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 episode, Nick Lopez, President of the Lime Painting franchise, discusses the growth of a luxury niche paint brand. He elaborates on the differentiation of the Lime Painting franchise, and how other painting companies can pursue their own avenues of creating unique value proposition in the market.
If you want to ask Nick 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 Nick questions directly by tagging her with your question, so you can see how anything discussed here applies to your particular painting company.
What’s going on, Nick? Not too much. How are you? I’m good brother. I’m uh I’m excited to shoot this episode. We’ve had it in the works for quite a few months, I think at this point. glad we let’s do it. Yeah. So you and I were you and I were talking a little bit before we started filming here and uh I mentioned how I had just seen a line painting, truck, truck, van, forget exactly what vehicle was near, near my house in Saint Petersburg, Florida.
Asked if that was new. You said yes, recently expanded, youngest owner of the franchise seems like you guys are growing pretty quickly what’s going on over there and hopefully that just continues to happen to more and more folks around the country. Uh And that’s our plan. Our 1st 100 locations, we were really laying the infrastructure of our franchise as we expanded across uh probably over 1003 states. But this next 100 locations, uh We’re, our ownership group is, is excited because um we, we will become a household name. So hopefully that trend continues.
I love it. Talk to me a little bit about, I guess I’ll start with you and I’ll kind of dive in a line painting, but a little bit. Maybe about your background, background in the space how this whole thing started. Oh, my gosh. Uh, well, my career starts in college. I was an out of state student at Michigan State and, uh, I went there to wrestle, I wrestled my freshman year and the scholarship was out. So I, I had seen the other paint companies were probably all familiar with those college paint brands.
But being that I went to Michigan State, I started uh my own company was called Spartan College Painters. And that’s how I got into the industry. I never thought that I would be in the space, you know, coming up on my 17th season here. Uh and, you know, back then I was just a broke college kid. I was painting to uh pay for out of state tuition and I looked at the bigger the home, the bigger the college bills it would help me pay and, you know, barely having, right.
So that was the logic and as I’m serving these customers, for me, it was common sense that they wanted quality and they cared about good products. And, you know, it was my name. I want to put my best foot forward. I, and so I got a lot of compliments like, thanks for showing up Nick, thanks for doing a good job, you know, thanks for answering your phone and being 1819, I, I love the pats on the back. Um But on the front end, I would hear, hey, are you gonna run off with my deposit?
Uh Are you gonna charge me more when you start the job? Uh You know, there was, there was fear up front and compliments on the back end for hitting a a really low bar. I start getting my dear. It was awesome. Thanks for showing up and doing a good job. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, and it’s a very fragmented space, the painting industry and consumers experience varying degrees of quality. I, I call it the Superman model, right? And um and so here I am 1819 and all I had was a, a Toyota 4runner with 100 80 miles on it and a paint bucket and I was a painter, right?
And so that’s what qualified me to become a painter and you have all these situations all across the country uh and extensive license licensing requirements, extensive background checks or maybe just a can of paint. Uh I love your passion for the industry. I share the same. I, like I said, going in my 14 season and um I, I, yeah, originally I just, like I said, started in college. So that’s my story. I love it, man. So the what is the Superman model? Uh Like I said, one guy wearing all hats, doing all things.
So he’s the painter. He’s given the quote he’s, you know, hiring his friends, he’s, he’s doing his thing, he’s grinding his hustling as he should. He’s a business owner. Um And, and so, regardless that customer is experiencing, uh you know, that person that might have lost track of the scheduling or might have lost track of the quoting or, you know, there’s, uh I love that the industry has become a, a lot more sophisticated through technology. But again, I started 17 years ago. So I’ve watched the maturation from a tech perspective over the years, but it still doesn’t change.
I, you know, the fact that uh you know, painting is very regional, very localized and uh every market, that’s the beauty in our country, right? It’s the free market. Uh And so what I love what I do is we provide a national standardized option for our sector and we’re the only one in the paint space that does that. And like I was sharing it, it started in college. So I was actually sitting in a lecture class in a marketing class, learning about positioning. And my professor was just sharing how um you know, within every industry, if you have a access of price and quality, if you’re high price, high quality, low price, low quality, you know, those are your lanes, that’s where you stay.
You can’t be all things to everyone. So think about mcdonald’s, right? If you went there for a steak and you kind of scratch your head. Uh and you know, that’s not their thing. They’re low price, low quality and they serve the general market and, or just for that particular experience, it’s just position, you look at vehicles. Uh you know, it’s just giving the restaurant industry as an example. And so learning about learning about positioning, learning about how a segmentation works. I was applying it to my experience in, in um East Lansing where I was.
And it just so happened to be a high end area, a lot of high end clients because why I, I needed to pay big college bills. Um And, and so I started looking into folks that were doing it nationally. I’m a business guy first. Uh not a painter. Uh My dad was a contractor, so it is in my blood, but I’m an entrepreneur. I have a full blown entrepreneur and never thought I would be in the paint space. But this opportunity just became clearer and clearer. And when I seen the national opportunity to provide a standardized solution for customers in markets all across the country, uh Eventually the world, um you know, something I was excited about as a, as a business student and aspiring entrepreneur and just fell in love with the paint space.
Uh Love everything about it. I love the immediate gratification of transforming a space, whether it’s X year interior residential commercial. Uh for us, we work with uh a fluent homeowner. So uh I always love being able to learn about uh where they travel and uh you know, the mini cars and interesting ways that they built their home and, yeah, just very neat conversations at the coffee table that in home sales, I, I just didn’t know how much I would love it and uh how much value I would be able to provide.
And uh it’s just immediate from the relationship side to the transformation. Uh And when the opportunity from a business perspective became clear that I could deliver this much value for customers and markets uh everywhere. And I seen how it was providing me a life changing opportunity. I was a first generation college student and it allowed me to go to school. And I, and, and eventually it would, it, it uh showed me how uh life changing it was for the uh sales teams, I would go on to hire and many painters.
And uh so when it came time to actually franchise, after proving out the business, I did it for five years in college, moved home to Denver, proved out the business grew to a multi seven figure business. Uh and, you know, standardized our services that we offer. Um, you know, from there taking it to a, a um a, a franchise. And, you know, that was a, a no brainer when it came time to actually franchise because of like I said, the clients that we had served the sales reps lives that had changed.
Um You know, the first sales guy I ever hired when I moved home from Denver. It was a side hustle in college. So, you know, um bringing on a sales rep and him doing 13 million in four years. That was life changing. So I’d watched story after story after story like that in the way that it had changed my life. I was excited to uh jump forward and help provide a uh a blueprint for our luxury uh clientele. Before we got on the show, you’re sharing, you had one of our partners on Lorraine Sanchez there in San Antonio.
It’s women and men like her that uh invest in our business model, the process, the systems, the support uh and our expertise for that luxury customer and the services that we offer and, and then that franchise partner can pursue uh our offering in their market and for our business, we’re the first ones nationally, bringing this to markets and, and so, you know, for Lorraine and others like her to uh participate in growing the lime empire and providing value in communities all across the country. Uh It’s something that we’re all very passionate about here at lime.
And the great thing about franchise ownership is you’re not in business by yourself, you’re in business with other business owners. And that, that’s why I fell in love with Franchising. There’s many ways to expand, there’s many ways to bring value. Uh but me being an athlete, a gym rat growing up, I really enjoy and enjoyed the locker room aspect. And so when I learned about Franchising and it being uh a being in business, but, you know, with others and not by yourself uh type of way to expand.
I enthusiastically raised my hand. So here we are, we’re uh over a hun, we’re coming up on 100 territories open. Uh We had seven in August of 2020. Uh So we’re here at Q four of 2024. That’s, it’s been uh an awesome experience and uh very humbling to have so many talented franchise partners see the opportunity as a right fit for them uh in, in their backyard. Yeah. So the uh man, a lot of time packed there. So I, I like the fact that you uh you went to Michigan State like it so often.
I mean, I’m not gonna hold it against you. I like it and I don’t like it. I went to Notre Dame so we, we can still be friends. But the uh the, the typical entrepreneurial stories like, hey, I, you know, uneducated, left high school, I just couldn’t be employed, could, couldn’t get good grades. Uh It’s nice to, to know that entrepreneurs come from all backgrounds, right? And can still be scrappy and can still make it work. You’ve obviously scrapped um five years, you, you refined a model and then you scale that model and also like your approach from a business perspective.
You say I’m a, I’m a businessman. I have a background. Uh, my dad was a contractor, so it’s in my blood have that background, but I’m approaching a business first, which I think is a, a big shift in mindset that a lot of painting company owners struggle with. But ultimately, I feel they have to make that jump if they want to scale beyond a certain point. And so you said I’m gonna intentionally choose high price, high quality, that’s gonna be my niche of the market that I’m gonna target.
Um Do you mind sharing a little bit about, I guess average ticket value the kinds of homes that you guys are targeting? Do you, do you prefer exterior versus interior? Do you do cabinet finishing? What does that actually look like? Right. Um Our average ticket residentially is, you know, anywhere between 210, 220,2000 depending on the market. Uh when you combine. Yeah, and when you combine commercial uh across the country with residential, it jumps that ticket up to almost 260,260. Uh We’ve had uh we, if you could tell like residential and commercial, how much are you guys doing of each?
More and more commercial? Uh with our franchise partners, we, we launched very heavy in the high end residential uh space and that was interior and exterior with more of an emphasis on exterior. Um But our franchise partners uh they uh love commercial and uh you know, so we uh we uh you know, create the infrastructure on the residential side as you know, uh most of our subcontractors that we work with, we’re a subcontractor model, by the way. Uh but most of them that we work with would probably get about depending on the, the uh contractor, you know, 2100 to 1003 of the high end residential projects uh a year, you know, and we would, we’ll provide them those types of projects 2100 to 2100 per per month.
And so it, it creates a lot of synergy and retention and alignment around the customer. And I, so that, that certainly is um beneficial all the way around for the customer, for the artisan um for the team that is doing the account management on uh the lime side. But we, we do um you know, residential, commercial and, and, and uh with the residential being the foundation where we build those artists and crews uh just because of the appeal, uh we can then take those talented artisans and um translate them into the commercial side.
Again, we’re, we’re looking for more of the high end and custom projects even on the commercial side. Uh So we’re not much of the production in, in mass volume on the commercial end. Uh And it really comes down to our roots because we’re a luxury painting company on the residential side, we’re doing a lot more than just paint because these properties are made up of many surfaces. You can see one behind me. It’s stone, it’s you know, manufactured windows and doors. Um, they’re stamp concrete, there’s metal, you know, usually like 218 ft long, uh, lights that are metal and, you know, the, the railing that wraps around the prop or the estate, um, you know, every surface deteriorates from sun and water damage.
And so we’re doing coding, so we’re not just doing painting. We look at paint is a type of coding and we look at coatings as a way of protecting assets from sun and water damage. It’s so the, the um yeah, that’s pretty extensive. What I’m, I guess that what I think it, it begs the question. So sales is challenging for a lot of painting companies, right? I think it’s uh I think it’s an often misunderstood unappreciated aspect of running a business for a painting company. Um I think the, the typical standard is go and present an estimate which I don’t even like that word.
Uh oftentimes that estimate, I like how you guys do in home sales. Often times that estimates emailed, you know, 48 hours later, which is absurd to me and then wondering why people are price sensitive because you’ve presented a mcdonald’s Hamburger and you, you hope that they pay for the stick, right? As you’re talking about, how does line painting, I guess go about finding vetting, training franchisees to be able to effectively go sell this way. Yeah, it’s, it’s not just recruiting and on boarding and training franchise partners it’s their teams as well. Right.
So, uh, that, that’s exactly what we are. We’re a sales machine, uh, we’re a sales organization and that’s what our franchise partners are. Those are the skill sets that they bring. Um, and, or at least have the skill sets to develop in those ways within our model. Uh Because there is a blueprint, there is a way, there is a process from a sales perspective, from a, from an operations point of view and otherwise known as production, right? Uh or just the operations of your business. There are, there are playbooks, support uh training and the most powerful part of a franchise is the community.
You have folks, whether it’s the employees, the teammates in these locations or the ownership uh that can come together and collaborate. And, and so that’s what we do as the franchise or we create the community, we create the mechanisms to collaborate and uh create a sales culture that’s greater than one location but is as a whole nationally. Uh That is the enterprise that is the empire that we’re all invested in. Um And as a result, customers benefit sales, people benefit uh artisans in the local markets that we serve uh benefit.
And um yeah, at the end of the day, it’s just about providing uh an old school service and quality fashion and doing it consistently through processing systems and one of them being sales and, you know, um and, and so helping our owners grow as business owners, not on just the marketing side, but on the sales side, on the recruiting side, uh that’s, that’s what we do as a franchisor, you know, not only are we investing in infrastructure to complement those systems that our owners need? Right? But um providing the playbooks across the board and facilitating the collaboration of the community so that we can unite and grow and bring value to the industry.
Um and, and ultimately improve the customer experience. Yeah, so the, I think that sounds great, man. The this year’s obviously we’re filming this near end of 2024. This year has obviously been a little more challenging for a lot of painting company owners than last year. There’s a lot of concerns about inflation and um you know, the upcoming election uh coming up here in about a month, the increasing wars in the world, right? A lot of uncertainty which is causing homeowners to be a little bit more reticent, potentially a little bit more price sensitive uh for discretionary purchases such as large painting projects.
How are you guys dealing with that? Especially when you’re saying, hey, I, I wanna stick to a high price. You know, I’m not, I’m not gonna allow ourselves to be beat down or play that race to the bottom game that a lot of contractors play. How do you handle it when the economy starts to get a little bit more difficult? Yeah. We, we um we provide value and that value is based on me, we’re providing solutions to need. Uh So there’s real depreciation going on with assets.
And when you own a high end home, you have a lot of discretionary income, you have a lot of assets no matter what the economy is doing or if it’s an election year or not, or if there’s inflation or, you know, um maybe there’s a natural disaster that impacts supply chains or whatever it might be our demographic when they have a need, they have liquidity to update that asset. And so whether it was 2008 when I launched as an 1819 year old or it was the most recent pandemic when we had seven locations and we tripled them in A, in A Q three and Q four of 2020.
Um Our resistant has shown our business has shown that it’s resistant to whether it’s an election year or uh you know, the great recession or the great pandemic or, you know, whatever it might be. Uh we had supply chain issues right on the back end of COVID. And every year system wide sales, you know, we, we have grown the Sherwin price hikes. Those are fun. Yeah, Sherwin price hikes. I think Ben Benjamin Moore was in there, right? Um But actually that was, that was actually we were insulated from that and big part of that it uh they did come later, but they didn’t come in that storm of everything else and that was just our, our relationships.
Um But at that time, we were um just formulating partnerships across all three of the major suppliers from PPG to Sherwin to Benjamin Moore. And they all knew that. And so uh us being a national brand that only purchases their high grade coatings. We are their sales force, right? We’re, we are strategic partners and so they’re also invested in our success. That’s the benefit of a national organization like a franchise where you’re in business with other business owners collectively, as an ownership group, you’re purchasing product together and that just strength, strengthens your buying power, strengthens your strategy partnerships.
And so, um it doesn’t always happen that way, but in that case, we actually were insulated from that, which did help because we, we were like in the middle of not only the, the, the pandemic, but the supply chain and then the price, you know, and um but my gosh, that is the power of a franchise in 2020. Every one of our owners made six figures plus and we, we, we continuously told one another the entire year. Could you imagine being a mom paw not having the community that we have?
Because what we’re talking about here, um Brandon, his mindset and when inflation comes or com recession, whatever it is, you name it, guess what happens? Your competition stops executing. Why? Because they were told something by some thought leader on some show that they listened to or the news station or their relative or their friend, or maybe it was just, they were hungry and tired and had a trail of thoughts that took them down a path that talked them out of executing, talked them out of doing the work. Why?
Because now they’re ridden with fear and the reality is if you go out and execute, you’re going to find results. And um and when your competition is scaring themselves during scary times, but those scary times are during changing times. But as an entrepreneur, that’s a part of being an entrepreneur is being a leader for the folks that you serve, whether it’s your customers, your employees, the artisans, uh they need your leadership and your direction to continue executing because it’s important for everybody’s livelihoods. And so uh to be able to, based on the fact that what we’re providing is a need.
It’s not a want when you have legitimate sun and water damage on $1003,000 asset. What do you want? Do you want to spend $8000 to wrap a coating on it or do you want to redo your stucco? Right? It’s like which the stucco redo is 100 grand and there’s a lot of sun and water damage here. And so that sun, water damage is similar on every other surface, the metal has rust, the wood has cracks and water logging, the stamp concrete is cracking and crumbling. It’s all the entry doors, the clear coats worn off the stain is, you know, the wood is starting to crack.
These are expensive assets. Even the doors on the homes we work on are worth 10 to $20,000 each. And there’s usually two. Right. So, uh, we, we always, we, we always take it back to, um, our sales model and creating value in that sales model. So if we’re hearing objections or whatnot, um, again, it, it might not be the right fit in terms of demographic, but as long as it’s the right demographic and there’s legitimate need, right? Our model works. So take it to the sales process and um, you know, that customer is gonna understand the need that’s there to your point versus just seeing the price, right?
How many times, how many times do you not do anything that I just said? And you present the proposal or the quote or whatever you call it? And you know, they just see the price. Um So you gotta have a fit of everything. Does the person have money? Um, do they actually need the service? And then is there a proper system in place to pair the two together, the person that has discretionary income to maintain that one of their highest valued assets and you know, the solutions for maintaining it and you pair those two together through systems and process.
Um, then you could, you know, rely on the branding to compound within neighborhoods. Um you know, then it’s about relationships and, you know, being a, an empire builder there within your community, regardless of inflation, the election, uh whatever it might be. But, you know, telling yourself the right story, which is let your competitors talk themselves out of executing so that you can be the one that serves the customers in the market because they’re gonna be there regardless of what’s going on in the world. You know, I think uh a a couple of really important points there.
So the the idea to continue executing, you know, action trumps perfection. And I think so often people get paralyzed by fear, especially when some negative things start happening in the economy or otherwise within their business. And the the companies during a downturn in companies that execute oftentimes can take significant market share and that can be some of their best growth opportunity. The other thing you mentioned that I think is really, really worth focusing on is this idea that your target demographic is less impacted by the economy, right?
They’re gonna have, they’re gonna maintain discretionary income even if interest rates are high, even if there’s some political unrest, even if, even if things like that, because they’re just in that demographic. But even even tracing it kind of earlier to that is that you have such a specified demographic. There are so many painting company owners where the question is a who do you serve? We serve everyone in this zip code, right? That’s not really who you serve. So that, so you guys are very dialed in on exactly who you serve.
The advantages of serving that audience. You understand the audience really well, and you understand how to sell to them because you’re not selling it as this discretionary. Hey, we’re gonna make your house really pretty. That will be a component of it. But, hey, this is an asset. This is an investment. This is how you think about it because you’re in a certain wealth bracket that tends to think this way. And it’s true, you have something really valuable and we’re gonna, we’re gonna speak a language that you understand and we’re gonna make this big dollar value relative to other painting companies.
We’re gonna make it, make sense for you. Right. And that, and we’re gonna build a whole business model around that. And I think there are a lot of lessons that not even necessarily serving the high market could serve, the low mark, could serve the mid market, but you can take that sort of thought process and you can apply it to your painting company. It’s not just, hey, we serve everyone in this radius. Do you want to paint project? Why aren’t you paying me more money? Right. Yeah. And it’s, it’s common in all industries, right?
You look at the seventies, eighties, nineties, the restaurant industry uh used to be a bunch of Mom Paws. It was a lot of diners and they were local and Franchising. Uh it, you can see how it’s mutually beneficial all the way around it. It, it actually benefits all stakeholders of the whole value chain. And um and so in the restaurant industry, you could see that value being so beneficial in every market that it standardized the whole country. Um many sectors, but I like talking about the restaurant space because we all, we all understand it.
Like we know mcdonald’s, we know Chick Fil A, we know Wendy’s and, and, and uh these, these um are all options that are uh se you know, they have segmentation and that happens over time. You have fast food restaurants, you have uh steakhouses, you have every, everything in between and even those have categories of higher end versus lower. And it’s just the maturation within an industry. And what’s exciting about home services beyond just painting. But home services at large, uh Franchising has been um creating this incredible value for all stakeholders in the space for, you know, about a decade now plus, but really picking up momentum uh the, the latter decade or so.
Um And the reason being is the white collar sophistication that, that uh comes into play in a, in a blue collar space. Everybody generates more value, more revenue, more profits, more mutual synergy um by uh you know, leveling up the customer experience and that comes with white collar sophistication. Uh Franchising being one of the methods of sophistication, but it improves the industry improves the customer experience. Uh And uh and so as the home improvement space has been being standardized, right? Uh we’re really excited about uh being able to provide a standardized option for a client that wants to pay more, to get more in contracting where that’s not always the case.
And you don’t always think of that as a homeowner or just a customer in the, in the space, but you do in just about every other sector, a lot of others, right? Think about the auto. We’re talking about restaurants, um, even your phones. So it’s exciting to provide that uh within the paint space. Yeah, I love it. The um, what would you say are some of the, the advantages of line painting o obviously, you guys have a specified demographic. You view yourselves as a coatings company and painting being a portion of that.
Um, meaning that you can really take care of all necessary services for a project. But if, if someone’s looking like, hey, maybe, maybe I do want to become a franchise partner. Why would they choose line painting over over? Say many of the other painting franchises that exist? Yeah, I asked uh Chat GP T that the other day. And what did Mr Chat GP T say? Well, it, it showed that painting is clearly the hottest sector in Franchising. Ok. It, it is, it home improvements, the hottest category.
And within home home improvement painting is number one, most, most uh number of brands and having been in the industry for quite some time now, uh I’ve seen a lot of growth in the space. I didn’t have nearly as many competitors. Uh And so it’s been really fun uh to make what a, what a great, well, that’s an entrepreneur’s attitude right there, but I, I didn’t have competitors now. I have fun. So it’s very fun. Well, well, hey, listen, we have a $60 billion industry. So I, I know I’m not doing 60 billion.
So I want all the computers I can because you know why that means the customer experience is improving. I can’t do it all myself. I can’t do it. I want more high end paint companies to be out there. I want high end painting to be a household term. And of course, I want us to be leading the category, but I want it to be a massive category. I want a painting to be of the industry in general. I mean, not, it, it helps other professional painting companies because we, we started to separate a little bit from the truck and the truck that might come in might kinda, um, you know, water down the paint might do other things and, and ultimately create a bad name for the industry.
Yeah, absolutely. A, a rising tide raises all boats and um I don’t know. Yeah, maybe that’s an entrepreneur’s mindset, right? A part of that, of a mentality of abundance. Um At least a successful one. Right. And so I’ve been honored to see the number of painting companies enter the space. Um I know that we just from a numbers perspective have been um you know, uh leading in, in the space uh one of the leading um contributors. So, yeah, it’s been an honor and uh that’s what we want, we want growth.
And um uh yeah, the, the industry to improve. So, uh I apologize. What was the question? Uh It was advantages of line paintings. There you go. Versus potentially other franchise, other franchise options. OK. So yeah, to that point, um you can’t fake culture. So uh culture kicks strategy’s butt every day. Uh And when you have culture combined with strategy, it’s undeniable, but the people at our company are franchise partners, um They’re elite, we only work with the top franchise consultants in the country. Um And they do a tremendous job of matching us with uh highly talented franchise partners.
We’re very selective with who we bring into our brand. Um We’re not, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve had a lot of interest from private equity, one of the fastest growing franchise companies. I say that humbly it’s the people behind us, but um we are not going anywhere and um so yeah, it, it um it attracts uh super talented uh owners and that turns into culture, but we’re intentional about our culture. We’re intentional about the types of folks that we bring into our organization and we tell people no, all the time.
Um And uh that’s not something we take pride in per se, but we do take pride in stewarding the enterprise value and um growing the brand that we’re all in, invested in, in a way that aligns with our ownership group. We’re, we’re very much a values based company. Uh lime stands for love, integrity, mission and excellence. Uh And that is a posture that’s a way of showing up in the market. Uh And so folks, when they join li they choose that way of doing business and you can tell the benefits that that provides to our suppliers uh to our artisans uh to our sales teams that we build uh to the collective ownership group.
Um From the way that the home office supports our franchise partners, it’s a posture that sets the tone for all stakeholders that creates a healthy collaboration amongst the company and that leads to innovation. That’s the power of a franchise organization. That’s why Franchising creates massive empires um because it’s collective ownership united and it’s mutually beneficial up and down the value chain um from the consumer to home office and uh everyone in between. I and so, yeah, what is it that separates us or makes us different? It’s, it’s the fact that we’re a franchise business and there’s so many advantages of a franchise organization.
Uh and it’s the way that we have grown the franchise, the types of people in our systems, our process, our approach, I can’t tell you how many Ivy League people and the best in the world um that have created the iconic brands that we all love and appreciate. They’ve invested in lime and leaned in and um and have gotten us to where we are. Uh It’s, there’s been so much talent that um has uh produced what you see. And so we don’t hit 100 territories open. Uh by chance, it’s, there’s been a lot of partners that have done extensive due diligence and um and, and they see the systems, the processes and that talent that has created um the empire that is Lyme and like I said, we’re really just getting onto the scene, our 1st 100 locations.
Um And so, uh yeah, we look forward to just continuing to improve the industry. Um You know, um we’re all about leveling up and improving the communities that we serve and that means our industry as well, whether that’s Franchising or the painting space, the Home Improvement space, uh the luxury homeowner. Uh We, we just want to take an abundance approach and uh and improve um and, and, and do good in the world. Yeah. So, Nick, one of the advantages that I think you have and that some of the industry partners that I’ve had on have is, is this oversight of a lot of different companies, right?
Because you guys have 100 franchise partners, meaning you have kind of your fingerprints in all parts of the country. So you can see what’s going on, uh, how things, what things are working, what things are not working. And we have a lot of people listening, who are not going to be franchise partners, right? They run their own painting company looking for uh strategies on how to improve their own growth. Can you share some strategies, some tactics, some best practices doesn’t, doesn’t have to be any, you know, covert IP or anything like that, but just things that people can learn from you about how to maybe improve their own sales process or their business in general.
I mean, our, our best, some of our best owners come from the space. Um some of our best owners know the space really well and they come and do that really extensive due diligence I was talking about and they realize, wow, I can build a bigger business here and I could be a part of a larger organization. Um And I can have all the benefits of a franchise organization and I have immediate access and ownership to that. Um So I wouldn’t bypass, I think a lot of your audience should actually consider joining our empire and partaking in and owning some of the empire and bringing it to their local market um because they could really benefit from our coaching, our systems or processes, they can stop winning, spinning their wheels and, and trying to figure things out.
Um and uh get backed by um a national organization and you have peers that um you know, you can collaborate and network with and uh share best practices in how to best do that. We call those conversions. So you do a conversion And um yeah, you become a franchise partner. Maybe not everyone is thinking about that. Just wanna throw that out. It’s not right for everybody, of course. But um it certainly is an option and like I said, that those are some of our best uh partners as you can um assume, you know, coming from the space.
Uh what we’re vetting for in that case, again, we don’t award to everybody. What we’re looking for is that coachability, like we really need you to plug into the system in the lime way you’ve been doing your way. But the lime way I is um everything is wrapped around it from the resources, the tools, the training. Um and uh and so being in stride with the process that’s been developed, that requires a posture of about a year, year and a half of fully making the transition. But guess what?
New owners from outside of the organization, they go through a similar 18 month just getting enshrine. Um But from outside the industry, you’re you just have the benefits of being from the space. You just have to take a, a collaborative approach uh to integrate and, and make the transition if that makes sense. Sure. Well, that’s great, Nick, appreciate you sharing all that. Uh Is there anything else that you would like to add before we wrap up this episode? Oh my gosh, you can spin your wills, you can spend a lot of time trying to figure things out.
Guess what cost money, cost time cause heartache. It takes away from your family, time, the balance in your life, right? But what if you had all the systems, the process, the training from marketing to recruiting to on boarding and train like you just, just those two things, marketing and recruiting, right? Just those two things and you throw in the technology. I haven’t even mentioned that and the talent at our home office haven’t even talked about that, but you have access to all of that. Yeah. So um yeah, I would just, I would just throw out that.
Um you know, you might wanna consider joining one of the hottest and fastest growing uh national brands and Franchising as a whole, but in the paint category as well and what’s unique is nobody in history has done what we’re doing. So you get the opportunity to make history as well in your local market. Uh and, and most importantly, have fun uh while doing it. So yeah, I could talk entrepreneurship all day. When you throw in paint, it just uh you know, you, you hit all my trigger points.
And uh so this has been an awesome experience. I hope I’ve brought some value and, and created um you know, some uh context for uh what we do at lime. And it’s been a real pleasure being on. I appreciate you joining Nick. Thanks so much for sharing all that.
If you want to learn more about the topics we discussed in this podcast and how you can use them to grow your painting business, visit PainterMarketingPros.com/Podcast for free training, as well as the ability to schedule a personalized strategy session for your painting company.
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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 Brandon@PainterMarketingPros.com and I can give you personalized advice on growing your painting business. Until next time, keep growing.