Guest Interview: Tanner Mullen of Premium Painting & DripJobs

Published On: July 25, 2022

Categories: Podcast

Guest Interview: Tanner Mullen of Premium Painting & DripJobs
Tanner Mullen

Tanner Mullen, founder and owner of Premium Painting, discusses how he has grown his business to doing over $1 million in annual revenue by focusing on the buyer’s journey. Tanner shares his in-depth hiring process, including the many subtle but impactful nuances involved that ensure he hires only the most committed and detail-oriented employees. Tanner also discusses his software DripJobs, what it does, and how it has vastly improved the experience he is now able to deliver to his customers. At the end of the episode, Tanner shares a promo code that listeners can use to receive an in-depth hiring course as a thank you for listening.

Video of Interview

Podcast Audio

Topics Discussed:

  • Why the buyer’s journey can make or break your painting business
  • What Tanner is really selling his customers, and how he leverages software to sell it better than anyone else
  • How to create a hiring system that fills your company with all star employees
  • What DripJobs is, and why it can help vastly accelerate your painting company’s growth

Audio Transcript

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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 guests. Tanner, mullen. Tanner is the founder and owner of premium painting, a residential repaint company based in Tampa Florida that does over $1 million dollars per year. Tanner shares his in depth hiring process, including the many subtle but impactful nuances involved that ensure he hires only the most committed and detail oriented employees. Tanner also discusses his software drip jobs, what it does and how it has vastly improved the experience he is now able to deliver to his customers at the end of the episode, Tanner shares a promo code that listeners can use to receive an in depth hiring course from him as a thank you for listening. 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. Tanner, thank you for being on the painter marketing mastermind podcast dude, I’m stoked. Yeah, we uh filmed a podcast on your podcast yesterday. So we’re doing it back to back here. I mean, I love it. Building off the energy man. That was an awesome time. And yeah, it was, it was, yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna see if I can host something similar to the quality that you did, but we’ll see. Um so tell us about premium painting man, wow, where do I start? So I never thought I’d be in the painting business. Let’s start there. It’s a good place. So, and that’s the ted talk. No, I’m kidding. Um, no, I, I never thought I’d be in the painting business to be honest. Actually, my father painted when I was young. I told him he took me when I was young, maybe like 11, 12. Uh, and where I live here in Florida, uh it was, it’s the retirement capital of world man. So they were putting up retirement communities left and right when we first moved here. So he had an in with one of the communities and he pretty much built his business. Word of mouth. So I remember dude, every day in the summer, he’d at least asked if I wanted to work and then he’d shoot me 60 bucks for the day. And that was to me like 10 grand man. And uh you know it was great because I got to be a part of it and I really got to experience what the before and after feeling is for the customers. My dad, it was a rock star dude. I mean he was customer service, everyone loved him in the community. Um Just really showed me what that this world looked like, you know. Um But it was sweat work man, it was it was a grind and and he was doing everything so you know for me it was definitely something I did not want to ah Did not want to get into. So fast forward. Now I’m in it and there’s a lot in between but in terms of where we are now with premium painting um fast forward uh five years in business we have 13 employees. We have a small division that does a little bit of flooring and moldings. We only do residential painting. So yeah. Are you guys W. two or or subcontractors? Everything is W. two, Everything besides my pressure washer and the occasional stucco job or you know, but every everyone’s on the books. Yeah. Why Why do you like W. two over subcontracting? Uh you know, quality control um is you know and I and I understand that in some cases maybe that’s not accurate to those who have built long lasting sub relationships. I think if you’re in the Northern hemisphere of the United States or wherever you’re at, you have a big hurdle, which is uh winter and you don’t have the pressure to keep uh employees staffed fully every week, no matter what here in florida we paint year around. So for me it just made sense. Instead of trying to find subcontractors to do work for me and have to ask them what their schedule is and try to build those relationships early on, which I didn’t, I didn’t have, I just started in the brush myself and built an organically grown team. Sure. And what you guys are now doing just north of a million, right, just north, just north, right, right above the cost. This was our first year of actually clearing Like the actual number. Um so in a fiscal year. So yeah, yeah, it’s pretty cool. Congratulations man. It’s a big, it’s a big accomplishment. Thank you very much. What, what in your journey? You know, you’re five years from 0-9 north of a million. What do you think? Got you there? Well, if you could, could kind of isolate one thing, what was the primary driver? Um you know, it’s, it’s the ability to balance all four aspects of the business uh in a way where there’s synchrony, you know, where, where administration is taking care of in terms of intake from their uh sales is appropriately done in an aggressive fashion initially to increase, you know, increased conversions from lead to to sail and then production being a leader of individuals and and having the ability to turn average painters into managers and managers into a supervisor, you know, and having the, the ability to recruit properly. But I’d say, you know, just to be able the ability to balance all four phases of, of business. Yeah, yeah, I love that man. So the, you know, you’re going to W2 model, obviously a lot of our listeners um, go subcontractor route, but some of the W2, where do you, do you have any advice for where to find good painters or how to make good painters and how to retain them anything like that? Yeah. Well, in terms of advice, you know, I think the first thing you need to do is make sure it’s a place where good painters would want to be. You know, I don’t think you need to be a painter very long in order to do that. I just think that you need to understand what a good painter would want. And you know, if you understand the dynamics of what an employee craves they crave in my opinion, a few things. One stability. Um, and that’s both financial and the stability and who are being led by in terms of your temperament. Uh, and you just got to find out what makes them tick, You know, there’s some people that thrive in a, in a team environment, I would think of what your value proposition is for someone who is an ideal candidate, identify what that is for me, it’s someone that shows up on time, has character, wants to grow and understands his role in the company or her role in the company. So for me it’s just about, you know, finding someone is one thing, but when you do find them, are you bringing them home or is this a stepping stone to, you know, somewhere else? And I think if you’re the answer is the latter, then I think you’ve got to really dig deep dig down to the foundation and make sure it’s a place where they want to call home. Sure, yeah. Make sure you provide them some kind of opportunity, you know, for growth and expansion, where do you, are there any particular need sources, so to speak, Where you have found our produce higher quality potential employees indeed, or facebook or referrals and started off of, well, you know, the best actually when it comes to employees, you know, you know your word of mouth, right? Anyone that’s working for you? Hey, do you have a friend? Right, That’s always good to get started with. But from there, when you exhaust those channels of just word of mouth, you then have to get a little, a little creative craigslist was really good for me off the bat. Um, but it’s not so much where the lead comes in from. I’ve gotten a good employee off of facebook off of uh of course indeed. It’s been our go to lately, you know, but it’s not so much about the channel. It’s almost like marketing. Right? I mean, the channel is good. It’s usually about what it is that you do with it and how how you filter out that that that applicant, in other words, like when you market, you’ve got to make sure that your message is coming across to the right buyers, you know, regardless of where they’re traveling. So for us like, yeah, it could be craigslist. It could be, you know, facebook. It could be indeed, as long as the message and how we filter out those applicants is coming across in a way that identifies exactly who we want. Um, It doesn’t really matter sure. What do you guys have any kind of a pre qualification process and if so, what does that look like? You know, really? I mean, the pre qualification process is just, you know, the first thing, you know, everything that I do in in the hiring. I mean, let me put it this way for us, For me, at least hiring in in any capacity in any business is the most valuable thing that you could focus on if you have great people, magically great systems happen magically great work happens magically, sales become easier because it’s almost like you’re selling an undeniable product because you just know it’s so good, magically, marketing becomes easier. You’re confident, shoots through the roof, You get held accountable because you know, you have good people that are holding you accountable, you start to cross your T. S and dot your I’s right? So in other words, like, you know, for me, everything about my hiring is a system or a strategy, right? The initial ad, number one, I mean that’s got to tell the world exactly what our standards are and right off the bat, there’s gonna be people that read this ad and say this company is going to demand more for me than I demand for myself. I’m going to fail. I have empathy and sympathy toward that. Unfortunately I don’t have time to nurture that mindset. I need people that see my ad and say, yep, that’s where I wanna go. It’s almost like if you’re looking for a house, you search and search and search and search and search, but you see that one house, you know, it’s yours. What we wanna do is we want to be that lighthouse for those individuals that align with our standard and we want them to say that’s my home, that’s where I wanna be. So I’ve, I’ve seen an ad before, I think several, unfortunately for employees that said don’t show up to work drunk. Is that what you’re saying you’re using to disqualify people. Is that your ad tanner that I saw, I don’t even need to say that, I think for me, you know, I mean it’s uh it’s uh you know, it’s just more so like these are the expectations, right? And I think what I wanna do is number one, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna get you tired of my process to the point where only those that are truly committed actually stick through it. Brandon, that’s it. Right? So you have the ad initially which outlines your standards, your vision, your benefits, your, your your the outcome that the person applying could expect if they succeed right? Setting expectations of next steps is next right? You find someone who goes through that process applies. Then from there is the most important, right? This is where a lot of contractors that I’ve met, I spoke to fail Brandon. You know what they do? They see a good applicant, they pick up the phone, they call them and then from there, the prestige that was created in the ad falls off because they say this. They say, well, hey man, we have a big job coming up monday. Why don’t you come on by and uh why don’t you help us out? And we’ll see how it goes. So in other words, you’ve compromised on what that initial ad portrayed of quality standard system process, right? So you, you compromise there. So for me, what I do is I have a structure in place. You come through my ad, I review your application from there, A nice message goes out and it pretty much says, hey, thank you so much for applying. We’ve decided to allow you to move forward to the next step. The next step of our hiring process is a brief 5 to 10 minute phone interview where we will discuss a little bit about you to ensure that you’re a good fit for what it is that we’re looking for. And in the same way we’re a good fit for what it is that you’re looking for, right, please indicate the best phone number to reach you and the best time to give you a call. And I have their phone number and I think it tells me when they want me to call on the initial ad, but I want to see who’s following instructions, right, if you’re excited about a job Brandon, Okay. And that company actually reaches back out to you. How many times are you reading that email man? Yeah, quite a few. Right. So for me, everything I do at this point is from experience and there’s a little psycho psychology at play here, but I’m really trying to give myself the best chance to sit in front of all stars. Right? And do you know how many people I’ve sent that to that? Don’t respond? How many more than you think more than you think? Right. So, so thank goodness. Right. So as that person moves forward now I’m doing a social media check Now I’m doing a Google search, right, a very light background check. Do you know, I would say 10% of the time I find something that’s publicly visible that wouldn’t align with our standard. I don’t move forward. I don’t move forward. So from there at that point when we have that phone interview, it’s structured, there’s questions, there’s, there’s, there’s a, there’s a tone in my voice that says what you’re about to get is better than where you were and I need to carry that momentum through the rest of the process up into the point where we’re shaking their hand at the end of their one week in person training uh and and offering them the job. Yeah, man, I love that. I think you’re making a really great points and a lot of companies that that do take the time and effort to craft a well thought out add that would appeal to someone that they want, then just sort of rush the rest of the process and when you, when you compromise your basically contradicting yourself and you’re, you’re losing their respect. Isn’t that like anything in, isn’t that like anything in any area of business though? Like it’s, it’s exciting at first, right? The marketing is great. We we hired the marketer, we got the adds up, everything’s good, we got the lead and then what happened when it came time to follow up and hang in there and sell the job. It has to stay in line and like you asked, what was this thing that ensured that I got to this point? It was identifying each area of my business and making sure that I was consistent in number one, my my vision for whatever I was trying to do and not only that my ability to stay consistent with the implementation of the things that I needed to do to ensure that the standard of that area maintained or exceeded where it was the day before. That’s it. Yeah, yeah. I love that. It’s much better to see them drop the ball by not replying to an email or not following instructions and giving you their phone number than it is for them to drop the ball on on a client site. No tolerance. zero tolerance. Especially, I mean again, I’ll tell you real quick, there’s an in person interview, that person’s instructed a certain time to be there and certain instructed a certain place to sit bro, okay. And I’m not this type of business owner to my guys. Once you make it through, you know, there’s a little bit of leniency there. But if you’re going to come into my world, I’m gonna make sure that you’re, you’re on it right? Because at that point I know I don’t gotta babysit you, you’re, you’re, you’re 10 minutes late to my in person interview and you don’t text me or call me to let me know where you’re at. That just that just makes me think that when it’s time for you to be on my job, guess what? I’m gonna have to wonder why you’re not clocked in and you’re not calling your manager or me to tell tell us what’s going on. So in other words from there at that point you sit down in front of me 10 minutes late. I’m telling you unfortunately this isn’t a good fit and you’re sitting there confused, but I’m telling you that. I’m sorry you didn’t follow the instructions. Yeah. Yeah. The ability to follow instructions is is remarkably seemingly rare in people. Yeah, yeah. But there’s people out there to do value that stuff man and my I want to collect those people to be a part of my team. Yeah. So tanner, I’ve been been dying to get into this man. So you you run this painting business um you’re successful at it, but you do something that actually interests me even more because it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit, no offense in the painting business. I applaud you in that, but you’re doing something just so exciting with drip jobs which is this this software developing. I would really, really like to hear, kind of why you came up with the idea of how it works within your business and what it does. Yeah. So early on I learned very quickly that I needed to start keeping track of all of these leads, right, you know, our painting business and some of these trades business is really just got introduced to the digital economy maybe 6, 7 years ago maybe. And and it’s and it’s like hitting us like a ton of bricks, man, because we didn’t have the systems in place to handle power of connectivity online and we get inundated with messages, we have marketers like you who want to provide us quality leads, right? We have lead generation services that are well known and almost a default to people who don’t know people like you and they’re sunk and unorganized processes. Okay. Not only just not having a singular place to put all of their contacts, maybe they go with hubspot and just load them in there. They put them in an excel sheet, but then from there they need to find the information when they need it Gps to an address, create a proposal, send an invoice, schedule a job, you’re referencing these data points of all of these customers in all areas of your business. For let me give you an example when I first started, this is where I found the need I signed up with, I’m going to say the word here, man, I apologize. I didn’t know you man. I’m sorry, I signed up with Home Advisor. Anybody Home Advisor and uh anybody heard of that? Probably not in about five years because they keep changing the freaking name. Anyway, that’s all I had. Right? And and I did like it because I didn’t have to do the groundwork. I didn’t have to knock on doors. They sent me people that were seemingly ready and I would be painting okay on the job painting and a lead would come in, right? So off the bat, I’m thinking, okay, well let me finish cutting in this room, then I can go out of this room, sit down and call this lady and schedule the appointment. So me just thinking, alright cool, I’m gonna do that. I get done cut in the room. It took me an hour and a half because I’m an average painter at best, but I did it and I’d be like, alright, let me clean my hands, you know, wash my hands, I’m all good. Alright, go sit down. Alright. Got my new lead. It cost me $85 for an exterior lead. I’m thinking, alright, I better get ahold of this lady. I call her. Nothing. Right? So I’m thinking All right, well, she didn’t answer. Let me call again. Nothing. So Alright, well, I should probably send her a text message. So I’d send her a text message. Hey, this is tanner premium painting, just reaching out. Are you still interested in that estimate that you wanted? Then I’d send her an email and then at that point in time I didn’t hear back. Right? So then the next day I’d get another lead and the same thing would happen and then the next day I’d get another lead and then, and then the two leads that I got two days prior, I forgot to follow up with him again and then and then the lead that I got today, he does want an estimate. So I gotta you know and Brandon what I realized was is that like keeping and that should there’s three leads. I’m already getting stressed out talking about it. It’s like I had to remember about following up with these people dude and I had to remember about who was where in the buying process. Right? So lead three, he accepted my phone call and now he is at a stage in the buying process further than lead one and two and then I have my customer that I’m working on, she needs an invoice and and and I didn’t have anything that had all of this information once and really what drip jobs was formed out of was I created a system that allowed us to extract the data from Home Advisor. Okay put it into a system and distribute that data to a bunch of different apps that did a bunch of different things. Right? So as soon as that lead came in I sent it to a text messaging app that sent them a text message. Cool. Then I sent them to an email app that sent them out drip emails over the course of a week and what I realized was is that On day three or day five people would actually respond to them and they say so sorry, I was busy, I apologize, Can you believe people are busy? I can’t even believe, I can’t believe that you weren’t just their only priority in their life at that time. And I said Eureka, I figured it out. I just got to be consistent, but how the heck am I going to do this in a more efficient way? So what I did was is I button up the system right? And it was working for me, but it was seven different apps. Man, it was google calendar. It was, you can book me, it was active campaign. It was appear, it was dude, it was everything you could think of slick text for texting and I was so excited about it. Yeah. And I couldn’t, I couldn’t wait to share it with my friends that were using, uh, you know, these, these services, right? And they wanted me to build it for them. So I built it and I said now I’m now I’m starting a business where I’m building out this system connecting their lead sources to it and it’s doing all this stuff for them. I’m thinking, what did I just stumble across here? Man, this is awesome. People are paying me monthly for it, but there were so many holes, oh, hey, my, my authentication didn’t, didn’t go through this month and, and they’re not getting a text message and I’m like, oh my gosh, this is messy. So, so during Covid, I decided, you know, it’s time to take the leap and I want to hire a software company to build this out exactly how I have it. But I want it all in one app and that was the birth of drip jobs. So that’s where we’re at. It does so much more now. It’s super awesome. But that is what, that is how it got created. Just out of my frustration trying to balance so many different things and you know, one thing I absolutely hated Brandon and I’ll stop my spiel here. But you know what I hated the most copying and pasting addresses and finding addresses in my phone and plugging them into the Gps. Yeah. Dude, that every time I did that, like I got mad and that put me in a low frequency head into an estimate and I made sure that all you gotta do is tap one button to get wherever you need to go. So that is one of my favorite features. It’s those little details to, you know, you don’t, you don’t hear much about those, but you being a painting company owner, you’re running your own business for five years, You’re, you’re drinking your own kool Aid, You’re solving your own problems and I found that in business those are the best products and services when they’re solved by somebody who is in the same shoes as the people that they’re solving them for, dude, I’m the greatest test subject, I use it every day. I find bugs and kinks before anyone because I’m literally using this on my own customers. You know when I signed up for software to try to help me uh one I felt like nobody was, was an actual contractor that built any of these Softwares. That’s what I felt like there’s no way you’re a contractor if you don’t have this or it’s no way you’re not, you’re even listening to your, your contractors if you don’t have this feature, like how do you not have this feature? You’re not talking to your customers like, you know, so for me that, that was frustrating too because I didn’t just say, hey, I’m gonna start my own thing man. I went and said there’s nothing good out there. Brandon and that’s how, that’s, that’s, that’s where I’m at now. So yeah, that’s, that’s your job. You gave me a whole demo which I appreciated at the, at the pc expo 2022 and he walked me through the whole thing had, had me put in my, my email on my phone, um sent me a proposal, accepted the whole deal and one of the things I was really most impressed by was the full life cycle of the software. That’s one of the things I’ve found still an issue with a lot of pieces of software is maybe they do the sales and marketing well, but when it actually comes to sending the estimate of the project management component, you need to do, you need to flip to something else or or maybe there’s some other disconnect but very few of them actually go that whole journey and you being building it just for painting companies really. I mean that that’s really what you’ve built this for. I think it’s huge. I think it makes all the difference in the world. Yeah, there’s a lot of steps, man. I mean let’s go through them real quick. You have a cold lead. Cold lead is number one warm lead is number two. A warm lead is someone that you’ve spoken to but hasn’t committed to an estimate yet, estimate requests that are people that request estimates for you. Uh sometimes they need to be pre qualified. I have a lot of cabinet re finishing contractors that want a text message to go out to say, hey, please send three or four photos um and they pre qualify or at least they give them a ballpark estimate right from there. Once they agree to an estimate, it goes into the estimate scheduled stage, that’s four stages right there, then you have the in draft stage, that means that you’ve created some sort of proposal but yet you haven’t sent yet. Maybe you’re looking up pricing or you need some more information. So it sits there, then you have proposals that are sent and then you have proposals that have been rejected. So that’s seven stages in your sales pipeline, then let’s flip the script, you got your jobs pipeline and I found a way to narrow jobs down to four stages, you have jobs that are waiting to be scheduled so for you people in up north so usually you’re waiting for five months to get people on the schedule. And one awesome feature dude about this is we can drip out communication to customers that are waiting for their contractor to get around to them in the spring. So in other words you will have people turn, you’ll have ultimately people need to feel taken care of, they need to feel valued and they need, they’re not that they are on your mind. Yeah, it’s a to do list in the office hey, just let miss Joann know that we’re still on schedule for six months from now when you could just automate that, you know. Um so so the project management side, believe it or not, I actually love the communication more than I do the sales side. Right, so what I just mentioned jobs that are on the waiting to be scheduled then projects that are scheduled. So we have um we have a stage for projects that are on the schedule, so that’s that’s stage two of four. So what’s interesting about this one is they get it text message and they get an email when their job was scheduled and what I have set up in my system is a drip message to go out five days after asking them to fill out a form to send me colors. So if you think about it, there’s really not a system in most cases for contractors to get color selection from there customers and what I do is I automate that five days after the customer’s job has been scheduled and then from there we have jobs that are in progress, okay? So we have a list of our jobs that are currently in progress in this job’s pipeline. Now this one’s good. One day after the job gets moved to project in progress, I send out an automated text messages asking the customer nonchalantly if they’re happy with the progress of the team today and you can’t imagine how many people respond to that. And sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but what does it do? It gets them to talk to me and communicate whatever the problem is, I can address it. I had a lady who responded friday night after that text message went out, I was out to dinner with my wife. I did not send this text message but when I came home I saw her response, it was about a scratching the floor. Um and I was able to be proactive about the situation rather than reactive on monday, had I not sent that text out because she probably would have called, I would have to realign my week. But that automatic drip message went out to that customer quality controlling for me Last stage project complete, that’s for reviews, right? When you move the, move the deal over to their a review link goes out automatically and it creates such a seamless workflow. So I just identified 11 stages of a customer lifecycle and you might be thinking, listen to this right now, you might be thinking like holy cow, like whatever I have right now is usually in a list view or it’s nothing in a pipeline fashion. And I highly recommend you find something if it’s not drip jobs to help you visually see where your customers are in the customer journey that Brandon talks about because it’s so valuable from a sales aspect to be able to pinpoint people that have proposals and to be able to follow up with them in the blink of an eye or even your project management to keep everything in line. So, you know, there’s so many cool things that that we’ve done with it, you know, it makes my life easy to be able to run my painting business from home and work at trip jobs full time. I wouldn’t be able to do it without trip jobs. And I think it sounds overly complicated. You know, you’re breaking down all the different phases, but the use case is actually quite simple. The interface is quite simple, you know what it does is powerful, but you don’t have to be attacking, you don’t have to be a software wizard to use this. Not at all. It’s all automated. What I explained to you is the principles behind it. But these deals move automatically and the follow up is already done for you. We wrote them all. All you gotta do is add your customers in day one and and and and you know, I mean it’s it and that’s scratching the floor. I mean that saves you that that very likely saved you from a one star review because if people, people sometimes what they’ll do is they’ll sit on it and they’ll be angry about it. But a lot of people like to avoid conflict. So for them it’s sort of easier just not to say anything, but well I’ll get I’ll get done back by going online and I don’t want that, right? I don’t want people to be quiet. Dude, I hate that. Like if we’re not on it, number one, if I don’t know about it, I can’t coach my team to fix it. If I don’t know about it and I can’t make you happy and they don’t know me from Adam. Usually they just hear my voice over the phone so they don’t know my personality, they don’t know what I mean. I know where they live. Like I mean, you know what I’m saying? So if you, you know, some people are, Yeah, I like that. You know what I’m saying. And they just, you know what my my floor is scratched, I’m never recommending that company, they might not leave a one star review, but we’ll never get a referral out of them, yep. No, that’s a great point. People want to feel that you care and oftentimes what I’ve noticed with with a lot of the painting companies we work with is actually some of the, the best advocates for their business. Our customers that they screwed up for, but then they went and made it right and if you screw up for a customer, but you’re, you’re in constant communication with that customer and you go and make it right. People actually seem to value that more a lot of times and if you just work perfect the whole time, but it can almost benefit you tremendously to fix an issue. Yeah. As opposed to just doing what you were supposed to do in a way that you were expected to do it, don’t scratch the floor on purpose, but it shows that they do a lighter one. Just, you know, you get a little pain, you can buff out without much. Yeah, don’t get paint on the wall on the wool carpet though, that was a mistake a while back I made. Oh boy, yeah, don’t do that. Um So tanner anyone listening. How can they, how can they learn more about drip jobs or contact you? Um drip jobs dot com. Uh you can contact me on instagram at contractor coach and yeah, I mean, you know, if you, if you do sign up, we set you up for free, so if you want, uh you know wanna free setup will teach you how to use the whole thing and there’s no charge really, I’m just, you know, honestly Brandon, like I don’t even like, I love the plugs, I love, I love getting it out there, I’m so passionate about the education part of this. Like I love seeing the look in people’s eyes when they see how this thing is going to save them time. Dude, that’s what’s driving me behind this. Like I know what your job is going to be. I just love the fact that I have every time I do a demo, it’s like the funnest thing in the world for me because I can literally walk someone through the process and see their face go, wow, like that’s something that I do now that I’m not gonna have to do anymore and and that’s what it’s about man, it’s a big, big relief. Yeah. You know with all the painting companies, we talked with one of the biggest components is as you scale your business hiring, you know who you hire, how do you, how do you relieve yourself of certain tasks, what order do you hire? And it’s a theme that comes up again and again and again and if you, you still need to hire, you still need to build teams, but if you can leverage, there’s so much technology, you know, drip jobs is one excellent example. There are all kinds of technology out there. And if you can implement that technology, that’s just as if not more important than your hiring plan because ultimately you can reduce your hiring needs and reduce human air and, and just make things fall much more smoothly with that process, right? You know, there was a time Brandon and I’ll reflect back on the story I told you, you know, with my dad, you know, paper all over the dashboard customer would call just getting a couple of pieces of information or telling the customer to text you and you and I were talking about this yesterday man. Now, more than ever, if you’re marketing online, you’ve got to make a great first impression before it was okay. You can, you can tell the guy the customer, you call them back or you know, not show up one time and then say, hey, hey, I was busy and then show up again. But there’s so many options now and the standard is continuously being portrayed by great marketing companies like you over and over and over again where you’re not, you’re not gonna get as lucky. Um, as, as the, as the market continues to evolve to continue to trust online reputation and trust over word of mouth referrals. So you’re, you’re, we’re seeing this, people are making their own decisions because they have a laundry list of reviews to read and they have a laundry list of data to gather. And it’s like drip jobs is that middleman trip jobs is that thing that’s going to connect the contractor to the customer in a way that is so professional, fast and effective that even if you tried your best you couldn’t even compete with what the software would do to you do for you. Um And the perception that it gives your customer is almost like this is an extension of their business. They think it’s a real human communicating with them. Um And it just it just makes you look good. So you know there’s it’s so deep and that it’s funny we were talking about that yesterday about the customer journey. You know it all it all ties together. No. Yeah you make a good point. Painter, marketing pros. Our goal is is to make it unfair for for the competitors are painting of are we just want to make it not fair when you when you show up to an estimate is not fair for everybody else has shown up to the estimate. And I think implementing technologies almost like they’re meeting a family member if they’re one of your client. Yeah. Yeah essentially. Yeah that’s that’s the kind of level of familiarity and and kind of trust that you want to establish. Um But yeah you know more and more painting cos I think they’re this industry is amazing. Obviously it has not Jason paris made a really good point. He gave a presentation with Nick Slavic at the pc expo and he said painting hasn’t reached its renaissance. You know plumbing, roofing, HVAC all these other all these other industries are so much further along with this tech embracing of technology embracing of systems and so much more advanced in their marketing. But painting will get there. So one of the keys to success as an entrepreneur and a business owner is you want to get on the fore forefront of a wave and this is a wave that anyone listening, it is here, it is coming, the wave is right here drip jobs is here all kinds of other technologies here. What we do is here and you can either get on board and and be on the front of that wave or you can struggle. Those are essentially long term. I believe your options in this industry. What are your thoughts? I mean that’s why we invest so much in educating and training. I don’t want people to say well I’m not tech savvy, you know, I don’t care, I’ll make you you know I didn’t make the software in a way that you need a certification. I just need a willing a willingness to to try it to do what we say and and and show up to our onboarding with you like you know for me it’s like I know that I I knew this and I saw it firsthand as a, as a contractor, I had Sherwin Williams dickies on dude paint paint pants, man, I did this, I lived this life And now I’m on the other side of it, I run a very successful business. I worked probably 10% of my week on my business, I have one office admin that all she does is answer the phone for us. I have no office staff and we’re generating $1 million dollars in a year with two crews and I’m not saying that for any other reason to inform you that we’re optimized because we have systems in place, software, we have marketing in place, we have these things that just make it to where you can actually enjoy the reason you started a business, which is for your time and to do what you love and to still make money and still make income and impact the lives of the people that work for you. And I think that if you make it about you in terms of, well I don’t want to grow or I don’t want to change. Well that’s scary because you’re comfortable, but I think if you make it about others and your family, how they will benefit and how your generations to come will benefit and how the people you hire will benefit, then the why is stronger, so the how no longer matters and I think when you adopt that mentality in terms of change, uh you know the perception is that as long as you have good people around you like Brandon and I’m definitely here to help. Uh it’s possible you have revenue revenue. I like that idea. The efficiency revenue is, is vanity and profit insanity. Ultimately what what matters is profit not revenue. Revenue is a good benchmark for how many problems you have. Pretty much, yeah, pretty much. And I would love to, you know, keeping my business around this area, I don’t want to scale too high. I still want to enjoy, I’m gonna enjoy, you know that’s why we started business in florida is a nice place to live. I’ve become even more of a fan um since Kobe because I’m actually not far from you. So you’re you’re in Ocala and I’m in ST Petersburg, we’re actually pretty close. Yeah, we got to get tea and crumpets. We do tea and crumpets. It is so tanner before, before we kinda start wrapping this up. You also host a podcast called the the contractor secrets podcast I would love and I think you may even host one more. I’d love to hear about that man, contractor seeks podcast. Life changing for me in a sense that uh you know when you know first I started just jumping on the microphone just talking about business sales, marketing, all that stuff and I thought that’s what I was going to do with it man I thought that’s why I started a podcast just to share my thoughts about business. Then I had a then I had an idea, I said, you know what, let me reach out to a couple of people that follow me on instagram and see if they’d be interested in a free coaching session and record it and not charge them for it. And if they, if they say yes, then they agree to let me post the conversation on this podcast and 200 business breakthrough sessions later. Uh, that has been, that has become our stronghold on the podcast where business owners from all over the United States, people in other countries, uh, get free coaching sessions for me. We talk about anything, sales, marketing, business management, whatever they want. And uh, we just hammer out their problems, man. And it’s like, it’s the best. I love giving advice. Like I don’t know something absolutely. Oh man, it’s just awesome. So that’s, that’s what that I mean. There’s still some great people that I bring on nick Slavic. I had J p Jason paris on, um, you know, randy was just on there yesterday. So don’t get me wrong, it’s not just for people starting out, but I think there’s so many people that we help and it’s such a collective learning experience. That’s what, that’s what it’s all about. Yeah. Where can I find that Apple Spotify? Um, if you look up in the sky, I got a banner flying over ST Petersburg today. No, I’m kidding. I thought you were serious about something over the beach. It’s not that serious yet, anywhere, anywhere, anywhere. You would find your podcast where their contractor secrets and you know, I just one of my passions man, if I could do a coaching session a day I would, I would love to do that man. I love it. So yeah, you, you have a unique perspective. I feel that I have a unique perspective because even though I actually don’t run a painting company, I talked with so many, so many painting company is just not, not just within painter marketing pros, but also this podcast, you run a painting company and then you talk with, I talked with over 200 people who have actually brought their business problems to you. What are some of the most interesting insights you’ve gained from, from that experience, from the exposure um, to yeah, I mean for me collectively, if I had to break it down and boil it, people are just in their own way. You know, um, the things that many people bring to me are uh, with a little bit of perspective, which is just me offering uh, an opinion in a way of just how I would handle the situation. Sometimes it unlocks this thing that’s been holding them back from growth and sometimes people just need a little push man. You know, it’s scary growing a business. It is man making decisions and hiring, hiring a marketer and spending money if you’re a new business owner that you never spent before but someone is telling you to spend X amount on software and X amount on marketing and and and sometimes people need a little push and and and and to be told hey it’s it’s it’s safe on this side you know you think it’s a big thing, you’ve seen uncertainty fear you know? But I always tell people that and I’ve been saying this a lot lately, I don’t know why I said well I know why but I tell people listen man the biggest risk you ever made in business was actually starting it when you quit your job anything after that not a risk at all in comparison. Okay you’re already in it so you’re already you’re already already jumped out of the plane. Yeah you didn’t quit your business to just be stagnant right. You gotta understand this is a growth game, you got to keep moving, keep moving the needle, marketing, sales, administration production, it never stops. So and and to piggyback on that usually I can narrow down after just a few questions, you know what’s the what’s the prohibit er I always just try to find out what that one thing is and we just spent time hitting that you know I had somebody yesterday who I did want for and he was letting he was getting ready to to let his best employee go sell floors and uh, I said, well why is he leaving? He’s been with you for two years and he told him that he was burned out from painting. And I said, well let me ask you, you know, what does he do during the day? Well it’s just me and him every day. And I said, well, let me ask you another question, Are you estimating how often? Well pretty often, well you’re leaving him on the job by himself, He’s responsible for the whole job and you show no urgency of getting a team under him to help him grow to a point where you fulfilled the promise he gave him when he came to you two years ago. And if anything, it’s just like saying, hey, you know, you have to keep moving the needle here, you, you can’t be complacent even though you’re making good money, you gotta remember the people around, you want to want to grow to, not to, not to the level you are, but they want to feel as though they’re achieving something you want those people in your business. So we hit that, that was a great one. So things like that come up man and we try to try to knock them out. People wanna, people wanna have opportunity, what do you see or how do you see? And I feel like we’ve already talked a lot about this, but is there anything, we haven’t talked about um that you see the painting industry changing. You know, any trends upcoming that you would, you would kind of give people a heads up about uh you know, people like you were popping up left and right and I just say have discernment understand that there’s certain people that are just trying to sell your leads and there’s certain people that actually give a crap um Brandon is one of them. Uh that’s what I’m seeing more often than not. You get these people that understand that contractors are susceptible. Um, and uh they will pitch you the vision of, of getting you leads and getting you jobs and when it comes time to fulfill the lock in a contract that make you want to sue them. Uh and they don’t do anything outside of what they said they were going to do. And in your space Brandon, you and I both know you need to do more, you need to be there to coach, you need to be there to teach, you need to be there to guide, you need to be there to comfort. You need to be there to coach again. You know, I mean? So it’s one of those things that, that’s what I’m seeing is the more and more we we advance in this digital age, the more people that are gonna pop up and say that they can market to painters and get paint jobs for contractors because it’s one of the most appealing things you can put on facebook is before and after picture and these marketers know that so they’re preying on people left and right have discernment identify the good guys in the bunch and that is my advice to anyone listening, yep. Yeah the snake, the snake oil salesman, make sure you do your diligence. Um awesome. Well hey if if people want to email you, is there an email that can reach out to you tanner at drip jobs dot com? That’s my personal email. Um I’ll try to get back to you. Um you know uh but at this time uh you know it’s a little busy so the best way to reach me is uh to message me on instagram instagram. Okay contractor, contractor coach at contractor coach on instagram. Okay. Um so there is a coupon code that tanner is given away today. He doesn’t didn’t know he was giving it away. He has a really great purple drip jobs hat on right now. I actually have well I’ll tell you what, I will actually give you a coupon code. Listen if you, if you sign up I have a real one. Yeah if you sign up for drip jobs I will give you my hiring course for free. So I have a hiring course that I made uh it goes through my entire hiring process. All you gotta do is tell, tell me that Brandon sent you and I will give you a link and you can take my four lesson hiring course and I guarantee it’ll help you out. So uh yeah, I think I really like that, I love that and if you say coupon code, Brandon will also send you a half. You have to do this, I got murdered. Dude, I have 200 hats I weigh over ordered. Alright tanner. Well hey thanks man for coming on. This was awesome, definitely a bit of a different show uh for us but I think in a way much needed actually appreciate you coming on, thank you for the opportunity man, it’s awesome. Well that’s 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.

Brandon Pierpont

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