Welcome to the painter marketing mastermind podcast. The show created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over 1 million in annual revenue. I'm your host, Brandon Pierpont, founder of painter, marketing pros and creator of the popular PC A educational series. Learn do grow marketing for painters. In each episode, I'll be sharing proven tips, strategies and processes from leading experts in the industry on how they found success in their painting business. We will be interviewing owners of the most successful painting companies in North America and learning from their experiences in this series titled Relationships are Key Candelario Valenzuela of VS Pro painting will be sharing how he has grown his painting company to $2 million in annual revenue with a 1003% year over year growth rate and the advice he has for ambitious painting company owners who are looking to follow in his footsteps.

In episode one, Candela discussed the importance of effective systems to scale. In episode two, Candelario outlined how knowing your numbers is critical and which numbers he most focuses on. In episode three, this episode, Candelario will discuss the importance of reinvesting into your business and the decisions he has made as his company has grown. And in the final episode, episode four, Candelario will deep dive into the importance of networking and some actionable insights he has on how to most effectively network for your painting company. If you want to ask Candelario questions related to anything in this podcast series, you can do so in our exclusive Painter Market mouse mind podcast form on Facebook.

Just search for painter, marketing mastermind podcast form on Facebook and request to join the group or type in the URL facebook. com/groups/painter marketing mastermind. Again that URL is facebook. com/groups/painter Mary Mastermind. There you can ask Candelario questions directly by tagging him with your question. So you can see how anything discussed here applies to your particular painting company. What's up brother Mr Brandon? I'm excited to be back, man. Yeah. No same thing over here. Yeah. The uh the, the previous two episodes were phenomenal.

Uh the, the systems, the numbers both super critical. Now we're gonna get into what I would define as, as kind of more mindset. It's mi it's action, but it's really a lot of mindset reinvesting into a business versus not. Right. Right. Um I, I remember whenever uh I was looking at starting the, the business, how could I uh make sure that, you know, once I was in it, I could make it grow. I am one of the things that I've, that I've uh learned when I was you know, looking for, for different ideas and things like that.

It was to be able to separate your personal money, uh, with your business money. Right. Uh, so it's two different things, the business money and then your personal money, uh, two different things that, that way as, as you go and you start growing and you start bringing in more income. You're not just filling in your pockets, but, but the business also growing, you know, in, in reference of income and all that stuff and how you, you know, to have that money there and knowing, ok, you know what, I'm just gonna put it back into the company so that way you can start putting your money to work.

At what point did you start thinking about personal money versus business money differently as being different things? So that, that was since the beginning. So in the beginning of what I did, I opened, I opened up a, a business account and then my personal account. Right. Of course. Um, and it, it was that you, you have to have that mentality where you're saying, ok, cool, like it and, and with me, it was like, I didn't, I didn't win it all deep into the business like it was a side hustle for me.

So because a lot of people going right straight forward, right into the business, they start their own business and they're, they're just depending on what they're making from, from the business. Right. In my case, it was a side hustle. So I was able to save up money right in that bank account while I was making some money in my, in, in, in, I guess, in my, the job that I currently have at that time. Um, so for me it was since the beginning. So I started basically breaking it down where, like I had the business money, I had my money a little bit that I made from the business, you know?

You know, I'll, I'll take out, you know, 50 60% out and then I'll leave 40% to the company and it was just, you know, money that kept on growing and then that's when I started figuring out. Ok, cool. Where can I put the money to work? Yeah. Yeah. I think when a lot of entrepreneurs start, they think of those things as one and the same because you can take the money out and it feels good to start making money on your own. And especially if it, somebody's all in it and they're bootstrapping.

Usually they're not starting with a tremendous amount of wealth. Some people are fortunate enough to do that. Uh, a lot of people are not. So then they're having to kind of live on it and it can be a tough balance. It can almost feel like you keep rolling the dice or like you keep gambling when you keep investing back into it. It's like, oh, but I have this money that I could take out right now. So how, how have you thought about that? Like you just said 6040.

How have you decided? All right, here's how much money I wanna reinvest. Like I'm comfortable doing that. I wanna grow this business. I have big ambitions here versus, here's how much I wanna take kind of chips off the table and have for myself right now. Ok. So, um first of all, so it, it's, it's, it, it has to be, uh you have to set it, you know, as, as a goal, like where do you wanna be, uh you know, in five years from now, right? Uh how, you know, the source of revenue or whatever the goal is like, where do I wanna be?

And then from there basically strategizing and knowing uh what, what are the steps that you need to take and of course, to be able to grow a company, you need to have some sort of uh uh income to be able to reinvest it in, into the business. So that way it keeps on growing your money, keeps on growing. So for me, it was, it was just setting myself that goal where I wanted to be and knowing that some, some sort of way the money, the money didn't needed to move around.

So that way you can just continue making, making more money. Um And I mean, from from the beginning I started doing that and it's just, it's just basically, there was times whenever I stopped working from, for the uh uh previous company that I used to work or I used to have my current job. Um, it was, it was kind of like I, I went all deep because I felt like I was having sufficient work flow and all that good stuff. And it was, it was, it, I mean, it was really hard man to say, uh you know what, I'm gonna leave some money in there and I'm not, I'm not gonna spend it on my own because definitely you have some, some money there that you could use for some other, you know, your personal things or, or what not.

But I knew how much money I could, I could live with, you know, throughout day to day in my uh uh in my personal life. So for sure, getting to kind of like distinguish uh your personal versus the business side of things and then knowing, OK, where do I wanna, where do I wanna get, you know, uh in, in, in a few years knowing that that's why you're sacrificing, not taking all the money out and just spending it out, you know, everywhere else. Sure. Yeah, delayed gratification.

The ability to delay your gratification is one of uh the, the very common traits of highly successful people, people who cant do that tend not to become hugely successful, right? So, and and I got uh there, there's a saying from Tommy mellow and, and I believe he says uh work workers eat first and then uh leaders eat last. So, so for me that it, that was always the case. I knew that uh everything else had to happen. I have to sacrifice myself in order for me to, you know, be able to get that recompense at the end.

So you have this mindset, you started with it as a side hustle. So it's sort of its own ecosystem. You already had your lifestyle paid for through your job. You know, you knew, you knew what you were doing, but you had ambition. So you said, all right, let me start this ecosystem on its own, kind of let it feed itself and grow, then eventually transitioned into that full time. But you maintain the mental discipline of, hey, I have big goals here and the goals are a lot bigger than the money coming in right now.

So I'm gonna continue to reinvest into the business to achieve those goals. How do you then decide how much to reinvest, what to reinvest in all that? Yeah. So, um II I mean, when, whenever I started, so the first, the first thing that I saw where I could invest money on was marketing and, and this, this, this was, uh whenever I started the, the, the, it started as a side hustle, I guess. Um I remember back back in the, uh, uh, in 2017 I remember only having about $750 in my bank account. Right.

And it was, I was, I was like, ok, cool. Like, you know what I mean? What do, what do I, what do I do now? I, I had already put my, uh, um, I guess I, I legalized the company or the business and I was like, ok, cool. Like, what do I do now? How do I start getting jobs? So I remember I started, uh, you know, I got it, I got some business cards, uh, started passing it around Home Depot. She Williams doing basically my, my homework.

Um and then one day I remember a buddy of mine came up to me. He was like, hey, come, are you, have you, have you thought about investing money uh for your business in, in, in the marketing side of things? And I'm, I'm like, what do you mean? Yeah, man, there's, there's this great um, application that you can go in there or app that you can go in there, you can put a couple of $100 in there. Um I got a friend of mine that is using it.

Uh you know, it, it might work for your business and all that stuff. And I was like, ok, well, let me take a look into it and I remember going into it and talking to the, to the uh people from this from this company. And, you know, it's just a platform where, where they, they advertise you. Um And then they will, they'll basically send you leads and all that good stuff. Um And I, I remember it was about $700 that I had to invest right up front to be able to start and I only had $750.

So I was like, oh my God, you know, how am I gonna do this? You know, but I um and I remember I, I spoke to my wife about it and my wife was like, well, you know, you, you, you do whatever you gotta do. She trusted me. She, she knew that I was gonna do, make the right decision or whatnot. Um And I remember putting those $7003 into, into this marketing uh company, right? And I remember it was like two weeks past and I received no leads and I was like, you know, bills were coming, I had to, we had to pay some bills and I remember a Sunday morning before we were going to church, my wife comes to me and she's like, hey, babe, next week we have to pay a couple of bills and you know, we were counting on those $700.

Like what are we gonna do now? And for a whole minute, I, I, you know, I was scared but I, I am a man of faith and I knew God was gonna, was gonna help us out and we're gonna make something happen. So Monday comes, the next day comes and I start receiving messages from this app and I remember the first lead came through. I set the appointment. I, I go, I go into the appointment and I, I sold it in this like on, in the spot.

Wow, 20 $2700. So I basically triple the money that I had invested in there. I take a deposit and I'm like, babe, here's our money that we invested in there and we had gone a little bit more on the deposit. So it was just like, man from there uh Brandon, I, I knew that there were ways of you investing your money in, in, in, in, in marketing basically and you could, you could basically double your money. Yeah, man, that's awesome. It, it's so scary. That story is so common a story like that of so many successful entrepreneurs where they are back against the wall.

They kind of have to decide whether or not they're going to take a risk at this point. Super scary, scary stuff. And I'm glad it worked out for people who are listening. I also want you to know there are you can grind to, right? So you, you can knock, knock on doors like you were doing Candela going to Home Depot. Uh There are ways to generate those initial projects for free with, with sweat equity. You know, you knock on 100 doors, you, you print the print some material, it's not gonna be expensive.

You something like this to print, maybe, maybe invest a couple $100 for some really high quality stuff. You go knock on a couple of 100 doors, you'll get a project. If you don't get a project, you need to revisit your sales process and what you're doing because you should, statistically after a few 100 after a few 100 doors. But yeah, man, the, I mean, we're in a, we're in a volatile game. We were business owners were entrepreneurs. This is what we do. So the things seem risky. It's because they are. Yeah.

No. And, and it was, it was a risk that I decided to make, right? But, or to take, but at the end of the day it paid off. Right. There's, there's a lot of bad stories out there from other people that they will invest and they don't, they don't make no money, you know, from, from their investment or what not. But in my case, it was, it was uh I guess a success story, right? I was able to put in the money, put in the trust and being able to say, ok, you know what, I'm gonna put this, this money to work and, and believing that it was gonna, it was, it was gonna, you know, something was gonna come out of it and it did, it did it off and, and since then Brandon, I, I am a big believer, you know, of course, there's a lot of free marketing out there, but I am a big believer, you know, in marketing for sure.

It's just always whenever people, uh, uh, tell me or ask me about marketing, I'm like, if you have, you know, some sort of money to invest into marketing, go ahead and do it right. There's, there's plenty of ways you can go up, you know about it. Uh But for me is I'm, I'm a big believer in, in marketing and, and it's kinda like you, you can be the best painter, you can, you know, paint like a Picasso. But if, if, if you don't showcase yourself, then you're basically hit it. Yeah.

So the uh I'm also a big believer in marketing. So we're aligned on that. Uh If, yeah, the, the, you see all these posts, right? It there, it's, I'd say it's funny but it's sad. The, the responses from painter trolls on the internet like, hey, don't, don't hire marketing, don't, don't lose your money. Uh You know, save those dollars for yourself that uh would definitely uh define what a scarcity mindset looks like, right? Save those dollars for yourself versus an abundance mindset. And I think what you said about you could be the best painter in the world.

I think we've ever had this idea like, oh, we, we go create this widget that's what it is. It's a widget. This is a business and we create this really great widget. We know we have great painters. We know we do quality work. We stand behind it. We, we hang the proverbial shingle out, you know, the sign outside our door. Hey, everyone, we're open and we wait for the flood except there is no flight because nobody knows about us. No, nobody knows why we're different. Nobody knows why we're better.

And this, this idea like field of dreams, you know, if you build it, they will come, they will not. There's no, there are no ghosts coming out of the cornfield to flood your business if they don't know about your business. Right. That's, that's a, that's a big one. II, I, uh the other day I was listening to, I don't know if you heard of Grand Cardone, he's, he's kind of like in the rest in the, uh I guess real estate industry. And he says that if it, yeah, you got it right.

So he, he talks about that. If, if Jesus was living in this century, he, he will be basically marketing himself on Facebook, social media. And I mean, in, in a way, you know, to be able to get the gospel out there. That's, that's true. You know, it's just, I, I, I'm pretty sure all this his messages will be out there. Yeah, he'd be, uh, he'd probably be using a lot of tools Yeah. Yeah. So definitely, it's, it's the same thing in business. It's like nowadays, like everybody, it's, it's in the internet world.

If you're not showcasing yourself out there, if you don't have AAA website that sometimes, like, I was at that event, uh, the Sharon Willis event where I was a guest speaker and I was, I was talking about one of the topic was, was marketing and, um, and it was just basically in having an online presence. And I, I remember when I, when I started, I mean, I didn't have money to invest, uh, on a website. Right. But I, you know, I went in and started looking, how can I do it myself?

You know, how, how could I get myself in there and, and I remember I got this Wix account and I started putting, you know, playing with it and it was not the best website. But, hey, that, that's what, what I could afford. Right? II, I knew that at least I needed to have some sort of presence on Google and, and, and, you know, all those, those platforms, 100%. Yeah. And that is the, that is the way to start, right? So, we, we do websites, seo premium stuff. It's not the way to start.

Not when you're, when you're small and when you're getting started, you have a business card, right? You have things like that and, and if you're gonna run ads online and you might, you know, you're gonna wanna have a website people can go to and you need just a one page site from Wix or Squarespace or really any of these website builders, there's template you and you can hire someone, you can actually hire someone for like $0003 or $100 to do this for you. But you can also just do it yourself and you can use the template kind of fill in your logo, fill in your colors.

And now of a sudden boom, you because you don't wanna, what you don't want to do is hand someone a business card and they go try to look for your site. It's not there or it looks like dog crap. You just need a one page site, it won't generate leads for you, but it will help you close the leads that look you up. Right. Right. So that definitely having an an online presence is, is really important for anybody out there that is, is pretty starting or has, you know, some time in the industry and it's looking to scale.

Definitely having that online presence is gonna help out a lot. Yeah. So you invested the $700 into this platform. You got the lead, it worked out knowing you. I mean, this is a success story. You say there are a lot of other failure stories there are but knowing you had, you failed, you still would have, you still would have come back. Right. You'd have figured out a way to pay the bills. You would have then, then gone for it again. Because another Hallmark of basically every successful person ever is enduring a lot of failure along the way and bouncing back.

And so the, if you're listening to this and you think, well, Candelario just got lucky, maybe he did a little bit, but he would have, he would have gotten there whether that first shot had worked out or not because it's a, it's still a mindset thing. Um But you figured out the marketing, what were kind of your next steps? Was it? Hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna really lean into, into this marketing thing or what happened after you landed that first project. So after I learned it, II I landed that first project, uh and Lee started coming through, it was, that was not the only project I sold during that month I saw like, you know, four or five other projects.

Um So I knew, I knew that that was the rate the one because if, if you're, if, if there's traction throughout, you know, through that uh a specific marketing segment you're using, then why change it? You know what I did was putting more, if I put $700 I saved up another $22. And the next month I came aggressive. I, instead of putting $2100 I came in, you know, 2100 $21000 to it because II I knew that, you know, it was, it was working and it had, it had, you know, returned my triple, my money basically, of what I had in it.

So I knew that I could save some money and be like, ok, cool. I, I have the opportunity to invest more in it because I know more is gonna come out of it. Yeah, the smart band. The uh as long as the ro I is there. So when a marketing channel is working double down on it, triple down on it. But then at some point uh uh at some point, you have to diversify a little bit, right? Because marketing channels ebb and flow. So when you're small, like you are Candelario, the best, best practice is find something that works and kind of go all in on it because you have very limited resources.

You couldn't be running Facebook ads and do an seo and do a direct mail and doing this thing. You didn't have that option. So you had something that was working. So you did it as you scale and get bigger, you wanna start putting more fishing lines in the water because Facebook, let's say you're running a Facebook ad, they change their algorithm. Now of a sudden the cost double strip us on you, right? Or there we saw this happen with Google Pay per click started about 2100 months ago working really well.

Now of a sudden the cost for, for painting contractors goes way up. Now. It's all the companies that were relying strictly on paper click and we're killing it now. They were kinda stuck trying to figure out what. So you always wanna kind of diversify, but at the beginning, you need to be laser focused just because you don't have the resources, right? I mean, that company that I invested with back then when I started, I still invest in that company but not as much as I used to a couple of years ago because it's not giving me the serve the same ro I so, but the good thing is that as, as I continued, we started seeing the different avenues where to invest, right?

We knew that we had to invest in seo uh Facebook that we could invest, you know, in doing uh uh door to door marketing and uh email campaigns and all that good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the one of the things that hangs people up on investing into marketing is this idea that, that they need a certain, you need a positive ro I, right. You have to factor things in like your, your team members time or your time if you're going out conducting estimates and you're not closing any of those estimates, that's a cost.

There's a cost of that time of what you're doing, uh gas, you know, it would be a little bit more minimal but things like that all need to be factored in. But there's this idea like, oh, I wanna, I want a 2700 X or I don't wanna do it, or 1003 X or I don't wanna do it. What are your profit margins? What's your clothes? Right. Right. What, what do you need to ma, to make it actually make money for you? Because if I'm gonna give you a dollar and you give me like a, a dollar and 2100 cents, heck a dollar and one cent, I'm gonna give you as many dollars as I can possibly give you because you're just gonna give me a bunch of money right back and I'm gonna make money, right.

So I think you knowing your numbers, it goes back to that last episode, like you said, I tripled my money. There are people listening to this like, well, that's bad. Three xi I don't do, I'm not gonna do marketing unless it's 211 X. How, what's your gross profit? You know, how does your business run? Because if you think that way because what can happen is when you run into paid ads. So there's organic, there's repeat, there's referral. When you start going into things like paid ads, you get a little bit colder leads, the leads that don't know you as much, there are leads that are a little harder to close sometimes.

So then you get an opportunity to work on your sales process and then your close rate might dip, especially if your sales process is just used to repeat and referral which are basically laid on sales. And then you start to, to find potentially a slightly lower ro I, what you still can get is a positive Roy and now the ability to scale much faster for your business. But I think it's a huge mental barrier for a lot of painting contractors is this idea like, well, it should all be like the repeat and referral business I had and now I'm starting into marketing and it's a little bit different and, oh, no, I'm not getting the billion X return because it was zero cost of marketing and it was a lay down sale and I close at 21000% and it, it's a different mindset.

But you can also take 20 years, 30 years to get to $2 million or you could take a couple. Right. Right. There's, there's, there's different, uh, uh, I mean, the, the wheel is already invented. Right? And sometimes we're trying to re invent the wheel and it just wait longer for us to get where we want to get if we have like, because, because that's, that's right. We all have that barrier, that, uh, sales barrier in between us between what we want to do in our business or where do we want to invest our money in a business?

And until we destroy that barrier, then we can go in there and see. Ok, cool. Because at the end of the day. Right. We're in business and it, it, it's, it's a, a risky thing. Right. Because we're out there, uh, making or putting our trust that we could, you know, wherever we put the money and it's gonna, it's gonna give you an ro, I, uh, of course, you know, you do your homework. II, I, every time that I'm gonna invest in something I'll look into it before I even gonna put my money to work in there and see what's gonna be the pros, what's gonna be the cons?

How soon am I am I supposed to be uh expecting results to see on it. Yeah. No, absolutely. You have to do your due diligence. Negligence is not a good attribute of an entrepreneur. All right. So you started investing more to marketing, you doubled down, triple down on this thing that was working, your business grew, you started doing other channels that are now working more effectively than that initial one. But the initial one is still working well enough that you're getting a positive Roy. So you still invest some money into it.

I, I guess I'm some, some sort of loyal to them, right? Because it's, it's, it's what I got you off the ground. What got me off the ground, man. It's, it's, it's, it's a thing that I, if I'm able to weigh out everything that I'm using right now, that's probably gonna be like the second lowest on where I'm putting my money into it. So it's, it's, but it's still, it's not in a negative uh uh uh uh side of, of, of revenue. It's actually bringing in income, but it's just bringing in less income than what it used to make me back back in the day. Sure.

Yeah, marketing evolves it, it fluctuates, you know, the effectiveness of different channels, algorithms are constantly shifting. Uh This being an election year, you and I were actually talking about this, uh briefly this being an election year. The cost per lead is, is increasing, it will always increase in an election year because the, the election ads go online and now you're, you're, that's, that's a huge influx of money. And when you're running things like Facebook ads, you're now indirectly competing with those because Facebook is only gonna show it.

It's actually directly, it's just a different industry. You're directly competing with those. Facebook's only gonna show so many ads to people as they scroll because they're not gonna bombard people with ads because then people won't use Facebook anymore. So you're not competing against just other painting contractors. You're competing against anybody that's marketing to that demographic on Facebook. So you get a huge influx. That's why Q four especially is so, so difficult. Um because of ecommerce and all the holiday advertising that occurs. So that will happen. And then also the buying cycle is gonna get a little bit longer because people get uncomfortable they get nervous.

They're waiting to see how it plays out who's gonna be elected, which means that the leads are still good, but they're not gonna close right away or that week or maybe quite as fast as they used to. So that it's very important this year to, to follow up, stay strong on your follow up game and don't quit early on sales going back to what you talked about right with the following up on, on the leads for the whole month. Yeah, that, that we have to, we have to either have an acceptance or a decline but it has, it has to say something and it cannot just stay open.

You gotta make sure you gotta make sure give me that no or yeah, if they say yes or no, that's, that's all you gotta, you gotta take because that, that's what it is. You know, as we, we have had clients that it's been like two months. We never, we never got a response back and until this day we're still following up, we're still trying to get in touch with them and we've, we've closed them down like that where it's like, oh, well, you know what about if we could come in and revisit?

Right? I would love to see how we can help. We, we're having aggressive pricing right now. We would love to come out there and help you out and we'll do that and we'll sell a job and we're like, oh my God, it was, you know, two months that we gave this estimate and it just closed. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a lead that is costing you money. So, absolutely. And you think about how much that lead costs, maybe it, maybe it should cost $50 100 dollars, $200 113 dollars depends how the lead came in.

But it, it definitely costs some amount of money even if it's organic or, or whatnot. There's still money that, that went into that some way or another. And then you go out and you. Good Lord, your estimators was out there. What? For an hour and drove there, drive time? I mean, you've put maybe close to half a grand into this thing. You don't want to pick up the phone and call him a couple of times at that point. You, you probably do. Yeah. Uh who is uh Jason Phillip was the one that's talking about that.

Uh The leads are basically the oxygen for your company. So it's like if, if, if we're not getting enough oxygen and we're not basically locking in that oxygen that we're, we're basically losing breath, right? So, yeah. Yeah. No, we do. Uh We do not want to let our business perish from lack elites. Definitely, man. But at the end of the day, I think that it, it and, and going back into kind of like putting, putting your money to work, uh, back into your business is definitely having different legs for your table.

Like, because it, it, the, the table is gonna be more steady if you have four or six legs on them or in it than just one. So definitely putting in and, and, and putting your money to work in different avenues. So that way, you know, that you have a, if, if like, let's say a Facebook is not working, you know, this month, at least you have this other three avenues where you're putting your money in that leads might be coming to you. Yeah. No, it's so true.

So the, yeah, the the legs or pitching lines or however you wanna think about it. Uh and, and when you can make them kind of different, you know, so let's say you Direct Mail can be dicey. You have to be really careful about how you do that and the company you use and a lot of times the companies charge it off where it almost becomes impossible to make good money on that. But things like offline, right? So Direct Mail is an offline thing or, or canvassing or things of that nature combined with online can be really effective because then if online starting to starting to become more expensive, the offline can supplement and then if offline for whatever reason is, is becoming less effective, often times the online can su so you wanna have these, I guess different differing forms of marketing that are, are different enough that when one goes down, the other typically goes up.

All right. Right. And, and I, and I remember that I, what I used to do because whenever you're starting out and you don't have, you know, that kind of money to invest real quick in, in, in some companies or marketing companies or, or anything that has to be for paid marketing. There's different avenues out there that you can take advantage of, right as even posting yourself on Facebook and you go to the uh there's different neighborhood groups that you can go into and then basically just advertise yourself.

But it's, it's like you just have to go out there and, and not expect for the work to come to you but go get what's out there because there's a lot of opportunity there for everyone. Yeah. And, and it can seem kind of scary but you're an entrepreneur. It is scary and that's OK. So the marketing investing into more marketing channels, you know, looking for that ro I doing your research, not being negligent as you do it but continuing to to pour back into the business. How do you, I I wanna get more into what else you invest into.

But before we do that, how do you decide how much this is kind of personal? But how did you decide how much to take out of the company? And did that evolve as a company group versus how much to keep in the company. So I, I uh I consulted with different people, different uh mentors on what, what they recommend, what to take out. So definitely seeking advice from people that are already uh uh you know, have been successful or that, that are successful in the industry. What are they doing?

You know, what's, what's their takeaway? What, what, what are they, they uh recommend and then just hearing multiple um I guess responses from, from multiple successful people, you're gonna be able to make your own decision and see this is where I, where I fit or this is, this is the numbers where I feel comfortable with and then knowing that the rest is just gonna help your business because as you, as you grow and, and you, you become more successful, more income starts to come your way. The company has to be basically doing the same thing as you grow on your income.

Company needs to grow on the income as well. So how did you, you know, you got this advice from people, do you remember any of the specific lessons or principles or tidbits that you got that we could potentially share? And so people can try to formulate it for themselves? Yeah. So my, my CPA actually advised me and, and this is one of the advice that I received from him to do uh uh 6040 whenever I was doing uh draws, right? Uh That that was the first thing. And then after that, we started just doing, uh, basically owners pay and then, uh, draw the, the, the, I guess the goal is to be able to draw at the end of the year or just leave it in there.

So that way you can be reinvesting himself. Got it. And then for owners pay, was that essentially what you needed to live? Was it what you wanted? Was it some percentage of your revenue or your, your net income or how did you look at that? So we, we go based on what we can also save on taxes, right? Because we have to have some sort of uh uh uh some sort of percentage taken off away from what we're making. So there's, there's, and I don't have those numbers on, on the top of my head right now, but we have a percentage that we look at that if we're making.

Uh we're, if we're going over that certain percentage on, on, on the account of the business, we need to make sure we're drawing that money into the, to the own in case to myself, right? Being able to know that, but we wanna make sure we do it through the owner pay where we're actually deducting taxes from it. So that way it's gonna be le it's gonna cost me less to pay taxes on. Sure. Yeah, it could go through my 41 K and we can use it, um, you know, we can, we can waive, waive off some taxes and all that stuff.

So, yeah. Sure. Yeah, setting up a 401k, things like that are really, really can be tax advantageous for your retirement. Uh, the tax issue is this whole thing, other thing. Right. We're, we're not gonna get into that, but especially newer businesses, sometimes they don't really remember taxes and then they get to the end of the year and then they have a big problem. So don't forget that taxes exist. I mean, that's, that's, that's part of like thinking about the money, the income wise whenever you're gonna reinvest you, you want, you gotta make sure to hold some money there for Uncle Sam because this is, I wish you didn't have to.

Yeah, I mean, he's, he's kind of greedy man. I think we will all be happy with that. But at the end of the day, we just have to make sure we, we um we, we keep some money in there for what's coming on your taxes. Yeah. Well, we know that that money is always spent highly efficiently and so that, that lets us all sleep well at night. Um ok, so investing into marketing is, is something else, were there other things like when you think about investing back into the company?

Are there other departments or, or things that you, you're thinking about in addition to marketing? So I'll say investing on your, on your presence, like, on your physical presence for, like, your, your, your team and, and, and, uh, the people that work with you, like, uh, like gym memberships. All right. Just kidding. I actually called my CPA the other day and I asked him, I was like, because I was looking into hiring a AAA fitness trainer and, hey, could this be a tax deductible? And he just started laughing.

I mean, there's, there's a way of doing it but it's just too much hassle there. I think there are ways of doing that. Like, yeah, like you, you have to get, you have to get a kind of like AAA letter from your doctor, but at the end of the day is like, ok, is this too much hassle? I'm like, that's not worth, it's probably not going to save enough money to be worth it. Right. Right. Um, but definitely for us was like wrapping our, our vehicles. That was, that was one of the, because that's, that's marking to as well. Right.

It's just a billboard going around. Right. Um, and definitely, you know, our, our, um, shirts for the guys, for your guys that it just gives you that presence whenever you're there, you're just, it's, it's your guys having, you know, your, your company logos on their shirts, uh, the vehicles, it just shows a little bit more CRE credibility in, in the buyer's perspective. Yeah. Yeah. And some other things that you've already talked about that you invested in were the, the CPA that you work with? You upgraded from the lowest to the highest program.

So you can get a much better, better feel of your numbers, more hands on experience, uh, uh, with him. And then you have, uh, some coaching consulting that you've invested into software that you've invested into. So all, all this stuff costs money. Right. Yes. Yes. So that's money you could have saved, you could have saved, you could have put those dollars in your pocket, man. A lot of, a lot of people see it that way. Right. Oh my God, you can be using that money for other stuff or whatever.

But here we are at, at $2 million. But I mean, it's, it's what helps you grow, like in reality once you start seeing that because the, I'm not re I'm not like, I'm not trying to say that I'm not that because I, I'm not emotional with the money, right? Like the money, I see it as a tool to help you, you know, uh either become or be able to, you know, get more stuff from it. Right? So it's not necessarily too emotional too. So the way I see it is like, I know how, you know, I have to uh di diversify on, on my investment.

So that way I make sure that that money is just paying itself, you know, it's just, it's just making more money and that's a good line. Not emotional with the money. I, I don't think we think about that so much, you know, I think money can be very emotional. Right? It's, it's very personal and so I think, I think a lot of people don't ever actually factor in. Ok. Am I being, how do I not be as emotional about this? How do I be pragmatic business minded if you will about this money and use it as a tool and well, if I put the money here, then likely it will, it will do XY or Z for me and probably net me more money because that's the goal.

Uh versus if I, if I take it now out, that might be OK too, depending on what my goals are. But just looking at it pragmatically versus emotionally, which oftentimes is more tied to fear than anything, sometimes greed. But a lot of fear because if you, if you fear a lot and you're, you're not gonna be able to go to sleep to put your money in some sort of way, just just don't put it because then you're not gonna be with it. It's like just keep it like, you know, but whenever you learn how not to be emotional with the money, then you put it, you know, I, I like for example, like let's talk about Seo, right?

Seo is, it's, it's not a short term return, it's a long term return, right? So you put the money to work and you forget about it, right? You're like, ok cool. This is, this is I know that this is gonna be a long term uh return so you know that ok cool I can sleep, you know, putting this money in there and, and I know that it's just gonna work its way up and it's one day is gonna pay off, right? But if, if, if you're too worried about that and you know that you, you cannot sleep at night, then just don't put it because then I'm gonna be calling Brandon every day and be like, hey, where's the result for the results?

And then, you know, you're, you're probably gonna break up a relationship there. So you, you, you gotta know that wherever any, any, uh uh uh a streamline that you want to put your money to work in your business, make sure you're comfortable with it and then you feel that OK? Cool. And, and of course you're, you're never gonna feel like, oh, I'm 100% sure or what not. It's, it's always gonna be a risk, right? But uh, that you can at least go to sleep, go to bed, you know, thinking that your money is there but it's, you, it's promising that it's gonna, it's gonna be a return 100%. Yeah.

And you've been doing sco the right way, you know, we've been doing over a year now we see the results and that's, that's what a lot of people will come into. It kind of the wrong way. And so I pay min pros, we, we set expectations early and we want to actually engage with someone if they're thinking about it the wrong way, do a couple of hard lessons. We had early on. Right. You want to. And I, I don't, I don't know what if you remember whenever I, I, uh, before I started working with you guys, I was working with another marketing company and I had, I had put a, a couple of $1000 into seo where it was not like, you know, I guess we're doing it the wrong way or what not, but I still gave it another chance, right?

I lost some money there and I could have said, you know what man, forget about this. I don't even, you know, uh uh I, I don't want to worry about this or what not, but I decided, you know what man? I, I gotta give it a shot because I, I was doing my homework and looking at, you know, where, where else could I put my money to work and knowing that that could be a potential hit in a couple of years. I'm like, well then I'm just gonna secure that.

Yeah, that, that's such a good point because a lot of people who invest in the marketing or coaching even have been burnt, right? They've been burned by some point. So then they basically leave from that. You were essentially burnt on seo and they leave from that and they never want to do it again. Which is a, you know, it makes sense. You, you, you tried it, it didn't work so you never want to do it again. But if you think about that with other industries or other things in your life, like if you go to an attorney and that attorney isn't very good, do you vow to never work with a lawyer again in your life?

No matter what, you're just never gonna hire one or if you, you know, you go to a doctor and the doctor misdiagnosed you and you'll never go to another doctor because you, well, you try that, it doesn't work, but that's what people assume with marketing, right? They, they, they tried it. Oh no, they're a bunch of scammers. They're all the whole industry. Scammers. They, it doesn't work. I tried it. You tried one? So I think this, it goes back to not being overly emotional and kind of dissecting your thought process and, and separating it from your emotional process because you have to be business minded.

You have to, you have to be, doesn't mean you have to invest in it with a marketing agency. You don't have to, but you should weigh things in a business minded, logical sense. All right. And, and I'm, I'm realistic. You know, I know that there are certain things that might not work at a point or it didn't work. And I'm like, I'm fine with it. I just move on and I just go into the mix. Right. I, I gotta make sure that I'm also being persistent but at the same time knowing that there's, there's always gonna be a risk on, on doing business 100%.

Ok. So we've talked about the marketing, talked about the Softwares, the CPA different things like that. Are, are there any other things we're missing that you look at as a reinvestment that maybe some other people wouldn't be considering or would just take that money out? I'll say a production manager for me in my case, right? Whenever I was, I was, I think at like 700,000, um, and we were targeting to hit a, uh, uh, our first million. And I remembered I, I consulted this with a couple of people because that's, that's, that's, and, and I'm, I'm pretty sure there's a lot of, uh, companies out there or people that are asking themselves, when do I hire a project manager?

100%. That was, that was a question that I had whenever I first went into the, to the PC A. Um I was like, oh my God, like when do I hire a project manager? Because I felt like I was drowning myself. Like I was, I was wearing too many hats and I felt I was, I was just being everywhere. Right? And 11 was because my systems were not all in. So I, I knew that if I had, if I could put systems in place that was gonna help me with, you know, alleviate a lot of my, my headaches.

Um, but at the same time too, the radar said that we were gonna hit a million that year and it was kind of like, ok, cool. Should I bring my, my, uh project manager now or should I just bring him after my first meal? And a lot of people told me no, you know, after your first meal uh and what not. And I remember one day sitting with, with uh uh uh one of my mentors and we were talking about this and he told me, well, come or you um I mean, at the end of the day, right, you're, you're shooting you, you're, you're on target to hit a meal.

So you're gonna make that happen. But how's your health, man? How do you feel? And I remember that I was, I was suffering from a lot of anxiety from, from like a lot of stress. And I was like, man, well, my health is not that well, he's like, well then, you know, do whatever is more important for your health. Like if you feel that a production manager is gonna help you out relieve a lot of that stress. I mean, you, you're, you're gonna hit your meal and, and you know, your health is really important.

So then do what's, what's best for your health. And I remember whenever he said that I just stood up and I just went ahead and make the decision and started looking at, you know, looking for production managers and I found one, I was able to invest in him for a couple of, you know, weeks before he started, you know, going on his own. And to this day I did not regret no single uh a moment of finding that production manager at that time of, of, of the business. Yeah. Yeah.

The uh they're just saying, uh a healthy man wants 1000 things, unhealthy man just wants one, you know, just wants his health. And I think that that question that your friend asked you, how's your health? That's something we forget you. And I are actually talking a little bit about it. Um How we're focusing on it now. But the, yeah, the, uh it, it's so easy to lose that because that's not what all these conferences are talking about. That's not even what I'm often talking about. Right on this podcast.

We're talking about ways to grow the business and revenue and finances and things like that. But what's the point if you're putting yourself in the ground? If you feel terrible, if you're, if you're not enjoying, you know, you're, you're living a super unhealthy lifestyle. Why are you doing it? We don't have to do it, we could get jobs. Yeah, because at the, at the end, at the end of the day, I mean, you can be making all the money in the world but if, if your health is health is super poor and you know, you die then where is all that money?

Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Yeah. Canario, what else you got, man? As we, as we come up to, to wrap this episode, I mean, uh I think we've, we've covered a whole bunch of stuff, a lot of, a lot of great stuff here with you. So definitely, I mean, I think everything, everything is pretty solid on my end. I appreciate you brother. I appreciate all your insight and your wisdom and just sharing this, this mindset for people listening. You know, there are a lot of key takeaways here.

I think the biggest is, is kind of the underlying mindset. So just try to make sure you're taking away how, how Candelario thinks about everything because it's, it's really positive, really healthy and it's, it is the reason that he is growing so quickly, right? Painter Morgan prose helps him. Other things have helped him, but it all is his mindset. That's why he is finding success. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Brandon for having me, man. I appreciate you. And um you know, definitely I, I uh th this is, you know, I've never been, I told you, I've never been in a podcast before.

This is my third one and I feel like I'm getting used to you already, man. You're killing it, man. Appreciate you brother. Looking forward to the, the fourth and final episode. Yeah. No, thank you, man. If you want to learn more about the topics we discussed in this podcast and how you can use them to grow your painting business. Visit, painter, marketing pros. com/podcast for free training, as well as the ability to schedule a personalized strategy session for your painting company. Again, that URL is painter, marketing pros.com/podcast.

Hey there, painting company owners. If you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Give us your feedback. Let us know how we did. And also if you're interested in taking your painting business to the next level, make sure you visit the painter marketing pros website at painter marketing pros. com to learn more about our services. You can also reach out to me directly by emailing me at Brandon at Painter Marketing pros. com and I can give you personalized advice on growing your painting business until next time.

Keep growing.