Paint the Future 2025 Series: Commercial Painting Success Panel

Published On: January 20, 2025

Categories: Podcast

Join the Industry experts Maggie Kuyper, Dave Scaturro, Jesse Ramos, Juan Vasquez, and Chris Elliott to discuss strategies for breaking into commercial painting, managing cash flow, mitigating risks, and building brand trust. Learn how to transition from residential to commercial work and plan for sustainable growth into 2025.

If you want to ask the panel questions related to anything in this podcast series, you can do so in our exclusive Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast Forum on Facebook. Just search for “Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast Forum” on Facebook and request to join the group, or type in the URL Facebook.com/groups/PainterMarketingMastermind. There you can ask them questions directly by tagging her with your question, so you can see how anything discussed here applies to your particular painting company.

Video of Interview

Podcast Audio

Audio Transcript

Expand

Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast, the show created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over 103 million in annual revenue. I’m your host, Brandon Pierpont, founder of Painter Marketing Pros and creator of the popular PCA Educational Series to 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.

Join the Industry experts Maggie Kuyper, Dave Scaturro, Jesse Ramos, Juan Vasquez, and Chris Elliott to discuss strategies for breaking into commercial painting, managing cash flow, mitigating risks, and building brand trust. Learn how to transition from residential to commercial work and plan for sustainable growth into 2025.

If you want to ask them questions related to anything in this podcast series, you can do so in our exclusive Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast Forum on Facebook. Just search for “Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast Forum” on Facebook and request to join the group, or type in the URL Facebook.com/groups/PainterMarketingMastermind. There you can ask them questions directly by tagging her with your question, so you can see how anything discussed here applies to your particular painting company.

Oh, thank you all of you for joining Juan. I’m glad that, glad that you’re participating now. It’s good to see you, brother. Uh, we got Maggieuer, Dave Scaturro, Jesse Ramos, Dave Scaturro, of course, uh, and then we, we have Juan, uh, has now logged in. Super excited. Am I missing anyone? Do we have anyone else? Chris Elliott, you weren’t on the screen. What’s up, brother? Chris Elliot. So if you guys can just, I’ll, I’ll call you out as I see you, um, kind of introduce yourself, your company, maybe a little, where you’re based, a little bit about what you do before we get started.

Maggie, let’s start with you. Maggie Maggie’s is on mute. Are you guys hearing me? Yeah, it says the host has to unmute us. Oh, OK. All right, my team will make sure you guys are all. Do you know what that means? You know what, I used to know what it meant, and I’m having a slow day. That’s fine. It’s been a big day for y’all. It’s been really fun. This has been awesome. Good job, Dave. Um, my name is Maggie Keiper. I’m, um, one of the owners at Harpeth Painting and CEO.

We are a commercial residential company in Nashville, Tennessee. Um, we do everything from new construction to repaint in both divisions, as well as specialty finishes and a bunch of other fun stuff. We learned from Dave Scaturro to diversify often and early. Awesome. Well, Maggie, thanks for, for joining, really excited. Uh, Dave, you know, just a quick intro in case anyone just tuned in. Yeah, I’m Dave with Alpine Painting and Sandblasting Contractors. We’re based in the east coast in Patterson, New Jersey. We work in about 4 or 5 states, but we’ll travel anywhere for a good client.

I run the commercial division for the company. I hope I can provide some value on this call. Sweet. Jessie, I see your red cowboy hat, you’re hard to miss, man. What’s going on? You are on mute. Uh mute yourself, buddy. Oh, I was gonna do this one, but you gotta turn it to you because this time it was on your jack not muted at all. Yeah, love it. Jesse, uh, TJ’s freshman painting construction, um, out of Dallas, Texas, uh, we focus on, uh, commercial light industrial and uh.

Well, I’ve also been learning from Dave, so there we go. Love it, by the way. Heck yeah, Juan, good to see you, man. Hey, good to see you. Hey, thank you again for having me. Sorry what happened earlier, but um, so my name is Juan Vasquez, who who don’t know me, uh, uh, we own myself and my brother-in-law own a company named Ilusion’s Painting out of in uh California. Our main, um, what we do is mainly paying high-end residentials, big homes, big properties, but, um, we are looking to expand.

We’ve been thinking for a couple of years to expand and we finally got into where we are moving into the commercial business. Um, it’s challenging, we love it. Uh, we got our, we’re getting our uh our feet deep into the water and um. Yeah, no, it’s, there’s, there’s a lot to learn, um, but here I can show I can share a couple of things that um I’ve learned so far. Awesome, thank you, Juan, and last but certainly not least, Chris. What’s up dude. What’s up buddy? Chris Elliott on at painting, um, we are headquartered in Indianapolis.

Uh, we also do residential and commercial. We focus on residential and Indianapolis market, uh, commercially speaking, we focus on, uh, property management through uh multi-family managed commercial. Uh, we also do some assisted living and light industrial, uh, for commercial division, uh, as Dave mentioned, we prospect 2003 to 5 states, but then for the right relationship right project we’ll go almost anywhere. Awesome, Chris, I, I don’t know if I can look at you the same way after the commercial contractor conference, the, the battle of the pickle ball, you know, I didn’t know I care as much as I did, but I knew I didn’t went off showing off like that.

I think that’s what made me feel compelled to do the ball. I was like, well, I’ve I’ve been defeated over here you don’t win. It’s a good conference. Um, sweet man. I would love to start with, you know, we have a lot of people listening, some, some people do residential commercials, some just commercial, but I think the majority of the companies listening do primarily residential, um, either primarily or exclusively. So maybe we could just start with how do you break into commercial, you know, maybe from your experience or what you would recommend if you’re a residential painting company, you want to grow into commercial, what are the steps to take?

Anybody, anybody who wants to take it, yep. Go Jesse, man, so the, the way I got into it, man, was I, uh, I pretty much like I, I try to do residential but like I was not good at, uh, it to be honest. I couldn’t sell residential to save my life so I was like, man, you know, I’m gonna do, I started reading a bunch of. Jessie, I could see them locking, like locking the door and kind of click it, part of it might have to do with your appearance.

Because I didn’t think you were the painting contractor. They thought you were not. That’s why that might have been might have been. No, so, uh, so man, I, I, I read this book. I forgot what it’s like a painter, and it was like you gotta go to networking events and I was like. Shit, alright, we’ll try it. So like I, I joined a lot of uh networking events and uh man, to be honest, that’s what like skyrocketed my business and then even with the uh PCA like.

Joining these networking events too and then learning uh from there as well but just getting your name out there um that’s how that’s how I that’s how really how I got my uh business started actually because I we never really did residential. I just like went deep in the commercial like how to get the jobs and I was kind of broke for a while but figured it out. Well, can, can I add something to Jesse’s cause I’m, I’m right on that, I’m we’re right on that, that, that stretch right now, right?

And so we, we’ve grown our business the last 4 or 5 years. We’ve been around for 18+ years, right? And uh we thought we had a business, but we didn’t. So right now we got our business going, but we want to grow and we don’t feel that we can grow and, and to where we are right now in our segment, so we want to create more. Um, but going into commercial, it’s not just painting. There’s, there’s so much more to it. Uh, I mean, you can do the state too.

I realized that the state has a lot to do with it too, like we’re in California and, uh, just us for to do a $13,000 job that we just actually working on right now, it probably cost us $5000. Just because we had to do a lot of things that we weren’t ready. We had to register to so many different things and these are commercial, but they’re also government jobs. So I was calling Jesse, I was calling everybody. I’m like, hey, you know, but, so I guess what Jesse’s saying, I, I really agree, is like we it really takes some time to plan.

We don’t just jump into that. We can go do a little commercial job and then really just go through it, but we need to really inform ourselves and educate ourselves. That’s actually what we’re trying to do, you know, here with Chris. I have Chris, I have Jesse that we’re, you know, we’re in our, in this group, and that has been so helpful for me to understand that I need all this work that we, in order to get a job, we gotta walk 1 mile and we’re walking like 5 miles right now, but we know that once we get there, we’ve done all the work.

So that if someone’s getting started, I think that’s very important. I think it’s super key to um make sure you start small, both from a production standpoint as well as a financial standpoint. Um, it may or may not be common knowledge, but a lot of, a lot of commercial work, there’s a delay in pay, um, even on some DTO work. Um, commercial repaint, you still have property managers that have to cycle it through, you know, their, their company’s billing cycle. You’re not going to walk away with a paycheck.

So, on Juan’s $0003,000 bill, he might not see that $13,000 for 30 to 60 days, which is normal and not illegal. And so I think it’s important, you know, as you’re dabbling or dipping your toe, or as Juan said, putting his whole foot in the world of commercial. That you are um making sure that you’re very, very cash sound. Um, also, as you get bigger into it, you’re gonna need to be able to pre-qualify for some work potentially, um, even for some commercial repaint work. And so you do have to have strong financial statements, um, and, you know, the paperwork, we can get into a paperwork talk later, but it builds from there.

So you really have to be set up, um, and dipping your toe early. In a very small job, that’s not gonna put you out a lot of cash that you know you can wait to get paid, um, make sure you like it, make sure you can produce it well is a really good way to start. Um, I’ll share with you how my father and uncle jumped in a commercial, um, so they Created relationships with other larger painters in their area when they were smaller, and they basically went to them and said, look, um, we’re not really established, um, but we’re really good at painting, um, and we want to learn from you and help you.

So is there any way on your next job you would consider using us as your labor force, subbing out the job to us. And they worked for this contractor for about 3 years. And they primarily did schools. They learned the ropes, they figured out how to do a school effectively, when it had the job how to start, when it had to finish. They learned the ins and outs, and then they learned the paperwork. And then from there they can be like, all right, well, we got to figure it out, so now we can go on our own and start bidding our own jobs.

So it’s a stepping stone towards getting in and breaking into a market because You know, that, that, that was public work, right, which is different than private work, at least in our area, and it was, you know, there was a big learning curve involved, so they had a safety blanket that somebody that kind of taught them along the way, so they didn’t have to take all the punches themselves. I love that. That that’s uh such a phenomenal idea, especially if you have a structured plan in place that really de-risks what you’re doing, but it also allows you to build a portfolio because you can go and then when you’re bidding for this work, you can say we did this and we did this and we did this because you did, but maybe you wouldn’t have landed any of those projects if you were just there by yourself and you weren’t subbing.

Yeah, man, if you don’t find it right, that’s why a lot of our companies go out of business because we just say, yeah, I can do it. And then it takes like Maggie says, it takes your net 30, your net 60, and then guess what? You have no money, you can’t breathe, you know, all the oxygen is taken out of you and that’s the, that’s when it just becomes a problem. I think I went, uh, almost went out of business like 3 times, to be honest. Yeah, I, I, I, yeah, I’ll, I’ll piggyback off of ones.

Was mentioned a couple times like plan. And I would just urge anyone to, I think most business owners have a vision problem, like they don’t really look into the future and we’re we’re tasked with that burden. We have to look into the future and what’s the, you know, what’s it, we, what do we want our company to look for or look like, what’s our aspirational goal, and then make sure that before you go into commercial that you actually are aligned. And that is the way you see the future for your company and don’t just jump into it.

So there’s a lot of because then once you have that vision and you know you’re in alignment, then you can start to work it backwards and, and, and if you have a good vision, your vision should be setting up the strategic framework of your organization. So we want to, as an organization accomplish this, this and this, so then your strategic framework. be built off of those aspirational elements of your vision, right? And so as long as commercial plays into that, then great, start to pursue it, start to educate yourself as as Dave said, uh, you can join a peer group, you can get a coach, you can join an association like the PCA and you start learning from others who have already done this, who have already taken some lumps, and you can benefit from, you know, maybe save yourself a little bit of pain, um, and then I, you know.

On a spectrum, you have intentional, and you have incidental. I would urge everyone to be very intentional and not just try to do everything from for everybody as we’ve all heard, um. Sniper approach, like if we’re gonna lean into commercial, we’re gonna work with GCs and we’re going to do multi-family new construction or uh we’re gonna pursue CapE projects through property management. Pick a vertical, pick a customer, be very intentional and try to win there and then you can compound and grow over time. Yeah. Good point.

I think it’s important too as you’re digging in and this piggybacks off of what Chris just said, you know, whatever vertical you decide or whatever market sector you want to narrow in on, you need to do research on that client. Um, it’s the wild west in commercial, just like it is in You know, residential new construction and well, I know it’s the wild west and res repaint as well, because you have one-off homeowners. Typically your price tags a little higher, um, and you have a lot more factors involved and so it’s important to do your research.

Why is this client looking for a new painter? Um, are there other trades that you can Reach out to, you know, and, and see if they worked with these people. And that’s networking is both to receive clients, but networking is also to make sure that you’re meddling into the right clients. And so, we network with a lot of other trades, um, and learn like, hey, who are you working with? Hey, have you worked with them? Have you had a good experience, etc. And so making sure you’re doing your research as well.

You cannot be Desperate and greedy if you’re gonna get into commercial pain. Um, it’s very hard to be successful if that’s kind of your motto is I’m gonna take whatever I can get right away from whoever I can get it from. Yeah, I, uh, good point. I got, so when I started in there, we started desperate and that’s kind of the mistake we made. So you know, I, what I did wrong was I straight I straight went for GC work which I’m not saying it’s not good.

There’s good, there’s bad of everything. But we unfortunately got stuck with some bad ones and in Texas anybody could be a GC like I could say I’m a GC right now which so we got stuck with a few jobs that went, didn’t go our way the the companies ended up just filing for bankruptcy and opening other companies so like. That’s the kind of stuff you gotta be careful but now you again that’s how we almost went out of business, so I’m saying so you gotta have your your paperwork in place.

You also gotta have a good lawyer in place, you know, maybe not starting off, but you know you gotta be ready for those kind of things, uh, that may go south and then that ties into the having, you know, some money in the bank or a credit line you can lean on if something does go south, uh, but you can’t be scared of it. You know, cause you won’t do it if you, if you’re just scared, you know. So let’s actually, let’s actually lean into that for a second.

So risk mitigation, we know managing cash flow is a, is a big risk, right? The working capital cycle is very different, uh, for commercial versus residential. What other risks do people need to be aware of and how should they mitigate them? So if you tell me, I mean, we. In residential, uh, you can just go, uh, we’ve done big deals by shaking a hand, you know, because we already have this, you know, this, uh, relationship, and in residential, it’s, it’s normal to do that, you know, you walk in it’s like, OK, alright buddy, I got it. $113,000.

All right, let’s paint it. Yeah, I’ll send you a bill later and, and a lot of and we did a lot for many years. Um, in resident in commercial, we’ve seen that it is, it is different. There is paperwork for everything and there’s a procedure for everything and as residential painters sometimes we’re not used to that. And so even your, you know, project manager will be like, oh yeah, I got the deal going. I was like, oh yeah, but what about this? What about that? So. That’s something that I’m, you know, we deal with big commercial jobs too, so they go for over a year.

I mean, residential jobs. So we’re kind of used to those things, but it’s still different and for someone who’s coming from residential, understand that part. The other is having an attorney or someone who can advise you on certain things. I think that’s very important. We had to learn the hard way and it is not cheap, so that is important. Yeah, anyone who wants to run with the big dogs and wants to be successful in commercial, you’ve got to have a good lawyer, you’ve got to have a good insurance agent, you’ve got to have a good banker.

Um, and if, if you don’t have those, even as a solid residential company, you need to be looking into that as a 2025 goal. Um, those, those are cheap insurance if you’re paying $250 for your lawyer to review your first commercial contract to make sure that There’s not fine print that holds you accountable for things you’re not aware of. Um, you need to make sure you have a quick phone call to your insurance agent and their cell phone. You should have your insurance agent’s cell phone number to be able to ask him, you know, a question about coverage for something, and then same thing like Jesse commented on, um, at some point in time, you will want a line of credit.

Um, in your kind of portfolio, and you need to make sure that you have a good banker that’s gonna get you a good one and get you taken care of quickly and cleanly. Yeah awesome. If you guys have a good understanding of your financial statements and cash flow projections and so you know, you may not need it right away, but eventually like layering in and fractional CFO or fraction fractional controllership. Um, because if you’re running all residential right now and you’re gonna make a, um, transition to commercial, you’re probably gonna go from cash to accrual, and you’re gonna need somebody to kind of help you through that process, uh, because being able to, uh, have access to the capital, you’re gonna have to have clean books and be able to show that you’re, um, that you’re a profitable company.

So, um, I think that’d be a, you know, something to be mindful for of. Another thing is like as far as risk is just like, do you have the Competence level to effectively estimate whatever type of project you’re uh targeting, um, so you don’t get yourself in trouble and, and under bid something and, and get yourself in a real mess, um, where you can’t either you run out of, uh, cash or you just, uh, you missed on the bid and, and now you’re in the negative and you don’t have the ability to absorb that.

So that’s something that’s you be very mindful and very intentional with is how you’re gonna approach the uh estimating. Uh, so this will be, this will be more of a sales question, but obviously, Or commercial projects. How can you land big commercial projects without needing to beat down your price, without, without that having to be the driver? How do you charge more than your competitors but consistently land these projects? First one is, uh, I think someone already touched on is don’t be desperate, but then I’ll let Dave take it.

Yeah, don’t be deaf, that is a good one. for us it’s about relationships, right? If, um, You know, Jesse said this really well. He got into networking groups, and Jesse’s a relationship guy. I know that because every time I see him at a conference, he comes up, gives me a big old hug, makes me feel special, says nice things to me, right? You know, he makes me, you know, he, he creates a friendship that’s really unique. And if you have that charisma, You can create relationships with your clients, so that they’re giving you, in some cases, maybe opportunities that not other people would have.

You would get last look, you would get an opportunity to um bid a job that you wouldn’t otherwise have. So joining a networking group, I think is one of the easiest and best ways that you don’t have to have the low bottom number, you can create a relationship and a friendship with somebody and the next thing you know, you’re, you’re bidding work. Yeah, I, I’ll say this to uh. I was just about to ask if Dave, what kind of filter y’all put on Dave because he looked better than all of us.

He’s just like that. Come on, come on, we gotta get his filter. It’s everywhere. When you see him in person, the filter is still there. I just keep going cross-eyed. I had a, I had to get rid of the video. You guys make me feel very special. Thank you. No, man, but, but I agree with Dave, man. That’s the way to do it like, and, and what’s crazy is like people, if they see you showing up, they wanna help you. So like, but you can’t show up to one event and think like millions of dollars are gonna come flooding like you gotta show up like week after week after week and you probably ain’t gonna get shit but you just gotta show up like you gotta be that face, you know, that painter guy. Yeah.

I think people oftentimes overcomplicate the division of residential and commercial, and I don’t get me wrong, we do both, and I, and I understand the difference. But in the end, we’re interacting with humans, and I believe there’s two types of buyers. There’s the relationship buyer and there’s the price buyer, and that exists in residential as well. And there are certain paint companies who The model is, we’re gonna try to be the lowest price and we’re going to, you know, get as many jobs as we can on the residential side.

And those also exist in commercial. Um, you know, you can, you can bid the crap out of work and try to be the low bid and just get a crap ton of, you know, commercial jobs. And then on the flip side, like Dave said, and I like, I think most people on this panel are, you can also pursue the relationship side. Where sometimes you get it, sometimes you get last look, sometimes the person is your people and they don’t choose you. We have a couple of companies in town that We do a ton of work for and we will continue to for years, but they don’t always give us jobs because there’s other constraints happening.

And the same thing is true of a residential buyer. And so sometimes we just have to like step out of the whole like, oh, it’s commercial, and remember, like, no, there’s, they’re literally still humans that go home and they eat dinner, and they go to bed, and they wake up and go to work. There’s not like this magic equation that makes them different than the people that you sell in their home. Yeah, people doing business with people. If you’re if if you are offering both a residential and commercial painting, are you using the same, the same crews, the same painters to conduct that work?

I, I tried that and it doesn’t work very well. Well it all depends too. Well, no, it does not depend. I think you have to have your commercial and your residential. Um, in California, it’s hard. I know a lot of you, you guys do, um, subcontracting for us, subcontracting is very technical, like we have to. There’s a lot to it, so we still have to have uh mainly W-2s, um, in the beginning when we wanted to get into commercial because we’ve been talking about this for quite some time, but it was the crews trying to do this and our production rates were horrible.

So then we got into a little bit of uh getting a different crew and now OK, now they’re getting better. So yeah, no, I, I personally would not do it. We have crews that cross over to both, um, but of our. Um, plentiful batch of painters, it’s about 10%. Yeah. What makes that 10% be able to cross over? Um, really special people, just like, uh, we have sales people in our company that can cross over and they can sell a commercial job and then go sell a residential job.

Again, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s not impossible. Um, it requires good management, so our project managers have to, you know, for example, we have one crew that crosses over all the time in our company. Um, they’re great at both, but we have to, we have to refocus them, right? All right, we’re on commercial, we got to produce, we got to do this, whatever. And that’s what’s more natural for them. They’re great on residential. They actually do a super job. They’re one of our top residential crews, that same crew, but we have to refocus them, right?

We’re in a client’s home. You can’t start at 6:30 a.m. Everything needs to be tidy, you know, you kind of have to just refocus them. Um, but yeah, out of a lot of painters, it’s not. It’s not all of them. I think the almost a different frame, like a mental frame of how they’re approaching it, um, I think ping ponging is hard. Like we just, we, we can’t go, you know, week to week to week. We kind of have to make sure they have a, a time to refocus.

Yeah, I think it’s only when you need it, right? Not all the time. Mhm. Mm. Yeah, have, have people depending on what what side of the business is maybe growing more quickly or doing more work at that particular time, people that can cross over. Yeah, and that’s, that’s been part of what’s made our growth successful is being able to cross over. Um, and when commercial is lighter, we fill it, you know, we turn on the faucet for residential and residential gets heavier, we, you know, so, or commercial gets heavy, we’re able to back off.

And so, especially people listening that are currently residential, wanting to hybrid, so the wands of the world, um, and the Chris Elliotts of the world, like, it’s, it, it can work and it can actually really help. Um, especially if you can have cruise crossover because it creates a lot of loyalty if you’re able to keep them busy year round. So I think I, I just want to make a point for everybody listening cause I think, I think it’s easy. To hear all this stuff and and get all these good ideas, but maybe miss some of the, the truly golden nuggets, because for me I’m seeing, even, even I’m seeing things I didn’t really think about.

So if I’m gonna scale the commercial painting company, I’m going to recognize if I have residential and commercial, one might might flex while the others not doing as well, depending on what’s happening in the industry. I’m going to intentionally try to have maybe it’s only 10%, but some portion of my fulfillment team be able to do both because I’m gonna know that’s gonna really balance me out. It will make my company more. Um, adaptive to whatever’s happening in the environment at that time. And then with what Dave said, that’s really stuck with me because I, I’m not a big fan of the GC. I’m not a big fan of the subcontracting stuff.

A lot of what I do is to help people not have to do that so that they can get the work directly, but you’re kind of getting paid. To to learn, right? And and pay to build a portfolio. I mean, it’s like I want to work in marketing, so I’m gonna to go apply for one of the best marketing agencies. I’m gonna get or I’m gonna start as an intern and I’m gonna learn, and they’re going to pay me to learn and then eventually I’m going to go start my own agency.

So I think that take away some of these nuggets in addition to the, to everything we’re learning about cash flow, take away some of these very, very intentional action items that I think would be very easy to miss. Appreciate you guys sharing this stuff. Um, we do have, so we have a lot of questions coming. It’s really good to see. I am gonna open it up too for people to come on, and probably 20003 to 20 minutes left, we’ll open that up, but I have a question from Josh Edwards when trying to win over a real estate agent or company or HOA, uh, do you offer them a discount on painting services for their clients?

What are some good incentives or sales tips on earning their business? I guess this would be residential Residential. You said residential. I mean, HOAs could be condominiums, which we consider yeah, multi-family. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we don’t personally offer a discount. We we don’t refer a discount at all on the commercial side. Um, I think you just need to be really clear on your value proposition, um, and, uh, and as Jesse said, like, You have to just, you have to stay at it, be present, and, um, you know, get it, get involved in if you want to be an HOA, uh, if you want to do work for for HOAs, um, I’m gonna assume it’s condominiums and you want to probably join an association and um be very, very present, uh, make a goal of 100% participation, um, and just understand that it’s gonna take time.

It is very like residential, you know, for us was very marketing driven. Um, the what the biggest benefit is it’s very, very predictable. Like we know if we spend, you know, X, it’s put that in the marketing machines and spit out this many leads and that many leads this many estimates, and that’s this many sales and we can plan and forecast almost down to the dollar. We’re commercial, uh, lot longer sales, uh, um, pipeline and um. Uh, it, it ebbs and flow a lot more at the beginning.

It’s starting to become more predictable, but I would just say you need to be, uh, very clear, uh, on your value prop, you need to be very present and, uh, be top of mind when they have a project that emerges. So I saw Dave, Dave Curro’s uh website, right? And he’s very, they’re very specific on like this is what we do here, this is what we do here, and it’s just the brand, you know, I’m gonna either buy cheap shoes or Nike shoes. They’re both in the same place, but it’s, you’re, you’re creating a brand.

So at the end, I rather, I, we, this is how we looked at it from all of you guys is like we don’t wanna give discounts. We want to give value and a name. And I think that that’s, that’s really drives you much more than discounts, personally. Do we have a question for Oh, I was gonna say shit. I give discounts, shit, so we do the contrarian. No, but I’m just saying like cause the other thing you gotta realize is if this is a huge square footage, you save a lot of management and you can you go so much more square foot so like.

That’s another factor you gotta kind of. Look at because you’re like, well, if I’m used to doing a small job making 50%, like you can take a couple percent off because you’re gonna be at the same job for a month, so there’s less management and your guys are just gonna like pick up right where they left off. So if your management is your project management is good, you can make up the extra percentage on the back. Yeah, but are you showing that as a discount? So I guess I, I interpreted it differently.

Like, will we, will we, uh, tighten up the margin to, to earn a relationship? Yes. Do we represent the discount to the client? No, because I just don’t think you you’re giving a discount, you’re trying to influence behavior, influence the decision, and I just think it, it’s different residential or commercial. Yeah, yeah, just it was more like that, more we we’ll, we’ll with the bar on your proposal or yeah. What’s that? Are you are you showing a discount on the proposal, or are you just coming in tighter margin?

Oh hell no. No discount on proposal. It’s coming in tight on the margin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and, and maybe you, yeah, I think we both interpreted the question differently, but I think it was good to clarify. Yeah, negotiations are a thing, um, and, and conversations on pricing are a thing, and even in some of the commercial repaint where like we have property managers that reach out and say, hey, like, I know you’re slower in the winter, so if I strategically create a budget for this project in this, you know, what can we do on pricing, you know, or I have this much to complete it, any way you can do it, you know, those conversations do happen and it’s, that’s not.

That’s not discounting or, you know, decreasing your quality. That’s literally the world of commercial. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s uh, yeah, I think there is a big difference in negotiation and discounting or cheapening your brand, and this is, you’re not gonna negotiate with a homeowner on a $5000 repay, but you can negotiate on a six-figure contract with a with a company that gives you a lot of business. And kind of like what Maggie was saying, so like your whole or like our whole goal, so like our company’s goal is to create the relationship, but then to be able for them to Like be able to talk about budget with us that way it’s not a weird thing because sometimes you’ll just be like hey this shit I need 100k for this.

I’m like shit, it was gonna be 95 but let’s go, you know, or, or hey, it was gonna be 110, you know we can eat a little bit on the margin and just make it up on project management, you know. Shit. Yeah, so Tony, she’s got a podcast record for how many times you say shit. It was great. Uh, Tony Severino asked, can you talk about, uh, production rates and materials, for example, painting a bar joy ceiling? How, how are you guys accounting for all that? What I guess production rates.

So yeah, we track our production rates in the field and we’re constantly trying to determine if they’re still accurate. You have to take averages, right, because some crews are gonna blow other crews out of the water and that goes to the point, you know, do you have the right crew on the job? You don’t want, you know, the residential guys that are good with the brush, picking up the spray gun and thinking you’re gonna get the same production, it’s just not gonna happen. And then you gotta constantly be evaluating.

All right, now let’s look at our job costing and say, OK. Did we hit these numbers or not? Why? What’s the reason? Do we need to adjust the production rates or not to, you know, get back on track. So these are conversations that should be happening regularly. Job costing is a very important role in being successful on commercial projects, cause you need to know your numbers and know if you’re making money or not. 100%. What gross Go ahead, Maggie. I said what he said, perfect. Yeah, what, what gross, so Adrian asked, what gross profit margins are you bidding for commercial?

We’ve been told it’s anywhere from 15 to 3003% due to the higher dollar amount of projects. Is this reasonable? I don’t like this question, Brandon. Maggie says no, Dave says punt on the question. 15% is, is not where anyone should be bidding work. I don’t, here’s the thing, I don’t know what’s above or below your line, OK? I don’t know how you’re accounting. And therefore, I can’t justify if 15% makes sense or it doesn’t. You know what, if I’m going for 40%, for example, some people may look at me and go, that’s crazy.

That’s highway robbery. Are you not paying your guys enough, or are you cheating your clients, but they don’t know what I’m putting in as overhead or not. So it’s really hard to say if that’s a good margin for you, even though it’s a good margin for me, cause we’re not accounting the same way. You know, I think there’s a, there’s a, a rule of thumb with painters where they say, oh yeah, 40%, 50%, that’s a good number, but is it? I don’t know. I don’t know your numbers, so I don’t like the question.

That that’s a good point. I’m I’m, I have the chat open and I’m reading into the question and it’s, I’ve been told 15 to 25% due to the high dollar amount of projects. And I think that’s, that’s where I want to say like just because these are six-figure projects or more, does not mean that you’re having to decrease what is the proper margin for your company. If that makes sense. So, today’s point, who knows, everyone’s different, even though we throw around a lot of industry standards. But just because the prices increase in the job size does not mean that you’re having to decrease the potential um gross profit for your company.

So, so on Maggie’s point, right, so let’s just say you’re going for 25% gross profit. If you’re overhead, and let’s just say as a company, you wanted to make 10% net profit, so then your overhead would have to be at 33%. So if your overhead is at 15%, 25% is a good number of gross profit wise to make your 10% net. If you’re like me and your overheads more and you wanted 15% net, then you would have to have a higher gross profit. Number. So again depends on your strategy and structure of your company to really determine what is the right gross profit.

And then, like, I’ll tell you right now, if I know, let’s just say I’m having a great year and I’ve broke even as a company, let’s just get crazy, in August, right? We crushed it this year. Broke even as a company. I can drop my margins on my job if I’ve got capacity, if I’ve got manpower, I could drop the numbers on my job and just eat it all, take as much as possible. If I’ve got, I’m slammed and I have a huge backlog and I don’t have enough manpower, my prices go up considerably, right?

So this, this strategy involved with how you play it based on your numbers. And, and some, like, our company is now breaking down per division, what gross profit we need to have because we’re a big company, but we want per division cause In industrial, there’s much more expenses for materials and equipment on those jobs versus commercial. So I can command a higher gross profit on commercial, I’m sorry, I can, I can bring my profit margin down on commercial and increase, I have to increase rather my profit margin on industrial because there’s more costs associated.

So you, you really, again, it comes down to knowing your numbers, working with an accountant, working with uh somebody internal, a controller or your, your, your uh accounting, you know, coordinator to know your numbers and know where you need to be, to know what margins you should or should not have on each job. True. And that’s something that we started doing for our residential, you know, most, most res most of us residential don’t do that. And so we didn’t do it either. So now we can actually understand what’s, you know, what’s a rock bottom like where do I, I have this much room, right?

Like you said, they, like if I’m slow, I’m gonna drop those margins. If I’m busy. I’m gonna go up here, but if I’m slow, I’m gonna drop them more just to get the job and I go right under my below my line, then I’m already I’m paying to do a job and that’s something that a lot of us do not realize in the uh for when you go into the commercial business, you have to understand those things. Otherwise you’re gonna end up in trouble very, very quick.

If you cannot answer right now what your company’s overhead is, either dollar amount or percentage, um, ideally both, then you need to take a backseat to commercial work, and you need to really be able to listen to what Dave just said. And you need to listen to what Dave just said eloquently and nod your head in agreement, not like you’re drinking from a fire hose. Like that makes no sense. And I mean this out of love, um. But if you don’t have those overhead understandings, um, to Juan’s point, because you’re gonna have to pay a little bit more in insurance, more than likely, and you’re gonna have additional things that come up cost-wise, and it’s gonna be extra work on the accounting end, um, and it does get a little bit more expensive and you don’t know where you are, um, it’s probably you probably have a little work to do.

Yeah, and, and cash flow, you mentioned this so the cash flow kills companies, right? So you could have a big backlog of work, right? You could have good profitable jobs, and you could be overextended. And not have enough in your bank account to pay payroll. And when that happens, the minute you miss payroll one time, You are a sinking ship, and people will jump off your ship to save their life, meaning they will quit your company. And before you know it, you will lose your best people and you’ll go out of business.

Time and time again, people that overextend themselves in the commercial world. Go out of business because they’re, they don’t have enough cash flow to sustain themselves. They’ve got the work, they’ve got profitability, they got systems, they got the structure, they got everything, but they went too fast too soon. You don’t even need to know your numbers down pat, but somebody in your company needs to know your numbers. You need to have an expert, whether that’s a consultant or a partner or an accountant that you work with.

Somebody needs to know your numbers to either pull you back or push you forward, so they help guide you. Yeah. Alright, uh, so we talked about breaking into the industry. We talked about going to events, being out there, putting yourself out there. Jesse, Jesse discussed that. We talked about building the relationships, not being desperate in the sales process, how to sell with reasonable pricing. We’re open to negotiation. Let’s back up a second. We’re, we’re doing some projects. We’ve got our feet wet. How do we actually build a brand?

So how do we build something like alpine painting and sandblasting where we become a known serious commercial entity in our area? What steps do we need to proactively take to make that happen over the long term? Do good work. Shit do good work. I would say that’s the best part. I mean, because what, because the thing is a lot of these guys use the same people so like I feel like once you’re in you got a good relationship you do good work, they’re gonna kind of pass your name around um but you also kinda gotta, I feel like you gotta be where your client’s at so like.

Like, uh, Chris was saying, if you wanna do condominiums, be at the condominium association or whatever those guys called, you know, if you wanna do schools, be at the school association. You know, uh, and then once you get one of those, I feel like they’ll pass you around cause they all hang out together. That’s how we do it. I think I want to make sure I understand your question. Um, I think it’s two things, two different things to build a brand and build brand awareness. But if we’re just talking about brand, the first thing my head goes to is is association.

So I, so if I, if I go to Dick Sporting is good and I want to buy a hoodie, and I buy a Nike hoodies because I’m associating something with that brand. That makes that I believe in and I choose that brand over other brands. So you want to think through like what do you want your brand associated with? And Jesse said this, like, I want my brand associated with someone who uh delivers great quality, answers the phone when I call, like what you know what, whatever.

That is, is the HOA contract painting contractor in Indianapolis, right? So like what that association is. And so it’s again, it’s like going back to that spectrum of being very intentional or very incidental. It’s like you would be very intentional on the brand that you’re trying to provide, and you’d be able to cast a good vision in your company, have good core values in your organization. And all those things. So then it’s like if you have a core value of, you know, we do the right thing for our customers, no matter what the expenses to our company, like that starts to translate your brand starts to be your company starts to associate with that, and then that starts to build a brand and then um then if the question is brand awareness, we can, I can answer it differently.

But I love it. I think that’s great, man. Uh, I wanna. No, you’re good, you’re good, Maggie, go for it. I, I do want to say just one thing for, for anyone who wants to come on and ask a question, go ahead and raise your hand, cause we’re about to transition into that. I love that he said, Maggie, go ahead, and then stop. Chris, no one was gonna notice that. Um, it’s a good thing I love Brandon. Um. For us, one thing we’ve learned, and it was through really awesome feedback from some of our commercial clients, not because we weren’t doing this, but you need to have the bravery to be honest.

Um, when we were growing, especially, we had a good friend of ours that works for one of our clients. Um, just tell us, he was like, if you’re not big enough for this yet, just tell us. If you have overbooked yourself and cannot complete this project, please just tell us. And, you know, having the ability to put your ego aside and lead with integrity and honesty, because like Jesse said, this is a world of networking, and a PM at one position or a property manager at one position is probably going to be moving on and taking another job at another company, and then he’s gonna go off on his own, and it’s kind of a little, you know, world of Um, like you said, they, they either all talk or they either all, you know, rotate around and, and if you’re leading with honesty, and if you’re leading with integrity, and you’re um treating people well, it’s, it’s gonna be a huge impact.

Yeah, yeah, I think it’s a ties into another point of The difference between residential and commercial, like if you’re in a if you’re in a metro. You can kind of be a bad contractor and survive if you’re willing to pay enough in marketing. It depending on the way you go with commercial, uh, the path you take, like it does, that’s not gonna work. So like, if if you’re getting started, you, you know, experiment, but like just don’t, it’s not the time to to fake it till you make it, because you can burn that bridge cause as Maggie said, so say you focus on multi-family property management companies, there’s a lot of movement in that space at the property level and property management level, they, they purchase each other and If you form a really good relationship, that relationship can take you everywhere they go, as Maggie just said, but also if you do a really bad job, that’s gonna go everywhere they go.

So you really can get yourself blackballed in the in the commercial um. Um, world, and so you just want to be when you take that step, like I said, like I would experiment, I would, I would start to understand my numbers. I would hopefully be at a point where I can um bring in some controllership, whether it’s inside the company or or a a fractional situation and, you know, make sure I have good production rates and so that I don’t get myself in trouble and I don’t uh firm bridges that I can’t repair. Awesome.

And you’re gonna hit me for this one, but I have to say this very quick because I keep hearing this a lot. Something that happened to me about two years ago is that I keep seeing these guys running and being so big, getting so big so quick. I understand that not everybody has that capability of doing that. A lot of these takes a lot of time to get somewhere where we need to go. So we need to understand the part that yes, there we have some very unique people and we have a lot of them here.

But the rest of us take a little bit more time. So take your time to prepare. Don’t compare yourself to whoever is going faster than you because then you’re gonna fail. I love that, man. I think that’s actually, no, I’m glad you brought that up on that’s actually been one of the, one of the only negative pieces of feedback that actually stuck with me. I would say from any of the, the kind of public stuff I do, like these webinars, round tables, masterminds, is, is someone, someone said, hey, it can make people feel kind of small or like they’re not doing well enough, which is never the intention.

But I see how it comes off that way, so I’m glad you actually pointed that out, uh, because this is just, hey, this is what these companies are doing, this is how it’s working. You can learn from what they’re doing, but everyone’s on their own path. Exactly. I see I see Brad over there laughing at us. my business coaches before is just like reminding yourself that you’re on the right path for you and, and don’t let comparison steal your joy, right? Yeah, I love it. So we have Manuel, let’s let Manuel in.

I appreciate your patience. What’s going on, man? Yes, uh, I see that some commercial. Um, contracts, uh, contractors or commercial companies, uh, they, uh. To do a job, they said, uh, you know, they charge 50% down payment and 50% at the end of the job. Some other companies will say, hey, you know, we’ll pay you the whole thing at the end of the job, or they’ll, we’ll pay you when the county pay us or something like that. Uh, how do you guys handle that, uh, situation because it’s very important to have a cash flow as, as Dave said in the beginning. Yeah.

Um, for us, it’s a negotiation, right? So when we were smaller, we would not accept payment terms that would make us overextended. You know, we weren’t in a position where we could wait to the end of the job to get paid or have payment terms to say 90 or 180 days. Um, now, we’re in a position where we can and we understand that some of the players that we’re working with, that is the payment terms. I have a client right now, it’s 180 day payment terms and that Clears out the lane for us because not everybody can bid to them because they can’t wait that long to collect their money.

So I think it does depend on your positioning. If I’m working direct to owner in the commercial space, meaning I’m creating the contract language, I typically will have payment terms that represent I want a 33% upfront, 13 at 50% completion, and a third upon completion of the project. And that kind of spaces it out and helps us out, um. And when I’m working for GCs, a lot of times it’s, it’s payment, uh, progress payments. You know, you’re not gonna get much up front, but you have an AIA a lot of times that you can kind of fill out, you know, mobilization costs or percent completed the job and then they’ll pay you based on those terms, but it’s a lot more paperwork involved.

But every job is a little different, uh, Manuel, and I think you have to set it up, um, that in a process that works for you. Thank you. Good answer. Awesome. Uh, so we have Michael. Michael, you’re coming up. Thank you, Manuel. Michael, what do you got? Hey, so I’m a rather small company, you know, I’m interested in joining the commercial section in, uh, you know, a couple of years when, you know, financially I am ready, and when would you guys say, you know. A company is ready to take on a commercial job.

So I think the question is when, when, when would a company feel financially viable to approach the commercial space? At what size do they need to be? I, I don’t think it’s much the size. I, I think it’s, there’s a lot of things that are involved in it, and I think we’re just talking about it has to do the finances. It has to do with the understanding too. If you’re coming from residential and doing small projects, and then you’re gonna jump into a commercial. It’s like, I think it’s not just the size of the company.

I think for me it’s personally more of a Are you ready? You know, have you, have you really looked into your company? Have you looked into exactly what that world looks like, you know. To me it’s in my experience right now where we are, I think that’s for me it’s more important than that part. Of what do you all think? I think it’s super super simple equation, Michael, you know. Whatever size jobs you’re able to do at the residential level comfortably and at profit, I would probably decrease that by maybe 50% or 2200% and pursue that as your first commercial job.

And those do exist. There are commercial contracts for $2000. You know, especially if you’re repainting an office before a tenant moves in or an accent wall, um, or something like that, and it’s a great opportunity to see what it feels like and, and realize if you like it. Um, and then also, so let’s pretend the contract amount is $211,22000. You need to have $2300,23 in your bank account, that if it never showed back up in your bank account, your company could keep running. It’s going to, I believe it will.

That’s not what I’m saying, but you have to be able to keep operating. You know, without that. And so those are really simple metrics. If you’re, if your biggest residential job that you’ve comfortably done maybe a couple times was $33,23 then find something in the, you know, $2700 to $2000 range, max out at $10,000 but also make sure you have $10,000 cash cushion in your cash account that, you know, you can float for, for time. Yeah, I’m gonna say the same, just be ready to float it. So Wonderful. OK, thank you, Michael.

Hopefully that answered your question, Kristen. You are up Hey how are you guys doing? It’s actually Christian. I know it’s with a K, but it’s Christian. Christian, my apologies. No, no, no worries at all. Christian, pretty sure, uh, yeah, you’re doing Jesse and Juan, it’s Christian, so Christian here we go, Christian. So real quick question. So we’re basically here in San Diego, California, and As you guys probably know, you guys work on Tyne T&M tickets. You get big clients who work on TNM tickets all the time, but you start financing, basically, it’s financing out of our pocket.

What do you guys do? I mean, we can reach over a limit of 25,000, almost up to like 7003,000 in T&M tickets and change orders that we, that we send. As you guys know that the GC will tend to negotiate those T&M tickets. Um, After the project, once you hand over the change orders, what are you guys’ experience on that part as far as, do you guys have an agreement? Do you guys have a certain percentage and you guys do not go over when it comes to TNM tickets?

So I can, I can tell you that one because we, we do those a lot, but those are in our residential world like we have some of these big homes and you know, we’re in the house for a year, a year and a half. So the way we, again, is the negotiation is negotiation, how we negotiate with our contractors that we deal with different contractors different ways. And so, but with the biggest one that we deal with and we have these big, you know, um. Relationships. So what happens every time we do a change order and we complete a change order is an automatic payment for us.

Like as soon as we complete a change order and it is satisfied and it’s done, it’s signed by them and then we invoice and we need to have that right away. That one doesn’t fall into our 30 day, uh, what do you call a 30 day net or nothing like that, and that’s an agreement that we came up with, uh, because they changed this. Anything else that we agreed in the beginning, it stays with whatever terms we have. Yeah, it’s part of the contract, but as far as commercial, we do more commercial and residential commercial I think I’m, I’m assuming the same thing has to deal with in the beginning, but we do big, I mean we deal with big GCs too, so it’s like I said, it’s just how we set up the contract in the beginning like I don’t, right guys?

I mean, would you guys agree? I think that comes down to uh how good your paperwork is kept throughout the project. Uh, as far in like how well you keep track of change orders and like the process on that and then again going to uh Juan’s point reading the contract and how the change orders usually work because sometimes what we’ll do is like uh I’ve even done it myself I would be like, oh just get it done. They said they’re gonna pay us happen change order never gets paid whatever you know but that’s like the documentation process but also you gotta read the fine print and that’s where your lawyer comes in place because.

They, a lot of times the superintendents will sign off and then in the in the change orders they’ll they’ll say in the contract it’ll say like must be signed off by a certain person, so like they can even get you like that, you know what I’m saying? Exactly. Yeah, we usually get superintendents. No, go ahead, sorry. I was gonna say we had great advice, exactly what Jesse said, make sure you know who should be signing it, um, because we almost got in a legal battle with the GC because the person who signed it no longer worked for the company and was not authorized and it was a solid.

Uh, close to $200,000 worth of change order work, um, over the course of a project, and thankfully, you know, it all got worked out, but also what you, what you call your change orders, like the actual ticket that they’re signing, um, needs to be verified with your lawyer, cause we, we did learn that that varies by state, um, you know, notice of work, sometimes you see that is not Is not actually a change order. They can sign it and say, yeah, I noticed you did it. You know, so like what you say is very important.

Um, you asked a great question. We don’t have a limit on change orders. We freaking love change orders because we make a lot of money on them. Um, it’s guaranteed profit, it’s control and of what seems to be often chaotic world because we do a lot of new construction. Um, so we love change orders. We welcome them, um. And so I think, you know, it’s just a matter of making sure you navigate them and everyone’s going to do it differently, but definitely making sure that you on the front end know what to call it, who needs to sign it, when it needs to be turned in, sometimes it’s not on the same cycle as the AIA billing, um, etc.

And so those things are all just details that unfortunately are going to be client by client based for the most part. Yeah, and depending on the job, on the back end, of course, you make money on the back end with the TNM tickets. But the thing is, when it’s you’re financing a large project, you know, a huge project, 11, a project over a million dollars and our change orders end up being, you know, over 2000, 300K sometimes, and you’re negotiating with them, you know, to get paid after 3 months.

I was just trying to see how you guys actually maneuver that. I see, um, Dave shaking his head. Maybe we’re doing something wrong on our head, you know, in order to get those change orders, the turnaround on the change orders. A minute cash, Maggie said. Yeah. Yeah, um, Christian. I, I would be concerned if I was 3 months out from getting paid from a GC and you have that many tickets, right? So that’s a flag to me, you’re doing something wrong in regard to getting either the approval or, you know, getting them submitted in a, in a proper way because the longer that that contractor drags it out on you, the less likely you’re gonna get paid.

Um, when I, I love, I love, we hunt change orders, we love, we call them, you know, additional work orders, um. Maggie said it really well. Every person you work with has a different process. The more established the GC, the more detailed the process, and the harder it is to collect from that person. Um, in some cases, early on, if I see that this is gonna be a job, that’s gonna be a lot of tickets involved, I’m going to their office. And I’m asking who is the right person that approves the tickets, and I’m I’m, I want to know exactly step by step, how do I follow this process so that we don’t have too many tickets for you, because look, I, I don’t want to slow down the job, but I also want to get paid.

So like, explain this step by step so that I know how to do this the way you want me to. And when, when you go to that level of detail, you never get stuck for money in the end. You have the authority and ability to know like what what can I do and what can I do in order to get paid. Who is the person who’s signing off? You want me to send it to this person? I have to wait how long? OK, great. I can move forward now and feel comfortable.

If you just leave it up in the air and say, oh, they’re eventually gonna pay me, you’re gonna get negotiated down, you’re gonna get a portion of what you submitted. Love it. Perfect, thanks for answering that. We gotta move on. I wanna ask, I want one more question to get asked, then we do have to wrap up within about 3 minutes here. Uh, I think it’s an interesting question. So Philip Klein asked, for those that travel between states, how does that complicate the operations of your business? Insurance, bonding, uh, paying for your subs, do they travel management or any of you union in some states and non-union in others?

I’d love to speak to this briefly, and I know Dave probably has and Chris a little bit more experience, but we do travel um for key customers because that’s what a gentleman from Alpine Painting told us to do. Um, and we have had a lot of success with that. However, our first large out of state job, we were the only non-union, um, company which caused a lot of um job site culture issues. We sent our subcontractors to the job. Um, and we almost lost $700,000 thanks to change orders and a lot of hard work.

We dug ourselves out of a hole, but it is extremely complicated, um, and requires probably a lot more. Research than we gave it. Um, in, in these types of questions, Phil, you’re so smart and you always ask really good questions. I’m gonna let Dave speak, but we have figured it out through very sloppy learning experience, um, and it can be lucrative and it can be a great relationship building piece. Yeah. Uh, we’re very selective in who we work for out of state. It has to be a great client who we’ve had a track record of success with in the past in our local area, in order for us to say yes to it.

There is a lot of complications. If you have in-house labor, it’s travel crews, and anybody knows travel crews who are painters? Yeah, production slips a little bit. There’s a lot of challenges. You got to build in some extra money like bailing out your crew lead if they get a little wild at the bar. Um, there’s issues where if you’re using subcontractors that there’s insurance requirements that maybe cover them in some states and not others, and that’s one of our biggest liabilities, um, is getting a worker’s comp claim from a sub that comes back and hits our policy, right, affects our EMR, um.

So there’s a, there’s a whole slew and I know we’re almost out of time, Brandon, so to be fair to you. There’s a whole slew of concerns. If you go, in my opinion, slow and controlled, working with the right client, it can be a great experience. Otherwise, you, you could get hammered. Yeah, appreciate that, guys. Sounds like uh a lot in commercial requires some planning, uh, some discipline, and maybe a little bit of patience, maybe, maybe even more so than in residential. So I appreciate you guys taking the time to share this.

I think it was a phenomenal panel. I hope our attendees, if we can see some, some likes, some comments, something like that for the panel here, that would be great. Uh, I, I learned a ton here and I’ve been doing this for quite some time, so I know a lot was shared. Dave, Jessie, Chris, Maggie, Juan, I appreciate you guys. It’s good seeing you as always. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you, Brandon. Awesome. So yeah, it’s always good to see you guys. Uh, so we’ll be hanging out at Expo soon.

So anyone who signed up for Expo? Yeah, yeah, it’s gonna be a good time. Let’s have some drinks. When do we not? Hey, no bull riding this time, OK. We’ll keep it more kosher. Hey, uh, these, these travel painters, man, you know, send them to an expo. They go, travelers, I know, Rolling Stones. Um, cool.

—-

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 PainterMarketingPros.com to learn more about our services. You can also reach out to me directly by emailing me at Brandon@PainterMarketingPros.com and I can give you personalized advice on growing your painting business. Until next time, keep growing.

Brandon Pierpont

Marketing Mastermind Panel – PCA Residential Conference 2024

Marketing Mastermind Panel – PCA Residential Conference 2024

In this series titled “Systems Beat Fear”, John MacFarland of MacFarland Painting will be discussing how to overcome what can...
Read More
Effective Lead Generation – PCA Women in Paint Conference 2024

Effective Lead Generation – PCA Women in Paint Conference 2024

In this series titled “Systems Beat Fear”, John MacFarland of MacFarland Painting will be discussing how to overcome what can...
Read More
Send It: Direct Mail in the Digital Age

Send It: Direct Mail in the Digital Age

In this series titled “Systems Beat Fear”, John MacFarland of MacFarland Painting will be discussing how to overcome what can...
Read More

Would Like to Hear How We Can Help Your Painting Company Grow?

SCHEDULE A FREE STRATEGY CALL TODAY

Get Started with Painter Marketing Pros Today