Guest Interview: Jason Paris of Paris Painting “A Painter’s Dream” Series Live Q&A

 

What is up everyone I am live, you got Brandon for pan american pros here with Mr Jason paris. This is the first Q and A. That we are doing in the paint marketing mastermind podcast forum group on facebook. So we are taking a deep dive into his series, A painter's dream. It was a four episode series. Hopefully you've had an opportunity to watch some and or all of it, it's been released through Pc Overdrive as well as our site and on our facebook group, here's your opportunity to ask Jason questions directly.

 

Be nice to him. He talks a lot about how you guys sending me emails. Don't send me any emails to Jason. Be nice to have a lot of mean stuff. Jason has his has his quirks and his viewpoints don't be mean to Jason. So ask him your questions, you know, say, hey, you actually asked me, okay, roast them you if you want to roast them, How many people show up but you want to roast me. If you want to roast them, roast them, we are going to be right back.

 

But Jason's gonna come back with you and then we'll see uh and I will be mean. You want to see what it looks like. We'll see how out of hand this gets. Hello Kalen. So make sure that you grant stream yard access to your name. There's a little link, we're going to throw up there that way we know who you are. Otherwise, it's just going to say facebook user. Um I think that's Patrick's into cheese here, but it says facebook users. So Patrick, we're gonna throw up a link for you to be able to identify yourself so to start to get the ball rolling.

 

Jason, Let's kind of do a quick recap of your four episode series. Yeah, that'd be great if you could do that. Oh, it's just yes. So we we talked about a lot of different things, you know, we did four things. The first one was trends I remember correct like economic talking specifically, like there's a lot of hullabaloo about recession time and and business cycles and and all that stuff, but you know, there's also macro, there's macroeconomic trends. There's also don't forget about the macro macro economic trends. Okay.

 

You remember those, you got double mac, it's like a double macro right? Double macro, you got your macros, you got your micro's, you got your mike? Rowe works? Television show, But really we're talking about recession, does that matter in our industry where the overlong flying trends is talent fighting, is it entering? Is there more or less demand? Supply and demand? We talked, we talked for an hour about supply and demand, pretty boring stuff. Episode two, we talked about industry trends, so I think it was largely about the professionalizing of the industry.

 

So there's top talent that is beginning like you're seeing, you're seeing people come in that are not your stereotypical deigning business owner now. And I think that's just the tip of the iceberg, as the kids say, where we're going to see a lot more of that. But some of the transit industry around professionalizing younger talents, getting in a lot more tech savvy, entrepreneurial things like that. Episode three Building with the end in mind. All right, so what do you want in life? It's called intentional intentional life design architecture.

 

Uh you get to be and then most of us are like 10 pcs even in our own life, but you get a chance to pop out and play game dev for a little bit. So start to architect that talked a little bit, I think in that episode about uh exit strategy. So the different potential paths of the exit strategy in a painting company, episode ford was wild. Okay, that was pretty uh inappropriate free for all free for all. But no, it was a great episode four. It was philosophies of business.

 

I don't remember what happened, I blacked out for most of it, but it was, it was a plus. If you want to go on it and and watch I think you're you're like videos that you put out, had pretty good summaries on these two. Uh so if I was smart I would just pull those up. I don't remember if I saw those on youtube or what, but yep, no, I think you pretty much nailed it. So in a painter's dream, you discuss what makes a painting industry?

 

So Aaron. Okay, I just gotta, can I just, can we talk about this is your show? Okay, Aaron Edward is not even your last name first of all. Alright, vitality. No one can pronounce it, which is probably why you changed it or you're going through some mid life crisis. I don't know what's happening if it is, if it's actually a personal day, I apologize for that. Your name, last name is vitality. No one can pronounce that. You are using Edward, That's cute. Second of all, nobody runs the whole ultra marathon.

 

It's called, it's not it's not called walking, it's called power hiking. Alright. It's called Power hiking and not no one's walking your power hiking. Alright, so just chill. Actually don't chill. Thank you for the roast. Except it is this how you do a roast. How am I supposed to react to these people, I don't know how to receive a roast ha ha. That's funny. Your name is No one can pronounce it and it's weird. The first roast, The first arrow has been slung. Jason is a wannabe ultra runner. Really?

 

He walks half the time. I don't it's power hiking guys. It's not it's not hard to see the rest of these comments. They go by so fast and I don't know how to see them. So yeah. 50 miles walking 50 miles running for Jason. So he's not a very good ultra runner. But yeah, I mean, yeah, I walk a lot. I mean, I'll just stay on the last race. There were over eight. There were there were eight people that were faster than me. So they must have been running a lot really fast. Yeah.

 

If if maybe I was running the whole time, I'd be, you know, faster than those eight other people, who knows? Yeah. Yeah. It'd be nice to not let eight people beat you, but we'll let it go because he did b I think like 100 people or something, so not bad. Gosh, I'm getting real defensive on these. I don't know if it's it's pretty it's pretty early on to get this heated, but we'll we'll keep rolling with it. It's okay. Thank you. I will stay hard. I know I have my hands.

 

Hopefully that is the David Goggins reference. Alright. I hope I hope it is. It is then that's appropriate. Yeah, I love it. David Goggins. So Jason. You said you had a lot of people reach out to you. Why do I have some echo right now? I don't know. You said you had a lot of people reach out to you after your podcast episodes. What were they saying? Uh they're saying you're the best, I'm very impressed by you and okay, I'm just gonna let it go actually. You are you recording these messages because they go off my screen fast and I can't see them.

 

I will follow. I will make sure we follow up with all that. Okay. Um A lot of people have questions about All Holdings. Let's say that was most of the conversations that ended up happening is it must be an episode three. I talked about uh founding partner in All Holdings. All Holdings is the one that operates uh prepares painting. So now I'm able to participate as a passive shareholder in that. We currently have seven partners across the U. S. If you don't include paris painting, painting companies we've partnered in with to help them scale into a stable asset.

 

So that's those were most of the questions just to shoot you straight on it. That's what popped up. Alright, just just Aaron, Okay. There were more than 17 people at this race. And I'm not, the thing about Ultra running is I'm very humble so I'm actually not gonna defend myself. I'm just not, it wasn't in Minnesota. I'm not gonna tell you where it was? Because it's actually worse? It's not actually not worse depending on it was in Iowa but was in Dubuque Iowa, which is very close to Illinois, which has a big draw from Chicago.

 

So it's actually okay, fred Hambleton the professional. So I would just say the definition from you. Hold up hold up hold up Jason. So I'm gonna I'm gonna ask it because a lot of people are gonna just listen to this or they're listening to it so they can't see it. So fred asked Jason, what would be your definition of a professional painting company? As in what would you say are the minimum quote unquote minimum requirements that the client should be able to experience from a professionalized business.

 

So professional business for me is one that is not simply surviving But improving right in the painting industry over the last 10 years. It's been very easy to survive if you are not doing well and painting. I don't know what you're doing in your life because this has been like the biggest gift of soft pillows in the economics that we will ever experience. So it is uh you know, are you doing the bare minimum when it comes to your clients? So, I mean there are certainly expectations I could list out but I don't know if that's gonna be uniform for every single business?

 

Every single person. Uh do you show up? Do you tell them that you're showing up? Was your communication look like what the customer experience look like was the product look like. I'm sure there are many different elements that we could start to freestyle. But it's not just the clients. It's also your whether your employees or your labor if you're using subcontracting, how well are they treated getting by or exceptional. And the last thing would be the business is the business just getting by off what that what that looks like.

 

I'll call that profit is the owner making good compensation for their work that they're doing in the company, right? So most people are out there doing all the sales are doing some project management and they're getting compensated for those roles. But there's actually not profit in the company. If you were paying market rate rate for those two things, a professional company will be the one that's not just getting by but is exceptional and has a profit, healthy profit at that. All these things about professionalizing they are what gets you ahead of the curve right now and more competitive market, it's what allows you to survive or stay above water.

 

The unprofessional companies are the ones that will go under rightfully. So the professional ones are the ones that will continue to grow or maybe even just survive depending on what their status, what their state of professionalism is and how how hard of the downturn it is there? Yeah, I love it. So you so you're basically you break it up into three different different avenues that you're looking at number one is how you actually treat your customers for most of the people listening to homeowners, you know, could be commercial property owners, How are you treating them?

 

How are you communicating with them? They're not mind readers. You know, you guys go out and do this stuff every day. You go out and conduct estimates every day, go out and paint houses, but they don't actually know the process. So are you telling them, hey, we're going to show up to your house at this time. This is about how long it's gonna take. This is our process. This is what you can expect from us. And then when you come back, you say, hey, this is how long it's gonna take us to do your interior repaint, This is what touch ups, what our processes for touch ups, if there any issues, here's how we handle them, here's our satisfaction guarantee or workmanship warranty.

 

Whatever you offer, communicate, convey that trust to them. So they know they're taken care of and that's what most people think of when they think of professional business, but then you're taking it farther you're taking. Okay? How do you treat your labor, whether it's independent contractors, whether it's W. Two, that's a big piece of the business homeowners or your, Your end customer, your labor and then something way beyond what most people are thinking about is actually the business, the equity in the business. If you're paying yourself people think, Oh, I made 100 grand, I made 200 grand, I'm making good money.

 

Well what are all the jobs you're doing if you're doing sales, you know, you're going to answer the phone, you're doing estimating, you're doing project management. If you actually hire people for all that stuff, maybe you're not making anything, maybe you're making negative. So treating the business as a business not as a job that you just worked really hard to hustle and make money. Yeah, yeah. For the client side, if I were just to riff off of it, there's communication, there's a level of care and there's the product, right, communicating like you said brand, they're not mind readers, you know, and think about your own experience, whether it's going to a restaurant or getting your car fixed or getting a service on your own home, right?

 

You want to see a level of care, You want to see good communication, you want to see a good product, right? And the labor, I'll just say the labor is like one of the genesis is of why this industry has so many challenges. One of the big origin stories in our industry is I worked for a guy and it was pretty bad. So I started my own company, right? That's, that's where all these businesses come from, that's where a lot of them come from, right? I start, I worked for a guy and you know what the second part of that is going to be and it did not go so well because it typically doesn't, there are many professional companies the on boarding for most companies that come here learn by osmosis.

 

If you get me in a tight pinch, I may give you a raise that may not be so hard to fight for it. What are the expectations? Who knows? Uh, that's not everybody. I do think also think we talk macro trends. I do think the industry is shifting and changing course professionalism, but that by and large has been the experience that most people have received and it's no wonder it's hard to retain or attract not retain, hard to attract top talent into this industry, given the experience that most people would have.

 

Yeah, yeah, I love it. The, I've seen, I've seen job postings for, hey, don't, don't show up drunk, do do this, don't do that. You know, make sure you do this, you have to have that. There's absolutely no, there's absolutely no mention of, hey, this is your opportunity at the company. This is what you can expect if you're, you know, we like to promote from within move up the middle management, there's none of that. It's just, hey, you must do this and you must not do that.

 

You don't attract the right kind of kind of, you know, not a great environment, you know, the only attractive components of getting into that is there's no drug test and no background check otherwise, why would you become a boner? Right? Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Um okay, so a little love for Jason, so that's nice P. S. I love you, Jason, real question for Jason, can you talk about the strategy behind building a leadership slash executive team and tell a bit about the story of how you did it?

 

Yeah, so strategy would be a series of plans. Um, if I was thinking about the strategy of building a leadership team, so you don't want to lose your identity, we'll start with that basis. You want to understand your core values higher that and make sure you don't lose it. So that's gonna be core to who you bring on, You wanna get people that are smarter than you, better than you and hyper specialized in their roles. So when you're a founder, you're typically good at everything, you have to be to get something off the ground, otherwise they'll immediately sink.

 

But you're typically not gonna be hyper specialized on the managerial level at anything, you're an entrepreneur, you like creativity like chaos, you like the lack of rules, lack of structure and the motivation that comes from the potential to fail disastrously, right? All those things are kind of the opposite of what you're hiring for, how you do it is, there's there's no magic bullet otherwise people would be building successful businesses left and right, and they're actually pretty rare, um, you know, something that helps us having a strong network of individuals and so, you know, like people flock together and when you're the entrepreneur of the group, you create the opportunities that other people can come in and and perform within that and generate value.

 

It also think about how I want to say this. It also helps if you can, can give people upside, right? That's probably easiest way, if you give people upside. So a lot of people are not going to be very excited about joining a painting company on the executive team level unless there's a real strong vision to cast. So I'd say that's that's the number one element of recruiting and strategizing with the team as was a vision, was the likelihood of that vision? How do you cast that vision, how to use as an attraction?

 

Make sure you don't lose your core values and your identity along the way. You know, that you're not hiring more of yourselves, You're hiring managers and executives, not entrepreneurial, creative founders. Yeah, that that I think that's how I'd answer that, that question, at least start off off the top of my head following up on that, would you, because you're talking about hiring, would you primarily be looking outside the company for this, or would you look internally, So we start internally and then we'll go outside. So I'd say it's pretty rare, especially early on that you're gonna have executive team caliber people with you in the field, it happens and so it's not, but it's, it's more of a unique event.

 

It's great if you can, if you can promote within because then you can retain the culture and the identity a lot easier if you, there's kind of a math math equation of how many of your roles for the next year and this is tough to do in a high growth company, right? How many of your roles in the next year do you have, you call it like a risk of culture because they're coming from the outside, They haven't been internally vetted. But then you need to balance that.

 

It's a nice edge of how many rolls on the executive managerial team are not a risk because they don't have the proven performance track record of that role. So someone internally is getting promoted, they're now getting promoted to something they haven't done. So there's a risk that you want to put in your chart on that. But you wrote somebody from the outside that has done that role before they have a proven track record. You're not taking a risk on your culture. That's something you want to monitor back and forth.

 

It's hard to do in a high growth company. Sometimes you get lucky or you don't and there's gonna be a big impact for like a 1 to 103 to three year sprint, but by and large, look inside first, if you can, um, at least be aware, there's not a magic number, but be aware of the percentage of risk on your chart for people who have not performed in that role before and weigh that with your, I guess your risk profile as, as an investor as the owner. Are you in general when you're hiring?

 

Are you quick to hire quick the fire? Slow to hire quick the fire. What's your approach? I don't hire that many people anymore. Uh, I just don't know what the answer is. Probably slow to hire quick to fire. I think that's what you want to hear. I think that's the, that's the textbook answer. I think I'll give the textbook answer there. Yeah. Everything that we've seen in the company, you know, firing quickly, is that the way to go? Yeah, yeah. As soon as soon as you realize they're toxic or not going to be a good fit there.

 

Yeah, It's like, uh, you know, we're all pretty pain avoidant individuals. I am for sure. I like to avoid pain. That's why around 100 miles, but it's more painful in the long run to not deal with that, yep. So Kalen, Kalen, thank you for coming participating. She said if you had to start all over again, what would be the top three things you would hit first. I remember all of the lessons I learned first because that's a big part of starting something, you're gonna learn a lot of lessons along the way.

 

So, but the number one thing would be, you know, reaching out and and having a network of individuals that's, I don't know, that's so easy to do nowadays. Back in my day when I started, I tried being the happy go lucky guy that was nice to everybody at Sherwin and a lot of weird dudes out there and they'd be like, what, I don't want to talk to you, I don't what is cooperative and I'd rather have a have a limited mindset. So it took me a while to find the P. C. A. Took a while for the internet chat groups to start popping up.

 

I think I've had a pretty big impact in my local area on forming cooperative in groups that are willing to communicate but dump, get dumped, gathering Minnesota painters. But I would say number one thing would be finding a group of people you can interact with are also painting business owners ideally energy in your geographical area, if not outside of that from there. You're gonna learn a lot of different things and I mean it's, I don't know what I would do different. I mean, there's certainly many things I would do differently, but so much of what I did or lessons I learned that helped me along the way.

 

Yeah, awesome. So Dave Pine, Thanks for joining us, man. He said in the mini series, you mentioned platforms that helped painters start and scale these days. What would you use or recommend if you were just starting? Probably google spreadsheets because it's super malleable, super adaptable. You're not gonna be locked into a thing, You don't have a huge, hopefully not a huge growth curve. If that's a huge growth curve for you, then it's gonna be even tougher to adopt software at some point you want to switch order software and that's a whole deep dive with you to get into of you know, what is it like to have completely open worlds of data and information and then you transfer to more of a gate lock and step, you know environment that the swiss software but I would start, you know the power of spreadsheets is very underutilized and underappreciated But the tools that are available today, I mean just think in the 1980s people were operating with beepers and maps right now we have gps and instant communication tools.

 

You know that alone makes it way way easier scale company than it was, you know. Is that 40 years ago already? Okay, that's a long time ago, 80s or 40 years ago. So maybe that's ancient history for most of the group here. But I think having an appreciation for the tools that we have at our at our fingertips today is always something to keep top of mind. I don't know if we fully appreciate what's right. What's like to have real time communication with anybody in the field for people to be able to navigate, um, their city or geographical area without domain expertise of all the roads and cities in terms and corn and corners.

 

Um, even the ability to have four referencing calculations, like spreadsheets have right, these are not manual calculations and it's gonna take a ton of bandwidth and brute force. Uh, it's, it's instantaneous and I don't think these things are fully appreciated, awesome. So someone asked, this is an interesting question. Um, it's a, it's a different kind of question says, how does your understanding of the main man, mr jesus christ inform your business values? How much of an impact does your personal beliefs translate the company culture? Yeah, I think so.

 

Company culture is gonna be an extension of the founders of the primary shareholders typically. So I would say if I go to, I'll start with all of holdings, a big part of our, our vision is to harness and democratize the equity and painting companies. And so it's not, I don't know, that's that's a pretty deep question and I would say in general, we like to teach people how to fish and we believe that if we do that with others, that's gonna have a pretty big impact. I say practically we do.

 

You don't even want to talk about it because then it loses its meaning. But we donate quite a bit of money to local nonprofits in our area. That's something that I think is a practical show through of what our personal beliefs are on the med aside. If you look at the vision and the value or the vision and the goals of all of holdings. Okay, conquering the fear of Mammon is a core value and core passion. Mammon. It means a lot of things to a lot of different people.

 

It's the word that is used when uh, I think it's in Matthew, it says you cannot serve both God and money. The word is Mammon, Mammon to me and to my partners means any system or structure that man creates to enslave itself. This could be financial is the most common one, right. This could be greed. It could be pried, it could be envy. It could be fear, it could be self doubt. These are all things that you now serve. You're not able to serve. What is your true calling, Right?

 

So Mammon is like the enslavement that we can only put on ourselves. How do you break free from Mammon? And it's really a fear of Mammon. How do you break free from the fear of Mammon? There's two ways there's a shalom. There's the peace of God. There's also this practical application of having your assets outweigh your liabilities in life, right? And so that would, that's like a pretty long answer. Uh, but hopefully gets us a little bit there of of if we can help people build assets in their lives is conquer their fear amendment.

 

I think that's the way that our beliefs and our faith has come to fruition in our businesses awesome. So yeah, the uh one of the takeaways, so I sometimes have a hard time following you, Jason, you you're you're pretty, pretty advanced in, in your in your verbiage. Sometimes we'll say um what I kind of took away from that was was largely lead by example, better people's lives, give them the ability to have assets that outweigh the liabilities and through doing such. Um you know, you have a certain belief system about helping people improving the world.

 

You live in that belief system improving donating nonprofits, things that nature bettering your employees, bettering the homeowners. That is, that's kind of how you integrate these personal beliefs. That would maybe be kind of um difficult to maybe directly uh implement into a business, yep. That I don't know that that's what I heard, but you know, you can correct me if I'm off on this one. No, that's good. Okay. Okay, the next one. Alright, that sounds good, man. Um Well there'll be another paint by numbers event this year.

 

Yes, so we're gonna start, I think we've got some collateral that's been put out at expo uh it is going to be to mark your calendars now, june, So right now it's slated for June 21 and 22, 21st, 22nd of june 103st and 22nd but paint by numbers, That's something we did in 2019 I think it was december 2019 for the first time. Obviously we didn't do it in 2020 2021 because of restrictions and governments and hotels. When 2022 we brought it back for the first time, huge success. And we're gonna do it again in 2023.

 

It's basically looking at Paris painting off holdings. How do we operate this company in a way that's scaled to stability and passive ownership and that an open book style. So completely open up our books, shared templates. We have key speakers from different parts of the companies. So Mark, you know, he runs eight figures worth of production mike, the same thing for sales and uh Alex talks about boring stuff like trends and P and Ls and stuff like that and uh yeah, it's a great time. I highly recommend it come to the twin cities in little middle to late june paint by numbers.

 

Is there a place that people are web web page or anything, People website anything, nope doesn't exist. No, I'm sure it will will. So we do this in conjunction with the P. C. A. I'm sure once expo it's announced that expo will be on their website. I reference the P. C. A. Website for the event awesome. Okay. And yeah, we'll we'll get a link up to that in our group as well. When that when that web pages live, someone threw a little shade at Walla gee I don't know if that was actual shade or a dig because I don't know who said it.

 

It says facebook user, but I don't know if you wanna talk about theology. They said why is apology such crap software? Who designed it? So I don't know if you want to respond to that. You know, it's it's hard to build software that you can run a an eight figure company painting company. Right? Because there aren't that many of them, Right? So it's it's a it's a novel challenge, right? It's pretty easy design software for, you know, a lot of painting companies that don't make any money and and don't have stability in there and then their businesses.

 

But no, it's uh that's that's been a passion project of mine is building out the software that we operate pairs painting off of. Its also software that our partners operate out of. I'm not sure if you're being serious or not, but it is a work in progress. This is something that we're continually iterating and adopting and it's not an easy thing, nor is it cheap, but it gets better. It's the best thing that I found on the market for how we want to run the company's uh if there is an easier solution, I would have bought it, I'm capitalist not an egotist.

 

And uh yeah, I'm not sure if there's shade or not, but if it's real it's real shade. I would just say, you know, check in every month it adopts pretty quickly. Uh if they're joking around, I'd say, yeah, it's a thing that I've enjoyed being a part of. Yeah. Yeah. So you do roll that out. You include that follow your partners at all holdings. Yeah, I mean they don't have to, but most people will take on all holdings as a partner because they want some domain expertise and support and scaling their business into into an asset.

 

And so we'll come in and say, here's here's the software we recommend you operate on, we can lean in the best and support you if you're running on this because now all the companies are so it's pretty easy for us to run reports and I. D the key issues and identify where we should lean in as a partner to help solve the gap. Um What's up? In theory? It's up to everybody, but I wouldn't I would not expect to partner with somebody if they don't want you all to be involved in their company.

 

Yeah, So let's let's touch base on it for a second because a lot of people are listening to this are not really going to understand what biology is. It's a it's a okay, it's a it's software, it's called an enterprise resource platform. So you guys have all been around Softwares and painting companies and uh it's the basic premise is having all of it into one spot. So this is something we started building for paris paintings 34 about four or five years ago knowing that we've grown into a larger, larger holdings.

 

And so instead of having all these different apps and many different spots we put into one spot tailor fit, custom fit to how we want to run the painting company. Right? So there's there's a real and there's a lot of different solutions out there and not not, I mean there's a lot of great solutions out there, right, more power to everybody. I can already see the tweets coming, they're gonna be mean. But this just as a heads up, this person did say that they were joking about that, but it gave us a topic to discuss here.

 

So I would just say, I'll say like this is not something that we sell, I'm not interested in selling software, I don't have any interest in selling software, don't have any interest in that because there's a very real difference between a product that you use for performance and a product that you use to sell or that you build for performance and a product that you build to sell if you're gonna and the painting contractors are the worst. So they're almost they're just the worst if you're gonna try and build, sell the painting contractors, they don't know what they want, they don't know what they need, they have like all these, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna say they have these stupid ideas of things that they think are gonna take them to the next level.

 

And then the dumbest things like there is like hiring a marketing company for the last 10 years who has a hard time marketing have this giant tail wind of an economy with the boomers, boomers are retiring now in 20233 Brandon, I'll give you some credit. Okay, maybe now, maybe now is the time to hire a marketing company. I'll just say in general, painters are the worst. You don't the pool of professional contractors that could actually adopt a software that's custom crafted to scale the eight figures that you know, has all the all the reporting in that allows for passive ownership is gonna be so minutely small.

 

It's software that we built for our company and our partners and that you're building it for performance, not for marketing and sales of it. All right. It's an object based orientated software. Sharp language. Uh, it's called biology because I used to have this giant metal wall in my office and I would take subway tiles, put maintenance on the back and write the project name and have different key bits of information on there and drag it around on the wall. But then I'd have to re enter that information to a spreadsheet and they didn't talk to each other.

 

It's like the main feature of the software when we first came up with it was you have this giant scheduling wall of visualization, but then would back and communicate all the metadata ended update in real time. Now it's much more robust than that. Obviously it's where we do all of our bidding. We pay all the subcontractors through there, all the financial reporting, real time communication, it's all in one spot. But apology because we used to operate the company off of like a giant wall. I love it.

 

So fred Hambleton emery has a very specific question for you regarding an Olive Holdings partnership. He says, what are the non negotiable changes that all of partner needs to make to their company upon entering into a partnership agreement, i. E. Software implementation taking an owner salary can't take on additional partners slash debt etcetera. And well, let's actually hit that and then he's got a second part. Let's hit that. That's a lot. All right. So I'll just say fundamentally off holdings is not going to partner with the company that they don't believe it's a good investment. Right?

 

So if we don't believe we can come in and add value, then we're gambling or buying something that is likely going to go down because most founders are gonna burn out over a period of time, scholars space paid. Um, trying to get like real non negotiables because in theory you could, like you could dig in your heels on one thing. But if you're doing everything else would say. Yeah. I think I still think that if all of invest in this company, we come alongside as partners that the performance of this asset could perform could could improve and over a period time become more stable.

 

So it's hard for me to call it anything specific with that. Let's get into the nuance of how we've decided to do these things. So we set up a legal entity, it ends up being manager managed with the founder listed as the manager or the legacy owner. Right? So the person we partner with ends up being the manager of the company. So they have all the card control, they can do anything they want, right? There are a few limitations like you can't take on a million dollars of debt in our name, right?

 

You can't do that. You need us to sign off on it. It's good to think about it too. If you are ever to become a passive owner in this asset that we know are jointly building together. What what rules or what restrictions would you want? The manager that we've now hired to have, right? If you're a passive owner in this business because all holdings has come alongside you and scaled it up and now you're able to be passive, would you want the manager that gets hired have to have the ability to uh take on a new building mortgage in like downtown Seattle, you'd be like frick, no, Seattle's a gong show, right?

 

You know what? Don't do not buy real estate in Seattle, that that's a terrible thing. You just put me on the hook for something really bad. Uh So those, I don't know if that answers the question completely, but it's a little bit about that. Yeah, I think mostly mostly answers that there are certain restrictions in place, probably to prevent just incredible liability. That doesn't make any sense. But overall, you guys are pretty amenable to the way that we've set it up is we like the, like the founder, the legacy owner to maintain operational control.

 

So it's not a board run LLC. It's a manager managed LLC. But the founder listed as the, as the manager so they can, they can choose to ignore everything that we want to do to an extent with the exception of taking on a ton of debt in our names or things like that. And so the actual legal entity, it's almost like you guys create a holding company and then they get the majority of it and you guys own a minority partnership in that holding company. Yeah, so if we wanna get into like the nitty gritty of it, what we do is we end up starting a new company.

 

So it's a truly a new venture with the D. B. A. Of the legacy company and that founder contributes their company's goodwill assets, brand, the momentum of the business for majority ownership and then we will come in as a minority owner, sometimes bringing cash, sometimes not depending on the performance of the asset and we will come in as a, as an operating supporting partner, right? And the idea is to the extent that there are gaps. So we're not doing is consulting right? That is like, uh, I don't know if we should get into this now because I'll get into it for a long time, but we're not coming in and telling you what to do because the internet has proven that americans are still very out of shape and they have access to all the information.

 

The reality on these companies is you can hire a consultant, you can hire a coach and those are great things and we work with coaches who are phenomenal. I know coaches are phenomenal, but it's really the integration of those plans, those concepts, those strategies that determines whether a company gets built or not. There's a difference between planning and building. A lot of times people are, most people are not gonna build a company on their own. Very, very, very, very few companies get built to stable passive asset class with one person.

 

It's usually a village of people that ends up taking, It's nice that that village has some heavy domain expertise as well as having done it before. That's the concept of awful things. I love it and you talk a lot about kind of being able to see around those, those future bends in the road problems and situations that that people who haven't been there don't even know exist. Right? This is this is a conceptual uh whether it's whether it's scaling a painting company or let's say I bought real estate, uh commercial real estate in Ohio, I would want to partner with someone who's done a lot of commercial real estate before, Right?

 

Because I don't know what I'm getting into, I think I know I look at actually, I don't have no ID. Yeah, so if you're gonna, if you're gonna get into investing, it's nice to do with partners. Everything I do is with partners, whether it's raising a family with my wife who is my partner in that buying real estate building, multi housing, multi family housing, that's all done with my partners. Same thing with painting businesses. Yeah. So if you're not running an eight figure painting company, so you're doing over 10 million, then odds are that that Olive Holdings has some information that they could share with you, even if you are, even if you are right, you may want to diversify diversify and start to realize some of the equity that you have, yep, fair enough.

 

So the second follow up to that from fred was is there a typical percentage revenue growth target you're looking for your partners to achieve during the first few years. It's very, very variable depending on on what they're up to. So I like 100% growth. So just we have, like I said, we have seven partners outside of paris painting right now. Uh you have some that have doubled, you have some that had like low double digit percentage growth, right? And a lot of it, I think it's dependent on how entrenched they are in their current systems.

 

Because there's like these two ideologies, there's a lifestyle business business which some people have talked about this, there's a lifestyle business which is phenomenal. I love I love people who have lifestyle businesses that charlie munger, like he was like a lifestyle business as a as a lawyer, nice lawyer degree. Those are great because you can really, really squeeze out the cash in the business and will operate as long as someone is there as a high performer to make it turn. There's another philosophy or path of life where it's not about squeezing every dollar of profit of this entity, it's ensuring that there's stable cast of stable passive cash flow for the years and decades to come right.

 

And those are those are two different ideologies, two different philosophies. Neither one is right or wrong, but there one is an investor, another owns a job who can now use that job to become an investor in other asset classes. So Chase had a question and and actually Brandon white shirts, I think they're going to connect offline, but he said, what would you consider a good win to lose ratio for competitive bid? I. E. Government commercial projects were low number wins. I don't know if this is something you have dealt with.

 

I have no idea. Okay, I'll tell you in general, like, so here's the philosophy of residential. I have no idea about commercial, I don't know that world. I think it depends on how well your how good you are driving or bullying or blackmail. And those are the three ways those would be like the three we talked about strategies, triple B. Um I'm just saying in residential, which is what I know residential, if you show up, when you say you're gonna show up, you could put the estimate in a pile of poop on their front door.

 

You know, probably book a third of the jobs right? It is like a very just show up, give a bid. You don't have to find their needs, you don't have to like get them to trust you. You just show up and give a quote, do the bare, bare minimum. You will likely book a third of the jobs, right? There's a third of the jobs, if you did everything perfect chris, you know, pre pre call, uh sent them all classified, everything you sent them everything beforehand, uh found every need handled every objection polished presentation.

 

You know, great follow up, strong close, there's a third of them. They'll never buy from you either not getting their house painted for real uh or you're just not a value fit what they're looking for. Is that middle third? That the skill of the sales presentation is going to determine right now. You need to make sure you have accurate estimating. There's two components here, there's estimating and sales are two very different things, estimating is finding accurate scope of work, deciding the proper resources to it. The sales skill is pulling out needs validating presentation.

 

Close all those elements, right? And I would say you're really fighting for that middle third and you know maybe perfect would be 66%. You do the math right? 33 plus 33. But yeah, that's kind of my philosophy on residential. It wasn't a question, but you can't break it up for 3rd 3rd. You never get third, you always get right for that middle third Log into government work. You got a bully, you gotta bribe, you gotta blackmail love it. Yeah. The 66% close don't audit me. That's what you, that's what you said is recorded.

 

Its live. These are Jason Paris words. That's what you have to do. Let me just delete that part real quick. Um So another anonymous facebook user. I like this question. What is all of holdings current B hag b big hairy, audacious goal and why be haig would be 100 million top line and that is high. That sounds like fun now would be, it would be a lot of business owners, a lot of families. So we, what we, what we have said, we have said 20233 families making $100,000 or more passively.

 

That's our goal. That's uh, we have multiple bags out there. So don't do the math on those first two because I don't know if they fully aligned, but the behaviors around, can we get 100 families making $100,000 or more? Uh that that's one of the goals that we have. So that would be 100 100 painting company partners that have partnered with you where they're making over 100 grand. It could be them, it could also be some of their key staff, right? We may say like you're someone that's been with you since the beginning, they're part of a builder.

 

You know, now they have real upside, right? Partner with all holdings. Now, we're really gonna scale this company and pour some gas on it. And if you want to continue to be a builder, a key driver in this business equity could be on the table that individual. Right? So it may not just be the business owners. It might be some of their key staff that can participate in that upside as well. Man, that's exciting. I love that bag. That is uh, I love that one. So much more than just the top line.

 

Top line revenue is what you always hear like 100 million because that's, that's a big one. But 20203 families say that first. Did you just make it up? You didn't make up the 100 families though. No, that's a real one. That's in our vision quest that we did out in Idaho. Okay. We did not do bot or anything like that but we did have a vision quest. Yeah. That's that's pretty cool. Yeah, I like that one a lot. So another another facebook user. I like this one accountability. How do you hold crew leaders accountable for not leading?

 

That's interesting hitting goals, profit margins painters not abiding by S. O. P. S. You don't give them the option. You don't make it optional. So so if you're talking about compliance, people don't comply. If it's the uh what's it called? Take the path of most resistance. People like the path of least resistance. If you give them an option to do the path of most resistance, typically they're not gonna take it. So you don't make it an option and whether you are leading with a carrot or a stick, this is your job, right?

 

And sometimes a lot of these items are either either there's not buying. They're not believed in on every level or they may actually be working against the well being the productivity of the individual. But for the holistic good of the company. So give an example would be sales reps. Sales reps are the worst. I hate salespeople. I never talked to anybody in our company that sells paint jobs they just drive me nuts somewhat of a joke there, but not not joking too much. Uh, you know, we ask a lot from our sales people as far as compliance and data and collections and, and it's a lot for them to do because they're not good at many things in life outside of selling paint jobs.

 

Uh, that's a, that's a subtle dig. But a lot of the administer things are not, they're not their skills. And actually these, these hate tweets and stuff. I see why this thing, we can edit this on the, on the back end. A lot of these things are not beneficial to them selling revenue that day, but they are beneficial to the project managers, to the coordinators, to the executives have to manage the trends of the business. And so we're actually asking them to to do things that are counterproductive to their individual goals but benefit the company holistically and how you set up the proper carrots and proper sticks to drive that behavior is what I would call appropriate architecture of a painting company interesting.

 

So maybe maybe comp uh like incentivized compensation. So profit margins things, compensation. It could be uh what they called verbal kind things that you say to people. Attaboys. Attaboys using disc, maybe Jason phillips is big on communicating with people the way they like to be communicated with, right? It's different. And I would just say if we could solve performance with money, praise the Lord Hallelujah, that would be awesome. Money does not drive everybody and you can't just buy performance in a business. You need leaders, you need managers, you need soft skills, that's, that's worth a lot.

 

And I was just saying our company, we pay, we pay a lot of money for people that are good at that because you can't just, if I could solve all of our business needs with money. Yeah. Game over super easy. Right? one of the biggest challenges is you get to scale is how do you lead, how you not just manage? But how do you influence those are things that have a lot of value? Yeah, Yeah. People people problems is, is a tough, it's a tough thing, right?

 

How to make it all work. Um, so Brandon Whitehurst said, what are the top three marketing areas where most of your leads come from for new clients? I'll just say that changes every single time. Somebody asked me this. So right now I was just some people who followed me for a long time flyers flyers and and single piece actionable. Actionable. Uh, single piece actionable flyers have been our bread and butter for a really long time. These are flyers that are individually hung on door handles there, like this rubber band on, someone has to engage with the piece stand alone.

 

That has given us by far the highest ry that's been like fun. I saw a huge drop in the Ry this spring on that. Sorry, last spring on that. So now we we pivot, we shift get a little bit, a little sneaky uh canvassing. Door to door, canvassing right now is our highest ry activity. We do a lot of different things. We're talking about new clients. It's gonna be number one is repeat referral, referral work will be number one to job site marketing three, whatever the hot active thing of the day is.

 

And then there's 20 other tactics. Our director of marketing is always trying at any different moment seeing where the trends are moving and what we want to pour gas on or pull off. I love it. So yeah, you have to be adaptive things. Change. Your ry different marketing channels change. You don't wanna be fully dependent on one channel because that is not, that's actually if there's more than 15% of your resources, Sorry, one more probably more than 15% of your outcomes coming from a single resource. That's a red flag for stability.

 

I don't care if that's marketing. I don't care if that's labor. I don't care if that's electricity. I don't know what else you could have. It was like the two main main inputs. That's like a red flag for us. That's a red flag for me as a passive owner of paris painting. I don't want to see any single thing game too and that's just something that's interesting. Like this was two years ago we started to de risk ourselves from flyers because they were saying like, hey, this is great.

 

I love the R. O. I. But what if but what if but what if you start to think more long term about the stability of your asset, not just the short term performance. So brad Ellison. Uh Nice little next next. All right, we'll skip it. Not even to say his second best live event today. He had brad had his own live event. So he's uh just letting us know that we're doing okay, but not quite as good as he is. Um Fred said that he looked jacked during that interview to, I don't know if he had like a pump going on, but that he probably had a protein smoothie.

 

He had some good delts and some good traps, you know, you know, he's 100% know that he pump before that. So fred said in person, in Minnesota was an eye opening experience and how love works with our partners and why that's really cool. John asked, what are some items are areas that you are currently working to improve our growing personal professional family, whatever you feel like sharing what's your next win. Okay, should I just pull this up? So I don't know, I'm kind of nervous, but so Q1, I have my personal side and that within it, there are three buckets, their spiritual, physical and mental.

 

Spiritual working on some scripture memory. Physical it's a lot of maintaining so I'm maintaining a lot of my rocks so I have a workout plan, smoothies, healthy snacks on a cold tub, their gun foam, roll, stability, work, stretch work, no caffeine, alcohol. And I'm trying what's called a plant slant diet this quarter. Don't ask me about it. Ask me about it in person. I love talking about it but a lot of people mentally really working on my pre sleep routine and then maintaining my morning routine. That's it for Q. One.

 

It's pretty easy. The next big bucket is the next big categories family, there's personal, spiritual, physical, mental then there's family, wife, Children, estate, wife recording. So I'm recording how I help around the house every single day. It's my personal thing because I think that's what's gonna bless her The most Children reading a book and we do cuddles every night and I'm doing a workday with each kid this quarter. I'm pretty much I'm almost there on the estate were doing some work on our fireplace. I'm getting all that scheduled and I'm cleaning up a punch list that I have from when we moved into our house four years ago.

 

That's Q. one for family. The last category is world and so I have my vocation and I have helping others vocation largely around the apartments. So I have some systems I'm sitting in there. I want more people to much helping others. I'd like to have a clean hand off to Mr Slavic for chair of the board with P. C. A. And I'm starting a content something. So I've been doing like these weird confusing video clips once a week. Those are things that I'm progressing on in my personal family and world for Q1, passion for the personal is realizing human potential, passion for the family is founding family legacy, passion for the world is conquering the fear of Mammon.

 

That's awesome. I know john john is going to love that uh answer. Thanks for that in depth response. Someone asked long term, how do you see the 10 99 model being able to professionalize and scale while at the same time being attractive to Newtown and labor versus the W. Two model. So 20233 99 right now works really well. If you think about 65% of the labor being hispanic and a lot of Hispanics or immigrants and people come to America to live the american dream which a lot of times is framed as self employment or business ownership.

 

So it's a great way to have that badge of honor of owning your own company when you're 10 99 without necessitating all the different value add areas of of of the business. So someone may be a really good painter but they may not have the emotional intelligence to interact with the client. They may not have all the abilities to do an estimate. It's actually a pretty hard thing to do accurately. They may not have all the organizational skills to have a job, you know get scheduled and happen at the right time and and stay on that project the whole time or or even the cash flow management that's required to cash for the whole thing.

 

But if someone's really good at painting, they can do that really well scaling. That makes it a lot simpler because you're looking at people who are specialists instead of larger having larger more journalists. So there's a bigger pool to pull from. It also works really well in the northern half of the U. S. Because it's very seasonal. So instead of having to scale up and scale down through the employee model, you can uh grab and then release 10 99 subcontractors was the second is another part of that question is basically, how does it compare to the W. Two model in terms of professionalizing and attracting the talent for professionalizing?

 

I say they're both, they're obviously both great models, They both have their pros and cons subcontracting is not easy button, you know, W two is not an easy button for a lot of things that it gets told that it's really good for. Um I think a lot of it depends on the strengths of the either the founder or the executive team. And so There are some people who are really, really good at the craft of training painters and I would recommend w to model for them, the people who are really, really good at the craft of logistics and I recommended 1099 for them.

 

I think you can scale, I think it's pretty clear you can scale a lot quicker with the 1089 and with those scales of top line revenue, you're able to afford the different layers of management that help necessitate or they're not necessary for professionalism. I don't know if there's a right, there's definitely not a right or wrong. There's a reality of what is the labor percentage wise in this industry and what are their preferences? Um but both are great models. You know, we in paris painting, we started out all W two, then we went 50 123 I mean that's all W2 sprinkled in some subs 5050, there are mostly sub shrubs with some some employees that were almost all subs.

 

And now we're starting at the pendulum, starting to go back the other way, there's no right or wrong pairs, painting has been through every evolution and uh it really depends on what the needs of the moment are. Yeah, I think people have this sort of misconception that if you use 10 90 nines and then you can't professionalize. But ultimately if you're using 10 99 crews, you treat them like employee, you develop that kind of relationship, You can still, I mean I think that was an issue maybe five years ago, if you said you use of contractors is almost a dirty word and it was like the one thing that the franchisors got right.

 

Um, I'm not going to bash them too much. Tell them about the chair of the Pc anymore. But yeah, using using 10 99 I don't know if that's a big issue right now or head trash in the industry. As you say, the only people who care are painting contractors who think they're God's gift to Earth because they only use W. Two. Uh, nobody else cares, right? Um, I think the one, yeah, there's there's it's interesting to kind of track the different head trash cycles that you have in the industry. Right?

 

So I do think 1089 subcontracting was ahead trash area in years past and then then I don't know I could future cast, I can say what they currently are right now, but if somebody asks, we'll get into it. Okay, Someone asked you partner outside the U. S. We're exploring somebody in Canada. It's basically if we feel like they're gonna be a great fit and if they're committed to and then we'll go through the legalese of what that actually means, but probably not. I mean Canada is basically Northern Minnesota.

 

So that's about it. How does the olive partner model differ from running a painting franchise. Okay, so Franchising. So there's a, how do I say this kindly, it's basically incentive architecture, there's two things. One is incentive architecture. So I'm gonna go real hard against Franchising. So if you are a franchisor or you sell franchises side turn off, send me the tweets, right? That's a great place to put the hate mail because I never read them. Um, okay, if I'm gonna go real hard slammed against Franchising, it would be, I'm gonna hire somebody, I'm gonna sell you a franchise as long as you have the cash, this works great for me, right?

 

I really hope that you're successful and profitable. I hope you are, I hope so much speed. You are going to spend a lot on marketing because at the end of the day I'm getting a percentage of your revenue either way, even if there's a loss, I'm gonna take that. My worst day is I get to resell that territory because you can act, that's your worst day. Partnering is the opposite. I'm not, I'm not, I'm actually not trying to sell anybody. We're not trying to sell anything in partnership because we're the ones that are making the cash investment were the ones that are putting the skin and skin in the game, right and then you either win or lose with that partner.

 

There's also Franchising is kind of the um, the ivory tower, right? Here's how you should do it. So first of all, like anyways, I'm not gonna information is not that important anymore. The internet exists, processes aren't that big a deal, but there's this information in the ivory tower, I'm gonna come and tell you what to do and I really hope you do it. I really hope you do as opposed to a partner says, here's what needs to happen for the business to scale and stabilize. Are you gonna do that?

 

Am I gonna do that? What things are you gonna do? What things am I going to do as a partner? Because I'm in it with you. It's that difference between ivory tower and yoking up with somebody in the field going shoulder shoulder. But Franchising is great. I have a lot of great people that I know run franchises and and we've recruited a lot of people who have formally worked in Franchising and their souls gonna take it anymore, so they can work all of all things. But it's still, it's really good for some things.

 

They certainly have top line revenue and even though the units are small and they turn over a lot, you know, there are also success stories out there too. I don't know how good of a save that was. Jason, awful, awful, awful. No, they're actually good too. They suck your soul, but they're good, not your, I mean, just whoever, there are people who have worked in Franchising and just, it's a tough architecture and it's really easy for us to recruit top level talent, all of that, got it.

 

So this one, I'm a little bit nervous to ask, but I'll throw it out there. It was asked, you know, I'm kinda kinda feed them as they come. What was your most embarrassing childhood experience? Oh gosh, I got a handful of them. Um, so in elementary school I'll start young elementary school. So a lot of social anxiety, I have a lot of social anxiety. Uh, if you've seen me around crowds, probably not surprised by that. Seems super nervous right now before elementary school, I would go to like daycare and I would sit on the periphery of the room and I would read every single book in the bookshelf, not because I loved reading because I didn't want to go play with the other kids.

 

So that made me kind of analytical and, and thinking a lot. Then elementary school was in, elementary school was a junior high, no, junior high, junior high, I would take my lunch tray and I'll go eat in the bathroom until the bell's about to ring. That would come out of the bathroom with my tray away just as the bell's about to ring because I don't want to probably a lot of insecurity, who knows what it was at high school dances. I don't know if I, I still do this sometimes in large crowds, but high school dances, I would be at one side of the gymnasium and I would pretend like I was walking very intentionally on the other side.

 

I wasn't going there for any reason. I was just trying to kill time and then I walked back and be like, oh yeah, I'm definitely like walking with a purpose just trying to avoid the anxiety of social interaction. Uh, there was one more, those are probably good ones to start with. So those are pretty good. Yeah, yeah, those are pretty good. All right, well, it does seem like you've come out of your shell quite a bit because you're doing a facebook live right now. This is people in recording and chair of the board director.

 

So congratulations, definitely. I've definitely grown as a person from my childhood traumas. Yeah, the uh, maybe the, you know, I know you had mentioned previously on our podcast that you went and you did door knocking when you got paris painting started and how that was really difficult for you because you were introverted. So I think sometimes sometimes entrepreneurship and business ownership can kind of force us to overcome some some personal struggles. You can be very, very motivated and you go against things that you don't really like to do because that is your, your drive outweighs your desire for comfort.

 

I love it. Yeah. Well kudos to you man. Um, so I love this question. How does your pre call sound on, on inbound leads? So inbound. What's that call look like for paris painting paris painting. It's a great day for painting, How may I paint you? Is that how my paint you know I don't do that. I've been taking a phone call in four or five years. But are they saying how many painter whose painting? No they say something much more lame. Hey this is calling so first. Okay.

 

One of our guys that takes the phone calls. His name is Colin he doesn't even do this. So if your name was Colin, I told him to do this no less than a dozen times. This is Colin. Thanks for calling. How may I direct your call? Gold? Why doesn't he do it? Why doesn't he do it? I don't know why they probably say something boring like paris pain. This is Colin how may I serve you today? Thanks chick fil a this is great. How may I serve you?

 

My pleasure. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. One of the most successful business models of all time. Whenever I answer the phone I don't get. First of all, you're not my contact list. My phone doesn't ring so I don't get any calls. Uh but I will most of the time people who have found my phone number from one way or another. I will say paris painting. It's great for painting. How many paint you or I'll say all of holdings is a great day for holding. How may I hold you?

 

I like that second. Yeah. Just think about it for you guys cos this is what it's like the fountain of wisdom coming out right now. No 103%. Yeah. Alright. Uh Well kind of kind of trailing on that. When are you going to do a real vision quest with some real peyote or some similar psychedelic compound? How have your feelings about psychedelic induced business vision questing evolved over the year? Yeah so so far so I've actually never uh taken a psychedelic outside of, I had coffee one time in college.

 

I was doing a paint bid. I was doing an estimate. The guy offered me coffee, You take the coffee trying to sell the job you were exploring. It was college, it was right. Just coffee is the worst. Um So I've never done even a marijuana consumption. Uh I'm not opposed to it philosophically. I'm actually very open minded to those things. I have two concerns. One is the burnout concern. So I've interacted with a lot of people and they're like yeah man I don't know if you knew this about me but I've actually done like a lot of drugs and like no way I never would have known.

 

I said sarcastically because it's very clear that they have like fried some things in their brain. So I'm worried about that. That's that's like you like tell when I was a little bit fried, the second concern I have is gosh good thing we can delete this later but it's kind of like pornography Brandon you know we're you know we're not deleting this, right? You know, we're just, it's kind of like pornography, right? It's kind of like by consuming a marijuana plant by consuming pornography. Are you missing out on something better?

 

Right. When you consume pornography? Are you missing out on the higher fulfillment of your sexuality that comes by having a monogamous relationship with one partner for life, Right? Is there something more fulfilling that you can achieve by by doing that same thing with I think drugs, psychedelic drugs. Again, I'm very open minded this, I'm not even close minded at all. Open minded. I go on a retreat every single year, three days of silent meditation and I get some pretty freaking sweet places and and it just, it mimics a lot of what I've read.

 

Psychedelic experiences are like, and I've done fasting and heat exposure and cold exposure and and 100 mile races for those who don't know, I love to talk about it. But the three days sound retreat is where I get into those deep, deep mental trances. And it's what I've read about what I've heard people say about with psychedelic trips. And I worry if that's like the greater thing that could be cheating myself out of by taking those shortcuts. Now there are counters to both of those arguments, right? I've heard some great counters.

 

You talked about exercise like exercise actually it doesn't blow out your knees, but it can make you stronger. So these are these tools that get you to a place as opposed to are the drugs the place itself or is the tool tool that gets you to there so far? I really enjoy my meditations. I love getting to or enjoy getting psychedelic experiences through natural pathways. So I've not yet partaken in those, but I'm not closed off to it. You do, you do ice baths, you do extremely long runs. Yeah.

 

So yeah, Jason, you're, you're one of my more difficult podcast guests and not difficult in a bad way, but difficult because I start to just listen to you and I realized I actually have to run this podcast. So normally I'm just gonna sit down. I'm like, oh, I probably have to say something at the end of all this. Well, this is nice because you have questions. I've been intentionally. Yeah, I'm reading the questions. I'm just, I'm reading the questions. This is my job. You're not allowed to do that.

 

That's, that's my value add. I'm trusting you on this. So I hope that you Yeah, I read it mostly right. Usually, um, if you could recommend a specific resource, this is my job. I'm very good at a specific resource to help business owners learn the ins and outs of excel. This is a great question of Excel, google sheets, what would be the best place to start? Somebody else asked me this and the answer is just do anything. I don't care. So that's spicy Jason coming at you, I don't care.

 

Just try something right? Uh I don't know what's best. Go go to youtube, go on the google. Uh you know, nowadays with chat GPT you can, you can ask the ai to make what you're looking for. Um as far as I understand the basics, the real answer is you, you have to take action. You have to do something where it's the best. It's kind of like people, how do I, how do I get in shape running start by walking, right. People like, oh, am I following the 80 20 protocol or the Hyman protocol or you know, what's the best training plan I gotta figure out.

 

So I maximized like you have not just just start doing anything, just start doing anything. Just watching any videos, just start. I mean the best thing you can do is to get a mentor, someone who can work to with your shoulders, shoulders, you can talk about, here's what I'm trying to do and they can show you something get real time feedback. That would that be like option number one. Option number two is just start anything. I don't know, it's best just just go to google, go to youtube, we live in this very, very odd information age that may not last forever may last forever.

 

Who knows? You may collapse, but they definitely don't have a 210 22023 years ago and you, the likelihood of you picking up a novel skill is much higher. Also the Ai phenomenon that's happening right now is going to take the need for technical expertise out of the uh formula for execution, right? So people used to like most people never execute anything because it takes a lot of work, right? And then it's like well I don't need to work that hard because now I have technical expertise and that was true for long time now you don't even need technical expertise.

 

Just need to be able to ask the question and get the support because the Ai is there, I can do it for you. So it gets easier and easier to execute. I'm sorry, spicy Jason coming out right now, but there is no best. The real answer is start with something, find a mentor if you can otherwise start with anything. I actually don't know the answer me, this is my insecurity popping out, I'm sorry, I yelled at you. That's a great question and you're gonna do great. I'm glad you're learning and improving yourself.

 

There's a lot of great resources out there. When I was learning new resources 22023 22020, 22023 years ago I went to like Lynda. com or something to learn like Photoshop and after effects and stuff like that. Um I don't know if that website still exists or not, but there's a lot of options out there. Yeah, you can you can just google this stuff like how to learn google sheets, how to learn, Excel, There's ask chat Gpt right, chat G P. Is down actually haven't seen through my phone. There's the sandbox version.

 

So a lot of people are complaining like oh chat GPT. It's always like at capacity, it's that capacity. Uh asked me to log in but if I saved it on my phone for the nerds out there, let me go to my ai group tab. It's called beta dot open ai dot com. That's more the sandbox hasn't fully permeated the zeitgeist yet so it's pretty available. I think they do have like an $212 cap on there for free Gpu resources that you take on but that's gonna last most people like 1003 months so dot com.

 

Yeah you can you can utilize Yeah I got a little space there. I really calm down. I just say great question. If you can find a mentor, start with that, always take the first step on anything and you'll find your path the fastest success starts with the first step. That was a good answer. Like I came around to a better answer on that. It's good. Yeah. Yeah and there are courses you can find this coursera teachable, just google this stuff and then as far as finding a mentor.

 

So if you get a fiber F I V E R R dot com and you search for, let's say Excel teacher google sheets, teacher, you can hire people pretty cheap from India or Pakistan or whatnot who actually go on and tutor you on this stuff. So Excel, I will tell you from experience is is incredibly powerful. You don't need to know one, 2100th of what it can do. But if you learn the basic functionality, it will change your life if right now you're kind of doing manual spreadsheets and things like that.

 

Um, okay, brad said this story makes me so sad. I think he he may have been referring to your childhood story. I wish I knew Jason before he was my father. So you're you're Bradley's father. So I could have been his big brother. He looked out for you. Yeah, he would have looked out for you. Um, someone else asked, what is your average job size in terms of square foot or dollar amount? I don't know six or 210 I think six or 210, square footage. I don't know if you don't use your pre call, your pre call as a way to screen clients.

 

So kind of pre qualifying them then how do you screen clients? Okay. Um, so one way you do, it is through your marketing and your branding, right? That will speak to you know someone that is either a fit or not fit. Uh, if you're getting the right person through the door just from, from your marketing in general and then maybe you have some type of a hurdle to set up an estimate. So whether it's filling out their name, just something that shows you describe the project would be a good one shows that there's somewhat serious selling almost they have to do something to get a little bit about your project.

 

It's nice. The more information you can get then you can, you can tailor, you know the pre send to that like hey, I have a stucco project and have to check like what kind of substrate they have now you send them a video on the value of painting customized. Um, I would recommend doing a pre call pre call. I know I gave the impression that we don't do it just our estimators are the worst. I don't like talking to them because they don't follow, you know, they work for you right.

 

They work, they work at your company would not exist without them. I am aware of that. Yeah, they're probably the ones that that send you the hate mail. They are the best. I love our estimators. They without them we would have no company. We would have no problems to solve if the revenue wasn't in the door. That's true. Okay. So you guys do do a prequel of some kind. Um, and 11 recommendation you have would be assigning some sort of task even if that is just describe your project for us because if people aren't serious if they're a tire kicker there a total waste of time, they're not even gonna do that if they do it.

 

Not only are they have, they invested a little bit of effort into, it's not kind of a cost on their end. Um, they, you also have something to custom tailor, so to speak, that sales process for. So now you're selling more value than price for them. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out, okay. I wrote down my traumas one time, so I'm trying to see if there's any more to the childhood. Okay, Here's another embarrassing thing for brad. So this is actually, this is a senior high, they had these time in between classes.

 

My heart rate just skyrocket right now. This is good. This is like uh releasing my trauma right now. In between the classes, they would have these periods and you have these like, you know what, 58 minutes to walk between classes, Go to your locker, get your backpack. A lot of times. I had to go from like here to here on the map and it would take me like two minutes. It was great. I have six minutes to socialize again. Jason is not like to socialize. He has a lot of security, a lot of social anxiety.

 

So I walked this needlessly complex routes around the school just trying to kill time until I got to get in the classroom right before the bell rang because there was one time when I got there really early and the teacher just like looked at me with pity. That's how I internalized it. Maybe she didn't, it was just my own okay we're working through it right now. And uh that that was that trauma and then. Okay actually I don't wanna talk about these things anymore. Okay, we're done. Okay.

 

No worries. Van uh someone asked do you do use the software to create your S. O PS. No I don't. So S. L. P. S. Standard operating procedures, we use Word or Excel to use those because it's not we're not bogged down by the execution. Sure. I'm sure there is software that makes it prettier nicer or easier to do. We have enough bandwidth and I don't grit to where that hasn't become an issue for us to execute. If it was like we have all these ideas for S. O. P. S. But we just never do it whenever I have time no one ever adopts it, then we would then we move more tech.

 

That's so that's not the best answer. But just the re answer for what we do. Like very simple. I think I used like just really basic graphic shapes in the past to make like flow charts and stuff. But these are like pretty simple tools that you can get online for free. Okay. Someone else asked how many jobs does paris painting do a year. I don't know. 1000. 2000. No. Over to. What do we do? I don't know. I mean I used to know this like on top of my head, I don't know why I'm blanking on it right now.

 

Uh let me just pull up, pull up apology real quick. What I say on our previous podcast, what is the answer? I do not know? Production production report 2022 apply filter 2765, 103. So we have a follow up question that you can decide, You can decide how granular you want to get here. Someone asked, what was your gross revenue? Gross profit and net profit for 2022. Grocery revenue was just Shy of 10, did not hit 10, Closer to nine. You know, you just said you're a figure. Okay, first of all you were the one that said that first.

 

I did not tell you said it, somebody said it, you said it first, you needed to correct me, I could have corrected you. Um, we had, we had the strongest gross margin we have ever had before. Our net margin was not what we wanted to be. It was in the mid to low teens fernet because We spent to achieve a $10 million dollar target and didn't achieve it. So we committed to the overhead and a seasonal business too, especially front load, a lot of overhead also were more sales restrained that we were production restrained and we don't wanna make any cuts on the production team because I think we have a world class production team.

 

Especially leading into 2023 so that's a little bit of, we'll probably dive granular early into this at P. B. N. 2023 as we do a deep dive into 2020 to talk through our learnings and how we apply that to the business modeling and the business forecasting of 2023 but high level. Those are some answers for you. I love it. Um So Dave Pine had a three part question number one. Uh goodness. Who do you like talking to in your company? Just take this one at a time. Who do you like talking to in your company?

 

Anyone? Um I'm thinking, hmm I like talking to darcy, darcy, big shout out to darcy. Darcy Sprinkle Caleb is cool, Darcy. I don't know what she does. She's in cubicle land. Yeah, she's really nice. That's why I like her. I think she works with customer experience under Nate's team. Either marketing or I think it's customer experience. I think that's what she does. So she's awesome actually. So great to talk to. Caleb is also on Nate's team. There's a through line here. He is like a marketing guy.

 

He's just cool. So I like him. You like marketing guys, not you. Yeah, well, other I met other marketing, other marketing guys like Caleb Caleb alright. Um I don't like talking to eric eric is our CFO and I like him as a person. But he's always saying no. And I'm always telling him, I'm always telling him one you have to spend money to make money. Yeah, that's 12. That was a good idea. It was necessary to this is the balance sheet activity, not a P. And L. A. Transaction.

 

So shut your mouth. That's why you don't get it. No, I like talking to chat. That's awesome. He's he's more Ferrari and he's really, really cool. Michael's super fun. He's our VP of sales. Uh Caleb is awesome. He's a marketing guy, Darcy school because she's a really nice lady and don't fully understand what she does. And then I don't know if there's anybody else probably you because you've interviewed me like every single week for the past two months like me enough. Then I like people who talk in memes that text me memes and I texted back memes.

 

I love it. Alright. Uh Dave's second part of his question was, do you have anything against people who don't make families respond by tweet because you can tweet him. So this is one of the biggest America is actually pretty well positioned, but mostly due to immigration because we're the coolest country in the world by far. Yeah, population collapse is one of the biggest existential threats to most developed countries. China is gonna cease to exist as a country in the next decade. This is one of the biggest drivers, I think.

 

I mean, okay, I'm just telling you, you can watch it. China has been faking their numbers for a long time. But they just started, they just started to release and announce how bad it is. They do not have a working class to replace what's going on right now. They don't have the people to continue to survive as a country and they import everything that's important. They import a lot of fuel and a lot of greens. Um, America is actually pretty well positioned for this. I have nothing against people who don't make families by like, like I did listen to joe Rogan podcast.

 

Okay, first of all, I was following Peter's I hand way before he was on joe Rogan. Whoever posted Jacob, I've, I've, I've consumed all of his content going back 10 years because I love Peter's ion, he's phenomenal and yes, I did listen to him and I am like, like the amount of hours I've committed to consuming his content over the last three weeks has been a high number but nothing that people who don't make families now if you don't Yeah, okay, I'm actually not gonna get into it, but I would encourage people to make families.

 

I would encourage people to be fruitful and multiply. Thus says the Lord love it and then number three, who do you think would win in an arm wrestling contest you or nick Slavic me because I like to cheat next. A pretty honest guy. I'm definitely a cheater. Yeah. Got it. Okay I'm gonna win at all costs kind of guy at all costs. Yeah. It doesn't matter who you hurt in the process if you break his arm off, it's actually a philosophy. It's called word rational versus like a site rational.

 

And these are like at the core of most superhero superhero movies right? You have the antagonist who has this goal for how society should operate and is willing to achieve it by any means possible. And you have the protagonist which is typically saying I'm open to achieving that same results by more focused on living to a core set of values, right? And this is like the conflict of our society a lot of times I am the antagonist. I am saying let's achieve the results at all costs.

 

The ends justify the means to be another way of saying it. Uh And then I'm also very values orientated. I'm a really good guy so don't get that wrong. Alright. Um yeah yeah I got a couple more uh win at all costs and a very good guy. This is like your franchise answer, you know horrible will suck your soul. But they're really great. So we have a we have a real question for you, Jason Real one. How do you hire production managers and what does your interview process look like?

 

I don't hire anybody in the company. I haven't for many years. How does Harris painting hire production managers? So for a long time. So just like most roles in the company started out through networking and networking. The people that were great. Now it's like any whatever. It's like professional tactics. So we have a full time HR recruiter in the office that works for, he works for all if So he provides services for all for paris painting and the other painting partnership companies. But he will recruit from, I don't know linkedin.

 

Indeed normal places. Right. And he he recruits professionals. So um it's like a really boring answer that is like yeah, he has a ton of bandwidth. He's very, very talented. He puts in the hard work when we first starting out, you recruit the network and then you find you network that that good individual. So you find a good PM, then you network that good PM and that'll get you so far, but it's not stability. And then once you start to really scare scale, you can afford the infrastructure that allows for that stability.

 

You go a little bit more diversified and consistent. Yeah. So you have literally just a job role carved out for that to get that accomplished. Someone else asked how many painters and project managers does paris painting have. So most of our painters are subcontractors. So at our peak season there's over 100 people in the field. Project managers believe there's five or six? Maybe seven? I'm not sure. Maybe there's six. Is there a way that someone asked could I paint by numbers? That's that's that's paint by numbers insurance.

 

Uh you can get a full deep dive how the company operates. It's clever because painting by numbers is like a thing that kids do. You got color. And it's actually not that it's actually a good metaphor because running a successful painting company is not that complex. You just have to stay within the lines. But it helps you know what number, what numbers go, where and where the lines are. Right? Is that you follow me there? No. Okay sort of kind of okay. Someone, someone asked um could I ask your H. R. Guy some questions regarding hiring your PM. Is there a way that people can maybe reach out to you?

 

So his name is brian, his name is brian. I call him B. J. Brian johnson BJ will be at Pc expo oh like a fun burly guy with a mustache and he hugs people way too hard so he's not allowed to hug me anymore. I don't like being hugged and I forgot I forgot about last call. No, I forgot about that with the social anxiety. How now you really try to embrace everyone hugging you at Pc I'm pretty like now I'm like really strong against don't touch me but brian loves touching people who loves you.

 

Okay brian is not editing it man. We're just rolling with it. Delete that part. Yeah brian, you know, corner of that expo, he's a he's a found out he was like, he was one of the largest recruitment centers, largest recruitment companies in the U. S. And he was on the on the path to becoming a director level. So he is top quality talent that's bought in to the vision of what we're doing it all off in the trades and he's a great resource to tap awesome. So talk to him at expo.

 

So uh fred had a just a nice comment. Thank you both for this awesome follow up to an amazing podcast mini series. Thank you. Fred. Jason was great to see so much valuable insight on your perspective of the industry and the economy and I really appreciate your transparency and vulnerability. Hats off for everything you've done to help improve our industry branding. A great interviewer as well. Thank you. I'm a good question reader looking forward too much more great content and Jason keep up the video content creation, looking forward to that as well.

 

So we have like four minutes. You want to hit what you're going to cover some something about chat. Gpt what you're gonna talk about X but you want to have fun for a couple minutes here. Yeah, we can talk about whatever I will just say with that content. So those who have been following me, I started posting videos on Youtube and I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm having a lot of fun and I think it's like, I've got like two Youtube comments, one was like, I don't understand what's happening, what is this?

 

I understand like, is this it like, is this it question mark, is this a full interview question Mark answered yes to both of those. I do know what I'm doing, I'm trying to promote, trying to give amplification to professional stories in the industry, because most people don't have role models don't really know what way to flow. You become a painting business owner, you think oh now I should become an alcoholic, I should probably get depressed and divorced. Like no, you can actually become really professional successful if you have those people look up to that are doing that.

 

So I think that's why I'm doing it. I'm also having fun. Um I'm gonna do that for this year at pc expo, I would go, first of all, I'm going to be giving a co presentation on artificial intelligence, machine learning chappy, P. Chet chat, G. P. Alpha wolf, all those fun things. So I'm gonna do co doing this with uh mrs morrigan knocks out of Nevada, I think. And yeah, I'm doing that. I'm also hosting a panel moderation panel on artificial intelligence as well. So in the last two months this has really become a major thing, so this is similar to spreadsheets being introduced to the masses, A lot of painting companies are not gonna use ai because a lot of painting companies don't use calculators or spreadsheets, right?

 

There are no professional painting companies that are thriving. That are not using calculators or spreadsheets. That is gonna be the new standard with Ai. If you want to be competitive on a professional scale business, you're gonna be using ai as a tool, you can still you can still survive. And then this may be our industry for a while. You can still survive never using Excel. You may still survive never using AI. But if you want to grow and scale and be competitive, you're gonna have to you're gonna have to adopt the new tools that everybody starting to leverage your competitors just gonna wipe you out.

 

Um Come to expo it's gonna be a blast. Uh There's information somebody posted on its pc a paint ed. So P C A P A I N T E D dot org forward slash expo. So you go to the pc a website you can register for expo there. Yeah. When are we gonna become enslaved by robots? Is that in the next 10 years? Um it's not really enslaved by. It's more like we are. Well, it's like we are, it's not, it's more like we are birthing the inedible outcome of humanity's purpose, right?

 

We get destroyed by them. No, it's not destroyed. It's like we have, it's like a it's like a caterpillar, right? Was the caterpillar destroyed when it became a butterfly or was it always meant to become a butterfly? Was with consciousness always meant to be restrained into these flesh bots? Or was it meant to be released into AI? Right. And was our entire purpose as a civilization of humans to this moment to be birthing this consciousness of Ai? So were the fleshpots, fleshpots going to continue to exist just for the simpleton that I am.

 

Well the fleshpots continue. Our is our is our consciousness just gonna exist in the Ai realm. Are we all going to die from the Ai Jason is what I'm asking. We will all die eventually. Uh we're all going to die. I'll just play that out right now if you don't die because of hunger. I mean most people die. I mean what is death? Okay, first of all, what is death? Typically we have one minute Jason blood flow stops to your brain, your brain ceases to function. It's like a pretty fundamental description but eventually the sun will expand eventually, the universe as a whole will experience heat death so eventually will cease to exist.

 

Yeah, I think you guys awesome man. Well it's a it's a conundrum you left me with a lot to think about. There is maybe more to consciousness maybe more than consciousness. There may be the spiritual, maybe consciousness is a lesser reality than the spiritual reality and both exist within these flesh bodies. So while ai may be mimicking our consciousness, it may not be able to mimic or replace the spirituality and spirituality solely restrained or constrained to these flesh bodies. I love it. Alright, Jason Well thank you.

 

Um I get to kind of sit down and go on this journey with you when we have these conversations. I appreciate your time. Thank you again for conducting a series of series was truly incredible. It's the first series that the painter Market Mastermind podcast has done a four part series. You are absolutely a leader in the industry. I think you have a fundamental outlook that a lot of people are missing on the opportunity in the painting industry. And so I think it was very enlightening and it should be very encouraging to people.

 

You know if you're not there, if you're google sheets or you know this stuff is kind of complicated and don't feel disheartened, feel feel excited for the opportunity that's here, that's really not hearing a lot of other industries paintings kind of behind the times almost like back to the future, you get to look at plumbing, you get to look at roofing, you get get to look at all these other other industries, you almost get to cheat, you get to go back and kind of cheat because we're probably about 10 years behind, so it's a very exciting industry and and I appreciate everything you're doing for adjacent and all the valuable knowledge you share.

 

Thanks man appreciate it and we're gonna cut it, we're gonna cut it now and we're gonna we're gonna not edit it at all. Thank you everyone for attending. Really appreciate it. We are going to post this recording in the pan american mastermind podcast form group on facebook and it will also be released via pc A overdrive. I don't think this should probably go on overdrive. It was a little uncut. We'll see, may or may not. It may not go on overdrive but at least we'll be in the podcast group.

 

It's fine. You know what I'm at the end of my chair term, a little looser. Alright, thank you, Jason. 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@Painter MarketingPros.com and I can give you personalized advice on growing your painting business until next time.