Guest Interview: Jason Paris of Paris Painting “A Painter’s Dream” Series: Episode 2

Published On: January 9, 2023

Categories: Podcast

Guest Interview: Jason Paris of Paris Painting “A Painter’s Dream” Series: Episode 2
Jason Paris

In this series titled “A Painter’s Dream,” Jason Paris will be discussing what makes the painting industry so attractive to ambitious entrepreneurs, and how painting company owners can capitalize on current and future opportunities. It is a 4-part series.

In episode 2, Jason will dive into the influx of young talent into the industry, and what that means for all painting company owners.

Video of Interview

Podcast Audio

Topics Discussed:

Episode 2: Industry trends – young talent.
– Wild west gets settled.

Audio Transcript

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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 in this series titled A Painter’s dream.

Jason paris will be discussing what makes the painting industry so attractive to ambitious entrepreneurs and how painting company owners can capitalize on current and future opportunities. It is a four part series. In episode one. The previous episode we discussed macroeconomic trends and how the ebbs and flows of the economy should affect decision making and planning within your painting company. In episode two this episode Jason will dive into the influx of young talent into the industry and what that means for all painting company owners. In episode three, Jason will outline what you need to do in order to make your painting company sellable, allowing you the option for lucrative exit.

And in the final episode episode four Jason will elaborate on his philosophies of business and how they apply to you and your painting company. If you want to ask Jason questions related to anything in this podcast series. 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 are type in the U. R. L. Facebook dot com forward slash groups forward slash painter marketing mastermind again at U. R. L. Is facebook dot com forward slash groups forward slash painter marketing mastermind.

There you can ask Jason questions directly by tagging him with your question. So you can see how anything discussed here applies to your particular painting company. Jason is the chair of the board of directors of the P. C. A. And founder of paris painting, the most successful painting company that painter marketing pros has worked with to date Jason. Thank you for returning to the show for the second episode. It takes a while, you know, it takes a while. There’s a lot to convey. Thanks for coming back man. Absolutely. Absolutely.

So here we are discussing, as you put it, the Wild West gets settled. Okay that’s the tagline, that that’s the tagline. The Wild West gets settled. Yeah. So it’s kind of good. Let’s talk about where we’ve been. Right? So uh the industry has been the Wild West. Right? Let’s call that. And that’s not novel for industries, right? Uh And industries go through their maturity, their iterations, their evolutions, right? Painting is no different and they’ll probably go through several of those in the next hundreds of years, right?

Whatever you wanna call it, uh this also happens to geography ease and that’s what kind of metaphor of the Wild West Gate settle I think is helpful to get this point across. Right? So talk about where you’ve been, the Wild West is it’s wild, it’s westward, right? So we’re talking about U. S. Geography, the colonies on the east get settled, right? That’s where most of population is. And it’s the adventurers, explorers, the Wildcats, the cowboys are moving west as they moved west. There is kind of uncharted terrain.

There’s no playbook, there’s no like secret formula for how to make this work. Uh And they’re not doing things necessarily at scale. Right? So you’ve got individual homesteaders that are rough and tumble cowboys, they’re good at pretty much everything. You know, they can figure out how to report 2000 if they need to, they can play their own dentist. Uh You know, they can obviously farm uh they raise cattle, right? All those things, all those things that make it really tough to settle the land. Now, what eventually happens to the wild West, eventually the wild West becomes less wild.

Right, so you’ve got these kind of cowboys, these settlers that come in and uh it will settle the land right? At this point you have maybe an environment that’s less rough and tumble. There’s a little bit more of certainty of what works and what doesn’t work. Uh Now you can get individuals who are more specialists. Um And I would say like sophisticated in a specialist area to come in and begin to create a lot of value in geography, geographical area, right? And the reason that can now happen is those are very rare to have crossover skill sets, right?

So it’s not, not impossible. It’s not never, but it’s super rare to have an individual that’s rough and tumble like a cowboy, but also super hyper specialized and sophisticated in a very niche area. Usually you have like an accountant, someone really, really good at accounting. They’re also not a generalist can do everything and has, you know, cowboy thick skin, uh, can can weather all the elements right there, kind of nerdy, they have glasses. Uh, wait there white collar button up shirt. Right? So kind of where we’ve been, I think that’s the right therapist because we’re gonna talk about young talent coming into the industry, but that influx or the effects for those are coming in, but also those that are existing and those who are looking to exit.

And I think it’s good to first go back to where we’ve been Over the last 2030 years. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think, um, this idea of kind of the jack of all trades, you know, the cowboy in this instance, kind of does everything playing his own dentist. Um, and then having to specialize. I’m curious are the new talent, are these the guys in the, with the tie and the button down shirt and the accountants who, who’s the accountant here? Yeah, I think it’s I think it’s a sophisticated business talent, Right?

So if you are a high level business talent, I don’t know why you would have gotten into painting for the last 23 years. Uh you know, on a good day, you’re building a nice lifestyle business, but there’s so many other options uh to earn a good income and have a nice lifestyle to have much more prestige. Right? So it’s not like it’s not like a a big magical mystery on why there hasn’t been top talent. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There’s some very sophisticated businesses out there.

Uh but there’s not a lot, right? Most of the industry is very unsophisticated, very fragmented, uh not serving the client. Well, I think we talked about this in our previous discussions. Um Most clients are not serviced well when it comes to a professional contractor, right? They’re hard to find and they don’t they don’t consume enough of the market demand to uh maybe push out or mitigate the poorly run companies write those poorly run companies are allowed to thrive exist, survive, not because of their own excellence because of the lack of volume that sophistication is taking up.

Um Yeah, I had a little business talent. I would just say this is another point, It’s a lot easier to uh scale and stabilize that many businesses now than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Right? And so uh I don’t know how many people listening to podcasts, but there are like entrenched in the industry, but if you started your company 30 years ago. you have a hard time, right? Kids these days are lazier. They do have it easier. That’s like progression of life, right? People have an easier every generation have their own kind of novelties and challenges as well.

But 30 years ago you didn’t have the access to information that we have now, right? And I call that from a technical side, right? Everyone’s kind of making up their own what works The prevalence of standards throughout the industry were not uniform, but you didn’t have like, well this is what everybody agrees that this is a finished surface and we can all agree with that. Right. You’re gonna have to be like a tough cowboy stand up for yourself, have that skill set, those competencies say like no, this is complete, this is, this is, this is acceptable.

And here’s why everyone’s gonna do that on their own in their own little islands. Uh You know, how do you train someone, what’s the, what’s the most novel uh most effective combination of products to achieve a certain result? That was much more siloed 1003 years ago. Uh The internet has that, it would be like a through line through all these elements of why it’s a lot easier. Um Yeah, there’s there’s like the technical information then there’s a practical information on how you scale business, Whatcom structures look like, what’s the typical or chart look like different scales business um, that’s like there for anybody right now.

So the P. C. A. Or coaching entity or any of the multitude of facebook groups or social media groups that are out there. Uh, if you’re like curious how do I fairly compensate? Uh, you know, a sales rep, my painting company, that’s not a mystery box that you have to be a cowboy. You don’t make the mistakes, you don’t have to have the tough skin. It’s kind of like here’s the template for you and that just wasn’t there 2030 years ago. It’s a lot easier nowadays. Uh, It’s also something that’s novel nowadays is people have a lot more camaraderie and community, uh, you have put a question out to your facebook group of people who want to ask a question and and calling anecdotal uh, painters of previous generations are a lot more standoffish when it comes to cooperation as, as I’ve pointed right?

Um, kind of like that person, if they’re successful, that takes food off of my plate right now and in any metro market, those numbers just don’t play out, I’d say most roller markets probably play out super strongly as well. The market is so large and this is so fragmented. Your only competition is your ability to execute business model, right? It’s not like if that meeting as well, I did poorly. Uh, it’s such a, The notion of an industry as we sit here in 2022 that that’s not the prime competing against others is not the primary focus of companies successful.

The primary focus is how well you execute your systems and your business model. But that Camaraderie that community was not there 2030 years ago. Nowadays it’s very prevalent. So 2030 years ago you had to be a tough cowboy mentally, right? Because very lonely at the top. It’s very lonely to be entrepreneur. It’s very it just it just eats away your psyche when you don’t know what you’re doing is right or wrong. Most of the people in your circles can’t relate to you because they’re not entrepreneurial and you are you taking this risk your eyes and lows and all those things now, you don’t have to have that thick skin that would have that camaraderie, that community is available through you to through advance the P. C. A social media groups.

Local gatherings have been popping up in the last two years, right? Uh That is very different and that’s just going to say is twofold one that attracts a different type of individual but also allows the attraction of individuals that maybe wouldn’t have been allowed to survive much less thrive in the past. Uh Two other things that I think are are different to make it easier for kids nowadays technology tools, right? So we talked about scaling and stabilizing and You know that’s hard to do and uh and a mobile phone not even a mobile phone, a landline. Right?

So how do you do that? How do you how do you have real time communication? The level of sophistication that people have access to now is just it’s a lot easier to scale your company right now than it was 2030 years ago that technology is so sophisticated and that’s real time communication, communication flow uh reporting to make real time decisions. Um that’s just a lot different than is right now. Right. Last item I would say that is both attracting different talents but also allowing different talents to survive to the consumer preferences and this is gonna be anecdotal as well.

But it feels like I don’t know you can call it the the loss of community in America right? The super super vindication of of the U. S. But this consumer preferences, you know they don’t have to know the deep personal history of everyone that’s on a job site. It’s becoming much more transactional and much less relational especially ability for consumers to um have a product that is scalable versus having a demand preference that necessitates snitching down what you’re able to offer as a service. I think that makes it easier for people these days as well to scale and stabilize our company.

Yeah I actually have a a round table that I’m conducting later today with the P. C. A. With a nice job and reputation management and reviews and I think it ties into kind of what you’re talking about there. Um You know it’s all about okay who has the best reviews? All right I’ll go with you. It’s not it’s not as much focus. There’s still some in terms of trust and and everything but it’s not as much focus as you’ve been a neighborhood painting company for X. Y. Or Z. Years.

They just want to know you’re going to produce the results. You’re gonna guarantee your work, people are happy and and you you know you’re gonna do it for a way that’s not gonna absolutely destroy their budget, right? Yeah. I think there’s a little bit of consumer preference. There’s also just market general market conditions. So um you know the the gap between supply and demand is so high right now that the novel value prop like you don’t have. It’s not bad. Uh Like I said the last 10 years you know firms like yours have been pretty useless.

Uh I love me. I love these podcast interviews man. They’re just such a pick me up for me. It’s just like why would you spend time doing a story brand and that’s not your limiting factor. Uh Companies are like going through these large like story brand exercises and really figuring all that you know marketing stuff. Uh I’ll tell you your value prop is a paint company over the last 10 years uh you show up and you say I paint, right? That’s your problem. If you show up and say I paint, that’s what, that’s what you need to do to win for the last 10 years.

And gosh, we were spoiled and we have been spoiled and everybody started being company the last 10 years. It’s like how, how could you not have succeeded question. So I think that’s something that we’ll look back on in the decades to come and say what a novel time in history. That was where your value prop truly was. I paint and you could just dominate market just by being able to execute operationally. Um do the marketing, but but that was not a limiting factor for most many companies now.

I always carry down to to, to bring you back up. Now, looking forward the next 203 years, hopefully that’s different, right? Whether it’s uh, you know, we have some macroeconomic trends we talked about in the last episode that are real, some of them are anecdotal, but there are like the hard numbers of consumers of confidence, interest rate and inflation. Those are real numbers that affect behavior. Um, and then we might be at a low point of talent in the industry. Right? And uh, so the supply side, so demands never been higher.

That’s starting to shift supply has never been lower. My hypothesis that that will shift um those two things that make it a little bit too, where has actual value marketplace and can sleep knowing that what you’re doing is helpful to companies not just selling what they want to hear might have some value, right? That’s what I like to hear, step in the right direction. Um so I wanna, I wanna kind of back up to what you talked about with with why there hasn’t already been this influx of talent.

You know, you mentioned that there are a lot of smart business people in the country. Why up until now, especially with such a supply demand gap over the past 10 years, why do you think that more sophisticated business people did not enter the painting industry? I guess I should be careful. I don’t want to make this like a bashing of and there are some, there are some very sophisticated painters, but most of the whole podcast, uh if I go to a cocktail party, which is hilarious, I would never do that.

I went to a cocktail party and said, yeah, I want a little painting company or a painting company. What do people think about you immediately? Like, I think, I think that you’re not on welfare, uh that’s so great that you don’t have to pass a drug test and and you can still provide for yourself. Like these are all great things. Uh people think that for a reason because it’s state of the industry today, right? And I’m not talking to your audience and not talking to the guy in his forties and fifties and successful company and, and providing phenomenal service to both his employees, his clients and the business is profitable, right?

I think some of those guys might hear what I’m saying. Yeah, let’s hear what I’m saying and say, wow, Jason, uh, really talking down to us, that’s not what I’m doing. So I just want to be careful with that. But why is talent not been driven in whether that’s applying to my gap, which is code language for profit. Right? So anytime any entrepreneur opportunity arises when there’s a supply demand gap, right? That’s corporate profit. Um, handful things. One top level talent hasn’t been tough enough, right? For all the things I listed, they wouldn’t have been able to make it without access information, access to community and camaraderie, the technology tools are in place down, Consumer preferences are driving things, right?

So, uh, you know, the, the specialized talent could certainly try to run a painting company, but they wouldn’t fail because they’re not tough like a cowboy, you don’t have to be tough like a cowboy anymore. I think that’s one major driver. Um, but I think that’s been changing like over the past five or 10 years. Right? And so I think there will be a push of talent into the industry, why hasn’t that happened overnight? Part of that, uh, societal pressure, Right? So if you’re, if you’re a senior in college and about to graduate and you’re at the christmas party uh with with your cousins and family and whatnot.

And you said, yeah we’re looking forward to graduating starting a painting company. Um You know when your cousin mary Sue says, yeah I’m looking to graduate and become a a pixel pusher at X. Y. Z. Talented. I know some people get what kids do, they graduate into these tech jobs that are people uh that that has much more societal prestige uh get you know, the hard work of a painting company. So so idle pressure has been a real thing. Um But I think a lot of it has been, it just wanted worked right?

Uh painting is a tough, tough business is becoming less and less stuff. I was four key elements listed out. Um Yeah, I don’t think dentists and accountants and lawyers with some of the wild west either, right, They would have gotten out there and they would have gotten sunburn and and then toast for three days like oh you know my son is burnt, my skin is burnt. Uh I can’t, I can’t plow the land today, right? I went out there and plowed and I pulled a hammy and now I’m done.

So right, first the cowboy gets out there, they’ve got thick skin. Uh they’re work horses, you know, they have that uh president visits a presbyterian work ethic. Uh they just get out there and brian every single day and uh you know those people do have to lead the way and the novelty of generational stacking is over time. Uh the micro improvements are made until it just becomes a much more fertile land. It’s a much more softer uh community allows to specialize the specialist to come in. So you think that there has that some specialists and people like that have come in.

But it sounds to me like you foresee a big influx maybe in the next five or 10 years, Is that kind of how you’re seeing this? Yeah, we’ll just all, there’s two points. That one I just in the last three years, thank you and I both met individuals that stepped in and these are guys that are in there guys and gals, they’re in their mid twenties, late twenties, early thirties you have accomplished like what even 5, 10 years ago would have been like, wow, that’s that’s amazing, right? So I think uh you know, whatever you call your benchmark, I’d say like 10 years ago, you know if you’re a one or $2 million company was like holy cow, the residential, it’s like holy cow that that person is like a monster right now, that’s like your one year too right now everybody trying to, it’s not a number, it’s not like a volume game.

So I’m not trying to talk to anybody, but I’m just saying the incidence of quickly rising companies, three young adopters is increasing, right? And I’d say well that’s anecdotal. Uh It’s that’s driven, I’m sure it could be. Um That’s what I see, so that that’s part of it. Um I would also just say this is not a novel concept that certainly has been happening uh in different areas of the economy. So the ones always go back to its farming was a very, very tough business right? For a long, long long time.

Now it’s driven by actual evidence, right? It’s basically an insurance game and it’s a big turn and it’s like basically leveraging cash to build an infrastructure and then insurance is cast down on it. Uh The cowboys, the farmers of today are a lot different than the farmers of decades past, let’s put it that way uh thing as brewing, right? So you think about the NBA grad, I think about em beograd, they’re coming from coming out of penn penn state. Uh it’s like, yeah, I’m gonna be a farmer.

That actually makes sense, right? You can use those skill sets in the farming industry now and generate multi million dollars worth of. Well right, you say the same thing with brewing becoming a Bruno, like typically decades generations past, if you said I’m about to graduate uh you know from michigan state wherever and and I’ve got my M. B. A. And I’m gonna start a brewery, you’re like, wow, you’re really uh settled in life, That’s an odd choice now. It’s like, oh that makes sense because there’s just this paradigm of, you can build a brewery set up to a point and then either partner with or merge with an M and A. Or completely liquidate to a larger um larger corporation, larger company, that’s like, that’s a common practice trying to see that a little bit and h back or the licensed trades as you call it.

So think about that in beograd sitting down at thanksgiving dinner, like, yeah, I’m gonna be starting the uh electrical company plumbing company. People are like, oh, that makes sense, I can see why you do that. Those are good businesses, sophisticated businesses, your skill sets will cross over your right painting isn’t quite there yet, but I think it will be, it will start to be right. I think we’re kind of on the tip of that spirit driving forward. Yeah, yeah, so I wanna, so, so like you mentioned, um I put up a post in the facebook group where you have the form, discuss the podcast and you you answered Zack Sherman’s question about basically how how does this work with the old timers?

You know, so to speak. The guys have been in the industry for a long time, how does collaboration coop, what did you call it? Cooperative in cooperative mission started saying in uh 2018 and I said it kind of hit wild fire. I’m sure someone else has used that word in the past. Yeah, you trademarked it though. So it’s the trade market for like my sphere of influence. Okay? All right, so you’ve trademarked it? So another question that came through and I want to address it because it’s relevant to what you’re talking about right now.

Um was from when Monroe, it says what new technologies, equipment and offered services are raising the bar in the industry. So it’s kind of where you’re talking about, you know, how how things have changed, what things are differentiating the top players in the industry from the rest. Okay, there’s kind of two so two questions there uh like technology and tools and services uh that are raising the bar. Those are kind of like I can give you some like um broad topics which should do the four that laid out.

So access information and communication technology tools, preferences specifically, uh you know what they call an E. R. P. Or Crm, or estimating software that connects to a project manager in software which connects to accounting software. Right. All these software type tools uh are certainly raising the bar from right? And that’s, you know, that’s for real time information to transfer uh accuracy and human error reduction, archiving, retrieval speed, uh you know, the ability to flow information from one from one unit of the company to another. Uh Those are all just marketing years ago.

Um And so that is certainly raised the bar of what is possible, but again, it kind of that that evolution of the tools that are available uh now makes certain people’s skill sets much more leverage mobile. Right? So again, if you if you’re a very architect like Process architecture type mind, um your skill sets would not have been that rewarded 10, 1003 years ago in painting, right? There’s like there’s a lot of other industries when you step into as like a nerve and be pretty successful. Now you can come to painting and you’ve got all these tools that leverage your skill sets.

Um that’s pretty that’s pretty novel building systems. Yeah, building systems that have, you know, they’re just leverage to technology. I’m not saying you can’t build and operate systems off of paper. Uh there have been great painting companies have existed for over decades or generations. Um just the speed that’s happening and now the level of reward through certain skill sets is high enough. Now that’s gonna start to draw that talent into the market and into the history services will be the same thing. So, you know, in the Wild West you have to get everything, you have a weak spot.

It’s gonna be a hard detrimental company. You have to recruit that internally. Um as this industry continues to make sure you have more and more of these kind of services block phrase, right? So just the proliferation of, of coaching companies in the painting space uh is large, right? You don’t see this level of consultative or coaching services like the dental practices, right? Because they mostly know what they’re doing at this point there, the work, there’s like a handful. It’s mostly consolidated. Um, there’s large holdings companies, like it’s not a mystery like a big mystery box, but in painting it’s a big mystery box.

People are starting to figure it out. You just have like an odd amount of coaching, uh, services based and consultative type type companies, you know that right? You’re obviously competing in that space. So it’s like if you look like at your swat analysis, it’s like, wow, the number of competitors are like trying to do what you’re, what you’re doing, what you have been doing, uh, does not decrease every single year, right? But that, that I would say overall that does help raise the standard of the industry right now.

You can walk into a painting company have some novel skill sets that typically weren’t rewarded, but our reward now have a blind spot and have a couple of options on how you solve that blind spot. I want to be the search that they’re offered in the industry. Um, The second part of that question was, were the top players doing, that’s different from the rest. That’s why base. Uh, I mean, I think the first answer would be they’re world class at leveraging team and utilizing a team of people as opposed to doing everything on their own.

So that’s the first thing that uh, an owner operating up owner operated painting company is it’s triple driven by, but also governed or, or harnessed by the owner operator. And there’s just a market difference, like a very, very tangible philosophical results orientated difference than someone who is the business and someone who’s leveraging a team of people that becomes the business. Right? And so I’d say that’s, that’s what like the top players are doing this different is their business is not them, they’re not the identity of the company.

Uh, they are, there’s a lot of, so many owner operators are just such phenomenal, talented, hard working, gritty people that it’s, it’s a great use of their life to drive a company to a certain point. Right? So I want to minimize that, but they also become the governor limiting factor on how much that business can scale and grow. And that’s what like the top players are doing is they’re not, they’re not limiting their company, Right? Yeah. That was actually ties in with something Skylar Stewart asked, um, which was, it would be, it would be good to hear about giving away your current job in the company to move on to the next bigger thing.

A few companies ever get sales and project managers even fewer ever built leadership teams. What’s the mindset? Is that hard and how to pick the right people. Yeah, there’s a lot of questions in there. But yes, it is hard, Right? And so I’d say you have to be pretty good ego death because I would call it right? Because you know, most painting companies are not creative people, right? They are like last name painting or first name painting or something like that. So to let go of, that requires quite a bit of ego death and that is hard.

Um anyone who’s been through that, they’re gonna struggle with what to do next, What am I good at? Where do I fit in the world? I think entrepreneurs actually, that’s like a general human need is where do I fit in the world? And where can I provide value? And how I put my talents to use think entrepreneurs feel that way a little more than the general population does. And so it can be especially hard for those individuals. So that certainly is tough. Um the mindset is one of ego death.

How do you pick the right team? Right, That’s gonna be driven by your values and your and your vision. Right? And so, um you know, we’re advanced attraction over here and so we’d like to take a lot of five year olds and 55 people in five key seats. And once you achieve that, there’s quite a bit of stability, I think that’s like the first building block of stability in your company. Um and then those individuals, you know, they have to not just fit, but the drivers of the value values in your company and then really uh, you know, when you think about the vision three years was 35, 10 year picture, uh those people have to be in most seats when you think about that vision.

So yeah, that makes sense of people. People is the hardest part of business, I think. Um, it’s also the most important, you know, once you get to a certain level of scale, so I kinda wanna wanna dive in. You know, we talked about why why this talent hasn’t historically been super present um, in the painting industry, which has allowed a lot of people who haven’t really professionalized our business to succeed and thrive and remain in business and now due to societal shifts due to um technology shifts that are empowering people who maybe are not cowboys um, can come in and actually succeed and and rewarding those process oriented kind of nerdy type people who can actually implement the business systems, it’s not gonna reward them.

So now we’re gonna see this influx of talent, right? There’s this influx of new New entrants that have something new to offer and really gonna challenge a lot of these older painting companies that haven’t embraced this professionalization, what can companies that are either new, they’re new and they’re starting now or that have been here for a long time, how do they adapt? What’s their game plan for the next 5 to 10 years? So if you’ve been around for a long time, you’ve been super spoiled. I should say that the last 10 years.

It’s good to know, it’s good to recognize super spoiled. Yeah. Um, it’s been way and, and, and this is like the one of the biggest like complaints or cries is like, oh, you know, we’re always undercut by the chopping of trucks and mike mike on a bike and the standard. And, and like that is a challenge in the industry, right? That that is a challenge. A large portion of the industry doesn’t understand how a job cost has a business model that puts them out of business as soon as they find out what taxes are, uh, that can be a challenge, right?

Um, so it’s kind of like reconciling like, yes, that has been hard, but like it’s a double edged sword, right? Supply feels like you can only go up from here and I’m always, I’m always been of the mindset of, there’s not a labor shortage, there’s an entrepreneurial shortage, right? So painting companies, uh, they attract recruit, attract, uh, and then train their labor, They’re not complaining that their network isn’t coming to work for them, right? Which is the first problem that the painting company that tries to coach runs into.

So it’s a larger craft industry. Um, yeah, those are my, so if you’ve been established and it’s just reconciling, it’s been, it’s been easier than it needs to be. It’s been easier than it should be and it’s gonna be harder, right? And we talked about kind of three layers of professionalization and on the previous podcast, you need to really make sure you treat your clients well, right? World class, you can’t just answer the call some of the time, you can’t call them back some of the time you can’t like saying they give you a bit and then give bits like 3/4 of your recipes that you do, you’re gonna have to really get sharp on how you treat your cli on on all phases, right?

The second you really have to treat your employees well. And so you can’t just say come work for me, I’ll pay you this much per hour and you’re not gonna have a job description. Your training plan is gonna be osmosis by working next to me and there should be no intentionality or future or communication or camaraderie or like every element of how you craft good labor attention and optimize their talents. You have to talk about that in the last element is you actually have a business that works for the business model that’s sophisticated and profit outside the wages that they’ll start driving the day today, right?

You know, and that works when it’s like a boom economy or like a super boom economy. We’ve had like the super covid boom that we have in the last two or three years or months flush with cash, they don’t have expenses are typically coming up with your travel and entertainment. And so it’s like a super boost charge that’s coming through. You just like get by. It’s like, well, like it’s so easy for me to get work cause I’m charging lower than everybody else. It’s not, it’s even easier and I looked down and I don’t feel like plan, I treat my clients like terribly and there’s, there’s always another one.

Uh, you know, now you have to make sure that you are starting to charge appropriately because you’re gonna get those profits because everything’s gonna get squeezed a little bit tighter if you don’t have that margin, it’s kind of like, uh, there’s a million different metaphors around this, but we use it as what we’re using our company’s relational equity. Uh, if you don’t have relational equity with people and then you go into the roughness of a business. If you’re on empty, it will tip you over, right? But if you have a little bit margin, you’re gonna hit that down patch and still survive.

So that’s why I think if you’re sorry, established, if you’re coming in new, I just have an open mind, open paradigm first principles reasoning. Uh, it’s a fun place to be like the general human condition. It’s fun time to be alive because there’s not much less established and set in stone that doesn’t need to be revisited right. That’s just like the time that we’re in as a species, like everything is like right now and ready to be optimized liberated. Painting companies will be no exception to that.

So if you’re like thinking like, gosh, it’s kind of odd that we do it this way. It probably is odd and don’t be afraid to adapt. Try something new because the wisdom of all, it’s like, it’s kind of like the system effect. I hope someday someone will let them talk about this. But there’s keyboards, right? Keyboards were designed in a way to solve problems that we no longer deal with. Right? And so like you have keyboards in order a certain way. So the type of the mechanical triggers don’t jam when they Do that thing.

Electronic keyboards, there’s no jamming, but we still have this design to solve a problem jamming, right? Painting companies were very intelligently designed 10, 20223 years ago, right? The way the companies operating made a ton of sense for the environment of that time. The environment has changed so much over the last 10, 20 years, uh, that they’re no longer solving problems that are, they’re kind of in the marketplace or in that environment anymore. So if you’re someone that’s new to coming in, it’s coming in and say you expect to be sharp expect to be on the other game.

Um, don’t be afraid to try different things. You know, your idea might be the best idea and uh, And just yeah, no, I think that’s powerful. I think when you’re new, it can be intimidating. You know, these guys have been here 10 years, 220 years, 210 years and you feel like you don’t really know what you’re doing but there’s also a strength in that and that you’re evaluating everything every process for the very first time. And so maybe you see something that doesn’t really make sense, but because they’ve been doing it for 220 years, they’re never going to look at it or question it.

Yeah, their success was largely driven by being the right place, right time. You started being company last 2100 years, right place, right time, congratulations your success More than likely. Yeah. This, this extreme boost and like you’ve always operated an ailment Right? Ever since the 220 recession was over, that only accentuated what was already becoming more and more of an issue of the supply demand gap. You know, then supply really dropped down. It wasn’t too long until the man shot back up. So you’ve been in this crazy tail wind of a company of an environment as a company, right?

So you’ve been very successful but don’t credit your success is the wrong things. I guess that’d be like people coming in and those are already established. Um don’t make your crediting along things for success rates are coming in. You see this company is offering like, gosh that looks wildly inefficient, uh their leadership style is not optimized the way that they’re maximizing the talents of every individual, their comfort and their company is super sloppy, but they’re successful. So it must be the way to do it. Like no, the reason they’re successful is largely because of where they’ve been and what they’ve done in an environment that made a lot of sense back then.

Right environments different, right? And what they’re doing now may not be the most optimized thing, but they’re at the top right? So don’t don’t don’t complain. That same thing if you’re on that side, like we’ve always done it this way, you know, we are where we are because of how we’ve done things and uh the way you were doing things with super optimized environment you went right and that’s why we’re so successful. It’s not because of this specific tactic, you should always be reevaluating uh what patches out there, what nerve impulses are running through the current environment and saying what is the optimal tactics, the optimal strategy given where we are today and the world is not static.

There is no new normal. It’s always been a constant change that’s only been accentuate, that’s only been like increasing for the last five years. That’s probably where the future. Yeah, I think covid kind of made change happen at a faster rate now. It’s just things are constantly changing. Accelerating. Yeah, I think we have like a false paradigm that the world is stable. I mean that’s just but that’s what we want. Uh I don’t know if it’s like a consumerism sigh up of like, it makes us more comfortable to spend money or what it is.

But yeah, the world has not been static for a long time. Uh, If you just step back and do a macro picture of things, you know, every decade, there’s like something, something crazy that’s going on. But yeah, we’ll think about this is the exception, not the rule, um, which isn’t a bad way for like the human psyche to operate, but it’s just, I wouldn’t plan on running the business. I feel like you might know the answer to this question. I have no idea, but I feel like you might know it.

How fast is the Earth’s spin? How fast does it rotate? I have no idea. I thought that might be something would be like, it’s all relative, right? And so like uh this is like people who probably don’t like me, I really don’t like excited because of this weird things, but like the words like, obviously moves fast, right? I don’t know if you if you said it’s the way that it moves around the sun or the way that’s rotating on its axis, but we go like the way that how fast it’s moving around the sun, like that’s relative to what, Right?

So it’s like, you could be like on a ship, like, let’s say you’re on a ship that’s moving 2100 miles an hour, right? But you’re running the opposite direction 53 miles an hour. Yeah, right, relative to a stationary point, right? You’re not you’re not going that fast, but you’re not moving 25 miles an hour. You’re also not going 210 miles an hour. You’re like uh I asked the question because if we look around and everything looks stable, it looks like we’re in this spot, but when you, when you recognize that the earth itself is moving and not only is that actually moving around the sun that you’re actually spinning while it moves um you can see, you know, there’s this kind of idea of a static environment is totally non existing.

It just it’s but our perception I look out the window right now and the trees just sitting there, the telephone poles just sitting there, everything looks like it’s static, but at the same time we’re moving super fast. I just don’t know how fast. Yeah, there’s kind of a loss of perspective, I would say like time to like, well what does that tree look like 215 years ago, right? Yeah, 20 years ago, what kind of current wasn’t running? What kind of data was streaming across the 20 years ago by a lot different.

Like sometimes we lose that perspective perspective of decades and generations where it just feels like the world we’re in has always been right, like this just normal and this world was like what you’re looking at is not as permanent as it may appear. Uh and then like you can get through the mind trip of like, we’re on this giant spaceship that’s been terra formed and space and like, you know, science is a great tool. It opens opens, opens us up to how much we don’t know and how much we don’t know about what’s going on outside space. Yeah.

Which is, it’s just good. It’s good. Again, I think it’s actually healthy for human psyche to have some kind of grounding, obviously, uh not like freaked out all the time. Um, I think that’s what like, uh like psychedelic drugs will do. Sometimes they like remove your grounding on what you believe is super stable and just reintroduce you to that concept of novelty, or is that what if this isn’t stable? Right? What if that truth is not always there, You know, what did this look at this area that when your offices look like 30 years ago, what do you think?

What do you think will look like 30 years from now? Um, a lot of times we just we have this false sense of permanence and false sense of security, it’s probably healthy for us. It’s probably, I don’t know if it’s like the human condition or if it’s a giant sigh up by capitalism, but it’s certainly something that we all share that’s that’s gonna be challenged, You’re gonna become a Sharma and lead a pc a retreat out into the desert with a lot of psychedelic drugs. Well, I’m actually not had good discussions about psychedelics.

I personally haven’t got into that realm. I’m not super opposed to it, but I have uh some arguments that need to fully flesh out, but I think I’m against it. I am a big fan of meditation, right? And so I fasted, I’ve done medications, I’ve got cold exposure, the exposure. Uh, you know, those things I think are very similar to when I talk to people about some of the mental experiences they’ve achieved uh, through, through synthetic means or through artificial means. I think a lot can be achieved.

Maybe that’s like the shamans of all. Um, but I think they also were taking consumables as well. So I’m a big fan of just what you call, whether we really call it flow and also takes consciousness. Um, so much of our day today, today, today, today today it’s just linear, logical problem solving, which is super helpful in the day to day, but to take some space, whether it’s once a day, once a week, once a quarter, once a year to get into like an intentional altered states of state of consciousness, altered state of mind.

I guess super healthy, healthy as well. Yeah, kind of allow you to see things from a different perspective, break all your, your mental barriers, so to speak, we have things pretty much locked in. I wanna, I wanna kind of approach things from, I guess a little bit of a different perspective. You know, there’s sort of a debate or kind of seems like this natural um I don’t know, almost natural, naturally opposing forces are not really opposing forces, but one is really focused on the craft, so focused on the actual painting, the actual the actual process of what you’re delivering and really becoming obsessed with that right?

Becoming obsessed with being the best at that. I know we have um some people in the pc that really specialized in that promoted teach it um and really promote being a craftsman. And then there’s this other side that can seem contradictory. Again, it doesn’t have to be, but it can seem contradictory which is really focused on the business, so focused on how do you sell and market it? How do you make it scalable? And how do you kind of make it, I guess good enough to where the customers happy?

Um but you’re not, you’re not obsessed, you’re not necessarily actually the best painter um in that that state or really even in that city, but you’re good and you present a good a good picture to the consumer. How do you kind of, what do you think about that dichotomy? And especially as more entrants come into the painting space. Those people sound super obnoxious. Which one? Which one sound? Obnoxious business? The business personal business persons. Obnoxious, okay, everybody, like there’s like there’s like humility and like a general, like for someone who just focus on the craft and and they’re both, neither one is right or wrong.

I think the one critique I give to those individuals that are focused on the craft is not, and in like 99.9 People have talked to that are like craftsmanship focus if you’re gonna focus on the craft, it’s like you’re not going to scale a company off of that, but you can increase your hourly rate a lot. And it’s like, it’s always an odd scenario when I’m like, Paris painting is charging more per hour than like someone who’s for the last 30 years of your life. They’re like testing out what type of brush works with this and that they’re like licking the wood before they trace this so that it gets the right moisture.

I don’t know, like there’s all these crazy things, I’m like, it’s kind of, you know, the charging more per hour. It’s like I’m you that’s like a hyper specialized skill that people pay a lot for and that’s the one critique I have because they’re just different. They should probably hitting that that top of that talk. You know, the people, it’s hard to, it’s hard to talk about like niches versus versus the general service. So if you hyper specialized with like, you know, every person on our team, there’s four people each other story have probably grown up and sleep with their paint brush and like people are gonna pay a lot of money for that scale a company to stability and scalability off of that model. Right?

Because those are just just hyper individuals, um, at the same time you can’t offer a large general service in charge of premium premium premium dollar, right? There. There’s, there’s actually a pretty high ceiling what you can charge. That’s largely like, like they have not done a great job of testing that market. You can also charge quite a bit to the convenience. Right? So if you’re able to offer a service based on a quick timeline, you can charge high premium for that because you’ve been able to build out your comments to scale and then you have the infrastructure to offer that service.

You have like the service of like the craftsman orientated nous. You also have the service that a large entity offers. Right? One of the, one of the would be scheduling potential scheduling opportunity, convenience basically. I would say neither one is right or wrong. They’re just different. Yeah. And I just say the second one sounds more obnoxious. Be careful, but I feel like if you’re coming to the like, like I’m just gonna focus on the business side that can be like, it sounds like you’re talking down to people, right?

That’s what I’m always trying to be careful. It’s like, well, it’s not like everybody doesn’t know how to be sure you have to be so obnoxious. Maybe that’s what I sound like a lot of times. Sure. So I think um, I think most of the people who are listening to this podcast are are focused at least on growing their businesses right in some capacity. So if they were focused purely on the craft they probably are not a listener of this. So let’s say someone’s kind of newer to the space and and they’re really a a business person coming into the painting space.

How would you how do they quality control? You know if their mind really is on that business on that on that business mindset how do they while they’re growing while they’re kind of building an infrastructure while they’re they’re process oriented person they’re using all the software technology you talked about you know they’re getting educated through the P. C. A. And the facebook groups and everything like that. How do they also ensure that their quality especially while scaling you know while while growing fast how do they make sure their quality doesn’t become subpart?

Yeah I think a little bit starts like what is your end goal? What do you want to do? So if you want to make as much money as you can over the next five years that’s not a big issue. Just to call a spade a spade right? You just got just got the market just run through and don’t care cash as you possibly can over the next five years. Just you and then head to Mexico so hard. Uh let’s say there’s like there’s two challenges with that.

So it’s like 103 reasons why I think what you’re saying is a good question. One as you scale company over time your brand becomes extremely valuable, right? So how well can you get repeat referral business that’s gonna have a big, pretty big impact your bottom line you over here. It also is gonna affect the stability of your company. Most uh, maintain lines that we say all holdings that I must be performing elements. Who cares about the cash. What I’m really interested in is stable passive income, Right? And so like the cash for one year, it’s like whatever that was fun.

What’s really about what really has high value and paint company, How stable and consistent are those problems can be for the next decades. So to have that we have to have a high, high level brand equity. Um, I mean, if you get into all the tactical practical someone one way, they’ll probably be, um, like a novel concept for some of your listeners would be having individuals that specifically hired to work against the interests of others in the company. Um, so everyone should be rolling in the same direction philosophically because they should all have some part of their compensation tied to margin, right?

Unlike the senior management side you call it doing that profit. Most people can’t control that. So the other thing, you would have them tied into the net promoter score or basically client satisfaction in term but oftentimes even those bonuses can I waited in certain ways where, you know, it’s in the best interests of an individual might be the best interest of the company, right? They say, well I’m willing to forgo my best score bonus because if I run 20 cruise instead of 14 cruz, I’m not gonna get my network will get this much more, more margin right?

Individuals that our client care, customer service that work against the interests of those individuals. And so this is a practical one is we have an escalation process of staining where someone calls in or get work were very uh like spies or like big brothers in our company. So if we catch wind of some inter communication between the PM sales around the coordinator and client that um like shows frustration as we called it. That can get escalated once it’s escalated out of that PM’s hands, all that sales reps hands out of that coordinators hands.

It’s now in the hands of client service rep is going to do whatever is necessary to make that a positive experience for the client, right Even to the detriment of those individuals, to the detriment of the company’s bottom line right there kind of operating as an owner trap. So typically play, you can step in and say like, hey, you know, we’re going to go some, some short term profits for long term brand equity here and you’ve given them leeway to basically what they’re able to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They have that control obviously within different layers of management as you call it. But um, My parents painting, I’m an absentee owner, there’s nothing that I’m involved in the day to day on, but I still want my desires represented. And so you hire these kind of homer’s reps or client care service people, uh, have your best to have the long term brand equity, uh, because your team is awesome, right? Every company is a family, as you would say. But you know, if individuals have a chance to make more money for their job over the next three years, so that over the next three years we have the opportunity to make 20% more income.

Most humans are gonna take that very few people are gonna say like, yeah, we could all make 20% more profits for the next two years, but that could really bite us 10 years from now. I’m thinking long term, especially if you don’t have a stake in the company. Surely one of those interests represented within the company. How do you architect that, how you say the structures we don’t side, but customer surveys help. But ultimately we found that’s really helpful is having someone with, with the big, the big stick, the big bat then come in and just say I’m in control now representing the owner and you guys screwed up.

That would make it painful. Yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. Yeah. Because otherwise you can end up like let’s let’s use the like like an estimator sales sales role as an example. They could over promise right to close the deal. They could over promised they could offer offer things or service that really don’t fit and then you come in, your production manager really isn’t able to meet that. Um And then now you have a dissatisfied customer but the sales, the sales person, the estimator might not really care because they’re on this kind of short term, you know, next year, two years.

How much can they make? But now in the in the process they’re kind of like your brand equity, even the compensation structure. So let’s say you pay them a percentage of revenue that they sell. Uh It’s actually really easy to sell work when you promise a lot and charge charge a little. Yeah I charge you a low amount and I’m gonna sell a lot of that right skill. Like the skill of sales is I’m gonna promise you very little, I’m gonna charge you a lot for that.

That’s the skill of sales. The other one is like giving stuff away. So you compensate someone on the revenue, they’re gonna feel it when they can’t charge as much but maybe their success ratio is higher. And so actually some more that they’re feeling or just they don’t have to hold conflict. Or sometimes clients will say something and just let it slide. Is supposed to hold on When you say that you are expecting this was that me to write that sales really dive into those unspoken expectations and draw them out and get super clear.

That’s a that’s a that’s a conflict. Sometimes still somebody in that. It’s not easy. Um But if you if you compensate them the way we compensate all of our sales reps are cost on the margin, cost on margin, right? So we have a threshold that they need to be at uh compared to the margin of the jobs. Just like easy numbers let’s say uh take all the margin of the job. And the sales rep has to be less than let’s just say 20% of that. Right? So say the job made $100.

It’s like well sales are up to, we have to pay $20 or less for that $100 right? Now if you’re out there making wild promises, that’s what happens to the margin. That job, it’s likely gonna go down, right? Only clients typically don’t pay more, they pay less. Uh If the owner’s rep, that customer service person gets involved, that’s like they’re just coming with the hammer just snacking with the margins of the job and it’s just hacking away at it. Um You know the labor is like giving a curve ball there.

Typically like more open to negotiating hard with the PM right? You have like unexpected change orders on the job site labor is not like, oh, I’ll take less money for this unknown thing that I have left to move on, right? So that’s like there’s ways to, um, just architect things in a healthy way. Architect things in a way where everybody’s gonna be on the same boat that you one example. Yeah, I love that man. Well, um, I appreciate this. This is, this has been incredible. Do you have anything else to add?

We have two more episodes coming out but anything else to add specifically tied to, you know, the influx of new talent into the industry. The idea of the Wild west getting settled here and how painting companies can adapt to thrive in the coming years. Yeah, I would say this is kind of dovetail into the next episode. So I think one thing that’s going to really drive top level talent and influx of problem solvers and top into this industry is the harvesting of their equity. Right? And so most people are not getting into painting to build a business and then either partner with the company or cash out or or get in place management team that can allow them to become passive.

Most people get into painting. Uh, it’s often found not sought, but they did get into, it is to get a nice lifestyle business right to make as much money as you can with working at least as long as you can, uh, to compensate you for your role, whether it’s president visionary, whatever it may be. But that concept of being able to harvest the inherent value of equity and painting companies is a paradigm shifter for most industry and I think that’s gonna draw top level talented and so uh I just want to acknowledge, because this will be a nice time capsule in 2022, The equity of painting companies is not a major driver uh for how people operate, much less what drives people into the industry, and that’s not gonna be the case 5, 10 years from now.

Uh people are gonna be like, Okay, this is something that should be top of mind, it should be something that is uh both a driver of counting but also affects how they navigate the business once it’s up and running. Um I think that will honestly be the biggest shift, right? Because then you start to get uh the capitalists right into the game, and capital is always like trying to like, seek and find and like, it’s like this uh it’s like this like manic desire to return on capital, right?

It’s just, it’s kind of what makes the world go around uh speed, that’s unknown to us both obviously. But the fact that painting companies can be that there’s solid investments, uh they get good cash on cash returns, they can feel real stable equity value, um that’s a that’s a paradigm shift that is kind of really turbo turbo boost the industry companies gonna get a lot more professional, it’s gonna happen quickly and it’s gonna be more competitive, but we’re all gonna like it, we’re all gonna appreciate it, right?

And it’s just, it’s just acknowledging what’s coming up. This happened, every industry is professionalized called farming called brewery. Uh Actually the financial services are pretty similar. I don’t know if we talked about that last episode, but the guys in the office, he was telling me how the financial services used to be the wild west, you know, 15 years ago and now, much more, much more civilized. But yeah, that’s kinda what I leave us with is just a plug for the next episode. When I talk about, I think building company to sell, starting with the end in mind whether it’s on taking on a minority partner, majority operator, complete sell out or placing an ad management team that allows you to passive how do you harvest that ongoing equity of the company through stable passive income.

Yeah, yeah, I’m really excited for the next episode, but Jason, thank you for your time man, this was incredible as always a plus work. Thanks, I appreciate it, man. 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 website at Painter marketing Pros dot com to learn more about our services. You can also reach out to me directly by emailing me at Brandon at Painter Marketing Pros.com and I can give you personalized advice on growing your painting business until next time.

Brandon Pierpont

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