Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast. The show 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 on this episode of the Painter marketing Mastermind podcast, we host guests.

Don Klim Don is the founder and co owner of the painters inc, a residential and commercial painting company based in bismarck North Dakota that does over $2 million in annual revenue. Don discusses how he has grown from hustling for any job he could get back when he started his business in 1993 to building a sustainable corporate model that now affords him a more enjoyable lifestyle. He discusses the important characteristics to look for when hiring employees and provide some great interview questions to ask potential hires. Don also discusses an interesting sales tactic he uses to keep his painter’s busy over the winter 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. Don thank you for being on the paper market Mastermind podcast. I’ll be very much welcome. Thank you for asking me to join you today. Yeah, absolutely. So I guess tell us a little bit about your background and the background of the painters inc well I guess you could say I started painting when I was in uh my senior of high school in the summers painted during the summers with it was to teachers and did it during the summer.

I didn’t really want to work that hard. So they didn’t care if I worked for them all day or half a day or if I wanted to go to the, to the lake and go fishing, that was up to them. But I, I started in the summers and then did it all the way through college and then um, that’s how I started my roots of painting and then um went into, graduated from the University of North Dakota and went and worked out in the corporate world for about 7, 8, 9 years, I always knew I wanted to own my own business that never dreamt that it would be painting.

But when I was always working in the corporate world that somehow or another ever always gets sucked into painting for somebody, it seems like, hey, I need just painted and of course I was always volunteering uh lots of times for free obviously, but just to help people out and then I always enjoyed it. So, um, one day I came home from being on the road on my job for being gone a couple of weeks and my wife, I was losing a little impatience with me and she said, well you gotta make a decision what you want to do with your life.

So um, I told her, okay, here’s what we’re gonna do at this time. We were living in Wyoming and, and I said, we’re gonna quit our jobs, we’re going to move to north Dakota bismarck and I’m gonna start a painting company And here we are 28 years later, Wow. So, so when was the painter zinc, when when were you guys found it officially? It was in March of 93, March of 93, wow. So you are the sole founder correct? Now, don, I didn’t expect to do this so quickly. But you and I were talking a little bit before the recording started and you said you are not 51% owner.

What did you mean? Well, um, back when um, we had 1/4 child and finally realized we needed to incorporate, um, my wife and I sat down in front of the accountant. We never discussed this at all. Prior to getting into our attorney and accountant and whatnot and having a conversation, I just assumed I was going to be 100% ownership. I didn’t know. and she goes no, um I want 50% and I said no, no, no, it’s gonna be 49 51 me and she said no and that’s probably the only decision I have bowed to her and said okay, Outside of that, I make pretty much 99% of the final decisions in the, in the business as we know it’s worked out well, I liked your, your attitude.

If she wants 50% of the business, she can take 50% of the problems with it. Yeah, excellent. So tell us a little bit um you know the painters, thank you. You guys are, I think primarily residential kind of what kinds of projects you do what your residential and commercial split is all that kind of good stuff. Well, um overall we are 80% of our revenue is residential, interior exterior repaint, Then about a breakdown of new construction. We just, we still do a little bit of that is about 10 And then 10% commercial, whether it’s interior or exterior painting, we steer away from a new commercial um for I think a lot of people know those reasons why, but Okay, so you guys are mostly residential.

Do you have a specific sort of demographic that you’re targeting? Yeah. Well you know what early on, you just took whatever job you got coming to you and as, as you get further into the business years, You obviously um come to find out what works best for yourself are our target market is basically we look at it. Um joint income of $150,000 or more. Um that’s in our market here. Um probably a house um that’s valued at $400,000 or more. Um And that’s our that’s our target customer, you know like our target job, You know, a particular job is anything under 80 hours probably.

That seems to be where we produce our best um net profit um Get to the bigger bigger ones. It seems like things can go a little south take a little longer for whatever reasons. So you know, kind of short and sweet one week jobs for two man crews. Get in there, get it done, get date. Sure. Okay. And where if you don’t mind sharing, where are you guys at revenue wise, what do you do in 2021? Just a little bit north of two million and sales. Um We’ve been very fortunate in this market not to have to deal with a lot of obstacles other people are dealing with as far as with Covid and and some of those restrictions um in our state, it’s not nearly, it’s um if you see something with a mask on, it’s rare and it’s it’s just the atmosphere here and you know, the the Covid itself, it’s it’s here, it’s present, but um it doesn’t seem to be a driving factor people, we didn’t lose a single job over it.

If anything, this is one of our better years we’ve ever had, so yeah. What a blessing. Yeah, that’s that’s great. And obviously in some areas California and new york, places like that, they’ve been pounded. Yeah. Okay. Well uh I guess so. You’re, you’re primarily residential, you’re doing a little over two million. About 80% of that being residential. Um Interior exterior. Do you guys do cabinet re finishing or anything like that? Yes, we do quite a bit of that actually. Um And that market I think um across the whole country is really um blossomed for a lot of people, I know some other contractors, not necessarily in our market but in other markets that that’s practically all they’re doing and and we average at least 1.

5 of those a month. Um And probably typical revenue job size is probably between 6500 to $8500. Um So it has been a, and we do market that directly also out there as a part of our services. Okay, so I kinda wanna touch based on this idea that you said in the beginning you’re gonna take, you take what you can get right, you have to eat, your family has to eat and then as you scale and get bigger, you can get a little more selective who do you not take now?

Are there projects that that come through and you say, hey, we’re just not the right fit or how does that work? Yeah. You know, like I said, practically no new commercial jobs. Um, it requires like epoxy floors. Um, you don’t do a lot of concrete, you know, we get requests for that, but you know, we don’t have the people that are specialized in those types of things. Um, you know what, we don’t go after the, Probably, I’d say very rarely do, we do do do a project anything over $80,000 for a project.

Um, we don’t want these great big ones that are going to drag on forever. And um, there’s just so many different ways that can go sideways on you, right? And then with, so it sounds like a lot of that’s really focused on the commercial or are there residential or you guys a little bit less selective there. If someone comes and they want maybe a small project, how do you handle that? Well, we kind of were trying to get off the ground, It’s called the painter of the day.

In other words, if they call in, we try to, um, like we have a gentleman who’s older than average, you could say getting close to 60 or 60 that, you know, he doesn’t, he’s still can paint is still effective, but we don’t want to give him big jobs and maybe he’ll go out and do a bathroom for somebody. Um, and you know, not that we don’t want to do that job or do you want to do that job, but sometimes depending on, you know, if it’s a $700,000 home and they just want this one bathroom done, it can lead on to a larger project later on. Okay.

So you you’re calling that painter for a day. Yeah, painter for a day. And and so essentially I want to make sure that I fully understand this when when someone is booking a job or tries to book a job with you guys, that doesn’t really make sense rather than saying rather than doing it and and kind of maybe stalling your growth and getting outside of your target market. And rather than saying, hey it doesn’t make sense. You guys have basically, in a way kind of built this lower tier product. Yeah.

And it’s it’s directed towards, you know, we say it’s a minimum charge. You know, if we go there painted the day you got them for eight hours, okay. It may if you if they get it done in four, sorry, still $600 if you want them to do something else, so be it. Um but and then if it goes into another day, well then then obviously it goes for another painter of the day um charge. So it’s a program that I mean we we don’t have it completely worked out perfectly yet, but it’s something that we’re really striving because unfortunately you do get a lot of those calls and sometimes Um those can lead to something, you know that’s more in your wheelhouse now if it’s like a house that’s not in our target market of the 400,000 or 150,000 income joint.

you know we’re not gonna probably we’re not gonna do that but if it’s if it’s in our target market and we can get our foot into the door um then we’ll pursue it. Okay. Okay so you guys are now doing some you know a couple million a year. What what do you attribute that growth to? How did you guys you know, start from nothing get to that point. Well um I mean it’s been a long process. I mean obviously it will be 29 years actually been listening to some of the other podcasts.

Yet some people have been very aggressive in their growth um Quite aggressive some of them. Yeah and and uh I mean we’re in our market uh it’s all everybody works for me, there’s no subcontractors and sometimes the labor market in this area along with everywhere in the country for that matter. Um It is difficult to always find quality good people. Um so our growth has been kind of like 10 years ago uh this last year we did $800,000 worth of work. So over the course of a year or 10 years we’ve we’ve we’ve increased about 1.

2 million. So, but what I contributed that to is is our market, um bismarck mandan surrounding areas, about about 100 and 10, maybe 100 and 20,000 with Outlying county. Um And us being around as long as we have um 80%, no, 72% of our generated leads is from past customers or referrals or um remodel jobs from contractors which we do do for residential remodels. Um So a lot of our, A lot of our customer base and you know, 79% of 72% of our revenue this last year was from repeat referrals or um contractors for remodeling.

So um just being able to be here for that long um has given us a lot of the opportunity, I think we could have probably got there faster, but we had some things that maybe weren’t very good decisions on my part that kind of held us back, yep. Um Do you want to elaborate on any of the any any kind of mistakes you’ve made along the way or any lessons? Well, I mean sometimes I wanted to grow faster than I was financially capable of doing it, you know, you know, they’re all saying um grow to make money and not make money to grow or you know, um so sometimes I wanted to make money and i it wasn’t the whole business wasn’t coming together at the same pace, so, and so we had to do some things financially a little different and then it was a challenge for us to catch back up and get that situated out.

It’s always a bit of a balancing act. Yeah, in a lot of different ways correct. So don you said something pretty interesting, just interesting in your specificity, Uh you know the 72%, you guys have obviously been around for a long time. It’s not not a really large market so people know you um but that’s still a very specific number. Before we started recording, you had talked about how you have implemented E. O. S. And a big proponent of that and everything that’s done. Do you mind kind of sharing I guess some information about your operations about about your your number tracking about how you’re sort of doing everything well and I know you know, by the 1st 56 years, I mean I was completely involved with the business in the field and doing everything and and um and so you’re working in the business rather than on the business and um not always necessarily knowing your hours, you’re just out there trying to make a buck, you know?

Um and then so it evolved kinda around me moving out of it and trying to struggle for years and years, not having a means of direction where how you want to take the committee to relay that vision two from outside of my head to everybody else. Um and sometimes as a small business owner, you, you kind of don’t want to tell everybody everything because you’re afraid, you know that to tell people exactly where you want to go, but that’s a huge mistake because without everybody else understanding where you want to take your business.

Um so you know, I have break the business and how to go to day to day and and work on the future. And one of our business coaches suggested looking at the OS and I ordered the books, gave it to all of our team members, told him he had the retraction and that was in like october and by january we were doing our two day off session first meeting. Um you know, did all of our core values, core focus developed all those. Um and here we are four years later and it’s such a relief as a business owner to now, everybody knows including the employees out in the field, employees of where we want to go and how we’re going to get there.

You know, last earlier Wednesday we had our state of the, I call it the state of the company quarterly meeting where all employees are here and we review what happened last year. Um you know what got us to where we were last year, where we are right now and where we want to go for this year and then also Reiterate to them where we want to be in three years and 10 years to. So um it’s just so much more refreshing and to have an operation to know how you’re going to run your business.

Yeah, yeah, it takes a big load off, I think a lot less juggling. So when you had said, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs are kind of afraid um to tell people where they want to go, what did you mean by that? Well early on well in our business, but I’d say within the 1st 56 years, you know, you just go out there and paint and if you had a project manager, he said we’ll paint this job at that time, I wasn’t giving out the hours and and to say okay, you gotta get 40 hours, you got to get this job done or 80 hours, it was just go paint it and our business coach says, well how the heck are they supposed to know What you expect of them if you don’t tell them, I don’t want them to know, you know, it’s um but no, it’s it’s it’s just pure logic and two, so people understood what’s expected of them and then the following year after we did that will almost certainly need, you know $60,000 more and didn’t do a bit more in revenue.

So it’s just, you know, your produced better and not knowing your numbers, not knowing how profitable you are in every job as a young painter getting into it. Um If you don’t come around to that, understanding what jobs are more profitable than others, what your target market is, as far as the type of jobs um you’re gonna struggle. Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. So just by clarifying people’s job roles, clarifying what’s expected of them, you were able to pretty drastically increase your profits from the same top line revenue do you have, I mean are you able to share any specific examples of of kind of the the expectations you’re setting for for your painters, for your project managers, for sort of different people and you’re on your team.

Well when they get their job packets and everything it has, you know, we use company cam which is a kind of a neat little um app where we can go out the sales, people can go out do their, take pictures of the jobs and and put all kinds of notes on the pictures and helps explain to the project to the project managers. We call them project managers or lead painters whatever. However you want to say. We say project managers when they get out there to construct a job, they know ahead of time by looking at the pictures.

You know, I got this steep hill, I’m gonna need this type of ladders or this type of equipment to do this job, you know, we want to stop painting at the end of this wall and not go any further, put notes on them. Um, and then of course they get their hours and they get however many gallons of paint is expected that for them to use, you know what, what, so that they’re not like going out and buying a whole bunch of paint. We buy all the paint ahead of time for them, but it’s just giving them the structure to go out to be more efficient on their jobs.

You know, we don’t want our painters going to the paint store. It’s the biggest way to lose one. Besides every time you go to the paint store, no matter what size of your community, you’re wasting a whole hour, you know, in the day time they go there and chit chat with somebody or what have you. So we don’t want to go into the paint stores and try to make it more efficient that way. That makes sense. So you had mentioned knowing the profitability of your jobs and what kinds of jobs you’re really trying to target.

Would you mind sharing some of those um, statistics about, about the different jobs that you have. What, what are the most profitable, what do you prefer? Well, our average job size is about 4600, you know, um, which is probably equivalent to about A 48 hour job, maybe a little bit less than that. Um, and we work in two man crews. Um, so you know, that’s about a three day job are our best profitable jobs, like I probably mentioned earlier or anything under 80 hours, we can still be profitable At 160, but it seems like that correlation as it drags out gets longer.

Um, it just always seems like more likely for something to go wrong. Um, and um, just to many distractions or, or what have you that makes the job not as good as well. So that’s what we really target two and majority of our jobs will be right in that price range. Got it, thanks for sharing. That has the, the labor, you know, I know you mentioned Covid hasn’t been as big of a factor there because of the, just sort of the attitude of the state and the people living there.

Um how about the, the labor and the paint shortage has that affected your business well. Um, surprisingly, you know, the paint shortage has been, um, has been an issue. You know, sometimes we’re scrambling from whoever can make a gallon of paint let alone, I mean seriously. Um, so what has led to us doing is typically with, and some of the paint stores went and let you buy in quantity and then bring it back and mix it. Um, and now some of them have kind of gotten away from that because I think, you know, if you complain enough, maybe people will change their policies.

So now we’ve, from a couple of different vendors will go out and buy a palette of this, a palette of that and it might be a white base or it might be flat white for ceilings or something and, and so we have that on hand. Um, and then sometimes if a customer really wants this product and we, and we can’t get there because the paint shortage, we just have to notify them that, okay, well as soon as the paint comes in, you know, we’ll put you on the schedule so we can get you done.

But so it’s been a little, you know, it’s something you never thought In 2021, 22 that in this modern age you’d have to deal with something like this right? Um, and so that’s, I mean that’s been a little bit of an obstacle. But you know, we found ways to work around that labor shortage or labor, um You know, it’s it’s always, it’s always a thing and you and you always, we don’t necessary, um rarely, well hire experienced cleaners sometimes. I mean if there’s when it comes along, but we would rather just hire and some of our best employees and people that just never painted in a day in their life but have a great work ethic.

Um and we’ve had to get more creative and and better at screening possible applicants for having them come in to do interviews. You know, unfortunately you schedule it and sometimes they don’t hit you up, you know, and unfortunately we’re seeing a lot of that. Um and that’s frustrating and we’ve been honest, we’ve been forced to raise our our starting wage, you know, for um apprentice painters, but that’s just the character of the market and obviously we’ve had to raise our prices. Sure. Yeah. Where do you find the majority of your painters use?

Indeed or facebook or how do you do that? Yeah, all those means. Um and we just had an accident of the company meeting here on Wednesday. You know, we really stressed our employees to try to, they know anybody and um you know, and then the past that’s worked fairly well, but it doesn’t seem like are more experienced painters have been with us for a number of years and um you know, they probably don’t have that younger um age group that they hang around with. So you know, my my wife, if she sees somebody out there busting their butts working really hard, she’ll walk up with them to them and give them a card and say, you know what, I’ve been watching you work and admire your tenacity and everything and you know, if if you want to bring this to make a career or something and they might be working in the bar, they make me a waitress, the waiter.

Um they might be working at a fast food restaurant. Um you know, sometimes you can find and pull people out of there as well, We used to be able to pay more than them. But now even a lot of those places have raised their rates quite a bit as far as starting pay goes to. Yeah, I want to touch on that because that’s something that’s come up actually in a number of podcasts. This idea that you need to offer the people, the people that you would want working in your painting company are probably people that are not just looking for a job.

They want some sort of a path. And you had mentioned your rightful hand them a card and say, hey, if you’re looking for a career, can you talk a little bit about kind of what that looks like? What’s your sales pitch? So to speak to show people, hey, you don’t have to just wait tables. We can actually give you a real opportunity here. Well, and I think no matter what happens if you know how to paint or do a trade, I mean you have a job for your life, you know, there’s, there’s such a need for it.

Um, so uh, you know, the key is, is what I tell the young people this is, You know, you know, we offer benefits, we offer, have health care, we offer paid vacations, um, to pay time off, you know, 56 hours a year. We pay for all that much. Um, all their tools, all their, all their uniforms, we don’t have them drive their vehicles to the job sites, they have to come into our place and and then go out from there, so we try to tell them, you know, it’s not going to cost you anything other than a good pair of shoes, you know, we’ll take care of all the rest and in the future wise, you know, as far as moving up, you know, we have all types of possibilities for project managers, salespersons, um you know, and try to lay down for them the vision of our company.

Um because, you know, in in the interview process we asked him, you know, what do you expect from the company you work for? You know, and it’s a it’s disappointing how people just don’t think about that. They just, you know, I just want to get a check, you know, or whatever, and and and those people aren’t necessarily may be the right fit for us. Um So I, and if they don’t really know, then I really kind of questioned them about certain things to draw out of them.

Um what it is they really want as far as the job goes. Um So it’s a challenge. Um and it’s not going to change. I think one of the other things that we’re really trying to do, trying this is another thing we’re trying to get off the ground along with this painter of the day is um, do all of our, you know, we do training, but, you know, project managers lead painters, they don’t want to have to train while they’re trying to get the job done? And they look at, it’s such a nuisance, unfortunately.

Um, but we, you know, we try to tell them, you know, the better you teach them and all this stuff, the better it’s going to help you and down the line, but a lot of times, Not because I harp on them about, I want this job done by 60 hours or 45 or whatever it is it is, but they look at it that way. Um, and they want to get it done and they don’t want things slowing them down. So we’re really looking at an in house training program that we want to get off the ground this spring.

Um, and so that we can go out and not be afraid to hire people with any experience? Just good work ethic and teach them and the people that are with us right now the longest are all the people that we’ve taught from the woods all the way up to now. Um, and they’ve been with us the longest. Huh? Yeah, I really like that. What do you expect from the company you work for? You know, so often when you interview job candidates, it’s all about their experience and whatnot.

It’s not, what are they looking for? Is this the right fit? I think it’s a great way. Yeah. It’s like what motivates you, I mean, you know, what do you, what do you think of, you know, what are you passionate about in your life? You know, you know, I mean, what, what gets you motivated in the morning to get up and get out of my head? Um, you know, um, and of course you, you ask them a lot of, some of the younger people and even the older ones just really don’t know what they want, five years from now or next year or two years.

I mean, I just want to get a job, I just want to get paid. Um, so those might not even be a good fit. I mean we want to see, we try to get people that can think for themselves that have a good intuitive thinking. Um, and I’m afraid to go out and make a mistake. I don’t, I mean I can tolerate mistakes. Um, as long as they’re doing it in the aspect of wanting to learn or um, in that way first it’s just sitting around being, waiting to be told what to do, Right?

A little more proactive. Yeah. Okay, so you guys are bismarck North Dakota. Obviously you guys have pretty brutal winters, You have any advice for how to combat the winter, slow season. Well, um, you know, for many years, I’ve kind of struggled with that the last, I would say 56 years, you know, we’re booked out right now until probably april we have 10 people in the field um and I could use at least four more painters but um what we instituted and we promote this year round and it’s maybe not A fit for everybody but we offer 10% discount for in winter months basically it equates to you know, paint for free, you know paint free when you paint your house I think um and we’ll offer that matter of fact um I probably had in early May, I probably had november and half of december booked out Of of 2021 for this fall, this last fall and then by the time November and October came along, we already booked into february, you know, end of january for sure.

And that’s been very effective for us and I push it because during the summer if we can paint outside, we want to be outside but there is undoubtedly something you have to do inside. But I just tell the person um if if you want to wait now they have to give me their deposit money, we do take deposit. So you know, if we have a 20% deposit for six months, I mean I can use that money in the business or however we need to whether we put it into the bank or whatever.

So as long as you take deposits, I don’t have quite as much issue with that, they’ve given um a discount some days. I I question whether or not we should continue doing it, but um, it’s been a positive thing for us to get business. Sure. Yeah, I mean, it might, it might cannibalize a little bit of your summer business, but if you’re staying busy outside then it’s definitely probably gonna smooth out your year. Yeah, but the 10% is always only for November December January, February March. We do not know if they want an inside job done during them.

Any other months, they have to pay the full price. Yeah, it’s, it’s nice that you get that cash floated to you six months in advance. That’s pretty good. Um, what, what would you say that your company is doing the best with right now? What are you knocking it out of the park with right now? Hmm. Well, um, one of the big things in this market now is popcorn ceilings, you know, textured popcorn ceilings. We’re doing a lot of, lot of scraping and, or um, um, sanding down the ceilings and applying like a hand texture or, um, or just plain pink and over the top of the, the scraped off ceilings.

Um that’s been a big, big, we’re doing one of those every month, if not more often. Um, that’s one of the things, the cabinet part of it is really um, is really a steady market for us. We also, in our revenue stream, we also have a, um, uh, what we call a prefinished wood shop. We also do have, And that accounts for about 30% of our our net revenue. So about 600,000. Um we have two small automotive spray booths down there. We do a number of work for lumber yards, wholesale distributors, prefinished products.

Um a lot of stuff for window companies that want to have their windows finished before they put them in. Um So that that there is and we’re about the only ones where we are the only ones in this market that do anything like that. Don you were holding out on me. That’s a pretty significant percentage of your revenue. Yeah I mean it’s called precision would finish. It has its own identity but the painters it falls under the umbrella of the ink of the painters. Um But we use that part of our business a lot for our cabinet mr spray everything and inside there and then the painters do the work out in the field um and then precision would finish.

Um I mean we do a lot of fiber glass entry systems. Um I don’t know if you know hello windows we do they have a regional store here that they do a lot of re installs old houses, they put new windows in and they want their windows custom matched to their present color of the wood. And we have a matching system down there where will match that um staying the windows they put them in there. Done so that That business has been part of our business since 94, So um and that has this was probably one of the better years they’ve had in a while and we see that market of being strong again.

Sure and we see seems like a nice niche. Yeah. Yeah. How has um this is kind of getting a little bit sidetracked but how has the shortage of lumber and and all that? How has that impacted that? Well for us we don’t we don’t sell any of that kind of stuff, we just finish it. But I know in the industry out there that it has been you know windows and doors were hard to get sometimes Windows I think are very difficult right now. Yes. Mhm. Okay so that’s good, what is I guess what would you say is a big struggle for your company right now, something you’re trying to work through um labor force, Probably the number one thing.

Um Without a doubt, I mean I believe I strongly believe if if, I mean sales, I mean I can’t say that you know if we really got more aggressive with our generation league do more work um and ourselves and I tell a customer we’re it gets a little to sell that job given the price and you’re talking in your sales here, you know a lot of people are having that issue and other trades to, so it’s a little understood but I know if we’re like we don’t want to get too booked out, let’s just put it that way. Sure.

Yeah, I could run into fulfillment issues. Um Okay now don got kind of two more questions here for you. How do you see the painting industry changing in the future or do you see it changing in the future? Well technology, you know with all the different kinds of apps in different ways of the different crm, s and and all those types of things now that’s um can be very helpful for business and more efficient being able to growth, they grow their office staff a lot of positive, You know, when I first started 28 years, a cell phone.

So my um so imagine living without a phone, A business without one. So really on it as a business owner, you really need about that. You need to understand how the, we used to use a lot postcards and we still do do some, but marketing has changed now, you know, um professionals, they don’t take the time to look at their mail or whatnot. It’s all they can find immediately evolved into trying to get every day. So they know who you are. Um as far as products go.

Um there’s always interesting products and obviously the shift away from solvent based products has been on the been going on for quite some time. But um there are still a tremendous amount of different things of products where that can and some, I’m not always good at that and knowing that depend on our sales persons to help us out and inform us better of of those new technologies and products, so I mean and then it boils down to just painting and there’s even different methods and different ways to do some painting now that um you know, bigger rollers, better sprayers, um all those types of things um do you have to be able to use those and have knowledge about all that kind of stuff?

And then then you can break it down industrial and you break it down into other types of paintings which we don’t do, but that’s even more um bigger and open product lines of what’s going on out there. So those are, you know, that’s the main thing um but then when it boils down to it, don’t forget the simple things in the in the real um just plain knowing your numbers and don’t get caught up on some of these shiny new things too. Yeah, because there’s so many distractions out there when you’re running a business from one day to the next.

Yeah, I think that’s a great point, you know know, the the business fundamentals is always going to be number one, but then uh all the different technologies and automation and you know, one of the things that’s come up again and again in these podcast is some of the other industries plumbing an h flag in particular, how far ahead they are of painting and what we can really, you know, learn from them and kind of implement into painting right to end up ahead and I think it’s only a matter of time, so you can sort of embrace it and and gain or not embrace it and ultimately start to fall behind as the industry evolves.

Um well I appreciate all of that. And and now the final question, do you have any other advice for painting company, which is especially ones that maybe are not at a million yet um for for how they can try to get there and and really grow their business? Well, I guess the main thing is, is have a vision, you know, um it is one of the things is like, um so some of the coaches never received, it’s like you’ll get, you’ll, you’ll, they’ll tell you well, what does that look like, and really sometimes you need to just sit back And think about where you want your business to be in five and 3 in 10 years and, and have that a good vision, it may change as you go, something’s gonna come along, um it may change some of that, but in being able to, as a small company to, to put people around you that want to grow and to want to make and expand themselves, you know, I think it’s important that you as a business owner, you know, I look at it as I want to, I don’t do this, I mean, I want to make money, you know, I want to be profitable, but I don’t do this and that’s not what inspires me profit is, is obviously necessity or none.

But I want to help the people that work here. I want them to improve their lives. I want them to be able to do the things with them with whether it’s going on a vacation to hawaii or who knows what, be able to reach what their goals and aspirations is. And if you can bring people into your company that have that kind of vision and want to, to improve and improve their lives, um, then I think it’s just a natural fit that your business is gonna grow as well.

Um, and and get, you know, get them all, you know, the hot term and rode the boat all together in the same same pace and in the same vision. I think that as a young and in order to grow, I think that’s so much more important. Um, and then then just have the, the determination um, to go out there because it’s a grind every day is a grind and there’s going to be that time when you’re a young painter and a young company, you’re gonna be working um, in the business way more than you should be.

Um, you got to work on the business and if you’re not taking the necessary hours every week to work on the business, you’re not going to grow. You’re just not going to particularly if you’re just doing sales, doing sales or just going out and putting out fires. Um, you just, you’re never gonna get to where you want to go. Yeah, I think that’s a great point. No matter how busy you are, you have to, you have to set some time aside to really plan for the future and really work on on your business.

Yeah, discipline. Yeah. This discipline, there’s a book. Uh, forget I forget his name. He was a navy seal, but the books discipline equals freedom. Mm mm of that book. Um, but yeah, well, don thank you so much for sharing all this inside. We really appreciate having you on the show. Well, I it was a pleasure and I wish you well with all your going forward and and finding somebody to talk to and and and making painting um, something to be proud of and uh, a great profession.

Um, and um, I think a lot of people struggle with that too. You know, you should be proud to be a painter. Don’t ever be. Don’t ever not be. Yeah, I think that’s really great. Well, thank you. Don All right. You have a great day. You too. All right, Bye. 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 PainterMarketingPros.com/podcast. Hey, they’re 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 website at PainterMarketingPros.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 okay.