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.

I know how you feel. You’re probably feeling frustrated. You want to grow your business, but ultimately you’re not sure where the best lead source is. One person and one agency is telling you to do this. You’re reading online and they’re telling you to do that. You’re trying all of it, but you’re just not getting the financial security, the success that you dreamed of when you started your painting business. You’re staring at your computer screen, wondering how to make the leads start flowing in again. What went wrong?

I’m Brandon, founder of Painter Marketing Pros, and we help painters like you get their internet marketing right so you can scale your business, sell more residential repaint projects, keep your crews busy, and achieve the financial security and freedom you dreamed of when you started your painting company. If you want to generate more consistent leads and build the company of your dreams, then go ahead and book a call with me. We’re gonna create an effective sales and marketing system for your painting company. So go ahead, scroll down and book a call now.

In this episode, Brandon hosts a powerhouse panel of top-performing painting contractors who are scaling smart—even in uncertain times. Mike Sutton, Mark DeFrancesco, Shane Fast, and Juan Vasquez pull back the curtain on how they’re closing more jobs with fewer leads, holding (or raising) their prices, and building standout brands that generate loyal customers and referrals. Whether you’re stuck at $200K or aiming to break $10M, this episode delivers proven tactics for growth, from strategic hiring and financing options to customer experience systems and sales process upgrades.

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

Using a different link. So if you just wanna resend him his panelist link, maybe give him a call, uh, so we can get him in here. Mike, Shane, Mark, man, one of the things I love about these events is I, I’m basically friends with everyone. What’s up, Juan? Good to see you, man. Can you hear me? Can hear you loud and clear, man. You look good. Oh man, you always give me a heart attack. This happened last time, so I don’t give you a heart attack. We send you a link.

We put it in your calendar. Juan, I’m babying you over here, man. Just gotta use the right link. Hey, I’m, I’m a painter of heart, man. I’m working on it. Right. Juan Juan has struggles with this link and he’s killing it in business, guys. So we listen to what the guy’s got to say. Um, all right, cool. Let, let’s, I’m, I’m gonna call on you guys. If you could just introduce yourself, the name of your company. Where you’re based, kind of residential, commercial, what do you serve?

And if you want to say anything about, you know, how long you’ve been in business, uh, if you want to identify your revenue range, how many team members you have just so people kind of have, have some perspective of who we’re hearing from here. So Mike, you wanna kick us off? Also, Mike Sutton, I own a company, Kind Home Painting Company. Uh, we’re based out of Denver, Colorado. We’ve been in business for 8 years. We do a 100% residential work, and um Last year, we completed just over $15 million in revenue and uh currently we have something like Somewhere around 70 full-time employees, those are not painters, those are reps, phone people, project managers, technicians, etc.

I was really hoping you were gonna drop some of that mic, so people could understand the magnitude of your business. Um, OK, but everyone on here is I handpicked everyone on here, so every single person on here is an absolute killer. Uh, Mark. So, my name is Mark DiF Francesco. I founded a company up in Connecticut called MDF Painting and Power Washing. We did last year 84% residential, the other 16% were commercial repaint, and last year we’re at 5.2 million in revenue. Mark, you’re, you’re, um, man, we, we have so many quality, um.

Quality contractors that are adding other value. Are you running a sales program at this point? Yeah, so, so I created a sales program that’s essentially videos and scripts and the whole nine to, to train my own internal sales team about 7 years ago. And so about 2 years ago, I started to share it with other painting contractors that are not competing with me and we have a program that we call Paint for America Mastermind. So that’s why this logo is a little bit different. Yeah. Sweet. Juan, I know, uh, I’d love in the intro if you could talk a little bit about your guys’ unique style of growth just so people can understand the, the kind of influencer you are.

Uh, yeah, I don’t know about all the influences, but thank you for having me here, guys. I really appreciate it. As you guys know, my name is Juan Vasquez. Uh, we are located in beautiful Monterey, California. Uh, just gonna throw it out there, right? Um, yeah, so I’ve been painting for over 1.33 years. Um, I’ve owned, uh, I started founded Illusions Inc back in, uh, was it? 1819 years ago, right? And so what’s interesting is that we ran our business just like any other uh small business in the country, the majority of business in the country where it was just myself and a couple of the guys for 1213 years.

The last 56 years, um, everything has shift. We’ve learned in, uh, to create a business. So we’ve been working on that for the last 5 years, my business partner and I. So basically we have reinvented ourselves multiple times and this to show you guys, you know, how things can be transparent from like, from being the painter. To becoming that the contractor for some of us takes a lot longer, uh, for some guys in the 1st 5 years they’re doing 10 to $20 million. For us it’s taking a very long time, but it’s been a great journey, so it’s great that we can always get to a point in our business and make that shift.

So that’s basically what has happened to us. Uh, because of that, I also, uh, we also have a, a podcast where we basically communicate and introduce, uh, uh, Hispanic contractors throughout the country. Uh, I also chair for the PCA and Espanol, so, uh, that’s something that’s very, uh, near my heart because that’s something that we’ve been able to, uh, bring the resources to a whole new community like myself that is in desperate need of that. So, um. Yeah, that’s a little bit of us. We do high-end home residential um painting in our area, so some of our to paint a home, so we’re in a very unique market.

Oh, I’m here. You’re back, you’re good. All right, sorry. So, uh yeah, and so we’ve been doing that for a long time and now we are moving into introducing a commercial section to our business, uh, to help the growth of the business. Amazing. Thank you for that, Juan. Really impressive, uh, journey that you’ve made. Love what you’re doing with everything with PCA and Espanol. And then we have Shane, last but not least, Shane and I worked together on the, the PCA residential Committee. He does a lot for the PCA, um, for the company’s growing there.

Shane, if you just kind of tell us, tell us where you’re at, uh, who you’re serving, a little bit about your business. Yeah, and I don’t usually look at myself on the screen, but I’m watching my body do this right here, and I have no idea why. I move a lot. I think there’s like an auto feature where it’ll kind of auto center you move it. I, I, I move on my own, so I disable that, but you’re good. Yeah, I have no idea. It’s like I’m like one’s my, yeah, above my figure, but I believe you.

I, um, yeah, so we’re in South Carolina, um, we’d argue that’s beautiful too, one, and, uh. You know, so different opposite ends of the country. Um, yeah, and I, um, came from a totally non-painting background. I was in, um, inner-city ministry, nonprofit work for years, and, um, kind of backed into the painting world and really fought it for a while, like, I don’t wanna do this. Um, and then at some point a few years ago, kind of relented and said, OK, like, let’s figure out how to grow a little bit.

And so, so we’re, we’re, we’re probably the smallest on the block in this group right here, um, but we love, we do love our team. And so we, we just last year switched to a hybrid models. We have in-house and subcontractors. Um, and, you know, we will probably be somewhere between 1.5 and 173 this year. I know it’s a broad range, but it depends on some personnel decisions that we’re evaluating right now. And, um, just if, if we grow, we want to grow very healthily, conservatively, because I about killed our family doing um inner city work and we’re not doing that again, so.

Yes, I’ll say, Shane and I have connected on a pretty personal level regarding balancing business with family life. It is challenging. We can be up here on the screen and look super successful, but I will tell you, everyone has their struggles. So Shane and I have connected on that. I’ve struggled with it. I think everyone on here struggled with it. When you try to do great things in business, it is difficult sometimes, and we’ll get into a little bit of that. It is difficult sometimes to make sure.

You know, you’re keeping your eye on the ball with family and everything else that you need to do. So I think that’s a, a very common struggle. I think Shane’s done a phenomenal job balancing that and making that a priority. So guys, I, I wanna hop in here. I want to lead off. I just feel like times are crazy right now, right? Politically, it’s, I’ve never seen anything like, you know, the past 4 or 8 years, it’s just insane. Uh, economically, right, like we’re, we’re gonna do great, we’re gonna do terrible.

There’s so many disparate views out there. I mean, obviously the tariffs things, you know, however you, you lean politically, things are definitely different. I mean, that’s a fact. Things are very different right now than they’ve ever been. How, what are you guys seeing for this year? What, what are you seeing for this year compared to last year? Kind of walk walk me through uh how the last year has been and what you see for this year. And this is open. Anyone, anyone can hop in. I mean, I, I mean, I can start.

I love to go out there, right? Um so something that, I mean, I, I think it has to be with where, where you’re, I mean, what your market is, because there are different markets are gonna get affected completely different, you know, commercial, you have your jobs, you signed up probably 2 years ago and now they’re happening. So, you know, it’s gonna take uh that process uh and residential, you know, it’s kind of immediate, especially if you’re doing. Repaints, those are, I mean, they’re as they go. So you know you are very into what’s happening right now um for us we do kind of function in a way like uh commercial because some of these homes have to be built, then we come in.

So it is almost like a lapse between 11 to 2 years to where we come in when we sign in. So it, it, uh, you know, it varies for us. Uh, I am involved with the, uh, Hispanic board, advisory board for Sharon Williams as well, and it’s really great for me because we see the insight, you know, the, they’ve been down about 30% this first quarter and that reflects everything that we’re doing and it’s just, I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the industry. Um, there’s a lot of things moving on, but as you guys know, there’s always something.

A couple of years back, it was, we couldn’t find a guy to work for us, you know, we couldn’t find a help. Then before that was like, oh, we’re trying to get the millenniums into the market. And now it’s like, OK, we’re not getting the, the right leads, you know, we’re not getting enough leads. And so there’s always something I think in the business it’s good to get, create strategies. Last year, something that helped for us is creating, is understanding that our clients were the biggest supporters.

So last year it was a slow year for us, but we ended up at the same level as the. before because we reached out onto our CRM and really became very focused on reselling to our clients and that really helped us. So it’s we created the systems that as things move forward you can reach back into your little bag of tricks and say, OK, we’re gonna apply this because this is what’s coming up. So that’s what we’ve learned throughout the years. Yeah, I love that. So the leveraging your list, you know, if for those of you who listen to my presentation, a lot of that is, is what Juan’s talking about there, right?

You have past leads, past clients, and most painting contractors completely ignore that. And when things become more uncertain or or the cost per lead goes up, those are basically free leads, free projects for you. Because we can’t control what’s happening here. We don’t understand. If we could be extremely good in a couple of months or it can be really bad. It’s just very uncertain. There’s there’s no control over that for us, but we have big control of how we structure our business to be prepared, you know, proactive for what’s coming or may come. Yeah.

Mike, Shane, Mark, what do you guys, what are you guys thinking for this year? Um, yeah, I’ll share a little bit, uh. I think universally in the painting industry across the whole may have experienced something around July of last year. Um, potentially, I’m misspeaking, uh, but I can certainly say that, uh, lead flow decreased in all of last year, and, uh, To everyone’s ill advice, it was, oh, it’s an election year, things are happening, just wait till next year. And um As a company, I will say this year closing ratios are up, Do booked for estimate is up, average job size is up.

We’ve increased our prices, we’re winning more work than we’ve won previously. Leads are down. Um, objectively, fewer leads are coming in, but we’re booking more revenue with what we have, and the focus for our team is, how do you get more efficient with what you’re given. And uh our energy this year is focused on leveling up our impact, making sure that we’re Keeping our eyes on the important thing, which is supporting the community, uh, giving back to the people around you, uh, we’re increasing our donations, we’re increasing our free paint jobs for families in need, and um we’re Really just trying to put the energy into others and That it comes back.

So, um, simultaneously like to improve your scripts and your messaging and Your effort And Um, see how that Uh, we have the, we’ve always shared a story since 2020 of be the buffalo, and, uh, Brandon, I may have shared this with you at one point, but when storms are coming in, buffalo turn and they run at it. Because if they run through the storm, it lasts. Shorter. So we’re running at this year and um Seeing success. And that’s cool. I did, I don’t think I knew that about Buffalo, so I don’t think you had shared it, but I love it and I’m gonna steal it.

I’m gonna use it. Cows will turn and walk away. I think you guys that did that presentation at PCA a few years back, a couple of years back, because I heard it at the PCA. I did not know. ike finally, I’ve been trying to drag this guy to a PCA event forever. He finally comes to PCA Expo. I meet him in person for the first time. We’ve done, I don’t know how many podcast episodes together. I’m like, man, I can finally hang out with him. And then I got extremely ill.

And so I got to basically say bye to him on the escalator. I was like, man, that is a bummer. I’ll probably see Mike again in like 5 years because we basically went to his hometown. The PCA was phenomenal. I will return. Yeah, good. I, I’ve been, I’ve been talking about Mike for years. I’ve been like, man, I had this podcast. Nobody knew who he was because he lived under a rock. So thank you, Mike, for entering the world and, and, uh, teaching us all something. So we got, we got Juan who’s talking about leveraging your list.

You have past leads, you have past clients, when things get a little rocky, when your costly goes up, reach into your bag of goodies. It’s your list, that’s a value, and, and then, you know, um, get free work, right? We have Mike, who’s talking about, hey, the, the number of leads is down, and yet somehow he’s up because he’s got a super dial in sales process. He’s operating from a place of abundance. He’s not saying, well, we have fewer leads, I’m gonna cut my price. I’m gonna be really scared.

He’s, he knows that he has a really refined sales process. He knows he sells on value, so he’s making more profit per per sale and his close rates going up. Because you can do this stuff, right? Sell leverage your list. Shane, Mark, what do you guys, I, what are you guys thinking for this year? Um, I can kick it off between us, Shane, if you like. I mean, I’m, I’m the eternal optimist, so I’m probably not the best person to ask for this. I have a lot of blinders when it I’m not super political.

I mean, I have my thoughts and opinions like everyone else, but when it comes to the business and how we interact with the whole marketplace, I try to just focus on the things that I could control, you know, and a lot of the other stuff, I just call it the noise. And I just try to remain calm when it’s up and when it’s down and, and just watch our internal KPIs. I mean, similar to what Mike said, you know, we’re controlling what we control. And the truth of the matter is, even in my marketplace, in my best areas, I spread less than 1% of all the gallons of paint that are actually being bought and sold and spread in those areas.

So if I look at the larger economy or different things that are happening, it, it could become easy for me to blame challenges on that. And I just look back and say, I, I really, although we’re a bigger size in our local market. We are small relative to all the gallons of paint that are spread. So when we don’t have, when we see our lead flow drop, we just focus on the things that we can control to increase the flow. When we see our, you know, ADLs, which is a sales metric we look at, and our dollar sold, we, we just control what we can control, more training, um, sometimes higher pricing.

Uh, more value to the customer. And so there’s 23 major things that I look at in terms of metrics and on all those metrics, we’re trending in a positive way. You know, and, and that’s a good sign, despite what maybe the outside world feels, just focus on what you could control would be my advice. You only have control over the input. You actually have no control at all whether a customer buys from you. You have no control at all about what your competitor does, but you can control how you show up, what your sales process looks like, how you treat the customer, whether you deliver the proposal in home or you, you email it over 48 hours later and you’ve completely lost control, uh, you can control all that shane.

Yeah, I really resonate with a lot of what has been said so far. Um, one thing I told our team last year, Mike talked about the leads starting to come down, you know, I just looked at him and said, if you can grind now and be successful now, then we’re gonna just absolutely destroy something later, you know. Um, and so we’re still, I would say we’re still seeing um A slow relief flow for sure. Um, our business is up dramatically. Um, and we’ve kind of doubled every year for a few years.

Um, and so that’s not exactly the pace we’re on, but we’re close right now. Um, not saying that’s our goal this year, but just, that’s the volume we’re doing. Um, we do have a little bit of a, uh, I mean, I guess I call it like an unfortunate blessing that we live right where Helene ripped through, um, so we’re doing a lot of storm damage stuff. Um, and so, so that’s, that’s, I, I know that’s kind of buoyed our numbers a little bit this year. So, um, so, so I would echo everything that’s been said, um, to this point and just a little bit like Mark, it’s.

I mean, I’m, I’m aware, I’m not naive. He’s not saying he’s like, you know, but I, I just don’t tell our team like, we can control these things and let’s get after it, you know, um, and I love the idea of the buffalo kind of thing, you know, um, because that’s, that’s the mentality I want our team, you know, it’s just like, we’re gonna grind, we’re gonna fight for this, you know, and, um, see what happens, you know. Yeah, like I, I love what, um, what all of you guys are saying, and Mark, your, your point too about the, you know, you’re 55.9 million whatever you control 1%.

of the paint goo, I mean, I think there’s this perception in the industry. There’s this misconception that you’ve tapped out a market when you haven’t even scratched the surface. So if you actually sit down, do the math, have this abundance mindset, that’s what I’m kind of getting from all of you guys is say, we lean into it buffalo, run through the storm abundance mindset. But I’d love to dive into that a little bit because for me, I’m listening to this. I’m like, OK, the lead flows down, but all your businesses are up.

I know, Shane, there’s a little bit of booing there from the storm. But how is it that that the people on this panel, the lead flow is down. But your business, is it just a mindset? Is there something else? If people here are listening, say my, my lead flows down too, but my business isn’t up. What I mean, one thing I would say is adjustments are made. I mean, if we look at say we need to get 67 leads a week and we see that they’re trending at 49, that’s where I look at the overall market and say if I’m only doing 1% anyway, I’m, I’m capturing 49 out of thousands.

I can’t go and find a way to go get 67. So adjustments are made, we’re doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t work. As long as you’re watching it for us, it’s, it’s every week, looking at that stuff and making little micro adjustments. I think that’s critical for how we we handle it. Knowing, knowing your data. So you’re, you’re mapping out the revenue, you’re gonna know your close rate, you’re gonna know your, your average ticket value per project. You’re gonna know your gross profit margin, and you’re going to actively manage your company, figure out, right, where am I getting the leads from, what’s my cost lead, move maybe some marketing dollars around and figure it out as opposed to just running the marketing kind of blind and say, man, I, I wish I had more leads, but I don’t necessarily know where they’re coming from, what I’m paying for them, or, or, you know, what we’re doing. Correct.

I think another thing is, um, to add to that, which I think everybody here is probably doing is we’re selling value and experience. Um, you know, there’s so many, I, I mean, I do a lot of clothes. I still do most of sales for our company at this point, um, at our size, and, and, and I can tell when people are fishing for the bottom dollar, all of us can tell that. Um, and that’s not our client. And, um, and through that process, though, I’ve learned. You know, there’s a certain big national franchise that is present probably in all our markets and they say, well, this person gave this price of this is, you know, 25% less like I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna I’m not.

I thought I was being politically correct. Oh, so I, uh, you know, it’s, it’s that. There is a race to the bottom in our area price wise, um, by men and women who lead these businesses who are scared. And that’s, that’s just the wrong mentality, you know, and so, so like most of the, the men on this panel here, I think we probably all raised our prices and we said we are different. And if you go with, like, I want the people that go with us and at the end say, you know what, we spent 433% more to go with you guys and I’m so glad we did.

That extra $2000 is worth it, you know, um, and we have heard that before and it’s, and it’s, it’s not just because our crews will sing while they work sometimes, it’s not like it can be our in-house, it can be ourselves, but we want that customer to have a great experience. from the time they call in the very first step, and I have a rockstar person answering the phone in our office to the time we send that final invoice and we give them the thank you gifts, you know, so what is that experience we’re creating?

And then they’re telling their friends that so that if our lead flow is down, hopefully, we’re getting some of those really hot leads, like the customer referrals that say, you’ve got to call these guys, um, because it’s gonna, they’re gonna take care of you, you know. So I think that’s another thing is can we communicate that value? Yeah, I love that. So you using, I mean that that’s kind of the antithesis of how a lot of people think about pricing. So I mean you’re you’re almost saying.

Using the pricing, the higher pricing, almost as a differentiator. So saying, hey, we, we are going to come in higher and we’re going to sell on the value and the people that that are our ideal customer avatar, which I think a lot of painting companies aren’t thinking, who’s my actual avatar? It’s not everybody in your area. The ones that are my ideal avatar, they’re going to see the price, but they’re going to see everything I’m putting behind it. And that’s going to resonate more with them than maybe a company that comes in, does their measurements, isn’t really delivering that value, but is, is clearly trying to be a really competitive price.

Yeah, I mean, I’m not trying to always be the most expensive, but I don’t want to be the, you know, I mean, so be clarified, but I do feel like we want people that price is not their main objective. But if I can go into a customer’s house and win over somebody even whose price is the main objective, if we can win them over to our sales process, that’s great too, you know, not by our price, but by our process, you know. Juan, can you, can you tell people some of the size of some of the projects you’ve completed?

Cause I know when you told me it, it just rocked my world. Mhm. So, uh, our average, uh, high-end residential is $50 million. So the last couple, the last couple projects we’ve had they can’t sell for like $8. We’ll walk over here doing half a million dollar projects in the house. So last, last, last residential we finished, it was $1.3 million to paint a residential home, and this includes, you know, high-end finishes, cabinets, and so on, uh, and so. When, when, and I think it’s great what Shane’s saying here, it’s so important to know your market too, right?

Because I can’t go out there and try to get leads because my clients are not looking for leads. I’m not gonna go find them on Google. I’m not gonna, these are, these are very close in networks like designers, architects, uh, contractors. So it’s a different world. Right, so I have to create those relationships and it’s taking us a few years to create those relationships. And what we’ve done when I say my little bag of arsenal or my little arsenal of tools is we’ve been able to create, I mean, we do specialty finishes that no one does in the area.

They would normally bring someone from, I don’t know, New York or San Francisco, which is like 2 hours from here. And we’re like, OK, why can’t we do that? Why can’t we not do that? So that’s what we started doing is we started creating um a few years back, I remember I was listening to um To Nick May and I want, I came into the PCA and I wanted to conquer the world, and I wanted to do all these different things. It’s like, no, focus on what you’re good at, create a presence, create a brand, and just be the best in your, in your area.

And I’m not saying that we are the best in that area, but we are. One of the ones that has one of the most unique finishes in the area. So if anyone is looking for quality, high-end finishes and unique finishes, we’re the guys. They’re not calling us for prize. They’re not calling us for, uh, you know, can we do it? They’re like these are the guys. So it’s, that’s what we focused on. Basically, and, uh, and it’s been great. It’s been growing in that department, but now in order for us to expand, we looked into doing residential, like small repaints.

And when I saw the average jobs being between 7 to 9000, I’m like, how many jobs do I have? To sell, you know, to get to a million dollars where I can sell one of these jobs. So I kind of shift out of that really quick and I was like, no, it’s not for me. So that’s why we chose the commercial world because they’re that type of jobs that we have and they’re pretty much doing the same kind of um uh process that we’re already doing on these big homes.

So we’re leveraging already our experience. So that’s very important to know what your business established for. Well, I’m curious, would we know somebody who purchased a $1.3 million dollar paint job? Any chance some of us might know that person? Well, I’ll tell you what, I never meet these people. They’re from all over the world. We’re, I don’t know if you guys are familiar with Pebble Beach. Uh, there’s a big golf area here and so we have, uh, we have owners from all over the world, um, a lot from England.

They come and this is their 3rd, 1.53th house. They, we’re working on a project right now that their budget is $80 million to build a house. I’m like that must be nice. So, you know, we, we always deal with, you know, architects, designers, you know, caretakers. Uh when the owners come, everybody leaves the house and they come and do their thing once or twice a year and, and we get a list of repairs. And so for us, maintenance has become one of those things. Our average maintenance job is about $16,000.

So yearly we maintain all these homes and then it just, it’s just a, a repeating um. You know, job for us. So it’s a, it’s very unique niche. You just have to always stay up to date. Now it’s wallpaper. Everybody wants wants wallpaper in our area. Wallpaper, raw wood, and uh metal. So now we have to become the best at that. I love the maintenance thing, man. Anytime you can, you can take what’s typically a one-time service and turn it into more of a recurring service, so going in completing the painting project, but then having maintenance.

You’re not only going to get that recurring revenue, which is gonna help balance out, uh, any, any lulls potentially new sales. It also obviously positions you for the repeat business because you’re already servicing that home, and, and that is our marketing, you know, that’s just staying on top of. When we call when we call our clients and then we’re like, hey, you know, Mrs. Smith, you’re, you’re due for your 6 month follow up. We want to come by your office by your house. I want to make sure that we’re not expecting anything to be wrong, but if there’s anything, we would love to catch it and take care of it.

The minute we walk in there, they are extremely, they’re extremely like surprised. They’re like You, when does a painter call you? Like, why do you guys do this? And then they’re like, oh my God, I got this for you to do, or my neighbor, and it’s just, that’s what we’ve been able to build here in our area. And it’s a small community too, so. And you go do that. I mean, what’s the fear of what’s the fear of hiring a contractor? The fear, let’s be frank, is that they’re gonna screw you.

Right, some way, shape, or form, they’re gonna screw you. The, the, the projects typically not the, the main fear, I mean they could steal from you or there are other fears, but main fear would be they’re not going to do a good job and then they’re not going to come back and fix it if they don’t do a good job and you’re going to get ripped off. So that what the, the hope is is that when you call them or you complain that they’ll come back. And what Juan’s doing is just so far beyond that.

He’s gonna actively come back when they didn’t complain about everything. That’s next level stuff. It takes a while. It takes a while because it’s new for every, every client and stuff and they’re like, oh, I’m not used to this. Like, why are you calling me? And then, but then once you do it, repeat it once or twice, they’re like, oh my God, they’re they’re selling you to everyone they can think of. So that’s helped us quite a bit and that’s what I meant. That’s what we really lean hard on last year and uh you know, that paid us, I mean, big, big dividends. Yeah. Yes.

On repeat referral. Yeah, we had 2000 clients from last year. We’ve talked to all 2000 of those clients, asked for any warranty work, any touch-ups, and we have over 200 new uh Estimates that we’ve done this year from those clients. There you go. Sure, we’ve filled our warranty schedule in the spring with those those projects, but gives us an opportunity to do high touch service and show our commitment to them. Exactly. Sometimes we just don’t, yeah, we don’t take that that opportunity is there. Sometimes we’re too busy trying to get new leads, new clients when, and that happened to us.

That’s what I’m saying. It actually hit us in our face and we’re like, what are we looking for new people? We have our guys. Let’s let’s go back to them and take care of them and uh yeah, it worked out very well. Yeah, I think some people listening to this might be fearful of, you know, the QAs and the touch-ups. Dive into them, run at them, you know, when that calendar is filling up, it inevitably is gonna lead to great word of mouth. It’s gonna lead to all new projects.

Um, it changes the game. I mean, we started something we call our customer care program, probably about 10 years ago, and we’ve kind of built off of it over the years, but it sounds very similar to what Uh, Juan and Mike are talking about, and it’s one of the smartest things we’ve done. It’s, it’s the right thing to do in business as well. Um, but to Shane’s point, I just wanted to make one note to people that are listening. Uh, he had talked about selling on value, and what I got out of that was, hey, we want to hold our charge rate and not just lower our charge rate.

I coach about 40 or so contractors now in sales around in different parts of the country. And just over the last 33 days, 2 of them have reached out to me nervous and wanting to rush to try to lower their charge rate. And I just want to mention what I said to them, to, to everyone who’s on this call, the things that go into your charge rate haven’t changed. What it’s costing you to pay great painters to do great work probably hasn’t changed. It hasn’t dropped in half, OK? It’s probably increasing, right, over time.

What you have to pay to put a great gallon of paint on the wall hasn’t changed. It hasn’t dropped in half. It’s slightly increased, right? So how could our charge rate drop? It’s just out of fear. It’s out of not being able to sell the value, high value, low risk, not being able to sell a great customer experience. So it’s, it’s easy. There might be a lot of people listening, they’re like, I just need to fill my calendar. Let me drop the charge rate. I just caution you, please try to hold your charge rate because that’s what’s going to keep you in business.

The things that go into that are the math that is not decreasing. That math is increasing and will continue to increase. So just a side note. Yes, some of the listeners, you guys are sometimes raising your hands. If you have a question, put it in the Q&A, and we’ll get to it. Um, we’re, we’re gonna have a lot of questions that we’re gonna cover in the last 15 minutes here. So one of the things I want to dive into, we’ve talked about the mindset, we’ve talked about not operating from a place of fear, holding the charge rate, potentially even leaning into increasing prices.

Let’s get into some of the tactical of that. I is there something that you guys can share, maybe so we, we talked about the back end. So reaching out to past customers really taking care of them, you know, a sales call, those are sales calls, by the way, guys, those QA, they, it’s a sales call it you know, it presents as QA what it is is a sales repeat referral call. Um, so there’s multiple ways to do this, but how about on the front end? You guys have anything you do special, um, to, to be able to close like Mike, you said you’re closing at a higher rate while charging more.

What are you doing leading up to that sale and during that sale that your competitors are not? Hm. I don’t know if I’m getting the answer quite we Our finance rate this year is significantly up, so we’re making it more accessible to our clients uh at a lower, more affordable entry point. Than uh what they were expecting. And uh we offer a 10 year no exclusions warranty for our clients, and we offer 10 year financing terms to our clients, which basically makes a paint job attainable at something like $150 a month.

Uh, the majority of ours. Uh, the majority of our leads were people who were not actively shopping for a paint job. Uh, their houses that we saw that needed to be painted, asked them if they wanted to, uh, start budgeting for that project, and then made it very accessible for them. I have a question. I hope you guys took notes, man. I hope, I hope everybody took notes on that. We talk about unique selling propositions 1010 year warranty. Yeah, I mean, I’m glad I asked that question, Mike.

Don’t hide stuff like that, man. You guys are doing stuff like that. Don’t make me pull it out of you. Just leave. Does the company do the financing or do you use a third party and like which one do you? OK, do you use a third party. Uh, there’s a ton of them out there. I’ve worked with many of them, uh, in the past. Um, we are currently using GreenSky Finance, GreenSky, and they’ve been excellent. It Bank They, they don’t have the same customer service we do as a painter.

But I can’t complain. Um, and it’s pretty cut and dry. As to what it takes to get an approval, and they’re fairly universal across the board, whether you talk with uh 6 of the home service finance companies out there. Yeah. Now interesting you say that because we had a, we just had a conversation we’re looking into, you know, just grow different um areas of the business and one of them is the flooring, uh, same thing too, there’s a company that can give us all the equipment at the same time.

They have a third party that does financing 24 months with no interest and, and they’re showing us, you know, the closing ratios and all that. I was like, it was amazing. Like we never thought about like financing, but God, it, it, it is a game changer. We, we’re not there yet, but this is something that we are exploring. So thank you. I already make some notes here. I’m, I’m learning, guys. Thank you, thank you. This is, this is good. And candidly, we’ve offered finance for 7 years that we’ve been in business.

Um, it is an incredibly difficult sale. Uh, the obstacles, the mental roadblocks that our sales reps have, uh, in offering it is incredible. And when I say we’ve seen an uptick, we’re talking going from like a 153% uh finance rate to maybe a 5% finance rate. Where when you talk to a lot of those finance companies want and they say look at the closing ratio impacts by making this accessible, they’ll put some wild numbers in front of you saying things like 70% or just these astronomical numbers. Um, financing has been standardized in many home service industries.

Window companies will often finance 85% of the things they sell. Painting, no one thinks about that when they get a painting quote. And candidly, it’s fairly offensive to clients when you say. Are you sure you want to pay for this, or would you like to spread out the payments? Um, Yeah, even some degrees, yeah, sorry, Mark. No, you’re, you’re good. I mean, I find the same thing. We’ve probably had it for about 7 years or so, and there’s been a very small percent. That’s why I ask those questions because it’s like it might be 2%, but to get the 2% to 5% of our business would make a big difference and I think One of the things that we’re actively coaching on is when we review payment options, make sure that we’re saying, hey, we can pay by cash, by check, by credit card, by all these different options, or we can pay for all of it for you, and you can make comfortable monthly payments.

What would be best for you? And those are just some of the word tracks that are a good way to use it. We also try to preposition with it and just have it out there for everyone. So we’re talking about it as much as we can, or at least training sales teams to talk about as much as we can, but I think there is a stigma against it, and that’s a challenge. You know, when you go and buy a car, most people find it when you buy homes, they’re financed, right?

And that’s kind of like a high percentage of homes are financed and paint jobs just aren’t yet. But as the price points move up further and further, those percentages have to increase. Going back to the original question, I guess what else are we doing that could move the needle on sales? I mean, that’s, I love teaching sales and working on it, and I geek out on that stuff. So I would say just an overall thing is listening to the customer and contracting around what they actually want.

And not what we want to sell, you know, and in some cases, that means contracting around pain. In some instances, that’s contracting around their accomplished list. And other times it’s putting on our consultant hat and just trying to help them. Maybe they need to do part of the project now and part of it over time, or maybe they financing is huge for them, and they need something that’s creative. I mean, we did a a complex recently that was a um You know, a condominium complex and we were able to let the company, our company, basically help them finance it and allow them different payment terms based on our, our, you know, relationship and prior relationship with them where we felt comfortable enough extending that credit, not through a third party company, but directly from us.

And that was enough to make that deal happen. So it’s like looking at every deal, it’s like what do they want to buy? It sounds simple, but making what you’re selling the solution to what they want to buy. And that’s a lot of Yeah, it’s training every every week, every day for the sales team. It’s simple, but it’s not, it doesn’t mean it’s easy, right? It’s consultative selling. You have a certain thing you’re selling, it achieves a whole host of benefits, but you have to inquire, you know, ask a lot of questions with the homeowner commercial property owner, figure out what they value and then sell to them.

Yeah, I love it. So, so let’s switch gears a little bit. So reviews, reputation, that’s all super critical. You guys have any unique strategies for generating reviews and then what happens if someone leaves you a negative review or or someone kind of comes after your business? Do you have any strategies for mitigating that? I could jump in. I mean simple things. I, we bonus our people. We bonus our people. So we bonus our crew leaders, we bonus our salespeople. We have word tracks and role-playing that we do where they practice asking for it, asking for it at certain times, making it simple and easy for the customer to do.

Um. In terms of responding to reviews, you know, I’ve just had many years of of having that, uh. You know, just having to deal with that. And I think my perspective on it has completely changed. I mean, you just have to step away from it, not be emotional. Uh, I, I love AI. So now I, I’ve recently met someone that told me that they’re using AI to do all their responses to their Google reviews, and it’s like these great scripted responses. But there’s there’s no emotion in those, in those AI responses.

So I would copy and paste their negativity and let AI tell you that and take a sit with that for a couple of hours and decide how you want to respond. That’s literally my advice. But I would just be professional. The world sees who people are based on what they’re saying out there. And sometimes those negative reviews help you as much as the positive ones, in my opinion. They’re hard to swallow when you first get them, but you have to live with them. Yeah. We’ve never really been big on reviews.

Uh, like I said, our business has been very, you know, just personal, but as we move forward, we have been making more intentional. Our guys have these little QR cards so that when we go, we can say, hey, the way we do it is this way. We don’t ask for a review, uh, in our contract, we say the best compliment you can do is give us a good review, you know, helps us and stuff. But The way we sell it, well, the way you can say we sell it is.

We asked him, it’s like, Would you help us, you know, like compensate our guys. So it’s not that we’re asking. We wanted to go how good our guys did. And the minute you bring that up to them, they’re like, oh my God, yeah, Pedro did amazing, this guy did amazing. So it’s like, so it’s a little tactic that we use. It’s that way it’s not illusions needs a review from you is we want to make sure that these guys get compensated and they get the reward that they, you know, that they deserve for being, doing such a great job and Everybody, we just did that yes last what yesterday and the lady was just extremely happy.

She’s in like almost a whole letter saying how wonderful the guys were, you know, so that’s, that’s what we’ve learned to use. Yeah, it’s a phenomenal one and I will say we do. Uh We have awards, rewards, prizes for our subcontractors um based off of reviews, and we do have a mandatory review rate that uh we hold our project managers to, uh, they’re not comped per review. But it is an expectation that a percentage of their jobs are 5 star clients and raving fans. And uh It’s easy, Brandon.

You ask and don’t ask once. Ask again, and then follow up on that. Ask after the person said yes, like, hey, you, you said you would, uh. Can I still get that, please? My guys would very much appreciate it. Um, So Always be yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, we see the same. Sorry, Shane. No, I say, we’ve seen the same thing as soon as you say, hey, you know, if you love having By or Ryan, or Pedro, whoever on your crew, they get a bonus if you leave a review and mention their name, like food, that’s like the easiest way to get it because the customer connects it not to you like one said, but to those people that were in their house.

Um, and then likeike said, we have a process. The first solicitation is supposed to be on the job site from the lead or the PM and beyond that, it goes to the VA. She’s got a Google sheet in the, you know, tracking system there, so. Uh, I will say it’s extremely important, maybe not for one, because he’s got the market corner out there. Uh, my brother, I love it. Um, but I would say once we got over 100, um, it just snowballed, uh, the leads, uh, we actually had to turn our LSAs off, um, because we were getting so many just straight people off phones on Google.

Um, and so it was interesting to see that happen last year. Shane, turn that back on. That’s gonna be a really big mistake. That’s a good problem to have, again, it goes with the tension of family or you know, like I can only do so many sales calls so we can only handle so many leads and stuff anyway, we’re, we’re getting there, man, we’re getting there. It is a good problem to have. So I, I think one use the word sale, you know, like it’s a sale, a lot of, it’s psychology.

They’re all sales. So we go, we, we think, oh, we give the estimate, that’s the only sale you’re selling the whole time. The repeats of sale, the referrals are sale, the reviews of sale. I like what Michael Chaney said, Hey, I mean, that’s a verbal contract. She basically said in the Women and Pat panel, Hey, we’re gonna, we’re gonna lead with, you know, hey, we’re going to try to do a great job. We’re going to try to earn a five-star review from you. Is that OK? Of course, the homeowner’s going to say, OK, they’re not gonna say no, you know, I want you to do a crap job.

We’re gonna be like, yeah, that’s great. And then now you’ve, you’ve basically got buy it. So you can build this intentionality. They’re compensating their team, they’re building it into the, the, the structure of how they run their company. It’s like my, like you said, it’s not, it’s not hard. It just you have to be intentional. I want to open up for questions in a second, but before we do that, we’ve talked a lot about sales, marketing, growth, that piece. You guys have any advice for hiring, building a team?

Obviously those things go hand in hand, selling and growing, and then also needing to, to cover the operations. What you talking about for hiring, right? Yeah, yeah, your team. So something that we’ve, um, so when we had the whole millennium thing that we couldn’t hire a lot of the, and we need skilled labor, right? Because of the type of work we do. So the guys, we needed guys that were in this, you know, doing this for many years and it was so hard to get those. So what we needed to do is how to train.

New guys. And so we created a, it’s not something crazy, but it’s a small training that we do. So most of our guys now that are with us, they’re very young. They’re in their twenties. Uh my guy is 73 years old, 24 years old, and he’s the one that ran the $1.3 million dollar job. He’s not a great painter. He is just great with managing people, so we had to learn that not every person is a painter, you know, so we had to create our leads, our painter, our gentleman painter, so we created a system within us to do it.

Uh, and like I said, it doesn’t have to be something crazy. You just have to look at what are your needs and what can you do to help them. And we’re constantly asking them, well, every 6 months we have a review and then we ask them what is the next thing that you want to learn. And so that’s how we’ve been able to structure that. um. As far as retaining them or getting more people in, in our door, it’s the same thing. They understand that here, they’re gonna learn how to run a report.

They’re gonna understand that they have a certain amount of hours to do their report. So basically, they are not just like any other cowboy that just go to work, grab a brush, and I don’t care what you do. So now they’re, they’re learning that there’s a purpose and they can learn. And so from there in, in a few years. They can either have a career with us, or they can move on, but they’re gonna learn something different than what they learned anywhere else. So that’s our pitch for them, and they get to learn very unique finishes.

So we’re, we’re leveraging everything that we are as a company, not to sell to the client, but to sell to the employees as well. And that has really worked out for us. Love it. Thanks, Juan. So I, I’m gonna go into some questions here. As if you have questions, put them in the Q&A, about 217 minutes left. So Jose Reyes has a question for Juan. If you don’t mind, would you share how big your team is and your revenue last year so that we can visualize what is actually possible in this industry?

I’m stuck at that 22K with myself and and two crews. I’m trying to hit my first million. Yeah, uh, we’re not big. We are $243 million. Uh, we closed $21.5 million the last couple of years. Uh, we were 23, uh, guys last year and the $215 million and something that we’ve been working on is tightening our systems to be more profitable. So we don’t want to just, uh, I mean, probably years, about 1.53 years ago, I wanted to conquer the world and I wanted to grow, grow, grow. And we did and the year before we did $21.5 million with over 23 guys.

So what we did last year is just refine our systems and be more profitable. So it’s more being profitable than grow, growth, and so that’s what’s helping us right now. Awesome. Uh, someone else asks, and I think this is gonna be good for everyone. We, uh, Mark, you had talked about selling to the pain. What are some specific pain points that you guys have identified with customers, like, like certain kind of avatar pain points that you sell to? One is the time frame. When do they need it done?

What, what is urgent that has to happen. Another one is, you know, the warranty, how long things are gonna last, negative experiences they’ve had in the past. What’s the cost of doing something right versus doing something wrong, you have to pay again and again and again. Um, those are two of the major ones that we probably all deal with. I think the actual experience you’re going to have. Yeah, as a consumer, what experience are you going to have? Like when you hire Juan and he’s gonna call in 21.5 months to check in to forcefully go out and make Sure everything’s perfect and be showing up to make sure that he’s taking care of your property, even if you’re not that concerned about it.

That’s one extreme. The other extreme is like that, that tailgate warranty, meaning the tail, you know, the warranty is only good until I see your, your lights drive away when you get the last check. And that’s what a lot of the painters out there are giving to our clients. That’s why the industry has a tough reputation, because there, there really are no warranties, and they don’t have a great experience. So that’s a big part of it is building that value. Um, and they’ve seen that if they’ve been a homeowner for a while, they’ve had negative experiences.

That’s why when you, when you interview a client as part of your sales call, you want to go deep, not just on the experiences they’ve had with other painters, but with other contractors in general. And I’m sure a lot of us do that, but that’s critical. To discover their pain points. Not sure. Yeah, yeah, I think the, the concept of other home service contractors in general is an important one. I think we can, we can start to think we’re super special in the homeowner’s mind, but maybe actually we’re not, we’re another contractor.

Um, so those lessons and if the roofer screwed them, the electrician screwed them, if the plumber screwed them, that’s your problem now. So I think that’s really. Really good point. Uh, Ben asked, what is everyone’s residential warranty? I think Mike, I think you said 10 years, you guys, you guys have a different kind of warranty program that you offer? We don’t offer any warranty. Um, if you look at the cans that not many manufacturers offer any type of warranty, especially if it’s outside. Uh, we live out in the ocean, so there’s, there’s no warranty.

But one good thing that we always say is that we stand by our work. So if it’s something that Wasn’t applied correctly or there was a mistake or something’s not working, we are gonna be there to support every step of the way, you know, whatever that means. And so, but it’s not an official warranty. It’s just a warranty that we are going to stand behind our work and any labor will be warranty, um, and that’s what, and then that’s when we sell the maintenance part of it like this is how we’re gonna be on top of it.

To monitor Uh, ours is, ours is 5 to 10 years depending on what the actual substrates are. You’re right. If we have, I mean, we’re on the water in, in New England. If we have a solid stain that’s white and it’s immaculate and isn’t, you know, you don’t have massive peeling or rotted wood, we can warranty that longer than, you know, a 250 year old historic home that has all types of layers of paint and, and all types of different things happening for prep. Um, but we layer that in with what we call our customer care program and MDF care, so that every year they have the option of doing a basket of 5 different maintenance things that are basically like preventative maintenance, like you get your oil changed on your car.

It’s the same thing for the paint jobs. So soft washes, gutter cleanings, touch-ups, um, those types. Things and we make them a basket that they can get that added on. So we associated a fixed price to that, so that then we can say to them, we’ll waive that price. So we’ll give you 6 years, no questions asked for warranty, but then another 33 years additionally is MDF Care, and that just helps us just add leverage to the point of sale when we’re trying to close. I like that. It’s pretty pretty clever. Yeah.

Sure, yeah, it’s cool. Awesome. Where are you going to school? Where you going to school. There’s some gold here, man. So Todd and Russell, they’re, they’re digging a little bit into the finance, uh, piece. I think that finance piece is so important and so rarely done. So Todd asked, what are some finance companies to not do business with? So I don’t know if you guys have any negative experience, just a caution if you want. Uh, what should we look for with the finance company and then what rates can you expect it to cost the business?

Uh, as far as the rates go, you could see them all over the place, Brandon. Um, we’ve paid upwards of 17% off top line revenue, uh, to provide financing for our clients, um, to as little as 3%, same as a credit card. Uh, depending upon the terms, uh, every finance company will have a list of them with different price rates on interest rates, links, APRs, etc. uh. And build it into your price. For us, we’ve we used two primarily Enterbank and then Hearth, and so Hearth really doesn’t cost the business anything.

Enterbank costs a little bit depending on which, you know, you choose. And so we put it more onto the customer, the cost of it. So basically, so basically I, I see this, uh, selling us kind of like a dealership, car dealership, right? You, you make the sale, you do this, and then any, anything past that, then now you deal with the actual uh finance institute. You have nothing else to do once you do the sale, correct? Correct. So. But we want I don’t know we train our salespeople to try to hold their hand.

I mean, the job of the salesperson is to hold the customer’s hand and help them make a great decision of what they’re going to buy. You can’t really ever sell them anything, you could help them buy. And I think it doesn’t stop with the financing. One of the things that we struggle with and are constantly trying to get better with. is holding their hand. Like if you go to a car dealership, when you, when they, when you’ve picked out the car you love, they have a guy that that’s all he does is work out all the details of the financing so you don’t have to think about it.

It’s a mistake in residential repaint sales to just let Let it go to the finance company. I think it’s smarter to hold their hand, even though the finance company is doing all the work and bring them to the point where it’s simple and easy for them, because you will lose deals if you just treat it like, OK, it’s out of my hands. Does that make sense? OK. Yeah. That experience, you’re selling that experience, you’re making it easy for them. Also, you might have a hard time getting finance on a $1.3 million paint job.

It is an unsecured loan. I don’t think these guys will need the finance. They will, they will get offended. They will probably get offended. They’ll give you the financing. Um, they are. They are your financing company for all your future projects. Oh, that’s that’s what we’re wishing for. Uh, all right, Jose asks, how much on average are you guys charging to your customers per square foot for an exterior painting job? That’s, that’s a so broad question if anyone wants to throw out some, well, we just, I, I don’t know that metric offhand because we base it on man hours and charge rate times hours.

I mean, there is, I’d have to backfill in on we use estimate rocket currently to be able to see what it is per square foot, but that’s, that’s loaded because I mean I prep work in there, I have all different surfaces that we’re hitting. It’s that’s, that’s a hard one to give an accurate answer to. For me, yeah, that’s where where with Paint Scout, um, you know, check out Paint Scout, check out things like that if you’re trying to get your pricing dialed in because there, there’s a lot, you know, there are a lot of resources out there.

David asked, what is your single marketing activity that generates the best results? Ours is personal, you know, personal contact, uh, presence, I think for us, marketing, like I said, our marketing or it’s, it’s, there’s more like brand awareness is you will see our ts everywhere in town and we’re not, it’s a small town, so it’s just, just rolling billboards every day. I, I’m gonna throw out a few if I could. Past customers are obviously always have the greatest CPE for us cost per estimate, um, but home shows work well if when people are spending money, home shows, um, direct mail, I find the proximity mailers are gonna give you the, the best CPE GLSA has been good for us lately.

Uh, those are some just like quick hits and signs, tons of poly bagg signs over wire frame. It it’s, that’s, that’s a winner. Put them everywhere, job sites, obviously, but put them everywhere. It helps. Oh yeah, by the way, uh, painters marketing pros. Don’t forget, right? Yeah, we almost forgot, guys. Come on, come on, man. Sure, and Brandon I’ll share, we uh advertise anywhere and everywhere that you possibly can, uh, but our primary lead source is door to door canvassing. So, um, it is by far the largest revenue generator for our team.

How many door knockers do you have at any given time? 17 are out today. Great. It is illegal. It is illegal for us to do that here. There are places that are like that, and there’s certainly communities uh that outlaw it, and then there are minor outlaws. You know. Yeah, I, I think customer, customer, no, you’re good uh repeat customers, customer referrals are obviously the strongest period, um. So it’s, you know, somebody I mentioned earlier, I think Mike or something, you know, making touch points with those consistently.

So recurring touch points with those that that book of business you already have, um, is our strongest. Now, obviously there’s other things we do, but I think that’s, that’s the pot of gold that a lot of times we can overlook easily. Awesome, guys, we have 2 minutes and we gotta wrap this up. What is one thing if people listening could only take one thing away from this panel, uh, what would each of you want them to take away? I mean, I can go ahead, uh, your business is gonna keep evolving just like the market and, and life, so you, your business needs to keep evolving with it.

Um, we’ve learned to be. More on top of things, so not react to things, but be proactive. So try to look ahead and see where you want to go and, and, you know, and set up at least your goal for the year and work towards that. That’s very helpful. It’s been very helpful for us. I think they’ll be afraid to work. Yeah, I mean, everybody likes to work they’re just like, oh, I wanna get, I wanna get to a place where I don’t like, it’s like, like quality of life, whatever phrase you want to put behind it, you know, it’s a you can get, you can probably get your business a place where you don’t really do anything.

Um, I don’t know that that’s how we’re created as human beings, um, to do, to be honest. And, uh, and I think that’s just a little bit of illusion that, I mean, I’m 43, so I think it’s somewhere in my age a little bit less that has that illusion. Um, and, uh, no pun intended wand for illusion painting, but I, uh, I, I just think you gotta, you gotta be willing to grind. You gotta be willing to run into the storm, and you got to be able to do the work, you know.

And sometimes that’s stopping and having a conversation with that staff person that’s having a hard day, and sometimes that’s figuring out where we’re gonna get our next lead from. It looks different if you’re going to lead a company. It’s longer and harder than you want it to be. Mike. Yeah, Brandon, uh, you asked earlier about hiring and uh I’m looking at Ben’s comment, if we met and had a beer, what is the one thing I need to do to get from 1.5 to 3. Um, it’s gonna be different for every person.

Uh, every business needs a different person. Don’t think that it has to be perfect before you hire someone to do a job. You can build a plane while you’re flying it, I promise. And, uh, bring them in there, you can’t do it alone. Build the team to help you get to where you wanna go, and uh do the things you think you can’t. 15 million in 7 years. Yeah, I think, I think you that bad boy you were flying. That’s the biggest I’ve ever heard of. Mark, you wanna close us out?

Yeah, I was actually looking at Ben’s comment and, and you got a beer with all these guys. You have a beer with all of us. So, so my rant is gonna be on hiring and I had written this down earlier. Recruit daily. I, I look at it as like a pipeline, and your hiring system is actually a pipeline that you’re bringing them through. And you have to be willing to recruit daily to the, to that pipeline. And don’t be afraid to have a long pipeline that has quite a few steps that allows you to get to know as much about them as possible and them as much about you, and then be willing to hire slow but fire fast.

And specifically Tim asking 1.5 to 3. It’s usually, I mean, it could be different things for different companies, but it’s usually salesmanship and not having a sales team. Like many of us have a lot of crews and a lot of painters that go and do a great job, but it’s the owner doing a lot of the selling. I just see that a lot at about that 1.5 mark. And to get to that next level, you start to view the company as a bunch of great crews and also a bunch of great salespeople.

And they work in, in conjunction, that’s how you build with blocks. So that would be my recommendation is start building that sales team, but the hiring is, is everything in that. Yeah. Yeah, a company has to become its own entity. Mike, Shane, Juan, Mark, you guys are phenomenal. I really appreciate you taking time to share this. If we could just get a heck yeah or yes or something in the chat if you guys enjoyed it. I learned a lot. I’ve, I’ve conducted hundreds of podcast episodes, webinars.

I took some stuff away from that that I had never heard, didn’t know. So that was truly phenomenal. I, I appreciate you guys. Thank you. Thank you guys very much. I appreciate you. Thank you for having us.

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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.