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.

In this series titled “3rd Generation Painter, 1st Generation Mindset”, Joshua Joosten & Cody Roberts of Sequoia Painting will be sharing their story on building a near $2m residential and commercial painting company based in Tulare County, CA. They will be detailing the changes that Sequoia Painting has undergone from starting as a post-retirement hobby for Joshua to a profitable and growing enterprise with a very unique approach to the painting industry.

In episode 2, they will discuss their counterintuitive organizational structure and how it has improved Sequoia Painting.

If you want to ask Joshua and Cody 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.

Welcome back guys. How you doing? Thanks for having us. Good. Yeah, I uh I am excited for this episode. I think you might ruffle a few feathers, which is good.

It’s got to perk up some ears. I think it’s great. Yeah, awesome. So let’s get let, let’s, let’s actually start um just kind of your organizational structure overall. What does it, what does it look like at Sequoia painting? Um As far as our staffing or organi organizational structure um starts with clear expectations. I would say that’s kind of first and foremost and expectations by way of uh job descriptions, you know, um gray area is not good for expectations. You know, the, uh it’s like an open ended comment, you know, you may get a reaction, but it’s probably not the one you’re looking for.

So, um I, I would say that’s probably the, the, the whole start of the organization is the, the clear understanding of roles and the expectation that the brand has placed on said roles, you know. Yeah, yeah, clear, clear job descriptions and roles. How many people do you guys have uh in your office staff, the staff is a total of five including Joshua and myself. OK. And then le let’s get a breakdown of, of those rules. OK. So, um probably one of the most crucial pieces of our puzzle is our admin professional or our, our lead of admin and she’s the office manager, she’s accounts payable.

She’s uh man, she pay payroll. Uh She is a juggernaut when it comes to office professional uh personnel um from there. Uh a big piece of what we do that we feel is where a ton of value in Sequoia comes from for your residential customers. And you know, some, sometimes our, our commercial customers is our color consultant. Um A young man is very good at visualizing. Um He’s very up to date on trending and forecasted trends and um you know, helping all customers, whether they have a great understanding of what they want the colors to be or if they’d have zero idea, they just know they want it to be different.

You know, that’s, he’s very integral to what we do. Um That’s where a lot of our value we see comes from is the, the reassurance to the people that decide to contract with us that you’re gonna be happy with where your money is being spent before the paints on the wall. Um And then, you know, the new edition this year was a residential estimator. Uh Obviously, that is a huge weight to bear in, in any service based company. You know, the the boots on the ground, the the face that’s knocking on the door.

Always remember friends, knock strangers, ring doorbells. Um Him being the professional knowledgeable person that knows his job description and expectation. Um It is a huge piece and then from the uh the the delegating part, you know, you step into the things Joshua and myself. Do you know Joshua um handles just about all of what we would source a company like yours to do. You know, he is uh Uber involved in the marketing, the, the presence on the social media accounts um as well as setting jobs up for, for kickoff day one, you know, materials are ordered, all the paperwork is in order, um things are ready for the teams to hit the ground running.

Um And then myself has uh been able to kind of morph my time allocations to really immersing myself back in the the new construction commercial side of things, you know, and really trying to get through uh at least a couple commercial jobs a month and sending them out to the people requesting those and, um, getting relieved of being the residential estimator, which is, was a, uh the largest piece of what I did in previous years. Um, bringing Paul up to take that over, uh, has enabled me to, uh redirect my efforts, you know, and, and get back into the war room, we call it where all the, all the plans are strung out and we’re going through the jobs that look like they’re a good fit for our company and with contractors we really, uh, like to do business with and, or want to do business with.

So, um, everybody is important to kind of, you know, reflect on the things. Some of the things we talked about in the previous episode is, it’s, I, I if somebody’s, if something’s missing, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of felt, you know, Josh, jokes about being able to, to leave and everything’s fine, you know, which that is true. But there’s the things he does still need to be done to some extent, you know, whether they’re able to be done remote or not. Um It’s, uh it’s very much a team effort for.

How long have you guys had a, a full time killer consultant? Uh You know, that, that was something Joshua had uh a lot of importance on that predates my existence with Sequoia painting. So, um he’s, it, it’s been, I guess, since you decided or was, was, was forced out of the, the garage platform into an office. You know, that’s, that’s about how long the color consultant has been uh on the payroll here. Yeah, I, I don’t, I don’t take the color consultant very lightly. I, I’m a huge, you know, making sure, you know, one of my biggest fears is us putting the paint on or our team, I should say putting the paint on, on, on the substrates or this, you know, interiors or exteriors or whatever and the customer ends up not liking the color, you know, it’s so we, we spend a lot of time and effort behind that to, to put that together.

Um The gentleman that does it, he does a phenomenal job with it. He does a mock ups, you know, on the computer, uh utilizing a program that we have. Um you know, those will get emailed, uh customers still kind of not satisfied there. We’ll go to the extent of actually putting samples on the house. Uh uh you know, um so we want to really make sure when they’re signing off on those colors and signing the color form, you know, that they’re 27% satisfied with, with the color scheme that they have chosen.

It seems like a pretty big differentiator. I have a, a full time color consultant on staff. You don’t hear that a lot. Yeah, like I said, I’m a uh circling around, I had an extra little story. Uh The um probably 290 years, we were trying to figure it out 290 years ago. Uh I painted a house and at that time, you know, you didn’t have a lot of technology they had today. So you would actually put samples on the wall and we would usually put a, you know, 210 ft by 23 ft uh sample on the wall and um did this on this lady’s house and painted the whole entire house and she got home from work and um, didn’t like the color.

She almost went into tears with it, you know, even though we spent a lot of time back then, we thought, you know, trying to get her to dial in this color. And long story short, we ended up having to, you know, repaint the house uh for her and uh circling back around and we actually met um, a, a gentleman that um came here to our office and we were talking about um direct mail with him and that’s what he kind of does for a living. And he’s kind of educating on the do s and don’t with direct mail.

And, uh, he’s like, you know, your last name is not very common. Uh, you know, do you have a, your, your father named Jake? And I said, yeah, he says you guys painted my house about 22 years ago or something. And my wife didn’t like the color, you know, and, you know, and, and I’m like, wow, what I tell that story all the time to, to everybody because that’s one of my biggest fears is making sure that we have the colors, you know, locked in 2100% before moving forward.

You know, it was kind of crazy how that circled back around 2000 years later, you know, you remember it and apparently they still remember it also. Yes, they did. I remember exactly. It was Christmas. They have a huge uh living room that has like 20 ft ceilings and they had a Christmas tree that was being delivered and yeah, it was part of a nightmare at the time. But the Griswold family Christmas tree. Yeah, something major. Yeah. So we’re, we’re real big on color, color consultations here, man. That’s wild.

Oh, ok. So you guys have the five in office staff. What, what do your crews look like? How many crews do you have? What are they, how many painters per crew? What does that look like? So, crews are always a tandem. Um We have it’s still something I occasionally do move around like chess pieces, you know, to see what’s most efficient, you know, because, um, the way, uh, the way we look at everything we look at everything has a, a labor hour value, you know, it’s gonna take x amount of effort for why task, you know.

So, um, in theory, you know, like a large pizza, if I order a large pizza and I eat it all by myself, I mean, I got lunch for the whole week. You know, now, if I share with the office, man, that pizza is gone in one sitting, you know, um, the pizza is the job, you know, and, uh, the, the labor hours or the slices. So we’ve learned two always seems to be the most efficient, especially if you’re successful and keeping two guys together that mesh well, that learn each other, you know, learn each other that they start to go around the job almost with one mind.

You know what I mean? Um, so they’re basically always two main teams and we currently have 5.5 teams is, is what we have. I got, we got an odd number in the field right now. So you said 5.5? Is that what you just said? 5.5 teams currently? Because we got, we got an odd number currently. Got it. Ok. One of them smells. So nobody will work with that guy. Yeah. Ok. Now let’s get into our heated topic. What? There was one, there was one position that I haven’t heard you guys mention.

And so what, so what is, let’s get into that and, and how you guys have done this differently? You bet you wanna start, Josh. Yeah. You know, um, obviously that is the, uh, project manager position. Uh, one that I get asked quite a bit, you know, and when I’m going to these different uh PC A conferences and stuff is, you know, project manager, what’s their role? And, and people kind of shocked when we, we tell them that we do not have any project managers at all, you know, that we, um I have, you know, one of my, my mentors that owns a very large tile company uh with roughly probably 200 employees, um has zero project managers and we’re, you know, adopting a lot of his policies and in ways that he does business and we, um yeah, we decided to go ahead and, and not have a project manager.

Um We, we brought everybody in uh foreman’s, you know, and, and had a AAA great meeting with them because like anything, when you bring something to the table, you gotta have the whole company buying in on, on something, right? You just can’t make the decisions on your, on your own and, and then you only have half the people buying in. So we had a meeting with all the foreman and basically kind of said these are kind of the options. We can hire a project manager for, you know, X amount of dollars and, and, or we can put those X amount of dollars into your pocket, which will mean that you will have a lot more responsibility to, to, to bring to the table when you’re on the job sites, you know, performing, uh, on the jobs, you know, and of course, like any natural human, they’re gonna, they want the money in their pocket.

You know, they don’t need somebody overlooking them and babysitting them, you know, they’re grown, grown people and they, they, they wanted to take that challenge on themselves. And so, um we ended up, you know, recreating our uh pay structure and, um, and put, put that extra, you know, few dollars uh towards the performances that we would have paid for a project manager and, and they all are their own project managers on, on their own projects. And, and the, the extent of that is, I’m sorry, Brandon, were you getting ready to ask a question, please?

No, no, keep going. Um The extent of that, I mean, they very much manage but all the things they do are what, you know, that project manager would do. We, we expect back to the expectations, right? Expectations and, and their job descriptions. Um, these skilled individuals are tracking material usage on every job. Right. I mean, they’re tracking the, the paper tape and plastic. They use, um, the gallons of paint, you know, the foremen that are more established, they handle their own reordering once the initial order, initial order is always handled it, you know, by office.

So it’s staged and ready ahead of time. Um The guys that are, you know, willing to take the more responsibility, uh Of course, their pay scale reflects they, they handle the reordering the tracking of it. I mean, all these are all things we lean on to accurately job costs. So it’s all things that are part of that expectation, you know, all things that if we had a project manager, that that’s all they did, right. That’s a lot of what they’re doing is going around is the job on schedule.

Um Do they have the materials they need? What have they used to this point? Is everything going per scope, right? Did they read the work order? Do they know what the work order says? So on and so forth? So, um it’s, I, I mean, I, I’m, I’m kind of hoping we, we’re used to the barrage of questions in this industry when it comes to the no project manager deal. And I really hope that kind of ignites it because we do do it. I mean, there’s, it’s not smoke and mirrors, it’s not me and Josh behind the scenes doing what a project manager should be doing and just saying, we don’t have one like that’s not it at all.

You know, I mean, I’m not overly proud of this statement, but there’s a large amount of our projects that I will never even step foot on or sink. You know, it’s just my schedule doesn’t allow for it. I got my own full calendar of things going on to keep the wheel turning and I have all the trust in the world that things are being carried out as they should. You know, our our customer input validates that for us, the job costing validates that for us. Um the smiles on the guy’s face is doing it, validates it for us.

You know what I mean? So what, what questions or push back have you guys received when talking with other painting company owners about this lack of a project manager position? I just think it’s largely people’s bad experiences that have been convinced, right? That now you gotta have somebody out there overseeing this stuff. You have to, you have to um Josh had a mindset before I came to Sequoia that you, you know, if he had a little bit higher of a pay scale than the average in the area, he could expect more, right?

Well, that’s been a mindset we’ve kept. So um we have no problem paying people their due worth, right? That’s, that’s what life’s all about man. You find people that share the love of your company with you that love the brand, they love representing the brand and you do the best you can to make their life good and they’re gonna do the exact same for your company. You know, it hasn’t always been easy, Brandon. Like this is not, you know, it’s not like, oh, yeah, we decided no project managers and it’s always been peachy keen, you know, back to the, the previous episode, the higher, higher, slow fire, fast. Right.

Like there’s been some, there’s been some aches and pains along the way. You know, you learn some stuff, you learn some stuff, the way business owners and, and management have to buy, you know, having to smooth the water when something doesn’t go. Right. And it didn’t go right, because a policy or procedure wasn’t followed or you didn’t have the right person in that spot. You know, this, this is, it’s life, it’s not unicorns and rainbows all the time. But, um, that’s really, you know, the couple con Joshua has had more conversations with that than I have with other contractors from around the country.

But that always seems to be kind of the general demeanor. It’s just, it’s obviously a route of less friction I would say to have that project manager. Right. There’s much less, um, effort involved from management and training perspective if you are figuring in your, in, in your company’s cost, hey, I need a project manager because I got, you know, six crews out there working and I got to make sure everything is on track and going, how it’s supposed to be. That’s the, that is definitely the path of less friction.

You know what I mean? Um Like Josh said, when we had that meeting with uh the, the foreman we have employed right now, I, I said it last episode, I couldn’t be more happy with the human beings that are involved in this company. Currently. I, I it’s been, uh it’s been trying to get here, of course, you know, and it will always have those time frames that are gonna make you scratch your head and go good grief, man. What, what has taken place? You know, you know, that just comes with the territory, you know, and if you’re wanting to be the leader of a company and, and build something of value that’s just got to be something you’re ready to, to face, you know, um the people we have now they, they were open for the challenge, you know, and I think a lot of that came from and, and money can’t always be the motivating factor, right?

Like that’s, that’s been proven throughout history. Uh More times, there’s tons of awesome books on that, you know, like uh at the end of the day, we all need it. It’s a necessity to survive, but it can’t be the sole motivating factor for wanting to succeed. You know, and I think um the confidence that we, you know, tried to portray to these team members, um gave them the confidence that, yeah, why not? Why, why shouldn’t we, you know, handle this in house? So to say, versus Sequoia painting have to employ somebody to come and make sure my job is going OK. Why can’t I uh why can’t I manage this project?

I mean, we all know painters do side jobs, right? When they want to make a little extra money for vacation or whatever this kind of stuff is, they manage those just fine, right? Like, so we, uh I, I really think the, us having the confidence in them that we can do this guys, we got all the tools here to make this happen. I, I think that, you know, it just gave them the, the confidence to, to try it, to take it off. You know, have you ever had a project manager at Sequoia?

Painting? No, no. And, and some of those incidents, you know, nothing’s gonna go perfectly even with project managers. But do you feel that you’ve had a, a larger number of negative incidents because of this structure? No, II, I wouldn’t think so. I mean, of course, we didn’t do it the other way to have the side by side comparison, you know, but um I think any of the woes that have been experienced by, you know, a job not going 100% correctly or as planned, um, more than likely would happen with or without a project manager, you know, I, I don’t think that’s the uh the end all, fix all to uh paint contracting companies, um validating the things going on in the field or going how they should.

Yeah, we’re one of the things that we are and I am really, really huge on is communication. Yeah, communication, communication, communication and every one of our foreman’s, they can communicate on a daily basis with their customer. You know, so there’s not, you know, a couple of days going to where a customer can get and start boiling because something’s not going right in their eyes, you know, this is if day one, they start communicating with them and they see something that they’re not happy with, that is addressed immediately from the foreman, you know, so it’s something that’s not brewing, you know, over three or four day period, you know, and then all of a sudden you finish a, you know, six or seven day job and they got all these things that just been aggravating them.

So things are put on the table like immediately, you know, they communicate with them on a daily basis, you know. And so, you know, communication is a huge thing in, in, in life, in general, you know. Yeah. 1003%. Yeah, I love that and, and I like how you’re kind of flipping it. So as opposed to the, the quality control, maybe not being there as much, it’s there more because the feedback is more immediate. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s been, um, one thing that I still enjoy is when we have a new team member, come on and they, you know, say a painter of 15 years or something.

And I, I don’t understand the, the, the idea behind it because it’s just not how we operate. My brain’s not wired that way. But, I mean, there’s sole proprietors and paint contractors in our area that, I mean, you show up to work and you paint the house and you don’t talk to the customer, the, the owner talks to the customer or somebody on behalf of the owner talks to the customer. You know what I mean? And they’re there every morning to start the crew and then once the crew is started, you know, then they, they may leave for a few hours at a time or something like that.

So we encourage interaction. I mean, humans thrive on interaction, right? So, um customers appreciate that. I mean, one thing I say every time we have all of our team together, you know, and this year was something I leaned on really heavy, you know, with, um leads being much more of a premium this year, you know, and not setting any uh huge records as far as revenue or growth or anything. Um Every little thing you could do to make us different is what we have to do, you know.

So the communicating with the customer finding some common ground, you know, hey, good. Morning, Mrs Jones. How are you doing? Yeah. Hey, I just want, you know, it’s gonna be a little noisy. We’re gonna be around this side of the house or whatever it is. You know what I mean? We, we encourage that like, we need to, we want that relationship, we want them to feel comfortable talking to those customers and like Josh said, that way the customer feels comfortable if they see something that they don’t think is right or they need clarification on something, you know, uh if that’s not part of your culture, then your customer, you know that they’ve never met this crew before and the crew is not real friendly or not and you know, doesn’t, not, you know, upfront and talking to them and they may have a question that they don’t ask and it results in a Google review a week later that then you got to answer at that time, like man, that, that would have been great to have spearheaded that right at the get go, you know, and put this customer at ease.

Like we are extremely fortunate to be chosen by these residential customers for them to spend their hard earned money with our company. And that’s not lost on anybody that wears the brand. You know, that’s something that we make sure across the board, everybody takes that seriously. You know, I mean, speaking for myself, my home is the largest investment I will probably ever make right I, I can’t think of many other things. Remember, we’re in California here. I can’t think of many other things. I’m gonna spend a few $100,000 on just to have a safe place to, to sleep and be with my family and call home. Right.

So, um, our customers are no different. So I, if they’re choosing our company to work on what is arguably the biggest investment they will ever make that should never be taken lightly, you know, and that’s, that’s an honor. That’s, that’s some, that’s something to be appreciated. You know what I mean? I love that, man. I, I love this. I, it’s absolutely not an abdication of responsibility. It’s a, it’s a reassignment of responsibility and, and I think when you remove that sort of like a middle management layer of a project manager, you, you’re forcing the team to elevate and, and so what would typically be perceived as maybe the lower, lowest rung in the hierarchy, but lowest rung.

Yet, ironically, they’re actually the people who, who are in the home and, and actually around the homeowner the most and, and probably the most important person in the whole time. You’re, you’re kind of forcing them to, you’re leveling them up in a way that actually when you think about it makes more sense than the, than the way a lot of companies are run. And, you know, we’re, we’re always constantly scouting because we want, we want that right. Supervisor that right Foreman for that position, because not everybody’s gonna be qualified for that position, you know.

So we’re constantly scouting all the time within our company, like who’s gonna be the next foreman, who’s the person that’s, you know, doing a good job, communicating with the customers right now, you know, and, um, so we’re always, you know, scouting and, and trying to find the, the next fit for those positions. You know, not all great painters are great supervisors, not all great painters are great leaders. And in our platform, not all great painters are gonna be great foreman slash project managers, you know, and that’s uh doesn’t mean there’s not a place for them in the company.

Maybe that is what it means, you know, to back to the fire fast, you know, to not sound in inhumane about it. Hopefully, that’s not the impression I’m giving anybody that listens to this because uh we, we enjoy the humans that are here. So, but it, it’s not gonna fit everybody so that, that culture fit, you know, is of the utmost importance. Yeah, I, I wanna, I wanna dive into that a little bit. What is the typical path to become a four minute sequoia painting? So we have uh we’ve only had a couple guys honestly that when they, when they come to us as an applicant for that form and position, um we still make it very clear to them that we understand that’s what you’re applying for, but we go back to that 90 day probation period and we gotta make sure that both, both ends of this deal are gonna be happy with it, you know, that, that we’re a fit for you and vice versa.

So, um it’s still obviously a sit down interview process and then getting paired with the our trusted individuals in the field, you know, and getting that kind of evaluation. Now, it’s a whole different job description from a list of responsibilities, you know, um they have that on the front end. If that’s what they are interested in applying for is to be a foreman. They get that job description. We also supply them with the painter job description. That way, the, the expectation there in front of them is it is apparent, you know, it is back to the, the price can’t be the motivating factor, you know what I mean?

Um They, they gotta want what’s on that requirement sheet to be a foreman for us. Um But we got our eyes on someone right now that we’ve been watching and uh Carlos, you know, he’s, he’s been on our radar for what now? He’s a, he’s a painter right now. Um He’s a journeyman level painter. He’s been paying for probably, I don’t know, 25 plus years, you know, give or take and uh he’s on our radar right now and, and uh you know, we like for him to, to work with a couple different foreman for, you know, six months to a year.

We’re not quick at trying to, we, we learned our lesson in this when you’re doing this kind of, uh, set up without having project managers. You definitely can’t just throw somebody and hire somebody as a foreman right off the streets. You know, you, they need to come into this culture and see what it’s about and see the interactions they’re having and the relationships they’re building with the customers. So we’ll watch him for several months, several months, you know. So I guess the short answer Brandon is, it’s uh it, we will accept an applicant that wants to be a foreman that we will never detour that.

But it’s, we are huge on the hiring from within, right? So if you’re putting up from pain to foreman, you come into our system as a painter and, and you work like Joshua said, you work with the, you work with the foreman that we have in the field now, you know, we move you around just so you can kind of get the fuel for everything. Um If at that time, we evaluate both ends are happy with the relationship. Um We, we, we can definitely look into that, moving you into a foreman position and getting in your own van and having a painter alongside you and being responsible, they were responsible for these projects, you know, and that, you know, when you get a foreman, you know, we, we give them a, their, you know, a sequoia painting, uh, vehicle to take home, you know.

Um, so we gotta make sure that we got our TS crossed and our, I’s about it and we’re gonna just, you know, release this liability to one of our foreman, you know, they’re taking our, our, our bands home, you know, and, and that has basically a billboard going down the road, you know, so we wanna make sure that they’re acting right all the time, you know, and they’re trusting them that, you know, they’re not gonna use our vehicle for personal use and that kind of stuff. So we’re, we’re really scouting, we’re, we’re watching them constantly, you know, I, I will say I, I think the, the best foremen have come from within.

Honestly, they really have, um, uh, there’s, I probably on one hand, can I tally up the guys that came in as foreman that were great fits as that as that role. Um Seth comes to mind just, just a couple Brandon. Honestly. I mean, typically our, our quality guys, they, they came from within, uh, that’s, that’s definitely our preference. We know they like the culture, right? They’ve already, they’ve already been with the company and they know even though they’re not a foreman, they fully understand that form and expectation because they work with one every day and they see what that individual does.

They see what that individual conducts, you know, and you guys have, have had a plenty of time to evaluate them and, and figure out how they are as a team member, I assume the, the, it sounds like you guys said, the pay differential between painter and foreman is typically a few dollars an hour. So when you’re at the, the high end of the scale for both, they’re separated by $7 an hour when you’re at the high end of both. So, um that’s something we stand on just because of the expectation of being a foreman.

You know, it’s, there should be that kind of a spread if either individual is at the high end of that scale, you know, a lot of expectation, we don’t ever sugar coat it and, and say that it’s not, you know, that’s why there’s no project manager out there doing it because it’s, there’s an expectation to be in a form of Sequoia. It seems like this could create a possible issue. Let’s say you have a painter and the painter is really good, but he’s seeing what the foreman is making and, and is interested in transitioning into a foreman.

But that painter, as you guys identified maybe doesn’t have the skill set to be a foreman to, to take on that responsibility to lead um you know, the painter alongside of him or her. Do you end up ever losing really good painters because of that? No, I wouldn’t say because of that, honestly. Um, I, you know, we’ve had individuals inquire about being a foreman, right? Um, and when we are willing to take the, the chance at that, you know, like, ok, we can see this probably being ok, you’ve been with us for X amount of time, um, you know, the processes, you’ve been through a couple of the, of our regular trainings, you know, um, it’s still a probationary period and that’s something that we tell them up front like you are a payroll employee, right?

You are full time. You’re now applying for, you’re, you’re applying for something different, right? So to us, it’s not as simple as just, all right. Well, you’re a foreman now, like there’s still, there’s still the proving ground, right? Like there’s still that still that 90 day probation that, like I said earlier, it, it doesn’t have to go 90 days, but it, it, it very well can if we need it to. So we make sure that’s crystal clear now. Of course, that doesn’t mean if it doesn’t work out, hey, you don’t work here anymore.

Like no, you are still more than welcome to be a part of the team as a painter. Um and we can implement a performance improvement plan. If this is truly a goal of yours to become a foreman, run your own jobs, then let’s go over the things we noticed that kept you from that this time or whatever it is, you know, and um just throughout the course of my life and I have learned uh empowering people, get you so much further than cutting them down, you know, like we, we gotta be aware of shortcomings.

That’s, that’s just part of being a human and, and conducting any type of professionalism, but e empowering people and, and helping them get to those goals, you know, will hopefully pay dividend, you know, and whenever it’s all said and done, I, if it’s something they truly want and they take your suggestion seriously and they really do love the brand and want to continue to grow with it. We’ll, you’ll see it happen, you know. Yeah, I love that. Empowering people. Get you so much further than cutting them down.

I think that a lot of business owners miss that. It’s tough. I mean, it, it, it, nobody, um, I, if, if I were to talk to myself, you know, five or 10 years ago and said, hey, in 10 years, you’re gonna be partnered up with your cousin, running a painting contracting company trying to be the best leader you possibly can. There’s a pretty good chance I wouldn’t have believed a word of that, you know what I mean? Um, in a one form of construction or another. Uh, nice guy.

Is it typically what gets said about most people that are out there, paving roads and finishing concrete and doing all this kind of stuff, you know what I mean. But, um, man, yeah, I said, I, I truly believe those words that, I mean, it, I, if somebody falls short and it doesn’t meet expectation, but they, they, they do meet the values, right? And they do fit the culture. Well, I mean, I, I have a firm belief in the day. You don’t think you have anything to learn.

You, you, you become worthless, you, you lose a ton of value, you know. So a as long as they share that mindset with me with Joshua, um let’s, let’s do what we, let’s do what we need to do to get you there. You know, we’ll, if it’s something you really want, man, we let’s buckle down, let’s make it happen, you know, love that, help them, help them develop the skill set to be able to achieve it. Absolutely investing into your team. So let me ask you uh maybe a little harder question.

So you guys are doing this successfully with W-2, you’re able to pretty fully control the process and the team, they’re your employees. Do you think that this structure would work with subcontractors? Go ahead it. Oh man. I, I honestly, I uh I’m not sure the answer to that Brandon because uh I’ve, I’ve never had to obviously deal with the subcontract model. I’ll tell you, I got a lot of friends in the industry that are from different parts of the country and to be frankly honest with you, I it seems like it’s a pain in the butt to be able to sub things out, you know.

Uh uh, but again, I’ve never done it, I’ve never had to deal with it. So, um, and that’s a good question. II, I think it all would boil down to, and, and again, I don’t know the laws and stuff, but, you know, boiling back down to the, the training. Are you able to do the training on those subcontractors and do some type of uh a training on them to let them know what your expectations are. Um Again, I don’t know laws on it, so I’m not sure.

Um I don’t see why it wouldn’t work, but I, I, um I, I think from the standpoint of the culture and, you know, the hub with the spokes holding the ring, um I, I look at subcontractors is like an unbalanced wheel almost, you know, and I don’t know if that’s how it would be Brandon. We’ve never done, you know, that’s just my, that, that gut instinct, you know, the, the projecting what that would look like. Um I don’t know the true benefit of doing the subbing other than if you’re just extremely successful at contracting all this work and you can’t get to it in a timely manner.

So you sell it off for a lesser profit margin than you would do for yourself. Right? Because the subs got to be able to turn a profit on it also. Right. That’s so, um, I, I think my, uh, for our immediate area and II, I know we share some of the same woes as other paint contractors in their areas as far as, um, less than informed contractors or contractors that don’t job cost or, you know, don’t play by all the rules and even if they don’t play by all the rules, at least doing the job costing and then understanding the prices that they’re putting out there and these kind of things, you know, I, I think I would just assume if I have a contractor that wants my work, right?

Wants to be a sub of ours, why wouldn’t I put the effort for, to get them up to speed to be healthy competition instead of sell them my work? You, you know what I mean? I, I feel like we have an appetite to feed here and as far as sequoia is concerned, um, if I’m gonna sell our food to another company, why wouldn’t I just try to help that company if they’re receptive to it? Of course, to become healthy competition versus just rely on me to sell them the work, you know.

So let’s say somebody’s listening to you guys and, and they’re interested in trying this, you know, to me, you guys have made some pretty compelling points. So they say, well, maybe, maybe we don’t wanna have a project manager. I’ve been looking for a way to level up our team and give them more opportunity. What steps would you recommend they take to, to, to make that transition or maybe just test that transition, you gotta make sure you got a great process and, and not just the painting, right?

We’re in the painting industry. So the doing the work, it it should be the easier part of the equation. It’s the coordinating that, that takes the training, right? Um Joshua’s mantra communication, communication, communication, that’s kind of the backbone really of that whole thing. Um We utilize Slack. We’re huge advocates for that platform. Everything the company does is by way of Slack. Um Every project has a channel, all parties involved are in that channel, any questions, comments, concerns updates. Um This happened, that happened, it’s all through Slack.

So I if some anybody listening wants to take the venture of no project managers and, and empowering their foreman to be s you know, efficient project managers in their own environment. Um That’s definitely where it starts. It, it starts with that clear line of communication. It starts with the expectation and you have to make sure they have all the tools they need to be able to do that, right? We can’t ask people to carry out a task and not provide them what’s needed to do. So, you know, that’s why we use Slack, right?

We, we want daily updates where this project’s at. Is there any issues? Did you have a hang up. Um, we do, uh, or I shouldn’t say we do the foreman do project planning, right. They, they hold a little meeting morning every morning, tailboard, whatever. There’s all these terms for it in the industries. Right. Uh, we very much instill in them. It doesn’t matter if it’s just to say, well, you left off yesterday, uh, caulking facia board and, you know, getting all the trim ready, pick up where you left off.

Even if that’s all that has to be said, there’s uh uh a little get together between the foreman and his painter every morning. This is, this is where we’re at. This is what I’d like to see done by lunch time, end of day, tomorrow, whatever it is, all projects are very a little bit so that expectation is bound to move, you know, but they, they make that effort every morning, you know, to communicate and then that’s also communicated in the slack channel. Hey, we’re, we are plan, we’re in body paint today.

I plan to have the entire house two coded and back rolled and start on that windows, right? Like this is all things that are laid out. We get these, I mean, our slack channels are dinging every morning, midday and evening, they’re ding going off. You know, it’s the communication is truly the backbone of it, man. You, you, you gotta have the communication. That’s one of the biggest tools you have to supply them with to have that expectation. You know what I mean? I, I mean, I’m, I’m huge on communication again.

I, I will talk about communication constantly with every person on my team. I, I come from a world that if you don’t communicate and you don’t let it all known out front, you’re gonna end up killed, period. You know, it’s so, you’re constantly, when I was at the prison, you’re constantly communicating with the convicts, you know, letting them know same thing you gotta get into buying with things too, you know, because uh things can turn real fast on you real quick. So communication is huge out there.

So I brought that to Sequoia a painting. So we always are constantly letting everybody know communication. Um Another thing that I would bring up, obviously, you gotta get your foreman that you have now to buy into that, right? That’s the first thing you gotta do. Uh maybe you need to even restructure your pay structure. Um You know, because not of we have hormones that are kind of in training. I don’t, you know, per se like uh Israel, right? I mean, he’s, he’s, he’s a young, young kid that wants to, to become a foreman and he’s got the what we’re looking for and obviously, you know, his pay reflects that he’s a beginner in the, in the foreman role and uh we are teaching him and training him, um you know, um trying to get him to that level of being able to grow into a mature for, you know.

So pay structure is gonna be a huge thing too. Yeah, definitely. They had the, the, the communication and, and having that um structure of all human, it’s human nature to want structure, you know, the unknown is uncomfortable. So, um you know, having confidence that you’ve given them all the tools they need to succeed, you know, is, is, is a big one from whatever you’re using to communicate to, um, making sure they know all the, there’s, there’s no, um, there’s no secrets, you know, like I know we’ve conversated with some contractors that the people on the job doing the work don’t know what the price point of that job was.

I mean, we have form and collect final payment checks and bring them back to the office and drop them in a safe, you know, there’s, and our vision there, there’s no reason that should not be trusted, knowledge and trusted. You know what I mean? Um, if I’m ever approached by an, by an employee that thinks, you know, well, I see all the money that comes through and I make this, well, we can have a quick business lesson on where all the plans. Yeah. You know, so, um, transparency and trusting your people, you know, is huge with the communication, making sure they have all the tools they need, you know. Yeah.

Now this is, this has been great. Is there anything else that you guys do maybe a little bit differently with your org organizational structure or anything else you wanna touch on uh regarding that before we wrap up this episode. Um We always strive for efficiency, you know, so having everything in play uh to make sure those teams can be as efficient as they can, you know, um materials are ordered for jobs. They’re in the shop with that po and the foreman’s name on it. The foreman is in the Slack Channel, uh, days prior.

So they can start looking over the literature. You know what I mean? As the scope of work, the work order, that kind of thing. Um, I mean, having everything in play again, setting them up for success, you know, like we can’t, we have an insanely high expectation. I’ll be the first person to, to say that, I mean, I tell our guys that all the time that are carrying out these jobs, like we do ask a lot. But that’s because we’re, we’re far different than other paint contractors in our area.

And that’s a huge piece why, you know, because we have, uh, a trust and a camaraderie amongst management to field going on that isn’t present in a lot of contractors. You know what I mean? You know, I wanna touch on something too that someone’s gonna end up doing this, you know, and not, you know, trying to do, uh, without project managers. Do you, you can’t set your team up for um for failure. Um So like, for example, uh the youngster that’s wanting to become or is a foreman right now and he’s, we start him off on small projects.

We’re not definitely gonna throw him on no, 100,000 square foot commercial building tomorrow. And, you know, where there’s blueprints involved, where he’s having to do some homework uh on the blueprints, you know, and, and, and getting things organized, uh from the blueprint side of it. Um, he’s starting with some smaller projects, you know, and he, of course, his pay is reflecting that right? And as he learns and he gets, uh to a point where he’s comfortable and we’ve got the training going on with him and um, he’ll go into it, you know, more challenging job and then a more challenging job and those are all different with the step raises that he’ll get as well, you know.

So definitely don’t try to try to do this and then you set, set one of your foreman up to a commercial project and set them up for failure where there’s, you know, I knew Joshua who, I didn’t know what he was talking about. I knew it was wrong. Yeah, exactly. Right. I mean, that, that kind of comes back to know your people. Right? Like we’re, we’re, we’re very involved. At least I, I know I, we feel disconnected sometimes because like I stated earlier, there’s a lot of jobs.

I may never physically step foot on, you know. Um Conversate, at least digitally with these guys daily through Slack. Looks great guys. Keep it up what, you know, whatever it is or, hey, what’s that or? I, I mean, we, we communicate a lot. You, you gotta know, you gotta know your, your, your, the strengths, you gotta know the strengths and weaknesses, you know. And that, um II I think trying to be a strong leader is one of the biggest keys to empowering these, these men in the field to take, take that stuff on, you know what I mean?

Um But Josh said, you, you gotta set them up for success, you know, you, you gotta give them those confidence boosters, you know, you gotta put them in a, put them in a setting that they can succeed in. We all want to succeed. Nobody wants to fail. You know what I mean? We, you, you’ll get some bumps and bruises along the way but it, it’s uh you, you got to know and coordinate well, you know, to set these folks up for success. Yeah, Josh Cody, I appreciate you guys.

We’ll see how many, how many feathers this episode? Ruffles. I hope quite a few, some interesting dialogue. Maybe, maybe we’ll be talking about it next conference together, but I appreciate you guys. I’m very much looking forward to the next episode. Yeah, maybe this will be the one that goes viral. Probably will be the one. Yeah. R often has some notoriety with it as well. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you guys. Thank you, sir.

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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.v 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.