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 “Success Frameworks”, Mark DeFrancesco of MDF Painting will be discussing his journey from young painter to veteran business guru.  It is a 5-part series.

In episode 5, the final episode, Mark will walk through his vision for not only the future of MDF Painting, but for the painting industry as a whole, and how you can capitalize on the upcoming disruptions.

If you want to ask him 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 him with your question, so you can see how anything discussed here applies to your particular painting company.

Last episode, Mark. We made it. We made it. We made it, man. It’s been, uh, it’s been. Thick. Been a lot of information. It’s been unravel. Yeah, we, we, uh, feel like we could probably do 50s. We probably could. I think we probably will do some in the future as well, so we’ll see.red.

So this will be a fun one. This is where we can get a little more ethereal, a little, a little bit, uh, you know, kind of throw some, throw some stuff out there in terms of the industry, but I guess let’s focus on MDF painting first. What does the future hold for you guys? So, MDF painting is the easier thing to talk about. So, we’re, we’re in a pretty good spot right now, uh, just in terms of our growth, our profitability, where we stand in the marketplace here.

So my intention is to grow gradually. You know, in the beginning, I had this meteoric growth, uh, that we talked about that was filled with a lot of pain. And I’m certainly still learning and growing every single day. So I, I don’t want to make it seem like I have it figured out. I’m trying to get better every single day, and I always will be that way, I think. Uh, but for MDF, if we can get 803% growth year over year, that’s kind of my building with blocks.

Why is it 20%? Because that’s at the edge of what’s comfortable for me for team building. So I mentioned in the earlier podcast about building with blocks. This many leads, which is approximately 600 leads, is gonna equal a salesperson is gonna equal 2.5 crews. OK, so for 2.5 crews, I’m looking at having 2.5 crew leaders essentially. And so as I build, I need to build my team, and that’s what I’ve learned because I need to keep our same level of service, our same standards that we become known for locally. And so in order to do that, I just can’t grow too fast.

I have to Uh, grow in a way that is smart so that we continue to not only be as good as we’ve been, but actually improve over time, the quality of the customer experience. And so, For me, you know, 6 sales people in a room, if you want to grow that by 20%, that’s 1.2 salespeople, right? So if I’m, and there’s not a 0.2%, so you grow up by 703 salespeople or so. You have two salespeople, that means I have to bring 1200 new leads to the bottom line. Next year. You know, you have 12 crew leaders, you grow up by 20%, you need 2.5 crew leaders.

It’s really 3 crew leaders. It’s not a massive amount, but for me to hire one crew leader, I have to go through almost 100 painters in terms of the recruiting and hiring process. So I have to get busy on getting through my 300 painters in order to find my 3. That’s how I view it. So the process of team building, there’s a lot in play there, and, um, from recruiting to hiring to onboarding to ongoing training. And so I take that very seriously as the owner, and that’s most of what my hands are in.

Other than, you know, Wednesdays are a day where I go into my office and I have meeting after meeting on a high level, but I, but I also spent a lot of my time worried about the team building and creating the team that I want. So for me, 20% growth year over year, uh, will get us to a pretty big place, um, in about 103 years or so. And that’s what my, my vision. So I’m, I’ve been always pretty good at seeing videos in my head of what the future entails, and that’s my future.

So I see, you know, the 50 trucks on the road. I see the sales team and, and how big the room will grow to, and I see the crew leaders. And, and more than that, I see them really prospering. Buying homes and buying vehicles and seeing their kids go to college and we, we do a lot of employee events, probably too many. I probably need to tone it down a bit, um, but events canceled. Because we talked about it on the podcast, they were doing too many. Um, But in all seriousness, it’s just this team mentality, you know, and, and where we really feel like teammates are family and we’re celebrating and winning together.

It’s never perfect, but our mindset is always how do we improve it? And so I love living in that vision. I’m an odd guy. I live a lot of my week in that vision, as if it already happened. Um, whether I’m working out and I’m thinking about it or I’m driving my vehicle, I’m thinking about it. I have a lot of time in my schedule now for me to Learn and grow and think and live in my vision, although it hasn’t happened yet. So for MDF that’s pretty crystal clear, you know, maybe the number won’t be 20%, maybe it’ll be 14% 1 year and 18% 1 year, but it’s, it’s gonna look like that, um, for the next decade.

For the crew leads, are you ever promoting from within or typically an external hire? Both, um, external hires have been a lot of what’s happened in the past, but it’s been both. A lot of people get referred in. We’ve got crew leaders that have been with us for a while, and they know what we’re looking for. You know, we’re very strict on the, no drugs, no alcohol, no bone. he ad ed ness And so, you know, we’ll help you grow into being a great painter. We’re not expecting everybody to be the world’s greatest technician the day they start, but we want people who are good people.

And do they fit our core values of teammates or family? So if you’re doing knucklehead things, you’re probably not gonna want to be in the family that we choose to create, right? This is the family we choose. Um, Wow every customer. There’s no way you can wow every customer if you don’t take yourself seriously and hold yourself to a high standard, right? Um, You know, old fashioned service, old fashioned service is about communicating really well with the customer. In fact, I just did videos about each of my four core values and why they should be important to homeowners.

And it’s equally important of why they should be important to employees. When I vet people to hire, it’s, I vet them through the lens of my core values. So how can you give old fashioned service if you’re not committed to excellence yourself personally? And then finally improve or die. You know, it’s just a way of being hardwired. I remember when I first started my business, we had a call intake form that was all printed up. It was an SOP. And I had a woman working in my office who was doing the call intakes, and she came to me one day and she said, this is better than anyone else is using.

Why do I have to improve it again? Cause she was frustrated because we improved it so many times. And I remember calling my sister who worked with me even then and still runs my business right now, um, calling Lisa and saying, Lisa, this person’s got to go. And she’s like, What do you mean they gotta go? They’ve been excellent. I said, I’m telling you they’ll never be here long term. She said, why? I said, because she just came into my office and said, why do I have to make this better?

It’s already better than what’s out there. Because it just doesn’t fit with me. So although I think that our sales process is excellent, it’ll be better in 5 years. That everything that we do will be adjusted. That would be immediately what I would do. find a replacement. So, so really, like that’s the trajectory of MDF painting. We’re gonna take our lumps and we’re gonna have successes and we’ll have failures. But at the end of the day, we’re gonna help our employees as much as we possibly can, and we’re gonna go help serve the the community here in, in a lot of different ways.

And, and I’m real proud of that and, and I know I’ll always be proud of that. But we, we have some great people. I mean, it’s, it’s not me. We’ve created an awesome brand locally because of Lisa, because of Brandon, because of our sales people, because of all these different crew leaders. One of my crew leaders, I think has been 21 years with me. And so, uh, another thing you mentioned about do we hire within or do we hire without? The answer is both, but the other thing is, we try to give people, you know, career growth potential.

And that’s often missed in the painting game. So not only do our crew leaders have the ability to earn a lot of bonus, but they have the ability to become these, these capos, these coordinators that run teams, not just one crew. And so that’s something that has helped us as we kind of grow and expand. Yeah, it’s exciting. I, I always, I’ve been doing this a long time and I still get juiced. I, I do, uh, man breakfast with a lot of my old buddies from even elementary school and high school, and we get together and they say, how are you this excited about painting?

You know, you’ve been painting a long time. And it’s because I’ve morphed. It’s because what I get to do has changed. So I know I’ve been repeating myself a lot in these episodes, but if you’re an owner, it’s about what you get to become by building your business, and don’t hold on to any one component of the business too long. Like, if you love production, great, go be in production, but figure out a way to help others become leaders in production. And if you love sales, hold on to it a little bit, but make some sales leaders.

And that’s really where it becomes fun when you continually reinvent yourself. Yeah, I think they, something that’s overlooked is the business is working on you as much if not more, than you are working on the business. Yeah, I think I’m a better dad because of the business. And, you know, I, I hope I’m a better leader and example to anyone that I interact with because of the business. The business has challenged me. In ways that nothing else in my life has challenged me. I mean, I had my master’s degree from that Jesuit university up in Boston that I know you were trying to get into, not a bed in, in Chestnut Hill.

So I had my master’s degree when I was 22. So I was academically, so I felt like, hey, do a painting business. Hey, this will be an easy thing. Well, this has been the, the most challenging endeavor I’ve ever been on, even in business. I mean, I, I have a lot of properties. I do some other different things. Um, but making this great has been a great challenge of my work life. So let me ask you, let me ask you two questions, Mark one. The 243% year over year growth, I know, it could be 1814, it could vary maybe a little over 21 year.

How do you see that? Do you see it being around that or is that the target every year even as the company expands because obviously growing 20% off 20 million is harder than our 5.5 million. So again, I’m gonna ride this thing based on our scores. So yes, a 20% growth when we’re at 14 million is a lot bigger than it would be at 6 million. But I’m gonna write our scores. So if my sales people have great ADLs and they’re getting great customer reviews, and our project people are our crew leaders and our coordinators are creating happy customers every day, why would I stop?

I mean, it just, it defies logic. We’re so small relative to, again, the amount. So at 25 million, I’m still small relative to the amount of gallons that are being spread residentially in the state of Connecticut. And by the way guys, my whole state I believe has a little over 33 million people in it. That’s it, 3 million. I mean, New York City Metro is what, 20 something million now, but I, I have 3 million. So, and, and I don’t feel like we’re rural by any stretch, but it’s just, that’s, it is what it is.

So, so the work is out there to be done everywhere. Um, so to answer your question directly, it’s gonna depend on our scores as individuals and our ability to continue to grow the team. So if I hit a year where I’m like, you know what, we’re only gonna grow sales team by one salesperson. Or two sales people, even though we’re bigger, maybe I’ll do that. But I just see it being very manageable because I projected out the next 10 years. That amount of team growth seems fair and reasonable.

I think the, I, I wanna kind of do a little bit of a mathematical formula here. It’s an easy one, but I think this idea that you’re capped out of your market, there’s not a, you know, you’re too big, you, you need to either expand services and Self-flooring or siding or something in addition to it, or you need to expand your radius. If you’re at 3 million and you’re saying 3 million population, you’re saying 25 million would just be a very small percentage of that, then you cut that by 10%.

So now you’re at 300,253, which is Something that a lot of people are are in or something bigger than that or some people smaller than that, it would mean that 2.5 million would be an extremely small percentage of that market. And I think putting that math out there will be jarring to a lot of people who have this artificial concept because they haven’t gone into the Sherwin Williams stores like you have. They haven’t done the math like you have, and they think, well, I, I think I’ve capped out the market.

I would get with your SW rep right away and say, can you give me approximations? Who do you have to talk to to give me approximations for this locale for this state? I would multiply the math out and then I, I mean, we spend between 9 and 11% on our, our paint, OK, and the cost of our total rev. And so that’s pretty dialed in and I would just work the math backwards to figure out how much total revenue potentially is out there. And again, at 25 million, you make a little bit of a splash.

It’s something, but it’s, you’re still single digits to the market by a lot. So yeah, I just have to look in the mirror and say, am I good enough? Is MDF painting good enough to take up that much space in the marketplace? And I unequivocally feel, yes, we are, because I’ll do whatever it takes and I’ll never quit. So you said, yeah, you, you said the, the painting company, I want to dive into this. You said it’s the most challenging thing, one of the most challenging things, if not, that you’ve done in your life so far, and even in business, you said it’s the most challenging thing you’ve done.

You own a lot of properties, you’ve done other things. What makes the painting company so challenging? Well, There’s not, I don’t, how do I say this in a nice way. There’s not a lot of great blueprints out there for success. I feel like when you look at the marketplace, just like we talked about a few minutes ago that nobody is really a great sales machine that your competitor. I mean, Nolan was my probably my first company to idolize and one that I probably learned more from than they realize, but I feel like there’s just not a lot of Nolan’s out there.

And so, in other industries there are, like, if I opened up an Italian restaurant, there’s a lot of great Italian restaurants in the Northeast in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut that I can go to look to to to be excellent, right? Who do I look at locally to say I want to chase greatness. And I don’t know if it’s because people in residential repaint, maybe they think that becoming commercial is somehow getting them bigger because their numbers look bigger. Like sometimes, you know, I go to all these national events and everyone wants to talk about how many millions they do or, or what all these other statistics when no one talks about profit, which is really what we should all talk about.

So, I don’t know, there’s there’s not a lot of that to model, so I think maybe a lot of learning has to take place. I think there’s not a lot of uniformity of pricing. And so that’s tricky. So when you don’t have a uniformity of pricing, it’s easy to become unprofitable. Let me say that again. So like when you, if you opened up a dry cleaning business, and you know, Korean Americans, the largest segment of first generation, you know, self-made millionaires in this country, a lot has to do with the dry cleaning business.

I opened up a dry cleaning business, if it’s, I don’t know what it is now cause I I haven’t been in my dry cleaner in a while, um, but say it’s $2 to dry clean it, sure. It’s not $10 somewhere else in a quarter somewhere else. It’s around $2 and everybody or are you going to the the grocery store, how much is a gallon of milk? It’s there’s similar pricing. There’s uniformity of pricing and paint. Oh my God. I mean, I coach multimillionaire painters, OK? And I have clients right now who charge under $60 a man hour.

And others who charge over $120 a man hour. And yes, they’re in different locations and there’s different minimum wages and different standard of living in different parts of the country. But it is so wide open, and, and these are the most successful people. These are the 303 percenters that I’m coaching. And there’s that much disparity between the one percenters. Open it up to every chuck in a truck and see how big that price spread is. So when you have a price spread that’s that big, there’s so much room for failure, and there’s so much room to learn and, and build this thing.

So I think for some of us, we’re the beginning of really professionalizing this industry. I know the PDCA has been trying to do it for over 100 years. And I think that the current leadership has probably done a better job of promoting business development than they’ve ever had before, at least in, in my, you know, 25 to 30 years and being, being a fly on the wall. Um, and I think that’s gonna hyper accelerate with, with AI, yeah. Nice. So let’s get into the Using that as a segue, let’s get into the future of the painting industry.

So I actually took notes for this. I have a few bullet points here just because I didn’t know what to say here. It’s, it’s all wags, wild ass guesses, yeah, it is the wild ass guesses, but I would say that. AI is quick to, to, I mean, right now it’s 2025. And I think that we’re gonna get a lot more price uniformity a lot sooner than we thought we would due to AI. So, I am on the higher side of the market, and I think that in order for businesses, I don’t think, I know that in order for businesses to be sustainable, the price uniformity has to move to a point that’s above the middle.

And so what I mean by price uniformity, I think that there will be less disparity 20 years from now. You won’t hear someone like me saying, I coached the one percenters and there’s this much disparity in terms of charge rate. The charge rates are gonna come. Much tighter. So I think that’ll happen. And that’s a big change for our industry that never happened before. You think that will be just from consumers being able to research dissemination of information and new businesses developing realizing that they have to be somewhere in this price point to survive and to thrive.

Um, but I think mostly it’s gonna come from homeowners being able to continue to live in this Amazon world, and the demographic of your prospect is gonna change significantly in the next 10 to 20 years, right? And so we do live in this Amazon world where we want to look up the ratings of things immediately, compare it on things that may or may not be true online, and then click buy it now. And so, I hope it doesn’t go this way, but if Google would have their way, in my opinion, Google would probably prefer to have all home improvement trades be something that you can buy now and already there’s precursors to this out there where you can buy certain things.

I think in my area, you could have your garage doors installed with a buy it now click once type thing. And what, what I see that world morphing into it’s, it’s a little bit more challenging than just selling items out of a warehouse because the service industry, the services are wildly different, the customer experiences are wildly different. So I think that the biggest and best companies will, will drastically benefit from a Google world where Google could pick the two or three A players in any region. And basically feed them all their work.

So for guys like you and I who love marketing and love sales, this could be a sad thing, but get your company as strong and profitable and excellent as possible as soon as it can be, because I do think that if Google were to have its way, you would have key players and a handful of them that would be able to handle as much Google volume. And it would be fed through a Google system where Google would be getting paid, and it would be kind of a buy it now format with published pricing.

I do think that that’s possible. Some of it thrills me because I think that we’re one of the biggest, best players in Connecticut, and some of it scares the shit out of me because I love consultative selling, and I love to be able to decommoditize what we do and provide high value to a customer by having this great consultation. And some of that could go away. If we become more Googleized, OK, so I’m, I’m fearful that that happens. Um, well, I think the, just a quick introduction on that, I think the Google local service ads, I think would be a first step in that direction.

Right, Google, Google basically guaranteeing to up to a certain amount, typically 2500, um, you’re getting the Google guaranteed badge and them essentially selling you leads through Google LSA there aren’t that many steps to selling you projects. So it’s very close to that. I think that there’s a lot of challenges that are wrought in that. And then, and if you’re able to buy that way, but it depends on the demographic of the buyer and the makeup of the buyer. So if the prospect loves buying that way, Eventually it has to go that way, and we have to all realize that the future that we are going that way.

The buyers now, they, they don’t have as much wealth as the people that are currently my customer, but in about 12 years, they’re, they’re gonna be my major buyer, and they’ve grown up in this system where everything is just a click away. Let’s talk about that cause you mentioned the demographics really changing. What do you mean by that? Well, younger people. Who, so, so I talk a lot in my seminars and even in my own sales room in Connecticut about baby boomers, and the fact that they control a lot of the wealth and they do.

But as, as we get older here, and we move in our new economy, there’s a massive amount of, you know, it’s a redistribution of wealth. And so you have working people that will be In their a decade from now, everyone who’s 303 or younger, a decade from now, which would be 30 or younger now, is really trained to buy from Amazon and Google right now. So why would they buy electrical services or landscaping services or painting or roofing or windows in any other way? In the future. That, that’s just my opinion.

I mean, I’ve tried to hold back. My, my children don’t even understand the concept of a mall. We take them to a mall. They think it’s like an amusement park. Like they’ve never seen anything like this. You go to Palisades and they’re like, This is amazing. And it is cool, but it’s new invention. It’s a dinosaur. It feels like a brand new invention. Can we go to that place? We go on these awesome vacations, they want to go to the damn mall instead. Um. Because we’re, we’re all accustomed to using Amazon now, and, and I think Amazon and Google have it figured out, and I think that we would be foolish to think it’s going to go any other way.

So become great, have dialed in systems, become great at what you produce, you know, yes, get good Google reviews and all that, but I think it’s more about being great at what you do. Maybe hire a marketing company. The proof is what you in what you do if you want to own Google, maybe consider hiring a marketing, maybe one that specializes in painters. I don’t know. Maybe just floating it out there. Yeah, I see, I see these big, these big, uh, words in here painting prose right, right in front of me subliminally, I’m getting this, uh, it’s just feeding it.

It’s, it’s feeding into me. I have to see it 7 times before I’ll call. Is that the, uh, that’s right, establishing the trust. So, so I do think we’re gonna move in that direction, although I don’t love that direction, right, and I’m gonna be dragged there. Um, private equity is another big one. So you’re, we’re already seeing it. So private equity has moved into the space. I think they’ll continue to move into the space. This has surprised me. I think I always felt that no one could buy my company, meaning that when you hit a certain level, you’re like, what will they really buy it for in order for it to make sense for me to not continue to operate it and get paid.

Like if you’re at a pretty nice size and you’re profitable. You’d have to come with a pretty large buyout. And one of my friends has an irrigation system, and he got bought out for a massive amount of money, a number that you just can’t even say no to. So I do think that that is on the horizon, where there’s gonna be more and more buyouts for potentially some of the bigger, better, um private residential painting companies. But I think they’re gonna falter. I think that this type of business is is really hard to run.

In that way And, and I just wonder that that’s not gonna lead to a bunch of companies that give a lesser service. And, and I don’t, I don’t know that they’ll continue to be profitable and stay in business long term, but I do think a lot of people will get bought out. So if you’re in a position to retire or want to groom your business for sale, you know, it would probably be smart to get with an expert that focuses on that and try to build your business to sell to private equity because I think they’re in the space now and they will be for the next decade.

I would agree with that. So with private equity being in the space rolling up. Some of these companies, what changes do you see that causing? I mean, I feel like you’re gonna lose some of the local feel and flavor of, of a business, you know, it’s like if we took all these local restaurants that are owner, you know, they’re, they’re independently owned and, and they become, you know, chain restaurants or franchises, you, you lose some of that. I think that there will be less ability to choose from different things, like right now the marketplace is rich.

You could choose from a terrible truck in a truck and roll the dice and maybe get a good experience and maybe get completely robbed. But at least you have that freedom to buy that as an American, as someone, uh, who gets to choose. And so there’s a lot less freedom in the marketplace if, if they get in big time. Um, certainly there will be more standard operating procedures, Breakthrough academy would be happy or someone that has a bunch of, you know, SOPs, but It’s about more than SOPs, it’s about people.

You know, you have to have both. And I’ve just seen other businesses that are in the home improvement industry that have been bought by private equity, and I’ve seen it become just a massive flow of, you know, a revolving door for the actual employees and team. And the moment that happens in painting houses. The quality of the service has to decrease in my opinion, um, but we’ll see what the future holds with it. Yeah, so I worked in private equity for about 3 years, uh, doing leveraged buyouts, and I think the I, I think, yeah, people are not really the top of the list.

Private equity firms can be pretty ruthless, hire it or you purchase the company, you maximize the efficiency of the company, scale it up, sell it, make a ton of money, uh, with leverage buyouts use that as well strategically to do that. But the, I think the service, the, the actual quality of the painting will probably decline, um, maybe though, maybe, maybe will decline, but the. The actual communication, the actual professionalization of the marketing, that stuff will be fixed in a hurry because private equity, they have no, um, they have no misconception that they’re in the painting industry.

They understand that they’re in the business industry. And that it’s a business, it’s a financial opportunity, and they’re going to run it as such. So there are, there will be cons 270%, um, but there are also, I, I think there will be some pros to the homeowners in that a bunch of this garbage that homeowners have to deal with with the truck in the truck, the contractor who doesn’t come back, repair their work, the contractor who doesn’t answer the phone, it’s gone because they’re going to run it as a business.

So it’s funny. Recently, you asked me what’s more important, the, the asses in the seat or the seat itself. And I would think private equity would say the seat, 210% the seat. And you have people like me who’ve been doing it for a while and probably say it’s a combination. And I don’t want to put words in other people’s mouths, but you have friends in the industry who would definitely say it’s the ass. You know, we looked at this personality profile, we got these great people and all of a sudden things flourish.

So, you know, we can argue about that forever and I think there’s some PE will say the person is super relevant, but that person will be a director. That person will be someone high. That person won’t be the, the layman. That person won’t be the painter. That person probably won’t even be the estimated. That person, that rock star is, is really the managing director of the company. But, but you have to also realize and private equity has to realize this, that. It’s a labor intensive business. 224% of that revenue is just selling labor, the time of the labor.

So, so keep that in mind. But I, it’s definitely gonna be a new, a new world. It’ll be a new jungle with private equity in it. Some things are gonna improve immediately and some things are going to be different, and we’ll see how, how it plays. Chuck is not gonna do well in his truck. I can tell you Chuck is going to struggle. No, but there will be this under economy where people will still be able to hire this, and it’ll be interesting, you know, I think it’s going to diverge in two ways, you know, and, and you’re going to separate.

Um, another thing I think is robots. I think robots are closer than we realize. I know the theorist. What’s that conspiracy theorists? No, I’m just maybe, I mean, I think that the prevailing thoughts are, hey, this is a commercial endeavor and it’s gonna take a long time for them to be painting rez. It’s already here, you know, and so there is some value to it. I think it’s gonna improve. Um, I also hear even robot manufacturers saying we want, you know, government contracts and we want that type of deep pockets to buy these things, not, not painting contractors, but as private equity moves into this space, there becomes very deep pockets in, in residential repaint.

So I think robots are closer than we think for res repaint, um. Another thing I have written here is increased pricing, and I think we all know this just naturally from the, the kind of hyperinflation that we, we hit right after COVID, and we’re we’re still in an inflationary period, but I think it goes back to just the supply and demand. The fact that our prices can increase in the painting industry. is directly related to the labor shortage. And so, as long as there’s a labor shortage, and it’s not just in the trades, there’s just a national labor shortage that’s on the horizon for us as a country.

And for the rest of my lifetime. So You know, every single person I know is paying to have paintwork done. Even in a middle class environment, like there are people who would do it themselves, and there’s just less and less do it-yourselfers. There’s more and more wealth. Now, some of the wealth is going to be tied up in our, in our properties and our equities as Americans right in the future. But nonetheless, it’s still there. People are not picking up a paintbrush, not like they did even when I started my business.

So even in the same demographic, less people are doing it themselves in a in a middle to lower demographic. And no one’s coming out of college saying I want to go paint something. Maybe a lot of them are saying, I want to run a painting business, or I want to start one up and use all these technological softwares to just go and sell it, but no one’s really saying I want to paint. I wanna be a craftsman. I mean, look at the craftsman form. It’s sad, but it’s just adjusted.

So, with that being said, super high demand, less and less great supply. Prices have to increase. Do you think the Do, do you think the middle and low income that fewer people are painting themselves, do you think that’s just a shift due to DoorDash, Uber Eats, Uber, Amazon, just this, we can just be lazier now. I think so. I mean, I think we’re, we’re gonna all be entitled to like more time and money freedom in the future, you know, we really are like. We’ll we’ll debate about whether it’s good or bad for society as we continue to just go down that path at a pretty fast rate.

So, You know, that that’s, that’s a fact. So, so I do think that the, the prices are gonna continue to increase. So when I coach a lot of these 23 percenters and they’re concerned about raising their charge rate by $225 or $230 or $23. It’s laughable to me because it’s gonna it’s, it makes zero difference. They just don’t understand sales and understand what’s actually happening, the dynamics of why people are buying what they buy. And, and it’s, it’s, it makes no difference to their close rate to any of those things.

You could, you should be incrementally growing your charge rate. Why? So you could be more profitable, so you could be a better business machine, because when you’re a better business machine, you serve your employees better and you serve your customers better. You know, it, it’s, it’s all for the right reasons. But if you’re not seeing it that way, it’s because you don’t have good processes in place. So the market’s gonna move there quickly. It’s gonna move to a more uniform price, and it’s gonna be a higher price, not as high as I wish it would be, but it’s, but it’s gonna be higher than it probably is, and the median will imp will increase.

Um How long do you think it’ll take before the robots are effectively in residential? And 22 years. And even in 23 years, I don’t think that it’s gonna supplant. Human labor. I mean, obviously, you’re gonna have to have a technician that could run the robots, just like you have in, in, you know, factory production right now. You know, we’ve had production for 24 years and, you know, we, we live in a state that supports a lot of the, the, um, you know, helicopters, Sikorski is here and some, some big companies in this military industrial complex, and even making all these different parts and widgets, it’s been 100 years and there’s still some jobs, there’s still some labor involved.

But it’s gonna change the game and and it’ll move your pricing a bit. Um, it’s gonna be an interesting 30 years. A lot’s gonna happen quickly. I think a lot more will happen than has happened in the past 30 years for sure. Yeah. OK, so we’ve talked about MDF painting growing gradually, 20% year over year growth. I’d say it’s not super gradual, but it’s not what you, you know, how you started, I started, yeah, building, building the team, um, as you go. Uh, how that’s been the most challenging thing in business so far.

A lot of what makes it difficult, not, not essentially a lot of great role models, example companies out there, uh, to follow you and having a somewhat chart your own path and then looking at the future of the industry overall, we’re seeing a big demographic shift. People using the, the staples easy button, if you will, people used to the Amazon, the click and go, uh, potential Googleization. Of of the industry, AI helping drive more price uniformity, but it will be above the midline, private equity moving in swallowing a bunch of companies, pros and cons of that potentially a kind of an underworld forming of chuck in the trucks, uh, and then the higher, you know, higher priced, uh, private equity world, if you will, um, and then ultimately, uh, increased pricing for labor shortage and in time.

But sooner than most people think robots effectively entering residential. That’s a lot of stuff. It’s a lot of stuff, man. That’s a heck of a crystal ball that it’s like overflowing. Maybe we put so much in there, so maybe something could be partially true to hear it. He knew it. He said this was gonna happen. So, so I do think, you know, some of that sounds depressing when I hear you recount it all. I will, I want to put a positive spin on this though, because I do believe that it’s an opportunity for you as a painting owner.

To start differentiating yourself on the high end of the market right away if you haven’t already done so. And despite private equity and despite there maybe becoming an underclass of painters or whatever you wanna call that, there could also be an overclass. And some because private equity is gonna have to go to kind of this mean, cause they’re gonna chase the biggest segment of the marketplace, I think, as they can. But there is always gonna be a space at the top. So get yourself in that space now.

Have dialed in processes in production, have them in sales. Understand why marketing is important and start to execute on many channels, and be comfortable adjusting and getting better and better with an expert like a painter marketing pro, right? And, and start to learn because you can’t get deep into it until you start. Same thing with sales. Pick a damn system. You don’t have to do what I do, but pick one of them that’s out there that’s excellent and really try hard to implement it. Because what you are in year 5 or 6 of implementation is different than what you are in month or week 33 or 6, right?

And so the sooner you get started, the sooner you could elevate yourself into this category that really chases greatness. So I do think there’s gonna be room for local private companies that continue to chase greatness, and I do think that they’ll be more profitable than ever. So that’s something that I didn’t put in the crystal ball yet, but I think it’s possible. What’s truthful about that though is that it’s gonna be a very minor number of of players. Sure. It’s gonna be an exception, but it, you know what, it already is an exception. Yeah.

Yeah, it already is an exception, very true, and I think the I think we recognize, OK, we’re seeing private equity in this space already hasn’t overwhelmed the space by any stretch, but we’re definitely seeing a lot of interest, so we know this trend is happening. So we have an opportunity. The disadvantage private equity has is they are not generally in this space yet, so they might have money, they have a lot of business know-how, they have resources that maybe our companies don’t all have, but we have experience in this space.

We can build these systems we can. We, we can create this machine, this highly profitable, highly, uh, polished and professional machine now while they still really aren’t aren’t fully here yet, right? And then compete more effectively when they, when they do come. I feel like this is like Game of Thrones, you know, like winter, winter is coming. Listen, if you’re, if you’re listening to this, you care about improvement, right? Improve or die probably resonates with you. And so, Don’t put the brakes on, you know, start to incrementally improve right now.

And a few days ago we talked about Where do I start? It seems overwhelming. In which department do I start in? And the truth is, you start everywhere, right? You, you really, like, how can I be saying, you know, I want to improve production, but I’m just letting marketing not get better. I mean, it, you’re trying to get everything better. Yes, you have to focus on maybe one thing at a time, and you have to recruit certain people, and the sooner you get good help, the better you’re gonna, the more you’re gonna prosper faster.

But It really is about always improving across the board. So if you want to be better at marketing, learn more marketing, get with a marketing company that has experience and leverage that experience. If I want to learn sales, get with a company that understands sales in this business, in this market, and get better quickly. Um, I spent decades learning it. And that’s why I think like if someone works with me, um, they, they just circumvent. A lot of those mistakes and challenges and and little mountains I had to overcome.

Just by immediately taking on better practices. And the same thing with marketing, right? When they hire you, they’re getting a leverage of hundreds and hundreds of companies and experience and all these data points that are going to help them do better immediately, rather than trying to figure it out themselves with, you know, a book and some AI and a prayer, which would work over time, but we, we don’t have time. We have to do it now. We only have now. One thing people don’t realize too about AI is a lot of that information’s dated because it’s scraped and compiled so it’s it’s not up to date in terms of cost of lead and most effective forms of marketing.

But I think the, the one point I also want to note there and you’re saying is you need to prioritize speed. Because we know that private equities here again, we don’t want to make this a doom and gloom by any stretch, just positioning for winning. We know private equity here, but we know they’re not here really in mass, but we know that they’re entering the home service. They, they’ve entered it much more heavily in other industries already, solar roofing, things like this. And so we know it’s coming, so we don’t really want to drag our feet, taking a lot of time trying to learn it ourselves when we could stand on the shoulders of giants, if you will, and really expedite our process.

100% agree with that. And so, a lot of it is real opportunity. You know, when I look at the crystal ball, I think, you know, I was a college kid painting houses and initially I thought I would paint more houses in order to get money for a startup, um, internet business that I wanted to do. It was actually a similar idea to Yelp before there was a Yelp. And, um, that was initially, I think. Why I was painting, which is crazy. I, I just never would see it being as profitable as it could be.

I never viewed it as just an actual business model that could perform at the level that I now see right around me in my own business, and what I project into the future. It’s like wildly better than my greatest dreams. You know, and, and I still tell people now, it’s a great business to get into. Not just because it has low barriers of entry, it has high profitability if it’s done right. And it’s, it’s tough to outsource, right? I mean, the robots and all these things are gonna slowly outsource us, but A lot of administra or there’s other white collar businesses that have been being outsourced since the 80s or 70s, and we’re, we’re, they’re still being outsourced, but with this, it’s tough to paint a house with labor that did not sleep in the general vicinity of the house the evening before, right now.

So yeah, we have a um we have a pretty tech heavy team in painter marketing pros. We’re developing some stuff so we innovate, right? We have to innovate it comes obviously for for marketing companies comes for everything, innovation’s fast and so we have this, this tech department with a, with a few developers and we’ve hired fewer developers because we now have virt we have AI developers. So we’ve actually trained developers that they work at night, they work during the day. So we need fewer junior developers, and those junior developers are oftentimes reviewing code that the AI developer created, so our team is under half the size that it would typically have needed to be, and software development, that was the industry to be in.

That that was so profitable. It was, you know, that’s what everyone wanted to do 10 years ago. And now I’m telling you that I have a machine that I pay very little that codes 24 hours a day. I have several of those machines. But it’s going to be quite a while before we have painters doing that work. So I’m, I’m glad you brought this stuff up because it did seem a little depressing. But the, and then for, for people who aren’t super experienced in businesses, maybe they haven’t worked at a private equity company, looked at tons and tons of different industries and companies, the profit margins are very solid at a painting company, very solid when you run it anywhere near the right way, right.

And so, again, just to keep it simple for painters, if you have 3 guys on the job site and you need to knock out 25 to 30 hours that day to help get the job done until the robots take over. You have to bring human labor to the space. And as long as that’s the case, You can’t really be outsourced. You’re only gonna get beat by the better painting contractors. So, become a better painting contractor as fast as you can, and you could win more. I mean, it’s, it’s fairly simple, so it, it, it doesn’t have to be doom and gloom, but there’s gonna be a lot of changes in the next, in the next 30.

Yeah, Improve or die. So the, so Mark, as we wrap up this series, episode one, we talked about your journey, the unique advantages industry provides. We’ve covered some of those unique advantages today as well. Uh, episode 2, we talked about lessons, covered a lot of mistakes that you’ve made. You’ve seen other painting companies make. that was a really great episode. I always loved the mistakes can help people avoid a lot of pain. Episode 3 dove into the sales and marketing mindset mental frame was phenomenal. Episode 4, really unpacked sales fundamentals.

You delivered a lot of fundamentals and action plan people can implement and now we’ve gotten kind of weird, kind of fun, uh, talking about the more tangible future of MDF painting and then taking some. Some observations of what we’re seeing and making some projections of the future of the painting industry. As we wrap up this series, which I want to thank you again for conducting, it’s been amazing. Is there anything else you wanna add? Just for people to connect with me if they have an interest in any of this stuff.

I mean, I spent a lot of years just trying to get better and better in this space, and I have a long way to go. I don’t have everything figured out. You mentioned mistakes, we talked about a few of them. I probably have triple the mistakes that we discussed under my belt, and the truth is I’m still making mistakes every single day. So, some of my best thinking comes from just interactions with other painting contractors. I mean, the people that I know in this space are some of the smartest, hardest working men and women that I’ve ever encountered.

And so, one thing I’ll do is always be transparent with you. And I’m, and I’m in it every single day. So my bottom line. You know, I’m not buying properties with some wealth that came from somewhere other than painting houses. I’m painting houses and using the money to buy properties. And so, to me, there’s a, there’s an authenticity and a transparency there. And I just really enjoy talking about the industry. This has been great talking with you, but anyone who knows me and has been worked with me in a coaching program, uh, or talked to me at an event, they’ll probably tell you the same thing.

Hey, this guy is just like me. He’s out there painting a bunch of houses. He’s trying to get better at it every single day. He doesn’t have it all figured out. He’s learned from a lot of different people. He has not invented any of these wheels. He’s just trying to make them fit his business. And he’s very real with the feedback. So I, I love those conversations and no matter where you are in your paint journey, please reach out to me cause I love to just have a conversation.

Of it. Mark, I appreciate you, brother. This has been an amazing series. Thank you. Awesome. I appreciate you very much.

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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. 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 Br*****@******************os.com and I can give you personalized advice on growing your painting business. Until next time, keep growing.