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, a educational series, learn do grow marketing for painters. In each episode, I’ll be sharing proven tips, strategies and processes from leading experts in the industry on how they found success in their painting business. We will be interviewing owners of the most successful painting companies in north America and learning from their experiences on this episode of the Painter Marketing Mastermind podcast.

We host for the second time guest, Jason phillips. Jason is the founder and owner of phillips home improvements, a residential painting company based in metropolitan Dallas texas that currently does over $8 million in annual revenue. Throughout Jason’s growth journey. He has learned the importance of effective systems and processes and why he should not be reinventing the wheel as he grows his business. Jason strives to view phillips home improvements as an easy bake oven and he even keeps an easy bake oven in his office as a constant reminder to do so, Jason discusses the importance of leading with value first to both your customers and employees and he dives into the importance of self reflection. Ultimately concluding that any business success or failure you experience is a reflection of your personal characteristics. 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. Alright. Jason. Thank you for coming on the Painter Marketing Mastermind podcast round two man Brandon. It is my pleasure. Had a, had a great time the first time and thanks for having me back. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The first time that was in person live at the expo, I was special. Uh this is, I don’t have as good of a setup here as we have there. It seems like you actually have a better setup, but uh yeah, we had a great conversation. I’m really looking forward to this one man me as well, you know, hey, we both got a microphone in the camera and that’s really all that matters. We’re set, we’re set. Yeah. So we, you and I were talking a little bit um before we started filming here about, okay, what are we gonna talk about? You know, because we covered so much stuff last time and you had really talked about the three stages of a contractor prison. You had talked about disk profiles, how to not only use it for hiring people, but also even how to communicate and motivate people and make sure you have the right people in the right seats uh and promote people that way. Um and if anyone listening has not listened to that podcast, I highly recommend that you do. So it’s the first podcast with Jason phillips that was released pc expo live. But this one we have a, we have a couple of things we talked about, talked about well rounded marketing. Um, three things that you wish you knew when you started a painting company I guess. Where do you, where do you want to kick off? Hey, what about what about the three things? You know, we’ve probably got, I bet I bet a lot of your listeners are, are just starting or or about to start there. They’re they’re painting business and and they’re searching up marketing right now. And uh, you know, three things I I I wish I would have known. We could, we could certainly spend a few moments there. Brandon if, if you like. So okay, back to what you said, the, one of the mistakes that I made over and over and over was putting good people in the wrong seat, putting good people in the wrong seat. And what happens when you put a, you know, a good person, whether they’re, whether they’re a friend, you know, when you start your company, your network is really small. Typically typically and you hire people that, you know, or or possibly your family, which can be problematic or it could be amazing. It all depends. Um, but you end up putting someone in a position because they’re a good person but their, their internal wiring ah is not drawn to what that position needs. Now, I’m a, I’m a big fan of hiring for, for character and training for skill. Okay, But there’s there’s also this internal drive that each of us have. Okay, some of us are, some of us are drawn to uh inclusion. Some of us are drawn to absolutely getting the details right, being right and getting all the details right is very important to us. Some of us are drawn by, winning, are just attracted to winning and some of us we love to have fun and make friends. We can, we can be great company ambassadors. And although you can teach, you know, you can teach people those skills, but if they’re not intrinsically rewarded by those things that it takes to be successful in those jobs, in those positions, those roles, that your company, they’re going to found her, they’re going to get frustrated, you’re going to be frustrated as their manager and ultimately it could, it’s going to break down turnover and could, could ruin some relationships as well. And it’s just, it’s a very bad thing. And one of the, learning about personality profiles has transformed my personal life, my family life and my leadership and the beautiful thing about personality profiles is it doesn’t take forever to learn enough to make it valuable, you could literally do, um you know, an afternoon session somewhere and come away with something powerful that you could take back to your team ah and improve things and that’s the thing I like about it. You know, it’s some things that are simple, a golden nugget that I can take home. And that’s the first thing I wish I would have known when I started my business because I hired good people, put them in the wrong seats and at the end of the day it didn’t work for them, didn’t work for me. And if it’s not win win it’s lose lose. Mhm. Um If it’s if we’re not both winning were automatically both losing and so having the right person now there’s more to having, you know, the right person and the right seat, the right person means, you know, they fit your culture, right? They they fit your company culture, they share your company values. Um They can work at the pace. Like my company, we’re a very fast paced team. We’re very fast paced team and that’s just, and the reason for that is my company is a reflection of me, my strengths, my weaknesses and no matter who you are out there listening to this today, your company is gonna share your, it’s it’s a reflection of you, your your values, the way you live, your life is going to be manifest in your company by the, by the people, you attract the way you build systems and communicate all of that, the strengths and the weaknesses and so so learning when, when it, when it comes time to learning personality profiles. The first thing is to get to know yourself. I know this sounds so touchy feely Brandon, but it’s it’s vitally important things that you may know uh in your below the surface, but not necessarily think about in your conscious mind, like, you know, um I’ll give you, I’ll give an example, okay. I’m really, I’m really good with numbers. I’m really, I can do mental math really fast and all that. I’m really good with numbers and for the first, you know, a couple of years of my company I ran, I ran the accounting books and I could do it, but I hate it and I never, and I never, I never said I hate it until one day. I’m like, man, I do hate that. Okay. And and it’s okay to say that I don’t like doing it, I want it done, it needs to be done, it needs to be done with excellence, but I need to know what what my strength zone is because you and I, we are going to shine when we work in our unique abilities, yep. And, and and discovering our own unique abilities and you see as, as, as entrepreneurs, when we start our, when we start our company, we have to be good, pretty good at that. Maybe sometimes making the widget or doing the service, sales, marketing, accounting management, all of these different things, we have to succeed to a certain level on those. We have to And so we became we become these renaissance men and women that can do it all. And then as we began to we we we began to uh higher a team of people to do the things we like doing least. And you know, it might be we’re gonna hire the painters. Okay. Well, I love painting. So nobody’s ever gonna spray or whatever. But then when it goes beyond that and you’re now off the brush, off the spray gun, whatever off the tool you’re now running projects and selling projects. And what I see is is most owners will either tend to a higher a salesperson and run the projects themselves because they are drawn to the project management or be higher the project management end and and continue to do the sales themselves. But what happens is we need to continue to grow personally and figure out that as an individual. There are certain things that are even more narrow than that. That are unique ability is And as you grow that, that you have to continue to slice off and narrow down your focus because the more you can specialize as, as a person, as a business owner and the more your people can specialize in their role, the more expertise they can develop and more effective. They will be back in the day, back in the day. My my salespeople also ran their projects was, which was great because the clients had, uh, one face to deal with. Mm hmm. But this is a truth. Your typical person who’s really good at selling is not good at running projects and vice versa for for somebody out there who’s listening, who maybe is going to hire for this role. Let’s say they’re they’re doing both those positions right now. Would you focus on hiring and, and they know that they have to hire someone, let’s say to do both of them because they’re going to focus on something else. Maybe a lot of the admin and, and maybe kind of getting the infrastructure set up. Would you recommend that they focus on a sales oriented mindset and hire someone there and have them? That person also conduct the project management are really focused on someone, You know, again, you’re leveraging the disc personality profiles who’s really more focused on attention to detail and project management and having them conduct the sales Well, that’s a good, That’s a great question. So, you know, there, I don’t want to say there’s no, there’s not people out there that can do both. Even if even if a person can do both, the demands of the job are different because the optimal time when you’re on a sales call is probably also the time when you need to be wrapping up and punching out and collecting a check on a job. So there’s the scheduling demands that are automatically different right now, what would be great is, hey, all of a sudden we’re going to double or triple leads and I’m hiring both people at the same time. It just doesn’t happen that way. Right? So that, so it may be that, you know, I would, I would suggest if you don’t have a sales or project manager, um, I would suggest figure out which one you’re best at. Mhm. Carve off the other one. Okay. Carve off the other one and hire someone to do that. Now, let me tell you this, I did it a little differently. I’m drawn to the sales, but I hired salespeople because I, I felt good about training them how to sell. So I was able to build that end of it while I began to work and, and, and improve on the project management end. So I would suggest one or the other and, and the whole and sales is a whole, another, sales methodology is a whole another subject on its own because the, the painting business that the selling system, there’s very few people actually have a selling system and it’s terrible. Okay. It’s ineffective. Everybody’s competing on price price alone because they don’t know how to, they, they haven’t been taught, they haven’t learned other than their own experience. Most people, okay. Um, how to sell and how to build value properly and you know, which, which kind of, you know, kind of leads into the next thing ah you know, the first thing I wish I knew when I started my painting business was, was about personality profiles, Okay. Uh and again, that, that helps, that has helped me in my entire life. The next thing is is I um I was constantly reinventing the wheel, constantly reinventing the wheel. I was learning everything the hard way, trial and error on everything right? And, and one day I just, I had this at this moment, I’m like, and why am I constantly reinventing the wheel? Like fred Flintstone? Okay, why don’t I go to the wheel store where they have all the different wheels that fit the right cars and they can tell you which one works better and I can buy that wheel and put it on my car and I can immediately be rolling down the road instead of carving out a wheel out of stone and when I, when when I got over that and it was actually Brandon, it was a moment of humility because you know, us as business owners were drivers were go getters, we can do it, we have bravado. Um, but that that gets us launched. But what it does is it becomes a limiting factor and for not everybody, but for me and for most, most contractor business and small business owners that I know this has been the case. So I’m like, okay, I don’t, I could sit down and write a selling system. Why don’t I go research and find the one, it’s going to fit my company and my and my objectives the best. And so I did and then I adapted it and improved it for my company. And so, so Rien, reinventing the wheel is one of the things that I should not have done constantly. I did that for years and years and I worked hard but that’s not scalable. It’s just, it’s not scalable. Hard work is not scalable when we are when we’re out there as business owners working night and day, weekends, there’s only so much hard work you can put into it. Now granted I meet some lazy guys here and there. Okay. But but most, all of the business owners that I meet out there, they’re hard working people, they carry a weight on their shoulders for for not only their own family but for all of their employees and and that’s great. But but if you want to make everybody’s lives better, you have to become a better leader. You have to build a team and you have to implement systems that that are scalable for your team and for your company. Yeah, I love that. That was you know, I obviously learned a lot from conducting this podcast from a lot of the, the best painting company owners in north America but there are some things that really stick with me and when we have conducted our first podcast, you had brought up this idea that hard work is not scalable and that stuck with me because I am a workhorse. I just drive. And I ever since we filmed that podcast, I’ve been kind of sitting back and every time I do something I’m like, should I be doing this? And I’m realizing I do a lot of things that I shouldn’t be doing that, that even for myself, I’m still carrying so much of the load, you know, so it’s not specific just to painting cos it can go to really any company. But I think this idea that, you know, you’re you’re driven your you want to succeed, You want to produce great results and you at some point think that you’re the only one who can produce those results or that you need to maintain your thumb on that quality control or everything is going to go to part. And I think this idea of finding systems of finding processes, like you said, you found a sales system and then and then tailored it to your business that have already been proven to work I think is is key if for people who are listening who do want to find these systems, whether it’s sales operations, whatever it is, management, what do you have any, any resources, you can point them to any direction. How should they start that research journey? I would suggest uh if if anybody wants to connect with me, just go to my website which is Jason w phillips dot com, I have a blog. You can sign up for my newsletter there uh in quarter four I’m going to be hosting what I’m going to call an owner’s bootcamp where we’re going to bring in some owners and we’re going to teach them some basic systems. Talk about leadership, personal development, team building and and building. What I call able systems, Systems that are scalable, teachable, trainable, repeatable, predictable. I call those able systems. And uh I’ve got uh I’ll show you here real quick. one of the icons in my office in my studio right here. Do you know what that is above my head right there, can you see that? It looks like a barbie house or so? I don’t know what that is. That is an easy bake oven. Ah you know what that is because you can take you can take any kid. Okay, give them some basic instructions and and they can make some cookies over and over and over. And they’re easy bake oven. Right? And uh and so that’s what a simple system is an able system, because you and I we cannot afford to hire geniuses at every level of our company. And there’s just not that many of them anyways. So if we can take something and make it obvious what to do, Give them the, how to the instruction, how the tools, how to do it, average people can get great results and that’s that’s what’s beautiful about it now, when, when I may have shared this before on the previous on the previous podcast, but but when I started I was I was all into automation. I built my own crm with all of this v be a code behind it and and I had all of these systems going, that made me a powerhouse. But what they didn’t do is transferred to my people. So I didn’t make my people a powerhouse only made me a powerhouse. I was the only one that could work the system. I was the only one that could debug the system or improve the system. Now today I have systems where I’m not even inventing or implementing all the systems, maybe I’m finding them, but they’re championed by someone on my team. So it’s getting me out of the loop. Not because not because I’m not a hard worker or not dedicated or any of that stuff kind of like you like, you know, you’re driven to to get things done like you just said, but at the end of the day, you know, you know, we want to lead by example, we want to be that leader that leads by example and that’s great, but we’ve got to get out of that and we’ve got to do the things that only we can do because if we’re doing their job, who’s doing the stuff that only we can do nobody. It’s not getting done. And so we have to get out of there and we have to rise above and think on a different level. Yeah, are there things, so I know it, it some of this is going to be specific to, you know, the the individual company owners, skill set or passion or kind of where they see their unique value. Are there things that you would say that are not specific to each person? That as the owner of a company, this is their role, like, like for example, being visionary, potentially or or things of that that you would say are kind of non negotiable that it, it is their job. This can be um some of this can be delegated, delegated, a lot of this can be delegated but it can, but it should never be abdicated. Okay, we can talk about that if you want, making the hard decisions, making the hard decisions, formulating and communicating a laser pointed vision of where your company is going, of who your company is living out. Your company values those things, you have to be accountable for. And ultimately, as the owner of your business, you are accountable for the bottom line, you can give, you can give your team reviews and marks and and KPI S and all this. But at the end of the day, your balance sheet is your personal scorecard now again, I believe there’s more to running a business and more to life than the balance sheet and money and you know, results are very important and and, and profits fuel the future. They hope you weather the storm all of that okay. But at the same time, if you just, if you just focus on on short term results, it’s kind of like, it’s kind of like spending all your marketing effort on PPC the moment you start, you stop spending on pay per click your ads stop working for you immediately. Where as if you are spending time on sc oh, it’s gonna be slow to grow, but it’s gonna, it’s gonna have a longer lifespan, right longer half life. And you’re planting, you know, you’re planting a forest at that point, that’s gonna, that’s gonna slowly grow. And when we build people who can then build the company and the bottom line, it’s, we are really in the people business. This most successful companies out there realize they’re not in the widget business, they’re not in the painting business, they are in the people business. And, and if we can understand that sooner rather than later. Yes, when it’s just you and some painters out there, you’re thinking about production and scheduling your thinking about those things because you have to, but as you grow, you need to have a vision of where you’re going and how you’re going to spend your time as a leader and it has to be about developing people and leaders and empowering people so that they can get the job done with with levels of excellence without your constant oversight without constant bureaucracy, which bureaucracy is a whole another uh conversation, you know, simplicity versus complexity, complexity literally is the the the battle that a growing company is fighting every single day. Mhm. I like that a lot. Okay so we have covered, you talked about the three um things that you wish you had known when you started your painting business. We’ve covered personality profiles and how it is a lot easier and quicker to actually get those wins and and actually take away value from that. Then I certainly would have expected, I would have expected probably multi multi weeks or months to actually be able to make that work. Um you say in an afternoon you can have winds. # two is constantly reinventing the wheel. So we’re we’re not the smartest were not the best at everything. Um and even if we were, it would probably still be inefficient and stupid to try to do everything there. There are already people who have paved, paved the way for just about everything that we’re all doing. Um So let’s let’s borrow, you know, great, great business owners kind of kind of steal ideas and refine them and make them their own. Um That that’s the name of the game and it’s what you did with the sale system, What is # three, Number three is the able systems scalable, transferable, teachable trainable measurable systems. Absolutely rather than, and the opposite of that is a fragile system that depends on the owner, It’s word of mouth, you know, it’s for instance, when you’re, you know it phase one in your company and it’s you and some and some workers, some painters, um, your entire crm is in your head between your ears, okay. Everything, everything you need to know is right there between your ears, right? You can do 1000 things at once, you can remember everything. and uh and you’re communicating 1-1 with people in the field, okay? But now when you start to grow, okay? And then you have a manager, we’re a team leader. That’s now leading people, you have not to levels you and the frontline workers, you have you team leaders or managers and front line workers. And that is where failure happens a lot because you’re now communicating something to someone who is then having to re communicate that. And and you and the chances are you only communicated them, they They probably only received 70 of what you said of what you told them. And then The next person is gonna at the next level is going to receive maybe 70% of that front lines have literally less than half, less than half of what you have. And then the same goes true when you want to have bottom up communication as well reporting back problems and things going wrong in the field. Okay. And so that’s why it’s very important to have S. O PS standard ways of communicating, this is the way we do it. This is the standard period and we’re going to if we’re going to change it we’re going to change it, make sure everybody’s on the same page and that becomes uh that’s a challenge. It’s been a challenge for my company and I see it as a challenge for pretty much every company I run into. Yeah, it’s that it’s that adding that that middle management. Yeah. Yeah, Jason remind me, are you are you using W two painters or 10 99? 10 90 nines? So. Okay. So how do you think that that you know implementing S. O PS. Um that quality control, you know, they’re maintaining that the as close to perfect communication as you can. How does that vary between W2 and 1099? Is it more challenging when when you have 1099 painters? Well I haven’t had W2 painters, so I can’t comment on that, but at the end of the day. Okay. My project. Okay. I have I have a project consultants that are uh sales sales people and when they when they get a contract an agreement, project it gets turned in to our production department and eventually after it goes through a process, a project manager shows up there with the crew and the crew chief and that project manager owns that job at that point. And it’s his job to communicate to the crew. Um, exactly. You know, the, the scope of work and, and flush out any, any gray areas that are of misunderstanding. And you know, we’re not just hiring new crews constantly and people we don’t know right. You know, we, we expect that painters know how to paint okay. But there’s specific things promises that we make to our clients that that need to be communicated and understood. Uh, you know, our customers have expectations on working hours and job cleanliness and things like that. But at the end of the day, I’ll give, I’ll give you, I’ll give you an example. Um, recently, you know, we’re, we’re moving my studio okay. And I needed this wall painted black and we had some rain. My, one of my expediters called and said, hey Jason, I got, I got one of the guys available and I said for half a day I said yes, I’ll take him. So I ordered a gallon of gray primer and two gallons of black paint. So I meet him at the studio and we’re talking, we’re talking through it and he’s like, I’m not sure we’re going to need the primer. And I said, okay. And he said, well now if you want me to prime it boss, I can prime it and put two coats on it. And he said, what do you want? I said, you know what I want, I want a black wall. I don’t care if you prime it or not. I want that wall black. What’s the what’s the most effective way to make that happen? He’s like, okay, no, primer. It is. And I’m like, okay, done. And guess what? In short order, the wall was black. You know, I don’t wanna drill bit, I don’t want to drill, I wanna hold Yeah. And too many times. Too many times. As as as painting contractors, we get caught up in that those things are vitally important. Okay. But like in our sales process, we want to tell every little detail of how we’re going to do the job and draw the customer down into the weeds with all of that. Most some customers care about that, but by and large, But they’re like bored by it. They’re like, give me the price. They just want, they don’t need to know how the sausage is made. They just want the sausage. Yeah. You know, here’s the way we say it. Don’t tell me about the labor pains. Just show me the baby. Mm I love that. It’s not a very nice way to say, especially when I say that to my wife. Okay, I would love that. You can say it to her next time in Albuquerque. I’ll reference when you said it to me about her. I’ll stir that pot. Mhm. So yeah, but but you know, I I can’t speak to uh the w to the w Two painters but you know at the end of the day everybody needs to understand what it’s gonna take to please that customer and deliver the promises that have been made. Yeah. And then you need to make sure that those promises have been made before you leave. Yeah. Well I think, I mean I think you summed it up and clarified it pretty nicely. You assume, I mean I guess you need a vet, you know you work with you’ve been working with the same cruise and you don’t just hire willy nilly but painters know how to paint. But there are expectations that they’re not going to know they’re not gonna know exactly the service hours. We’re not gonna know exactly um if certain things were promised there weren’t promised or what the level of cleanliness or or rapport behavior is always going to be expected or what was conveyed. You know they’re they’re they’re those are absolutely um opportunity, opportunities that are right for miscommunication for misunderstanding. You know your your salesperson or consultant goes in and and and says something and then that’s not passed along. I mean those are very common calling points of failure I guess we call that the handoff and it is absolutely critical and it is a constant tension to manage to make sure that everything is communicated well and thoroughly. Mhm. Very important. Yeah. So that was helpful. So those are the three things you wish you knew um to reiterate for everyone listening, personality profile, disc profile, look at up D. I. S. C. It is not as complicated or scary as I certainly thought that it was. And within an afternoon you can find wins for you and your team. Don’t constantly reinvent the wheels. # two through trial and error. You are not the best. And even if you are, you don’t have all the time. We don’t have 80 hours in the day. You still only have 24. So find what already works and use it. And then number three able systems. And Jason is having a boot camp. Q. For boot camp that I’m actually gonna talk with Jason about because I think I could derive value from that as well. Um even running a marketing agency, but That will be Q. four and you can also reach out to Jason going on Jason W. his his website, you can learn more about him. We’re not done. Just wanted to sum all that up. Did I did I pretty much cover that. All right. So then the another thing you had mentioned might be a good talking point for this podcast was well rounded marketing. I’d love to get your thoughts on that. Okay, so Um you know, I’ve been doing this 25 years and I I don’t you know, purport to be an expert on everything. But I’ve hired a lot of marketers through the years and I’ve been in charge of my marketing department. You know, I started my company, I started my company canvassing, knocking on doors and putting out door hangers and Jason, Jason paris started that way. Yeah. And so that I called that the eye called that the the Goodyear marketing plan because all I had was the tread on my shoes. And you have so many quips, Jason, you have all these quips man. I feel like I need you to write them down in in the book because I want to steal all of them. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, I just want to steal. But but you know the thing is this is I, you know, I see companies all over that are really killing it. Like some companies they’re there all they’re all over. All they do is canvassing and they kill it okay. You know some companies are, you know, hey they do all their marketing on instagram or some are all, you know PPC or or just all these different ways. Okay. And and there’s there’s so many different avenues in marketing. Okay. It’s very difficult to get good at all of them. Um First of all I’m gonna say that okay. Uh and and it’s great to specialize and and be really good at a particular type of marketing. Okay. Um But I want to, I want to give you uh it’s dangerous To not have well rounded marketing. It’s dangerous. Okay because I’m gonna give an example. I’ll give you a few examples here. Okay, one in 2005, Wow. Going way back here, Jason. Okay, this is how bad it hurt. It sticks out of my mind. Um we got almost all of our leads from a particular magazine and we were sending out hundreds of thousands of copies of the ads in this magazine. Okay. And in August of 2005, the phone didn’t ring Magazines go out, 3rd class mail, the postmaster may or may not deliver him when he wants to. We had it was like, we’re getting leads, you know, june july august boom. Nothing september it’s back again. That was real and that hurt. That hurt. Okay, now, uh let’s use another real world example back in the day, a lot of companies got all of their not home, not not home improvement companies in particular, mainly like a mortgage refinance companies and such. Got all of their leads through fax machine marketing. If you’re old enough to remember the fax machine, you would be so annoyed because you constantly got these ads coming on your fax machine. Well, guess what? One day the FTC decides. That’s illegal. No more fax machine marketing companies went out of business because of that. Okay, and guess what, how about companies that do that do home shows and events and canvassing? Oh my gosh, it can’t ever happen. Guess what? Covid, you’re shut down, you can’t go knock on doors? No events. Boom. Mhm. Out of business sucking wind, whatever it is. Okay. You we think these things can’t happen. But they but they do um how about this? You know we we last year In in Texas, we had what we called Snowmageddon. You heard about that? Right? Where where all the two week freeze just caused all kinds of problems across the nation with materials and such. Well back in 2015, google had an algorithm update called mobile garden. Okay. And and that was where your web pages had to be mobile friendly. And so what you don’t know is when there’s going to be something, whether it’s political, whether it’s environmental or whether it’s whether it’s corporate policy, something is going to mess up a lead source for you and if you are wholly dependent on that lead source, you’re gonna be sucking wind. So yeah, at the end of the day, you’re gonna need to pay more for some leads and less for some other leads. But you need to have begin to develop diversity in your leads. Very important to have some diversity. Okay. And so so there’s, you know, pretty much all marketers these days. Okay, grew up on social media and they only want to do digital marketing. They think print is dead. Okay. And print is not dead. Okay. You can talk to some some other guys like Garrett. And then and and so offline marketing. Right. How about how about Jason paris door hangers? Offline marketing. Okay. It works. It absolutely works. And so, so to have a good mix, if we if we were to draw matrix, Okay. So, you know, a square with four squares in it and we have, you know, the the top, the top row is online and the bottom row is offline. Now, the left column, let’s say, we’re gonna we’re gonna say it’s take it marketing, and the right column is make it marketing. Okay? And let’s let’s let’s go, let’s go in the online, let’s go into online. Take it marketing. Okay. That would be, for instance, pay per click advertising. It’s online. It’s easy to track is quick to implement quick results. And and you’re you’re marketing to people that are already searching for what you want. Right. Okay. And guess what? There’s a good chance. Those are very competitive leads. When I say competitive, there’s other they’re they’re they’re getting other quotes from other companies. Now, let’s look on the other hand, let’s take it offline and go to canvassing where you interrupt someone at their front door. Okay? They weren’t necessarily looking for you, but they have a need and you show up at the right time. They’re in their busy life. They live a whirlwind and they’ve just been waiting. They know they know their pain is peeling on their house. They haven’t got around to calling and all of a sudden you knock on their door and you’re there, guess what you’re gonna get, you’ve gotta lead right there and they don’t have any other quotes and they’re just happy someone showed up, yep. And so that is making marketing and it’s too many marketers today just want to take, they want to swipe that credit card, swipe that credit card, just put that credit card in, give me some facebook ads, give me some google ads being ads whatever it is. Okay or even uh league aggregators, yep, okay lead aggregators, you know, and we’ve we’ve we continue here and there to try and lead aggregators because for a number of reasons um one because you never know when you might get one that actually has some some good leads, but two it helps us improve our systems because we have to uh really respond to them very, very quickly. There’s a certain way you have to yeah, they’re very competitive. But you know, the the appointment set rate is really low. I mean they’re low value, everybody’s buying them and they’re giving them out to a number of people right? Which again that’s a that could probably be a different subject on its own but but have a diversity was was at the expo so I think I’m probably not going to make a full podcast of a beat down on that one. But yeah we could do, hey hey we we we um we do Angie, you know they have, they have Angie ads and Angie leads, right? And and we do Angie. I’ve done Angie for for for years and years when they, when they merged with Home Advisor, we were, we were one of their larger accounts. They flew me out to uh Las Vegas for two days, put me up in the cosmo and wined and dined us, entertained us and all that stuff. It was Jason they bought you. No, I’m just I’m just going well, you know, how many days is it gonna take? You know, so but but it was it was it was you know that having a, having a good mix of marketing now now the the difficulty with that is it adds complexity. Yeah. Now you have to have lead attribution. No, no where each dollar is performing, where it’s not performing. How were your leads coming in? You’ve got to have lead tracking. Do you have you know, do you have, do you have ah dedicated phone numbers and bound for that? So you can know where everything is going into your crm and it really gets very hairy. Okay. That’s why you need someone like you who can help people out with that. Yeah, you have to, if you, you can’t just roll out a bunch of different marketing campaigns, figure out your business is going up and then just be happy because you have no idea. Oh or the thing that we hear is well the customers tell me this or I ask them how they hurt. That doesn’t work because 30-40% of the time? They’re just either wrong? Maybe they forgot or they’re lying. So there, it’s often very inaccurate when you ask a customer how they found you. And if you’re not attributing lead attribution, attributing those leads to whichever certain source and then figuring out not only when the lead came through, did they close? Okay. When they closed? How much, how much was the revenue? Are you typically getting these low quality, you know, single room, whatever or versus the whole house? Okay. And then what’s your profit margin? What’s your percentage callback? What kind of what’s the quality of this kind of customer? Do they tend to be happy with the work or do they just try to beat you down the entire process? There’s a lot to track. That’s right. Absolutely. You know, uh, Last year we got 42% of our business from repeat and referral. Okay. And so if we made the assumption that everybody just remembered us so much and they loved us so much and we were just so in touch with them that they just called us back. No, they responded to this campaign or to that campaign. I want to know. Of course. I expect them to love us. I expect that we’re gonna, wow them. Yeah. But what is the thing that made them call today right now? What made, what made them call this time, You know, did they go pull my business card out of their drawer? Maybe they did chances are they saw an ad, they saw something somewhere, a truck, a yard sign. And they’re like, Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to call and that is where we attribute that lead to in our system. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And I think this, this idea to, you know, you have 42% repeat and referral. So often the repeat and referral is really viewed passively. Well we did the business so we’ll get them back and and the fact that you’re attributing it to wherever they found you because you’re not viewing it passively, you don’t just do somebody’s, you know, painting project and you never keep in touch with them or you don’t have any kind of outbound marketing And then you just expect in five years, 10 years or they ask a neighbor, they’re not going to remember you likely. I mean people have a lot going on. They got a paint job. I’ve had some experiences that were really positive with home improvement companies. And I remember being wowed a couple years later. I’m like, what was that? I can’t even remember, I don’t even know the company because you’re not going to ever be the top of their minds. It’s several years from that. You know, that reminds me of a wake up call. I had years ago. I don’t remember where I read about a study and they said every month that goes by, that your client doesn’t hear your name, Your top of mind awareness goes down by 10 And after six months you’re on the same playing field with all of your competitors and we, as business owners, we want to think, oh man, we did such a good job. They were smiling, They love us so much. And yeah, and then guess what? You ignored them. You didn’t have them any value. The only time you ever contact them is when you want money, don’t ever provide them with anything of value. It’s just, hey, oh, we’re doing a deal half off or you know, free this or whatever it is, free paint, you know, and, and we’re constantly asking for money and I get it, but, but we need to be adding value and adding that on a regular basis and keeping keeping our, our name, our company name, top of mind awareness in front of our, you know, ideal clients can you provide maybe an example of, of adding value for people who who maybe are listening to that and they’re not really sure. You know, they think maybe email marketing would just be kind of telling about the specials or promotions that are happening or, or that maybe don’t really know how to add value. Okay, So that’s a great question and you know, there’s, there’s, there’s a number a number of ways. Um, one is, you could, you could give them homeowner tips, hey winter’s coming. Here’s some things to, to prepare your help, you prepare your home and save some money. And the homeowner were home owners to paint. Yeah, it doesn’t have to be about even about painting necessarily. You could help them, yep, and here’s here’s some things you can do and uh you know, you can of course uh you could also uh in addition to, you know, homeowner tips, you could do, here’s how to convert your stained cabinets to painted cabinets. We’re gonna show you exactly how to do it. There’s a good chance after they see how to do it. That they’re gonna say, oh man, that’s way too much work, I’m gonna call you, they may do that, but you’re, you’re just an open book. Hey, here’s how, here’s how we do this, here’s how you can do this for yourself and give people stuff. That’s that’s a value because as homeowners, your tips, I love that. I mean that’s my favorite, that’s my favorite way and ah honestly that’s something that we’re, we’re doing more of this year than we have in the past. That was just something for so many years. We were just constantly out there just treating everybody the same like there are new fresh leads, sending them the same ads And they’re like, no, we need to create a circle of love, we’ve got all these customers that, that we’ve done a great job for, we’ve got a database of, you know, you know, 40,000 satisfied clients. And we just, we need to create a circle of love and just add value to these people. And um, you know, hey, yeah, we might throw some entertaining tiktok out there here and there and get a few laughs, but, and that’s fine, but, but that’s not really adding much value beyond, you know, beyond just a blip in time. And, but you know, helping them, helping them see, you know, typical things that, uh, okay, so in our business, most homeowners, they don’t pay to maintain, they pay to repair, right? They wait until their house breaks down now in their car, they’ll take their car into the dealership or whatever for the oil change every 3000 miles most people. But on their home they want to wait until it’s in really bad shape. And if, if we can point out some of those paying points, hey, mr, customer, if you, if you wait and you do it later, it’s gonna cost you way more money, Why don’t you just, you know, take care of this now or, or, you know, one of the things I’d like to tell everybody, it’s just something so simple simply. You can call us to do this or you can do this yourself. Just walk around your house twice a year. On the outside with a, with a caulk gun and just caulk up some areas where where the sprinklers have been uh spraying on the box windows or whatever and it may have split the caulk and just caulk that that’s going to help protect that paint. And maybe even a paintbrush, just if you will do some minor maintenance on your paint job, you’re going to double the life of it if you just give it a little bit of attention. I think that’s so huge because how many people think about that? I know, I don’t think about the sprinkler hitting the house, it’s not just not something that really I regularly would think about and if you have people, you send that to enough people and you provide a good enough experience, some people are actually going to do that. And if those people go out and do that, you can be almost 100% sure that when they do need a paint job, it is going to be your company. They go with that’s right. Exactly, because you’re building trust with them, you’re adding value to them. And you know, I was like, man, don’t we want the customer that says, man, I’m not calling anybody else. These guys, these guys are honest, they have integrity, they’re here to serve and add value there, not just here to make a quick buck and they’re not gonna send some slippery salesperson in here. Yeah, yeah, I love that, man. See Jason, I think one of the things you do really, really well is you take into account the reality, you know like like some of the stuff that you talk about historically for me has been and I think for a lot of people it kind of seems um kind of theoretical soft, you know the personality profile like it all sounds great, but you recognize the constraints that we all live in, you know, if we only have so much time and effort to apply what you just said for the homeowner That’s, that doesn’t require very much and that’s something that I I 100% believe people would actually do and I think, most most times when people send home home this home that I don’t think they’re oftentimes very implement implemented ble tactics, you know, it’s kind of what to know, but not necessarily you’re saying literally by by Kagen walk around outside of it, man would not take very much very long, pretty much anybody in the world can do it and the benefit would be extending, you know, doubling the the 8000 the life of the $8000 paint job or whatnot that you just got received or you say that this personality profile, you recognize that we live in the real world, people are not going to go to some, you know, conference or summit for several weeks and all of a sudden become, you know like certified human behavior um certified what is your, your certified certified human behavior consultant. Yeah people are not, we’re not all going to go become certified human behavior consultants, but we can go learn this for an afternoon and actually do something that actually moves the needle. That actually makes a difference because ultimately that’s that’s really what most people want and that’s what I want to do with my boot camp is have some really some golden nuggets that that business owners can take back home and uh and and move the needle and you know every now and then I’ll have I’ll have a friend come in, uh an industry friend come in and just spend a day or two with me, meet my team, see what it’s like to uh see what it’s like to to be in my culture and kind of immerse themselves in my leadership culture of my amazing team and not me, my amazing team, okay and see how they interact, healthy conflict, things like that, watching this go over scorecards and things like that and uh every now and then I’ll invite a friend in to you know to do that. If you if anybody listening is interested in coming to spend a spend a day or two with me, I might be open to that. Not that I’m all that, but I feel like my team has something very unique and very special and very blessed by the team that I have and I have wonderful leaders and managers on my team and I’m just like, man, if you could have what I have, if you could have what I have, your life would be so much different and I want, I want all the painters to have that, I love that. Yeah, anyone listening who’s thinking about doing that, Jason is all that, he’s just humble and do take him up on that, try to take him up on that because that’s amazing. Jason do you don’t wanna take up too much of your time and this has been a decently long episode. Um and I’m gonna have you on again, I think I think I need to make your recurring guest, it’s just too good man, it’s too good not to do you have any other, any other things you want to share. You know, I would, I would just say that uh and maybe this is a topic for a future, but as you grow, your company, things are going to become exponentially complex. And when you have complexity, it creates wasted effort and wasted time. So there’s a beauty in keeping things simple now, of course, you know, if you if you try to simplify something before you understand it, that’s that’s foolish. But once you understand, if you can simplify it and make it easy for people to do the right thing, that’s genius, so fight for simplicity, battle bureaucracy, you know, uh commit to becoming a better leader, commit to becoming a better leader and that’s going to help you build it, that’s going to help you build a better team and uh and and the the day will come and you’re not even the one building the systems anymore. How about that? You’re not even building the systems. Think about that, I was stuck in that for someone like I’ve got to build all these systems for these teams and I got to the point I’m like dude all I’m doing is building and repairing and improving systems and I finally said okay I need my managers to system eyes and I know a lot of guys out here, a lot of guys and gals listening actually are doing the US traction model well in the book, one of the things he says is above all else your managers need to be able to uh system eyes simplify predict okay and this is this is not some, some new thing. All of the most successful companies master the idea of simplifying. Yeah that’s amazing. The easy bake oven, it is not a barbie house, easy bake up and now I want to get one of those, I have a five year old and one year old so I think it could be practical as well here as well. Absolutely yeah, thank you for your time man, this was absolutely amazing. Um I guess I can say I was always because now this is our second one together uh and we there will be a third man, I I appreciate it. Brandon. I just I enjoy, appreciate you and and uh I love sharing with like minded with like minded individuals. Thank you for having me today. 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, 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.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.