Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast, A show created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over one million and annual revenue. I’m your host, Brandon Pierpont, founder of Painter Marketing Pros and creator of the popular pc, an educational series, learn do grow marketing for painters. In each episode, I’ll be sharing proven tips, strategies and processes from leading experts in the industry on how they found success in their painting business. We will be interviewing owners of the most successful painting companies in north America and learning from their experiences on this episode of the painter marketing Mastermind podcast. We host guest Jason, paris. Jason is the founder of Paris painting, a residential painting company based in Minneapolis that does over $10 million dollars in annual revenue. Jason discusses the many struggles he has encountered while building Paris painting from zero to over $10 million dollars per year and the character traits he possesses that he believes allowed him to succeed. He also provides some very insightful thoughts about the future of the painting industry and why he currently considers painting to be a hidden gem for ambitious entrepreneurs. 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 Jason. Thank you for joining us on the painter marketing mastermind podcast man. Thanks for the invite. Yeah, absolutely. So, I guess tell us a little bit about paris painting your background, kind of how this whole thing came to be. Yeah, well, I always say started uh Paris painting 2012 with two things, a paintbrush and a dream. And uh it took it took five years to get to $1 million. And so um I didn’t start full time until 2014. So a couple of years just kind of a part time thing on the side. Uh but five years from his first accepted to get $2 million. And then in the next we just crossed our next five years. Uh we’re about to cross into the next five years. But all right. I gotta say that or again cause I’m like so I’m just gonna say it one more time. 321. Well, I always like to say we started with two things. A paintbrush in a dream here, Jason. We’re gonna we’re gonna I’m gonna do the countdown again and then I’m gonna I’m gonna let the team know. Alright, let me think. So. We started I was trying I was thinking about this literally last night. Yeah. You want to come out with a strong intro because it’s 2012 or not even just about this like the history of the company. First years, 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 1920, 21. Yeah, we’ve been business 10 years. Okay. All right, cool. Okay. Um Yeah, I mean we we can we can start we can edit. I’ll tell you typically, and if you care, you know, we’ll do it kind of however you want to do it. I’ll tell you typically I I don’t care sort of how it goes. You know, some people like to edit ums UHS or I just let it rip. I know that. I mean, we’re talking to Painting contractors. I don’t think they care, but yeah. Yeah. Well, no, people listen actually actually, yeah, yeah, this this is getting about I think like 1200 downloads per episode. So it’s but they don’t care. They’re not like, oh, they used a lot, but they use a lot of filler words, you know, nobody, you know? Yeah, they don’t, it doesn’t matter, man. Okay, Jason, Thanks for joining us on the paint marketing Mastermind podcast, man. Thanks for the invite. Yeah, absolutely. So tell us a little bit about paris painting your background kind of how this whole thing came to be. Yeah. So there’s painting is a company started in 2012 with a paintbrush and a dream. And uh It took five years to get to $1 million 2014. But in the subsequent five years we went from one million to $8. 3 million. and then along the way we, we bought a couple of other companies, we started a Holdings Holdings branch and uh Giving beyond just $8 million dollars of painting revenue. Um yeah, that’s a little bit of the background of what we started with and then I painted in college. So I went to the google gods and said college summer job and top hit that day was a company called college pro painters. And so my destiny was set at that moment by Sergei brin. Uh and um that’s kind of history from there. So I paid him for a few years in college graduated, went to the corporate world, graduated with a degree in economics from new york city Minnesota and went to work for automatic data processing, um, being a, For what they call this, those are basically glorified B2B sales rep, Did that for about 13 months. And then uh, I don’t want to really convince my wife just had a brief conversation with my, my wife and said this is not life giving. Uh it is nice to have a studied paycheck. It’s, and they treat me well and I treat them well. But um, I’ve got that entrepreneurial spirit like, you know, and I think there’s only one way to solve this and she was like phenomenal supportive spouse, Follow your dreams, follow your passion, let’s do it. And that’s how I got started, man, that’s amazing. Yeah, the, that it doesn’t go away. I don’t think it goes away in anything in life. It’s like as an entrepreneur, you like, you want to like drive, drive, drive and you’re never satisfied. That’s something I realized. We’re, I was like doing some things to my yard and like cutting some trees down, trying improving the view and my wife said something, uh, said maybe after like maybe after you take those ones down or you clean this up, I think you’ll be satisfied. And I just kind of paused for a second because the concept of being satisfied never crossed my mind. That’s really funny because you, here’s the concept that you ever will be satisfied. Like you’re just gonna be like manically want to drive and improve things forever, satisfied. Yeah, it’s a blessing and a curse allows you to accomplish a lot, but you never get to fully read the reward because you’re always gonna find, you gotta find some healthy outlets to, to put your passion into. Yeah, well yeah, prior to us starting this recording, your, you mentioned you’re going to do 100 miles race conduct iron Man’s jump into freezing tubs. It seems like you got a lot, a lot of outlets that you’ve got a healthy outlet man, otherwise drive everyone crazy and, and uh, you know, we’ve got a great team here at paris painting, I’m not involved in the day to day outside of a board level anymore. So I used to work super hard in the painting company and it was my outlet, my passion to do a bunch of stuff. It’s grown, it’s thrived and succeeded for not just myself, but a lot of others involved, partially because of my college humbleness to step away, but then you need other outlets to, to pour that passion into. You can’t get, you’re not gonna get to the office and grind at at five o’clock, you know, you can just wake up and go run in the dark and negative 10 degrees at five o’clock. It’s negative 10 in Minnesota. Yeah, the uh, the intensity is there, so I wanna, I wanna kinda, I’m probably jumping the gun a little bit, but that’s okay. You went from one million to 8. 3 million. So it took you five years and I know two of those were part time to go from 0 to 1 million and I’m sure you learned learned a lot there and then one million people the hard way. Okay, can you kinda talk about how those first five years And then the next five years sort of deferred because 1-8. 3, that’s obviously that’s massive, massive growth. Not that 0-1 isn’t. Yeah, there there are different types of growth for sure, right? There’s a there’s a real difference between founding a company and building the foundation, uh, to perfecting the process, right? Those are two different things and man those first five years where grit struggle, perseverance pain, uh, joy, sadness. So you’re just riding the emotional roller coaster. It was all me on my shoulders, right? You obviously have people that work for you, but you’re the one carrying the load. And uh man, I just think back to those days and what was I thinking? And obviously I was a genius, right? I knew it would pay off. I, I always knew that someday they pay off. But you’re like Elon musk man. No, Well that’s what yeah, our good friend would say that, But those are, those are the 5-9s, right? So I left my 9-5 so I could go work at 5-9. And uh, I remember, you know, saturday nights take me, you make, you make a lot of sacrifices in those early years. So saturday nights, my wife would want to watch netflix and like I gotta go to work and I would work until I got dizzy and I just couldn’t walk from the computer to this big scheduling whiteboard wall thing that we had and then I drive home sleep And you can sleep in on Sundays because you’re gonna go because you didn’t have to go to church till nine. Typically you’re in the opposite five, so you’re sleeping an extra that day. And, and those were the grinding years and then we had, I think our 2nd 2nd or two year old was born the year that we crossed two million. So it’s hard in those early years to have young kids too. You don’t see them as much. Um, you know that you’re making a sacrifice and you, that’s the hard thing about entrepreneurism is, you don’t know if it’s gonna pay off or not, if you work in a big company or if you’re a partner in a law firm, you know, you put the time in, people are going to recognize it and you’re going to earn up that, that either relational or real equity when you’re an entrepreneur, nobody knows or cares the sacrifices you’re making and putting in, right. It’s about results and you don’t know if what you’re doing is a good decision or not and you could, you could actually lose money in a given year if you’re putting in the kind of work and passion and, and honestly applying a lot of skill that you have in a larger company, you can get rewarded pretty handsomely for that. So those early years are a lot of sweat equity, a lot of emotional, uh, passion and also a lot of risk that’s and pain. I just can’t click call it anything else than in those first, early, early years, you’re kind of flying in the dark and really ultimately taking a bet on yourself and I think in the dark to, I’d say again, just emphasize on my own as well wasn’t really connected to anybody else. Didn’t know other painting contractors. I remember um so I would drive mostly around in this Hyundai Elantra and then I go to the paint store and painting contractors had these big fancy nice trucks. I was like frick these guys must all be like 8 10 $20 million cos I’m just a little humble Hyundai launched a $1 million company and uh you know that’s not reality, just like social media is not reality and uh, but I had no idea. I was like, I think the purveying thought in those early years is AM I the only dumb one here? The reality is it’s hard for everybody growing a business and the painting industry is a challenge scaling is, is hard to do and uh, but I didn’t know that. I thought I was the only one that was kind of struggling in that way. Yeah. And I think this is an amazing point because you’re obviously one of the most successful painting companies. Um really probably in the, in the United States And chair little yeah residential for sure. I mean doing Nate, we, we spoke spoke with him on Tuesday said you guys are probably gonna do over $11 million dollars um in 2022 you’re the chair of the board of the pc, you have a lot going for you and here you are saying you felt dumb and didn’t really know whether you were the only dumb one. So I think that can, that should probably make a lot of people feel a little better if they feel that way. I think that one of my favorite messages, my talk european contractors is it’s okay for it to be hard, right? People will say like because I think that’s a feeling we all have is am I the only one that it’s this hard for and just validating? Like you are founding a company that is hard, that is hard, right? And and if you feel like I’m struggling and it’s painful and I don’t know if I’m doing it right. That’s the price of admission you are doing that is a normal feeling and just want to validate That’s hard. And guess what next year? It’s going to be hard and remember those, those early years, like it was every single year I cried alright, you get to the lost and I can remember every single spot what it was, where you’re just like, I don’t know if I want to do this anymore. I don’t know if I can do this anymore. I don’t know if it’s worth it and you get through that. It’s an emotional low point in the day. I remember it was the first year I was doing it full time. I’m just gonna give you this is a story. Yeah, we love stories. I was doing it full time um and it just rained a couple days, we’ve gone through like a wet wet spell. They dried up. We’re out there painting on houses, we’re on this big job crew. I was, I was an employee based at the time. The crews were not hitting my estimate, so I was not making the margin, I thought I would be making, which is stressful. So I’m out there trying to teach them, encourage them, hold some accountability. I show a guy like, hey, like he’s just kind of like, no, you gotta like move with a purpose. And so I grab the ladder like here, then I get the pivot tool on it and run up there, but the ground is wet and I’m sure I did something wrong because I’m not the smartest human being, so it slips, starts to slip back a little bit. I’m up on the ladder. I’m gonna, I’m gonna show him like how to really move with intention with the ladder, It starts to slip back a little bit and then it catches and it turns and I fall off land and I like just land on my, my my side and nothing major like, like a bruised rib maybe at the worst. And uh but just knocks the wind out of me and I can’t talk. I’m just like, this sucks. I drive home, I drive straight home, I go, I sit down for a second in the kitchen, grab my laptop, I go www dot Code academy dot com. I’m thinking I’m a pretty smart guy. I’m just going to write code. This sucks. I don’t ever wanna, I don’t wanna be paying company. I don’t want to say more. I’m gonna take Obama’s advice and just learn how to code today. And uh now I ended up not doing that. And uh but I remember that was a low point where I’m just like, what is my alternative? Because this, this sucks, wow. You’re thinking about giving up and just getting a job as a developer. Yeah. Just go write code somewhere in a cubicle and uh not not do this anymore because it was hard, but you have to you at that moment, I think every year when you’re really stretching yourself. Yeah. And whatever it can be and this may not just be your business, but um I was certainly stretching myself in business those years and, and yeah, that’s the number one message I love to give to people is what you’re doing is hard and it’s okay to feel that way. That’s amazing. Yeah, that is really good advice and I’m sure it’s appreciated by many people. Um okay, so, so with you, you know, it was a struggle, you didn’t give up. You thought about giving up a few times. What would you say kind of helped you through that? Not, not mentally, but in terms of what, what advice would you have for painting company owners that maybe they’re stuck at half a million and they want to ultimately get to past 10 million, what would you tell them? Mm Well that’s kind of I think there’s probably two parts that I’ll answer. One is um you have to be a little irrational and have like an irrational belief. That’s how I felt. I looking back it was like my wife called confidence. Yeah. Like what were you thinking? Like what would you be doing that? Like the opportunity cost of every single year that you’re doing this is pretty large. Yeah. You don’t want to sit down and do the math for a couple of years or you’re just gonna quit. Probably you’re not making much money. And if you’re to put that work and I was And most business, I mean most small businesses, they’re putting a lot of skill to work, to write their interviewing people, they’re hiring people, they’re doing sales, they’re doing production management, they’re doing the business, accounting, planning, every strategy strategy, like all those different roles. Um you have to be a little irrational and then we never got stuck. We just had obviously pretty, pretty steady growth. But I think if you get stuck, um you know it’s being open minded to reevaluating your beliefs and a lot of times we have these preconceived notions, these beliefs, these it’s basically so the concept is first principle reasoning, you break everything down to its most fundamental concepts that are true and then you build back up from there so you might have a limiting belief that says There’s just there’s no good guys out there and I can’t hire and I’ll never grow more than 500 or or I just I’ll never have the time to do the systems building that I need to do while also doing everything else. And so break that down what’s true, what’s not get some outside advice and be open minded to hearing something that is not a current belief that you hold. And I think that open mindedness is a real key personal trait to those that continue to grow and not get stuck on those roadblocks. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I think you know being having an abundance mindset, being open minded, being willing to take a hard look at yourself for all characteristics of a, of a leader and a successful entrepreneur. When you, I do want to kind of run through an exercise here if you’re open open for it because I want to make sure I understand that everyone listening understands it. So when you say limiting beliefs kind of break everything down obviously the the labor shortage or perceived labor shortage, you know, I think there’s different degrees of belief there, let’s let’s focus on that, let’s say someone’s at at 800,000 and they say man, I would be a $2 million company if I could get good painters but I can’t, what’s the process, how do they, how do we do that? I mean I always say, let’s look at the facts. Right? So are there other painters out there first of all? Or are there no painters? There’s literally no painters. Oh, there’s lots of painters, right? You guys are, there are many many painters. Well how many painters are there? I don’t know. Let’s, let’s do some simple math. Like go to one Sharon Williams store in your geographical area that you want to serve. Ask him how many gallons of paint of your type of product that they sell. So for us to be the residential products. Right? And say, wow, that’s a lot of gallons. How many gallons do you use? And then figure out how many gallons you use your, your, your sales reps would know this too. You kind of get like gallons per head count. Mm hmm. And then you do the math. You say, well, you know, if my painters are using this many gallons and that store is selling that many gallons, how many painters is that store servicing? Right? With the head count ratio. Mhm And how many stores are there in the area that I’m willing to serve? Oh, and then what market share to Sherwin have versus the other guys. And you can ask your territory rep because he knows that answer right? Or just split and split in half and assume that they own 50%. Suddenly you’re doing the math and you’re like, there’s a lot of freaking painters out there in the same way that there’s a lot of houses to paint right now. Now we know what now we know what the kind of market cap of labor is like. We know that there’s an abundant market cap of demand as well. You’d say, well, okay, so there is a limit to the number of painters out there, They may all be gainfully employed and uh, if you are the worst employer in town, you’re only going to get the bottom five right? If you are the very worst place to work for you go to the bottom five, if you’re not the worst place to work for, you would think that more people would want to work for you, right? So it’s usually what, what the issue is, you don’t have a business that people want to work for. It’s not that there are people in your business, right? That’s the hard part. I mean, the truth of the matter is is that the first business problem that painting companies typically run into is I can’t hire my friends and my network right now I need to hire people to come into my business and they’re gonna get exposed to potentially chaos and not everyone is willing to martyr themselves. Like I am for my company and I don’t have the same peer pressure that I do to my friends and family. So it’s hard to recruit and retain labor. Yeah. Yeah, that was a big topic that I discussed with Nick Slavic on his episode. Was, was this idea that um you know the labor shortage is not as severe or final as a lot of painting company owners seem to think that I don’t want to downplay that. It’s a challenge in a company. Um, but if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a professional problem solver, right? That’s, that’s your job and that’s not the first problem you’re gonna run into if you want to actually run a business if you want to be self employed and have you and three other painters painting all day. There’s nothing wrong with that. And it’s a phenomenal thing to do. But if you want to run a company um you’re gonna have a lot of problems that are a lot harder. I’ll be honest a lot harder than how do I recruit three painters today? Yeah, that’s like if you can’t figure that out, it’s it’s not getting easier in life. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s an excellent point. You know, I think a lot of of painting company over sort of struggle with this transition, especially if they started as a painter from being self employed and you know painting with their crew to being a business person and and an owner of a business and I think employees hiring, managing, that’s a big learning curve. But it’s a necessary learning curve if you, if you want to actually get to a million two million and it just exposes everything else in the company to, right? So it’s a challenge. It’s a learning curve, but it’s also the first thing that starts to really, you can’t just wing when your people see through that pretty quick, right? And the things that you’re willing to do or that you can cover up with you and a couple of guys, you can’t cover that up or, or just make it happen at scale, right? And it’s so it’s like, there’s like the actual, the challenge of recruiting the labor, that’s an issue. But then there’s the challenge of really integrating labor that’s just as hard, right? Then it doesn’t work. It’s easy to make an excuse and say it’s just cause kids these days don’t wanna work. And I was like, well, not for you, overall right. Sherman Williams sells more and more gallons every single year. Uh, more and more houses get painted. Um, now I’m not saying that demand is outstripping supply. That’s a challenge and a real issue. But yeah, there’s a lot of painters out there. It’s like, it’s not like there’s no painters, there’s a lot. Yeah. And, and, you know, the importance of system uh, systematized in your company having the processes because you can’t just cover for things when employees come in, there needs to be some sort of structure, quality control, you know, customer service, like. So this is just one part, we’re talking about a professionalized company and what are the ramifications of not being, you know, professionally minded. Um, I think that it’s also a cyclical issue right there because not everybody wants to be a painter in life, right? That is true, right? There is a truth that uh, per proportion of demand supply has not risen at the same ratio. So it is a challenge. It is a hard thing to do. Um, So the, the cyclical conundrum you run into is when you’re not professional, you hire people, they don’t have a great experience. Now nobody wants to become a painter, right? Why would, why would anybody want to get into the painting industry when there’s not many good companies to go and work for? Right. Yeah. I don’t think it’s like, somebody asked me if I thought about going to high schools and talking to the kids about becoming a painter and I’m like, you know, we could um I think, I think that’s the beneficial. There is a benefit to showing role models of what it can look like. Um but I’m like, I don’t want kids to go work for most of you. All right. Yeah. You see some of these companies and it’s not that’s actually a good opportunity. And that’s that’s like, I want to say that humbly and and make sure that that’s received in a healthy way. But the reality is is if you throw someone into the painting business, see, um, odds are they’re not going to have a great experience as an employee and that’s a tough deal and then you try and petition someone and say, well you started out as an employee and then you become this and become that and someday you can run your own company. I don’t know man, most business owners, it’s like I wouldn’t really call that something that is a big carrot for what I’m trying to recruit people into, right for most of residential repaint for a long time. It’s been you got uncle chuck in a truck and he’s at thanksgiving dinner and he’s drunk, he’s overweight, his truck is rusty and he’s probably getting a divorce because he never interacts with his family, right? That’s not a good, like no one wants to become a painter when you see that, right? But if you got, you got uncle johnny and johnny is like driving a Tesla and uh he’s like happy and he engages with his family, it’s like wait a second, What’s uncle johnny up to? Oh he owns it, He owns a painting company, maybe I wanted to paint company when I grew up, right? I think that role model, it’s a cyclical thing. Um but it kind of starts with being a good role model in the in the industry so that other people want to jump in and join in that are going to be professionally minded. Yeah, I think and I think the P. C. A. Is amazing at that and you being the chair of the board, the pcr contributing back, you know, I think, I think you’re kind of approaching it from a different angle like, hey, let’s let’s really professionalize this industry, let’s make as many painting companies great places to work as possible and then, you know, the interest will be generated. Yeah, that’s that’s that’s certainly one of our big strategic initiatives is, you know, I think that you can tack it from both sides. You want to build professionalization up in the industry because there’s a lot of potential and there’s a lot of gems and and with a little bit of support, a little bit of coaching, a little bit of knowledge transfer motivation, communal engagement. There’s a lot of potential to build up professionalization within some of the seeds that are already in the industry. I think there’s also a tremendous opportunity to draw professionalization into what we do. All right, There’s a lot of really bright minds that are in no way ever gonna think of. I think running a painting company would be a great idea, right? It seems like a bad idea to most of them, most people. But if you can start to paint a path paved path, if you can start to show a path of no, no, you can run an actual company, you don’t have to be a martyr and just do it for the love of the trade, you can, instead of starting a chain of restaurants, which would be a bad idea right now, you could jump into uh, highly fragmented, um, industry that, you know, demand far outstrips supply and these are, you know, decade long trends. Uh, and you could build a business that can, you can build growth equity wealth and have tremendous cash flows, pretty low, pretty low cash, very, very low capital intensive, great cash flows. Like that’s where you get like the NBA’s or like I’m not gonna go start a brewery, let’s start a painting company. And you see that in plumbing, HVAC roofing pest control has started to do that as well. Um There’s a lot of other home services businesses that have really gone through that professional renaissance and they’re attracting great talent to come and run companies and build companies that hasn’t happened yet in painting. Uh, that’s not gonna last forever. So it’s been kind of nice. I’ll be honest, it’s been kind of nice, but it’s not very competitive, but um, like that’s another way that you really start to change the industry is by drawing professionalization in. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I can tell you, I mean, we, we work with painting contractors across the country growing them and my wife had to pull me off the ledge a few months ago, I was going to start a second company. It’s gonna start a painting company in addition to running painter marketing pros and she told me to to to cool it. So it was good, but most likely, most likely I actually, I’m gonna jump into the fray here with you guys with my own painting company in a in a couple of years. Yeah, it’s a great, I mean, it’s a great opportunity. It’s uh like I said, it’s not very capital intensive. Yeah, you can’t make that big a mistake in general, like there are things you can do, but typically your worst days you have to repaint something, right? So it’s not like a super high risk learning curve if you want to get into it. And then um there’s such a high demand for what we do, particularly on a professional side, right? So my my belief has always been held that you’ve got this strata of clients, right? Just like, just like in the food consumption industry, right? You have people that I wanna eat at Manny’s steakhouse, you have people that want to eat out of the food truck, right? And there are always people with people that want to eat out of a food truck. Um Not everyone’s going to make a steakhouse, but in general, people would prefer to eat somewhere nice if it was accessible to them. All right? And uh that’s something with painting contractors. My belief is that there’s, we like to complain about um you know, the illegitimate painting contractor, right? People, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard anybody complain, but I hear a lot of complaints of like, oh, these guys are just not legit and they’re undercutting and it’s what’s ruining the industry, It’s like, well, I don’t think they’d exist if there were professional painting companies at enough of a skill to service the demand of clients. Mm I think that a lot of this, if you want to call it like um there’s a lot of that, a lot of that kind of lower tier market where people basically price themselves out of business or they’re just running out such a razor’s edge of risk, that um it’s detrimental law that exists because clients aren’t able to find uh painting contractors that they prefer to work with to service them and they end up settling. And I always say look in the mirror, like you gotta grow your ability of capacity so you can service more clients, so that’s not as much of an issue. And I think if more contractors do that, that’s one way that things improved as well. But obviously I have a lot of hypotheses and uh you know, they’re all just ideas, but yeah, well you seem to have a pretty recurring theme here, accountability and whatever your problem is, look in the mirror because it’s probably related to you as an entrepreneur, you you kind of have to own everything, yep. Yeah, I think that’s a great mindset in life is control what you can control um you know, be the solution not the complaint and uh that’s good, I’m glad that you see that. Yeah. Yeah that’s great. Um Okay kind of switching gears a little bit. I want to touch on some marketing stuff. So Um we’re working with you guys, you guys hired painter marketing pros. So I know we’re gonna be doing some of the web stuff but but you guys already have a very dialed in system obviously um you know you’re doing, I’m just gonna say you’re doing north of 10 million because you are at this point what what’s worked best for you? What what are what where have you seen the biggest R. O. I. On your systems, your marketing, everything. Yeah well first I’ll say I so I learned that we had hired you this morning actually from my director Nate and I was kind of shocked because uh I mean I’ve seen you on social media and I’ve heard all about you but there are a million that’s seemingly marketing gurus out there and uh Nate is a pretty dialed in guy. And so if he hired you uh I’m gonna say I was shocked and hopefully don’t take offense to that. But if he hired you it’s like you’re the real deal right, you never know. Yeah congrats on that. It’s a good account. Um what’s worked best for us. The highest ri piece we’ve had is a single delivery. Actionable flyers and so that’s our highest R. O. I. It’s a 14 X. And we do that at scale. So paris painting, spent a little over $230,000 delivering flyers last year At a 14 x. revenue. So we love paying that bill. That is great turn. Um and that was actually so I started when I started pairs painting. I was door knocking and then hanging a flyer. If nobody answered the doors that’s how I started off the ground. Right knock knock knock, nobody answered knock knock knock, nobody answered the knock knock knock. Hello get the f out of here. Alright sounds great. Right do that enough times and days someone answers the door and they want to paint quote. So that’s how I started you hang fliers. I don’t answer own a company near me called paperboy marketing and they delivered flyers. So I hired them great returns. Sweet. Did that did that did that year over year over year. Uh Nate ended up selling his company in 20 2018, 19, 2018, 2018, 2019. You’re right, you’re right 2018 used an interview with them that sale all you people listen to the podcast will know that sale did not go well uh ended up having to take the company back which is never the goal of that transaction Paris painting felt the pain of that right. We were a primary vendor and that was not fun to go through because we uh we really loved their services. So there was a he’s probably explained this on your podcast, but there was a combination of things and and we ended up purchasing that company, partially because of Nate’s talents brought Nathan. He’s now our director of marketing and customer experience. Mhm. So we own that company in house now, it charges the same price to paris painting, that charges to other painting contractors just in the twin cities. So we don’t get great savings outside of having similar ownership profits, similar ownership. So the profits go to the same people. But um yeah, that’s been our highest ri tactic is is flower delivery. There was a big push in the last two years that has been doing a phenomenal job on on de risking that because we get that kind of return. I think 14 X. Is pretty good. You tend to stack at scale, you stack to start to stack a lot of chips on that. You get to funnel then now you’re at risk, right? So he said this is great. However, let’s start to diversify diversify a little bit because he’s got a great job. I want to say, he knows I don’t want to say because my number’s gonna be wrong, but it’s probably like hopefully less than half of our leads come from flyers now. Um but Nate could tell you, I don’t handle anything with marketing. He does, Yeah, we’re actually gonna have Nathan for a second episode because we actually didn’t really get to marketing very much and and we kind of started touching on it, but it’s been almost an hour. So we both knew this was another hour long conversation. So yeah, we’re gonna have around two. Yeah. So the, that’s really interesting. So 14 X. Obviously that’s an amazing return. Especially at scale because you can, it’s easier to get 10 plus return if it’s small, just like investing cash, right? It’s like you can find somewhere to put your cash and get a, You know, 15% return. But Try doing that with like $1 million. You can’t find a place. It’s harder. It’s just so, so kind of with the flyer. Do you have any for any painting companies that kind of thinking about this. Do you have any advice for how you structure the fly or how, how you target the residences, anything like that? Yeah. Well all credit will go to donate on this. But I’ll tell you what I know and something that I’ve always liked that’s on our flyer delivery piece is some kind of grounding or like a baseline offer right? And you’ll stay like 2000 sq ft of house Rough to 99 right? They’ll say requires a custom quote can change based off of this, this, this and this, whatever it may be And you get out there and it’s gonna be, it could be a $2200 job, could be a $3800 job. It’s all over the map, but you at least have something where a client can, can take this card. They see some kind of price gauge or reference and now they feel grounded. So like that’s in there. Uh there’s a face, there’s my face on there from before I had kids. I have four kids now. So you look, I look young and like look at this young guy, the go getter, someone I could trust and uh, that there’s a personal bio that touches on things that different people will pick up on. So kind of strategically placed in university. Minnesota graduate, uh, father of four. like, like to run and uh, involved in my community and church. Right? Those are four things that are avatar. Marketing avatar would typically pick up on one of those four things. And so they see that and they relate to it right there, runners. They’re family people, they’re either a runner or a family person involve the local community or church. Um, wherever the fourth one I said, I said was or was the University of Minnesota right? Kind of growing up in Minnesota, have a Minnesota tie or Minnesota allegiance. This is actually a state that has the highest percentage of people that are born and also die in the same state. So we know that’s a nice trigger. So you have that and then within three seconds you have to know what the flyers telling you, Right, what is it about? You sold it for three seconds, 123, take it away. What is this about? All the paint houses. It’s gonna be super simple, super clean crisp. Have to understand three, those first two features I talked about that’s really about grounding someone to feel comfortable and secure. So it’s really scary and I’ll just talk from my experience. It’s really scary to reach out and try and gather a quote for something that you don’t know much about, right? So if I needed to, oh, this is good. If I needed someone to build a website would be like, I don’t really want to do this is, I don’t really want to do it. It’s just, it’s just $65,000. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what questions to ask, but if I get a flyer because I got a flyer and it’s like website $2,000. Uh plus or minus. Here’s some, here’s some things that are going to drive it up and down. Right? And here’s Brandon and his face is like shaven and looks nice and here’s some stuff about him personally, wow. Like I feel like by holding this and we use nice thick card stock that’s laminated. I feel like by holding this, I just feel more secure and safe. What I call them, right? And so I’m gonna call me looking at this, I feel grounded and secure. Like I have some reference and ammunition. So I’m not coming in blind into like a fog. That’s how I interpret our marketing piece market expert um Nate would explain it phenomenally, but I think those are some key components, the client has to feel safe, have to feel secure. It’s a very scary thing that they’re doing. They’re reaching out to someone collected quote on a service that they don’t know much about. Yeah. And I think, I think it’s so easy um for entrepreneurs and painting company owners to kind of forget that, you know, we’re, we’re in the day to day and you guys are selling jobs and some jobs are going to be 10, 15, 20 plus $1000. So if someone is kind of hesitant about a three or $4000 job, it kind of seems like, well what’s the big deal? But for them that’s a lot of money. It’s not an everyday thing. Yeah. Not every day you get your house painted. Yeah, it’s, it’s a big and it’s uh, you know, one of the things we’ve kind of talked about is, there’s, it’s a high risk because there’s a lot of ego wrapped up in house painting. You know, it’s ultimately gonna, it’s gonna really affect their mood. It’s when, when they have family or friends come over, if it’s a bad job, that’s gonna be really embarrassing. It’s not like plumbing or electrical where you just need it done, but no one’s really gonna see it. Everyone’s gonna see it, yep, it’s a big identity piece for a lot of people to write even subconsciously and uh yeah, there’s a lot of humiliation that comes, it’s not done well and I mean and clients are rightfully on edge because in painting we have just an un professionalized business and industry where it’s like, most clients have either been taking advantage of themselves or have experienced being taken advantage of through a friend, a family member or someone on tv right? They watched it, they watched an episode where a contractor has not acted in a way that a longstanding professional company would. Yeah, so yeah, and you know as a contractor you have to come into an engagement with a client knowing like they may be a little jumpy and there’s a reason for that. Like they’ve been like abused either directly or indirectly, but they get your subconscious doesn’t know if it’s you or somebody else, that’s why you’re in a mood when you’re at the movie theater, you’re like, oh my gosh is our ship gonna crash? Like stressed out right now? I’m not on a ship, I’m in a theater eating popcorn, but I’m like worried that the ship’s gonna crash because my subconscious things that I’m there, so your clients like they have this emotion, they have an emotional reaction and it’s real and you have to, you’re like almost walking into like almost hesitate to use this because someone will get offended by it, but I don’t mean a bad, but you’re almost like you’re walking into a battered women’s shelter and you’re like reaching out to someone like, no, I’m not gonna hit you. Like, I’m trying to like, help you. And uh, you’re like going to, you’re going to a client, you’re like, and here’s the contract. But like, I’m like, here’s like, this is the like, like I’m gonna do what I tell you, I’m going to like, this is they’re like, jumpy and scared and like, I don’t want to put any money down and you’re just going to con me and was like, no, like, we’re we’re good, we’re good people like we’ve been hurt, but we’re a good person. So that’s a great point. Yeah. You have to always start with the buyer in mind and kind of keep their um whatever past traumas or hesitations they may have uh in mind when you, you said you you have these four pieces of information that you give it by yourself, Runner father for church and then went to University of Minnesota and that typically one your your customer avatar, your target market avatar is gonna resonate with at least one of those. Did you guys actually sit down and come up with, okay, here’s our target avatar. Well Nate will get mad when he listens to this because he’s not, he doesn’t feel like we have enough data to constantly say our who our avatar is. If you guys don’t have enough data to say that then no one has getting, he’s going to get there though. So he just, he was, yeah, so that’s, that’s probably not for me, that’s an intentional thing. I, and I don’t know if it was, I feel like I look back at that, it’s like, so here, I’ll give you like, the honest answer is I put that stuff out there on my first flyer in like 2014 and it worked retroactively. I’m like these are like four things that are anchors for every client that we have. This is great. And so Nate would tell you that we don’t have a true avatar yet. He’s getting there, he’s almost there. But he’d be really mad if I said that, I know what our avatar is because he’s the one that ultimately has to deliver on that. Yeah, Nate is a very thorough dude. He has a, he has a lot of data. Yeah, he is, he’s super. I mean, yeah, because I mean paperboy is just like a data gold mine of every single house in the twin cities metro area and he’s a phenomenal mind as well because he’s just, he’s worked with most large home service companies in the area and uh he, I mean he’s an entrepreneur, I could say talent the great things about him. But yeah, he’s also very data intensive, he’s almost, he’s almost as big into like the keyboard uh monitor setup as I am right. He’s like he has he has all those monitors up. He’s got like his mouse embedded in his chair just sitting there just squinting. So yeah he’s a great guy. Yeah. Yeah. Well he um He has made it a point that he’s taken you guys to over 30 million uh repairs painting so painting because I think we’re getting pretty close to 30 as a holding company this next year. But alright man, let’s go. Yeah that would be pretty, he would be the guy to drive us there from a marketing perspective to write. I put my hat, No one else but him with with you on the team, with him as one of his resources, right? That’s obviously something he’s using. So um Yeah I’d like to hear that. That’s great. Yeah. Yeah. In your shoes I would definitely like to hear as well. It’s good news. Um Okay so a lot of things are going well obviously for you guys are close to 30 million as it’s a holding company. The painting division is doing over 10. Is there anything you guys are struggling with right now? Um I would say are like I. D biggest risk, our biggest challenge is developing leaders and so we know how to buy market share, right? We know how to produce work. We have not experienced a labor shortage and what we are offering and what we’re able to stock up and and ramp up with for, for labor. Um, we know how to coordinate those two components after a job gets sailed sold and what needs to get to produced at scale all items at scale. The part where you get to get funneled as you grow for us is developing leaders and that’s a big thing that we’re investing in. That’s obviously a key strategic initiative for the last year is making sure that we’re well positioned in doing that forecasting, that planning of or the future roles we’re gonna need over the next 3 to 5 years and who is in the pipeline and what structure is gonna be needed and how do we develop and recruit and routine these leaders. So that’s really the limiting factor for us. Um, another big piece would be obviously it sounds cliche, but culture, Right? So making sure that the culture is in check and ultimately we have to two key numbers that are going to determine our success over the long haul. one is our net promoter score and the other is the internal retention. If you have happy, happy staff and happy clients, that’s, that’s what’s gonna sustain in the long term. Right. Without those two things, You know, you’re probably on a 5-10 year time horizon to Peter and Helen. Yeah, that’s a great point. So when, when you guys are recruiting leaders, are you kind of looking internally for that. Are you typically looking externally? How do you do that? We do both and it’s got to be done kind of a healthy ratio too. So there’s a challenge of when you are growing, you’re creating a lot of new roles and there is a risk factor involved in having someone step into a role they have never performed in, right. You never want to overload the ORC chart with and experienced risk in that sense. There’s a ratio of what’s appropriate and what’s not. And I’ll just tell you in 2021. So last year we overloaded that ratio and uh we had a great year, paris painting particularly had a great year, but some of our other business divisions in the holdings company did not have a great year as we were hoping and we had definitely leveraged ourselves quite a bit on that on that risk factor. So you’ve got that component. But then also you never want to overload the amount of external hires and key roles that you do in a given year either. Right? Because you want to retain the culture, you want to make sure that the ethos is there. You always hire for values. You hire, you fire for values. Um, you never want to have too many new people in and out from outside the organization into key roles in any given year two. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, I like, I don’t watch a ton of sports, but I love reading and watching documentaries about sports and uh, so I like Bill Belichick as a coach. You know, he’s a love hate guy, but he’s talking about team building, I’m sure it’s not his concept, but just the ratio of veterans, two new guys that is appropriate in the locker room and uh, you gotta think about that a little bit with the organization of what’s the appropriate ratio, but it’s not always about having the most talented group of people in your company, but it’s building a kind of a whole ecosystem of people that work well together. Yeah, yeah. I think that’s, that’s a really good point. You have some people who have the experience and can come in and know their job and then you provide a path to advancement for employees who have been with the company and the company really well and are very loyal and you kind of have your cake and eat it too sort of that way. We just were very open messaging about this is what we’re doing right. But we’re trying to empower everybody to have that ownership mindset and to own their role more than just being an employee because there is a pathway for them to jump and eventually kind of own a section of a business unit. We’re big believers in that. We’re not like hold the pie to ourselves group philosophically literally let’s share what we have and you know selfishly also grow the pie together with people are very invested and and have earned that position. Yeah, the abundance mindset. No. Um so you guys think you had mentioned that it’s negative 10° there right now which is obviously very cold. Yeah. You’ve, you’ve managed to grow a really successful business even though you guys in bureau long and harsh winter. Do you have any advice for how to combat winter season? Yeah. So I’ll tell you what we’ve done and then what we’re doing now, we’ve gotten really good at scaling up and down. So that’s what we’ve done in the past. So I started out as I mentioned full employee model and have since transition to majority subcontracted model. Large part reason for that is we have call it seven months of winter here in Minnesota and you’ve got five months where and you’ve got rain in there as well where everyone is trying to get all the exterior painting done as well as into your painting that they want during that season as well. So you have to be high rpm, you know, scale up sales, scale up production. Uh, make a well of sunshine and there’s a lot of logistics that go into making that work well. And that’s a strong point of ours were really good at logistics and organization. So that’s one way to solve it. It’s just really good at those things. Um we are now, I mean over the past two years it’s been a strategic initiative directed from the board level of, We want to just like a lot of things de risk, right? The risk and stabilized as you get bigger. And so we want to grow our interior arm. So it’s just a lot more stable throughout the year. So instead of spiking like this in the summer, it’s more like this. Alright, just a smoother curve essentially my arms didn’t make sense there. Um So yeah, it’s it’s part of it’s just getting really good at scaling up and down. The other part is uh get two more interior works. You’re not scaling as much in proportion. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great point, satisfying answers. But that is that’s what we’ve done in the past and that’s what we’re doing now. Yeah, no, it’s I think that would be helpful for a lot of people. Are there any um marketing our growth strategies that you’ve tried that you were really excited about? Thought they were going to work well and ended up being a flop. Yeah, radio, radio. So we did radio and I think it’s a good tactic and I know people um secondhand who have had phenomenal success in other industries like carpet cleaning, uh in particular. So um we this was 2019. We spent quite a bit of money on radio and I think it moved the needle, but it was not like an R. O. Eyepiece and Nate I think understands the tactic to the radio and he would be able to do it well before we had hired Nate. So we’re all just flying by the seat of our pants when it comes to marketing. And uh yeah that was one tactic that we dump some cash into and it was fun because like I go to church and people like, hey I heard your radio ad, I love to have my ego boosted the so um but other than that, I mean you got, we got leads from it, we’re certainly gonna return, but not in an R. O. Y. Perspective that one of us, we are doing it now right? Yeah, I got it. And then um for smaller painting companies with limited marketing budget who you know can’t be spending a quarter of a million a year on direct mail, there are flyers flyers, single piece actual delivery. So they, they banned him to like a door handle. It has to, it’s a single piece that’s there and they have to engage with it. Do they have to take it off their door to engage with it? Yeah. Okay. So if they don’t have the money to do that or at least anywhere near the scale, what would you recommend that they start with? Man, I’m a big fan of. Well I mean what I did was just knocking on doors humble, get scrappy. It costs you $0 family, your pride. You learn a lot and I’m I’m an introvert like I don’t not have that. Um But it was, I’m door knocking for eight hours on saturday, wow and that’s what I’m gonna do today. And uh like I said it’s like no I’m calling the cops. Uh then you get the housewife who answers like you know, I don’t need a paint card but I don’t need a paint job now but let me give you my card. You know Actually I don’t remember what she said. I just remember she said like and my name is like I don’t know if I can say her name, I’ll use a different my name is like Samantha willing that says that that’s like willing and able to give me a wink like ah no it’s like scurry away to the next house. So you just have bad experiences, door knocking. It’s not fun. But then you get one client who says yeah I’ll take a quote great when when can I come back and do that, you want to do it. And they’re like, oh let’s do it on on monday, you go there and they say no okay frank right? So you’re still not. You get more and then eventually get someone who says yes, you quote their job out, they say yes great. Now you got a job, stick a yard sign up and then when you’re out there I I painted like my 1st 1st couple of part time years you’re in your painter whites, you’re painting the house at lunch you take a break and you knock every door again and you’re doing your painting whites right now. You have some social proof, you got the yard sign up, People have typically seen the yard side driving in and out. So you’re, you’re painting the house down the street, you go back and paint and then the same thing in the evening and yeah, that’s like the golden hour. So like 5 30 to 8 30. You’re knocking every door in that neighborhood. Like I’m painting a house and like I’m painting a house down the street now, how do you say no, that that’s a great I mean if you’re looking for a paint job and the guys knock on your door, like I’m paying a house down the street and he looks somewhat professional and like, okay, like the shirt matches the sign I saw, that’s how I would start. It’s like swallow your pride, knock on some doors get gritty, um get things off the door. Now, the second thing I’d recommend is to hire painting marketing pros that obviously outside of that where you would start. Um I’m trying to think what else, I mean, that’s really flyer delivery knocking on doors. Um I mean the things people do now are so much more creative than what I did back in my day, 10 years ago, back in your day. Yeah. Guerilla tactics when you start out, how old are you chasing 35 34 34 you’re most of the people listening are older than you Just yeah back in your day, back in my day. Back when back when the iphone was new and googles and the youtube came out when I was a kid, Not that far back but what was happening in 2012. They don’t even know, I don’t know amnesia. Just two old guys. Um Yeah, well yeah, I mean you grind it, you know you hustled and and you grind it hard. Yeah, I think Guerilla marketing is a great thing to do when you’re early on and just get scrappy and and um you know there’s an opportunity cost you could argue but you’re not in a position where you’re just like allocating capital and sitting back oh my God spend here and take my saturday off and then I don’t know man, you can’t do that. And there are people who, I mean I’ve met a ton of painting contractors that scaled two million bucks way easier than I did and uh that is a great thing and people should, I did the dumb way and the hard way. Uh so but I I still like the guys who get scrappy early and then and then you know once you earn it you know then you can start just spending and seeing what works and and work with someone who can track your marketing with you and uh find out where you stack your chips. But yeah I think, yeah, I think there are a couple of great points. There. One is, I think I’m a big believer that if, if you’re doing something entrepreneurial you will succeed if you don’t quit. The only way you fail is if you quit and and that seems to be large, I mean that’s that’s always the mantra I’ve taken um when things have been difficult and I think it it sounds a lot like the mantra you you took cause obviously didn’t quit and things sounded incredibly difficult. And then the other thing is another statistic, just generalist statistic is only 3% of your target market is ready to buy at any given time meaning for you. You’d have to knock on 100 doors and maybe three people would maybe consider getting a quote from you about the ratio yeah, which is a lot of people I want you to go away to that consistency piece too. It’s like ah I knocked on every door already in my target neighborhoods that I want to work, do it five more times. Some people are going to be upset and annoyed. Running a business may not be for you. Yeah. Yeah. If you’re, if you’re too worried about that you’re worried about someone being annoyed and upset with you. You honestly you might, it might be better if you go work for a painting company and try to become a project manager or sales rep or even a production lead. like those are great positions to have, you’re probably not on, you’re probably not going to survive as a business owner because this is not the first time that you’re gonna have to do something that’s uncomfortable, right? Yeah, yeah, it’s a great, yeah, you’re, you’re gonna extend yourself one way or another and probably a lot of ways and if you end up having to let go of employees and you never had to do that before, hard discussed a lot of hard or you hold accountability, you’re afraid to hold accountability because now your friends won’t like you anymore or you have a hard time, you know, having a hard conversation with a client because well what if they don’t think that I’m a good company anymore. Um you gotta, you gotta, you gotta do a lot of hard things now. I will also say I’m not the best at everything. And uh I found that out quickly in a couple of those cases that that I talked about and we hired a president who took over and runs paris paris painting right? And paris painting has done much better with him as president than if I were president, right? So I’m like not preaching, I’m not like high and mighty, telling people stuff, it’s just like, that was my experience as well. Like there are things that I was the bottleneck and the cap on of being like the business president, right? Business owner and now I’ve stepped back and I’m just shareholder ownership. Right? And so I let the team run the company and you found people who, who are stronger in areas where you’re weak and you were able to delegate, you were able to get yourself. I would, I thought I was great, I I’m like, oh, I’m a great sales rep, and I would say I was good as when you found a company, you kind of have to be good at everything, so you have to be irrationally confident, very, very gritty, and then a generalist of all things, and if you’re not a good generalist of all things, there’s gonna be a big enough hole somewhere that’s gonna, you know, uh you might want to co found at that point, yeah, you’re gonna have a, yep, yep, so, um that is a challenge. Now, what you’re not typically is all those things and also hyper specialized in more than one or two areas. Right, So I’m a great founder, generalist, gritty confident, uh good at most things, not hyper specialized in sales management, surprise, surprise, Micah, our VP of sales, my goodness, he is been gifted in that, right, He is very, very good at leading a sales team. Um he could not start a company, right? He could not find a business and he’s very aware of that. We tried that with him, we tried to start paris washing with him as a general manager did not go well and we shut that down after one quarter. And uh he’s but then he so he got humbled quite a bit and now he’s now he’s performing extremely well as our VP of sales. Same thing with marketing, right? Like I’ve got a pretty good marketing mind. Maybe not actually that good, but okay Nate. My goodness is like a marketing savant. It’s insane. Same thing with being the president of the company. I think I’m a pretty good president, like I’m a pretty, I think I’m a pretty good leader. I can run meetings well, I can establish a vision, I can hold people accountable, understand and a lot of different things. My goodness. If you’ve met Alex, he is like I would not want anybody else running a company that I own. Yeah, insane. And I can go down and down list. Eric our our CFO, I like spreadsheets a lot. He is on a whole nother level than me right? He’s our CFO that’s like all he does is that the way that he handles our finances are beyond my ability by a factor of five. I was I was gonna say 10, but I’ll just say five because I think I’m pretty, yeah. Yeah. Just acknowledging like you are your founder, you’re good at most things. You’re likely hyper hyper specialized in one or two things, but not everything right. And and if you want your business to continue to thrive, you have to be humble enough to step out of those things that are not your gifting. Yeah. Put the right people in the right seats. So do you do you have any um Thoughts as to how the painting industry is likely to change over the next 10 years? Well, I’ll just always start by saying if I knew, I’ll start by saying, I don’t know right, because I just need to be humble in that. Um But the hypothesis would be, I think it’s gonna professionalize, I don’t think this little sneaky secrets gonna last very long. Mhm. I think you will see obviously the continuing trends of more technology. I mean the consumer preferences continue to change and the trends that trends that are there for what people prefer Are different than they were 10 years ago. But I think the industry and of itself will go through its professional renaissance probably on the later end of 10 years out. If you really look at that type of a high time horizon right now, there’s no realization of equity build and businesses, it’s very uncommon. It’s very uncommon uncommon that someone sells a painting company and they’re able to either retain a portion of that business or um have their passive income, you know, outstripped their liabilities in life, right? That’s that’s pretty uncommon. People will sell their company for their equipment and their client list basically. Um or sometimes for their guys or you know, once in a blue moon for a little bit of cash. But by and by and large, they’re not, people are not realizing the equity build of what they’ve embarked on because they haven’t really built on asset that people are interested in buying. I don’t think that’s gonna last last long um, as companies professionalized and I think that is part of what’s going to drive really, really bright minds into the industry, is that liquidity of equity. And when people see that, you know, it’s pretty fun to make $100,000 a year. That’s great. Like that’s a good lifestyle business. You own a great job. You know, one day you’ll say you make $300,000 a year as a, you’re a good successful little company. That’s a great job that you own, right. You also own the company, but it doesn’t really distribute profits because you’re taking all the cash, Right? Right. That, that might be what it costs to do everything that you do right to have your president primary sales driver, production manager. Uh, CFO those kind of things, right? It’s hard to recruit people to really want to do that when they can go. This is what’s been happening like one of the things that happens, like people can go start a brewery, build it for 3-5 years and then sell either part or all of it to Budweiser for millions of dollars, right? It’s like, oh yeah, you made Maybe they took like 60,000, 60, 80 K salaries every year. But then when they sold it for 20 million, they’re making like $5 million 10 years than it is right now right now. It’s not even a concept that’s out there. We talked to painting contractors, it’s not thought they have, it’s not something that they’re aware of. Um, yeah, I certainly want to have a part in moving that needle to say this is an option. This is thing that, this is something that happens and there is a way to build an asset that can sustain distributions to a minority founder shareholder. If, if that’s the path they want to choose man. That’s, that’s amazing. Yeah. All right, well Jason I want to ask you just one last question. I know I’ve taken up a lot of your time today. I appreciate uh, this great insight that you shared with us. Do you have any other advice for painting company owners who are listening, who are like, man, I would love to be making over $10 million dollars in revenue one day in my painting company. Yeah, I think we covered some good things. One of it is being open minded, um, have that humility to ask questions and here’s something that is not what you believe, um, be willing to step out of the way when appropriate. You are not God’s gift in every area of your business. And uh, and um, that’s just uh, so those kind of two things would be one and number two and man, I would encourage people to, this is a great industry like we are. I also want to say paris painting was started and it’s just had the tail winds of a great economy ever since. So there’s a reality of that, right? When covid hit, there was a little dip in the economy overall, but the trades did not get hammered at all. If anything was the opposite, we got boosted. So I’ve certainly been lucky um, in that regards, no doubt. But yeah, the advice would be, be open minded, be humble enough, seek out resources and help from others. Don’t do it the hard way like I did getting at least started. I’m a big fan of the painter painting contractors association. So you mentioned that’s where I serve as chair of the board. Um, it’s a phenomenal nonprofit for the benefit of painting contractors. It’s underwritten by all major four major paint suppliers. So Sherwin Williams, Benjamin moore PPG paint and Bear, I’ll donate so that we can so they can underwrite a lot of initiatives and programs that we do as well as we have plenty of other sponsors that help support as well. So I say utilize that as a resource. That’s something that’s very low cost. It’s underwritten. It’s a nonprofit. So you realize that um yeah, just reach out to others. Take advice and There’s just also really not everyone’s going to be over $10 million dollars so find the best life path that fits for you and um yeah, just enjoy the journey. I don’t know what else to say about it, Jason. That was amazing. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah. Thanks brian 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 PainterMarketingPros.com /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, they’re painting company owners. If you enjoyed today’s episode, make sure you go ahead and hit that subscribe button, give us your feedback, let us know how we did. And also, if you’re interested in taking your painting business to the next level, make sure you visit the Painter Marketing Pros website at painter marketing pros dot com to learn more about our services. You can also reach out to me directly by emailing me at Brandon at painter marketing pros dot com and I can give you personalized advice on growing your painting business until next time. Keep growing.