the events, you know, like the fact that you didn’t just harp on expo expo is, is big.

It’s world class. Um if you can come to it, your God come to it? I don’t think you’re too small. There are a lot of companies there that are not very big, but they’re gonna become big if they want because they’re there. But it is, it is a bigger, a bigger event, sometimes a bigger investment. So these regional events, how can people find those? So those are all listed on our website. Um some of them are, you know, part of groups like masterclass, nick suffix masterclass is hosted throughout the year and there’s different opportunities.

Um sometimes they’re up in Minnesota where he’s at, or he’s traveling the country for these. So stay tuned and look at them on our website. We talked about it in pc today, we send out emails about it. And that also goes for Chris Moore’s business, 360, same concept there. And then we have regional events like paint by numbers that was up in Minnesota last year with Jason Paris and a lot of his leadership team was presenting and talking about how do you literally paint by numbers and grow your business like so I was up there and they’re like at this, this revenue level, this is when you’re ready to hire a marketing person at this revenue level.

This is when you’re ready for a sales person and so forth. So they were talking about all of the key seats that you need to fill and at what point do you need to fill them? And then obviously they went into a lot more in depth than the breakout sessions, but that’s a pretty good overview of what that events, like, um, some other events like the craftsmanship for um, the commercial form, the residential forum, those are all an annual event um, that you can attend. And there are those specialty forums, as I said, that paint by numbers one is, is incredible cause I know one of the biggest confusions as people scale is when do I replace myself here?

Who do I hire next? You know, what’s the way that makes sense? And one of the things I like about Jason paris approaches, he does, he doesn’t really hold back any punches when he’s talking about what you need to do. And there’s this idea that your time is worth a certain amount of money so therefore you shouldn’t be doing um tasks that that don’t make sense for you to do at that hour, you know, hourly rate, which I agree with. And I think generally people actually don’t embrace that enough.

But then he, in, in a podcast was actually expressing the opposite and sometimes people can embrace it too early and they can say, oh well my time is worth X, Y or Z with the reality is you don’t have enough revenue for your time to be worth X, Y or Z. So right now your time is sweat equity and then you can invest into this person in the future. So knowing you know that it’s a thin line, it’s a thin line. When do you hire at what, so that’s that is huge.

I I think that’s a really good point to is doing, knowing that you need to get out of your business too soon or that you’re worth so much when you’re not. Um It’s even something that I’m seeing in employment situations when I’m hiring for different jobs, like people have a very inflated sense of their own worth and skill value um where you know, I don’t know if it’s a generational thing, if this is something that’s happening to people in college, but you know, first and foremost I’ve noticed on resumes, they count college as experience and that’s not work experience.

Um That’s not, you know, field experience. Um Let’s see what else. Um Yeah, I I found it interesting that someone wanted six figures for an entry level job um at a non profit nonetheless. Um But yeah, I could go on and on. Yeah and I do, I do want to caveat that um just to make sure people, people listen, we don’t think your time is not worth a lot, but it has to make business sense, right? You have to act to be able to afford these people because if you can’t then you’re gonna go out of business, we’re all for aggressive growth, we’re all for systematize ng hiring building um you know marketing that’s that’s a key.

But number one is making sure that you don’t go out of business, right? So doing doing a kind of lock step with where you’re at and I think that’s what’s great about business accelerator paint by numbers is it’s rooted in reality. Yeah. So um you’re gonna be fine going through either of these these courses. I mean I view it as kind of, you earn that right? Like if you if you want this certain position you want this project man, do you want this executive assistant? You earn that through your own success as a business owner, your business will follow your own personal growth, Your business growth follows your personal growth. Yeah.

But one thing you had mentioned before, we started recording here and I do want to just note it is is a couple of stats about industry partners. You had mentioned how long the average tenure of a partner is. I think that speaks volumes to the P. C. Can we dive into those stats a little bit? That was a member membership numbers, membership, that’s what I’m asking. Yeah. So um you know, we do a member survey each year we put the results under the about section of us on the website, so we’re not hiding it.

Um But yeah the average member, they’ve been with us for about eight years. And so when people first start um I think that what I’m getting at is that it’s overwhelming. Where do you start with P. C. A. And you just have to start somewhere. That’s why I say start with the podcast first, find an area of your business that you want to focus on. And we have all that content laid out in categories on overdrive, that’s where you start and then begin doing that deep dive.

But one of the metrics I’m I’m interested in looking at next year when we do the survey is how does that first year member compared to the eight year member in terms of revenue? Um So I can tell a story of this is where you’re going to see your your company grow to um in the first seven years of membership with P. C. A. I love that. Um Yeah some people don’t think they’re that they’re big enough to join the P. C. A. They think they need to get to a certain figure.

What would you say to those people? I’d say you’re doing yourself a disservice. Um I look at the P. C. A. Is basically like um what do they call an M. B. A. Program um for your painting business. All of this is specific niche content that’s going to help you fast track your business. So whether you’re just starting out, I I mean one of the things that I would love to see is see us even grow into the university setting and getting people who are business majors or entrepreneur majors and you know, this is a great investment for your first business.

Um, that’s where I would love to see us grow. Um, so I never, I think it’s never too soon to be part of the P. C. A. So even if you are just starting out having a good foundation and knowing when and how to scale is going to be beneficial to you. Yeah, I think there, you know, it can kind of be like losing weight. You see someone who some act or, or football, you know, football player, athlete, whatever you want, you would love to look like that.

You don’t look anything close to that. And so you kind of don’t take any steps because it’s just disheartening or seems overwhelming. But the first step is just, you know, try to exercise once a week, right? Or just try to cut out a certain thing out of your diet. Maybe that’s the same here. You can listen to those podcasts while you’re driving around. If you think, well I don’t really, I’m in the business too much, I’m too busy. You can throw that on your headphones while you’re paying, you can throw it on your car and that’s step one is just to start getting that information in your head right and then you gradually grow.

It’s not something you do overnight to eight years, eight years being the average membership. That’s a long time and a lot of personal business growth can occur during eight years and I recommend a selfish plug here is to watch a business anatomy episode that we did with Jason paris and he talks in this episode about how he built his team and when he built his team furthermore, he talks about the early stages, he did not realize that he thought he was a failure. He’s struggling. He’s putting in all these hours.

His wife talks about it in the series, how he’s never home and he thought that there was something wrong with him. Yeah, yeah. And he’s coming to these pieces, starting to come to these pC events and he’s like, oh, it is supposed to be hard in the early years and then he’s learning all of these best practices from people fast forward to today and look what he’s doing. So the moral of the story is, it’s not like comparing yourself to Michael Jordan’s so to speak. But this is possible for everybody if you put in the time you put in the work you put in the processes.

Yeah, yeah. Jason, Jason paris is humble and he’s completely transparent about his process. He he’s an introvert, uh kind of a weirdo that’s okay. He’s kind of a weirdo, which I love makes for interesting podcast episodes, very Mathy, but he is an introvert and he actually went door knocked. I don’t know whether years, several years, but every saturday door knocked for eight hours and that, that is a living nightmare for an introvert and that’s what he did with two kids at home. It took him I believe, five years to get to his first million.

And some people listening, No big deal. I’ve been doing it 10 or 15 years. He was driving really, really hard, trying to get their educating, investing in himself. So then we have people like Brad Nelson come on and they can, you know, kind of turn the switch on and get there right away. It’s great to learn from them and how they’re doing that. But also don’t get disheartened Because Jason was kind of the pinnacle of success, right? One of the pinnacles of success in this industry. Chair of the board company does well over 10 million a year in revenue.

Now he’s branched out into investing in all these other painting company, took him five years to get their of consistent, really dedicated effort and investing into his own education and his business growth. So it is possible network. Yeah. Yeah. I’m just going to add one more thing to is one of the reasons why I’m so passionate about the P. C. A. Is the whole entrepreneur aspect of this is because being a business owner is really a path to freedom. Um and it’s not so much that oh I get to do whatever I want in life because you’re still beholden to somebody, everyone in the world is beholden to somebody at some point but it’s about taking your destiny in your own hands.

And I love that. And I want to see more people get involved in entrepreneurship specifically painting because the bar is so so low. Let’s be honest in terms of failure. Um because you’re not going out and getting venture capital funding to fund your business, right? It’s your sweat equity in the beginning. Yeah. No that’s a good point and that’s one of the things Jason really talks about it is the industry in the bar being low but and that’s a you know prone Akane. Um but you’re not really competing against chuck in the truck and the truck will always be there.

But this industry is going to transform, it is going to reward those companies that invest in themselves. Uh Disregard chuck in the truck chuck’s gonna be there, don’t worry about him. Right? The customer avatar, the homeowner, the business you’re serving is not hiring chuck. Right, okay. Um chad is there anything else that you would like to share with us about the P. C. A. Um Overdrive expo the events really. Anything we’ve covered. No, I think that we covered everything. The only thing that I want to make sure I cover is overdrive is free with membership right now.

It’s 5 99 a month for people who are not members. So they just want to subscribe, it’s a low stakes entry into the world of P. C. A. So obviously you get all the great content but you don’t get the other resources that come with membership. Yeah, I think that’s a great point because then you can start you can start this educational journey With what is less than a netflix or who are Amazon. You know it’s less than those. So obviously that that is not a not a high investment, $6 a cup of coffee in some places.

So chad, thank you. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for kicking off this industry partner series. Really appreciate your time As a reminder. Anyone who wants to tag again, plug can go into the Painter market Master my podcast form on facebook tag chad directly right there. He is promoting that that group and is a part of that group with me with the P. C. A. So chad, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you. And um congrats on the show, I can’t wait to see how it continues to grow in season three.

I’m really excited about what we can do here everyone. Thanks chad. If you want to learn more about the topics we discussed in this podcast and how you can use them to grow your painting business, visit painter marketing pros dot com forward slash podcast for free training as well as the ability to schedule a personalized strategy session for your painting company again that you are L. Is painter marketing pros dot com forward slash podcast. Hey there painting company owners. If you enjoyed today’s episode, make sure you go ahead and hit that subscribe button, give us your feedback, let us know how we did.

And also, if you’re interested in taking your painting business to the next level, make sure you visit the Painter Marketing Pros.com to learn more about our services. You can also reach out to me directly by emailing me at Brandon at painter marketing pros dot com and I can give you personalized advice on growing your painting business until next time. Keep growing.