Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast, the show created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over 103 million in annual revenue. I’m your host, Brandon Pierpont, founder of Painter Marketing Pros and creator of the popular PCA Educational Series to grow marketing for painters. In each episode, I’ll be sharing proven tips, strategies and processes from leading experts in the industry on how they found success in their painting business. We will be interviewing owners of the most successful painting companies in North America and learning from their experiences.

Join Brandon Pierpont and the panel of painting industry experts – Zach Kenney, Christian Manhard, Nate Streeter, & Brad Ellison share actionable marketing insights to scale your business—from leveraging organic social, direct mail, and SEO to mastering referral programs and data-driven sales systems. Learn how to build trust, measure success, and stay top-of-mind in today’s competitive market.

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.

So who is having a good conference? What do you guys think of this residential conference? It’s awesome. Yeah, I wanna, I wanna thank the PCA for putting it on. I, I’m a huge advocate of the PCA who here listens to the Painter Marketing Mastermind podcast? Wow, that’s awesome. It’s more than I expect. I appreciate you guys if you’ve been following me for any, any length of time, you know, I’m a, a very big proponent of the PCA, massive supporter, and I appreciate you guys coming out. I know, I think we had close to 40 who are not yet members of the PCA.

So hopefully that got rectified yesterday. If it didn’t, please go speak with Janelle and please fix it. Because it will help your business. If you’re not registered for PCA Expo, if you haven’t been to PCA Expo, I know for some of you, this is your first event. PCA Expo is like this times 10. So this is, is awesome. There are different events, but PCA Expo is basically like a Super Bowl version of this versus a regular season game. So make sure you get registered for that. Again, Janelle can set you up and there’s a commercial contractor conference a couple weeks from now.

If you do any kind of commercial work or you’re thinking about moving into that space, that’s in Arizona, I would highly recommend you check that out as well. So the Who cares about marketing? Any you guys care about marketing? You think it’s important at all? I think it’s important, right? I think it’s kind of important. It’s how we get paid. So we have a, a panel of experts. I’m gonna sit, which is cool because it’d be kind of weird at some point. So, I told Zach, I, I just kind of stand in front of him with my back to you guys, and he thought that might not be like the best strategy.

So I’m gonna sit instead. But we have a panel of marketing experts. All of us know a lot about a lot, but each of us is, is exceptionally well versed in, in a certain topic, right? So we have Zach Kenny here, owner of ZK Painney, who follows Zach on Instagram. You guys ever seen a video from him? Yeah, so he’s done an exceptional job creating remarkable content of building a, a huge organic following and ultimately using it to help scale a highly profitable company, ZK Painting, where he serves some of the high highest end homes uh throughout Boston area.

We have Christian Manhart. Christian has, has done an excellent job as an organic influencer, something extremely hard to do, to also spread the, the craft, um, show really what goes into creating the work that he does, and was able to actually effectively, uh, monetize through manufacturers as well, which is an exceptionally difficult thing to do. So a true influencer. So I, I wanna dive into that with Christian. We have Nate Streeter. So Nate has a, a very unique background. He is the marketing director at Olive Holdings.

He, he started out as a, a vendor to OliF through his own company. He had a successful company, Paper Boy Marketing. They do, they do flyer distribution. Throughout Minneapolis Saint Paul area, and they were so effective for all, for uh Paris Painting as part of their growth strategy that they actually acquired paperboard marketing and they wanted Nate to themselves. So they pulled Nate in, so that’s really, really awesome. Expert, expert in that and expert in every door direct mail. Uh, and then we have Brad Ellison. Any anyone ever heard of this dude?

Couple of people. Yeah, he’s very shy. He doesn’t really like to talk with people, but we, I managed to, to yank him up on the stage. His story is wild. He started Ellison painting just a couple of years ago. I just asked him what his revenue was. He’s close to $5 million in a few years. So this guy knows how to scale, he knows how to sell, and I’m very excited to get into that with him. So can I just get a, uh, one more round of applause just for these guys coming up here and Sharon.

You know what, I feel better standing. I, I run the, I run the, um, I run the podcast standing, and this, I don’t know if this is gonna help you guys or not. It’s just a weird thing. I, I run it standing, I have a standing desk. And my house floods a lot. Some of you who know me know that it, it sucks. Floods all the time, flooded recently and when I move, sometimes I have to sit because now I don’t have a standing desk. I’m, I’m in an Airbnb or whatever I have to sit and I actually do worse podcasts when I do that.

I, I find it throws me off. The point that might be relevant for you is figure out what works best for you in terms of your sales process, proposal, whatever, because it, it actually makes a huge difference, uh, your comfort level. So I’m gonna stand. 2024 has been a weird Year. It’s been a weird year. The, the election always changes things. I think it’s become exceptionally volatile, uh, recently, obviously both sides are, are kind of passionate at this point, we have kind of passionate’s like what, what a tactful way to say that, uh.

And then we have wars, we have inflation, and, but ultimately, people are still buying painting projects, but it’s changing a little bit. So I want to kick off with what has been your guys’ experience throughout the year and what forms of marketing have you found most successful in 2024. And I’m gonna hold on to this microphone, so you guys have to share. I, so I really have um. Like referral-based marketing is like I don’t do an ad spend, I don’t have, so I really only have my social media and then like in-person networking.

Those are like my two like forms of marketing. um. And I would say that my social media is is continuing to do what I like it to do, um, because I put a lot of time into it. So it’s, it’s like the machine has momentum. And I’ve, as long as I continue to like keep going, it’s working, but I, I mean, yeah, I would say that there’s definitely a bit of a different feeling out there than there was last year. We spent most of our marketing dollars this year on Facebook and Google ads.

Um, Facebook has generated certainly more leads, more opportunities to sell. Uh, Google produces better leads. Um, in 6003, we saw a really good return on a combination of door hangers and direct mail. So we kind of doubled down on direct mail starting in 2024 and it totally fell flat on its face, like a 4.5 X ROI. And it was similar style ads, uh, similar, um, demographics and, and, and geography. And, uh, we, we still can’t figure out why it didn’t work this year, but we’re pretty responsible with our marketing so we just pulled those dollars away, we redirected some more of those funds back into Facebook and Google and continued to grow.

Um, I was gonna say I haven’t noticed much of a change because I put out so much organic content that there’s seems to always, I always like to say start my business door knocking and now I’m always in people’s homes. So between having the referral base around my area and you. Using social media to my advantage locally along with working with these bigger brands. What I’m able to do is I know Zach and I talk about this all the time by following all your local real estate agents, brokerages, local businesses.

I’m posting every single day. So when these people open their phone and they hear like, oh my client needs to repaint their house. I’m first, I’m top of mind, like there’s no competing because I have the attention of my market every single day. And yeah. Um, let’s see. So I think what’s working, man, the biggest thing, everything can work in my mind. Like there isn’t like a tool that’s the problem. I mean, that, that seems kind of the easy out. I usually have painters tell me. Something doesn’t work and I’ve watched everything work this year.

I’ve, um, so I don’t think there’s any problem with any tool. Um, I would say give people what they want. I know that sounds maybe too simple, but it’s something that we talk a lot about. People want a local present painter. They want a competent craftsman. They want somebody that they can trust. So they kinda, and then when you think about trust, what is trust? It’s the who, who’s coming to my house. Who’s gonna come paint? Who have you done business with before? Um, so give them what they want, um, in your messaging.

I don’t know that the tool matters so much. You could do all those things with direct mail, you could do all those things with Google, you could do all those things with Facebook, um, as well as other tools, um, so. Yeah, that’d probably be my my thought. Awesome. So I’m in, I’m in a unique position in this panel because I’m also a panelist, but I’m also the moderator, so I can ask myself questions. I could be like that’s a, that’s a great question, Brandon. I’m glad that you asked it, which is neat.

It’s called kind of like unfair advantage, uh, but my what I’ve seen, what we’ve seen with our partners this year is that the follow up is even more. Critical I think Christian’s point about remaining top of mind is undervalued. It’s underappreciated. Only 3% of your target market is ready to buy at any given time, right? And when, when people are facing uncertainty, they tend to be a little bit slower to make discretionary purchases. Repaints are typically discretionary unless HOA is forcing you or something like that. And so the follow up remaining top of mind is really, really critical.

I, I was just gonna add to that as far as, I mean, when people buy stuff, sometimes it takes them, you know, a couple times of seeing something like, oh that’s a cool tool. I’m thinking about getting that, and then they see it over and over like, oh, OK, I can actually see how this is helping me in my business. When you’re consistently putting out this content every single day, they might see you for a couple of weeks, a month, but they’re still always, every time you pop up, they’re like, oh, I should actually have my house painted and like it’s just, it’s in every like baby steps just to get them to call you and then by the time They’re actually ready, you’re the person that they’re gonna go to.

It doesn’t matter, they’re not gonna reach out to other companies. If you’re popping up and they’re like, hey, wow, but I mean, you’re working in people’s homes, which is most likely the most expensive asset that they have. They wanna know that when they hire someone. Like you’re, everything that you’ve been putting on this digital real estate, which is social media advertising, if you show up and do the exact same thing at their house, that’s the whole reason they’re hiring you. It’s like they trust you. I went from door knocking to just being in people’s homes, you’re always there.

It’s, and if you treat their house very, very well, they’re gonna scream your name from the rooftops. Yeah, I love it. So we’re gonna get into something a little subjective. Everyone might have some different thoughts, but I’m always curious about it. People are always curious about it. What do you guys foresee for the industry next year, moving into 2025 and how are you planning your marketing accordingly? I mean, I’m, I’m talking about the future like what I first see is I, I don’t know and so just like focusing on what I can control.

So like I recently went through and like redid my framework for my social media. I’ve been creating a lot more content around a like with those ideas in mind as sort of my insurance plan as I like. I’ve had a tendency to build demand to a point where I was like overwhelmed with work and then neglect the thing that was building the demand and like that’s been a constant battle uh as a small company that with me doing everything was like oh like I, I’m not worried about that anymore so like focus attention over here.

And so I, as I start to like, yeah, I feel a little bit of like uncertainty about the future, I just always double down on like what I know works for me, which is creating content and then proactively reaching out to potential clients, whether it’s real estate agents, designers, builders, and like just that proactive like I’m gonna go do the things I can do and then I have to let the rest of it go, otherwise I’d be in a corner with anxiety. As far as moving into next year, what I love about organically posting is when you’re on these platforms, the professional dashboard gives you instant feedback, instant analytics.

When you’re posting something, you can tell within 48 hours. How’s it doing? Here’s a video. Here’s the retention rate. If you’re consistently posting these organic posts, and then you get the one that organically does better, then I don’t pay for any marketing, but then you know, OK, this video did better. Let me put some ad dollars behind that because it did well organically, people liked it. So it’s giving you a good idea of what to run as ads. Because, you know, OK, sure. I’ve been posting 10 videos or photos.

This video did a good amount better than the last one. OK, yeah, I’ll take that, put some ad spin behind it and see how it does there. It’s your, it’s a fun game. I always relate everything. I grew up skateboarding and snowboarding. Every little thing that you do, flick, like it’s instant feedback to land something correctly. And that’s what posting consistently teaches you. It’s like, you get to Get what a lot of people don’t, which is the analytics. You can focus on that stuff and it really just, yeah, so I’m going off on a tangent, hand it off to someone else, you’ll notice I do that a lot.

Um, I think for us, as far as 2025 goes, it’s a good tangent though. Um. I mean, we’re planning for like explosive growth. I think I, I don’t know how, how to say it more than that. I mean, most of our partners, we’re gonna be probably planning for between 30 and 100% growth next year, you know, depending on the partner and um. I think demand will be similar to 80003. That’s what we’re planning. Do I think demand is down this year? Yes, I, I, I, I, you guys are priority heard that.

I haven’t been here both days, but, uh, you could talk to Sherwin, you could talk to others. Demand is down for painting. I think, uh, supply will also go down in the second half of the year next year. Shout out to Austin at base coat. I agree with him, like, we’re in that aftermath of this 2020, 2021, 2022, maybe into 2023 of an increase in demand. And the supply will always follow behind that. It’s kind of a trailing and so we’re in this terrible time, probably the second half of 2023 and this year, and then I would bet into the first half of next year where we have more supply than we need, but I think that will rectify.

There will be lots of stand in events that will likely go out of business, I think over the next 9 months. So that’s what we’re planning for, um. Probably very similar marketing spend, so most of our partners will be in that 5 to 11% of gross range for marketing spend. We have to create controllable marketing systems, so some of that you, you spend a little more so you can gain control of your marketing, um, but that’s what I think we’re doing, you know, relating to 2025. Yeah, I I, I think whatever the industry or the market is doing, we all have the opportunity to grow in spite or sometimes because of that.

If the, if the demand is down and the smaller companies don’t have work, what does that mean? It means I have more subcontractors, uh, and I can spend more in marketing, get more leads, sell more jobs. So we’re just keeping our, the, the pedal to the metal. We just, we’re, we’re gonna hit 1003 million close to it this year. We’re aiming for 8 next year and If we need to pivot and make some changes, we’ll do that. Uh, but I don’t think it, I don’t think our pivot will ever be, all right, hey, let’s slow way down.

Like now, how can we keep our momentum while shifting our strategies? So Brad has a pretty reasonable growth trajectory. He’s gonna do 5 and then 8, and then probably like 100 to $200. And then somewhere in like the $3 billion dollar range. Um, so you guys can follow that path as well. The, I think the, the overall trend here that, that I think is important to note is there’s not, there aren’t huge fluctuations, right? Do what’s working, don’t stop doing what’s working, and don’t, don’t overthink the economy, overthink external. Uh, influences because ultimately they don’t impact you as much as, as they’ll impact the next guy if you, if the next guy freaks out about it, right?

And then knowing the data, I think Christian’s point to, I was speaking with someone about this yesterday. Uh, actually I think Jacob, you guys, your team, uh, does a great job with the some of the content that you create. And if you do create this content on organic, you can figure out what resonates with people, who, how many, how many views did you get, how many shares did you get, how many comments did you get? And then you can put some money behind it because now you’re starting to understand your target demographic.

What, what are they actually responding to. So I appreciate all that. I would say as a caveat to that though. Just engagement And those numbers like sometimes they don’t mean anything, right? Like and it’s extreme example like you could, you could put some like clickbait content out there. They got a lot of people to like put a, put a talk about something that will get people going. You’ll get, yeah, you, you could, you, there’s a lot of ways that you could also do this where you get a lot of data that says this is performing well, but the generally speaking for business, like in my world.

Where I’m looking for revenue in my business, the metrics of social media are not a good indicator for me if this is gonna drive revenue to my business. So if you like if you can align those two, then yes, but like just because it performs well on Instagram doesn’t mean it’s gonna drive revenue to your business. Yeah, it’s a super good point. So the neat thing about when I do this online is if somebody disputes what I just said or, or kind of like adds a caveat to it, I can just mute them or kick them off, and I’d be like, oh sorry, there’s some sort of technical disruption, but Zach’s here live, so we just, I just have to listen to it.

So that’s a really good point, Zach. Thanks for clarifying that. So Fred, who, who liked Fred’s presentation yesterday? I liked it. I liked it. Fred was, if Fred was nervous. He’s, he’s done an awesome job on the committee planning this whole event. He’s, he’s poured a lot of heart and soul into this. And, and I think. He was vulnerable in a structured way that that I think gave everyone something to walk away with, right, and work on. And one of the things I like that Fred said, which was honest, was one of his biggest regrets is not investing more into marketing right now and, and how that’s not necessarily helping him at this current moment in time.

But when you invest in the marketing, it can be a scary thing, especially for a smaller company. So my question to you guys is for, for companies that are not investing a lot in marketing or they’re thinking, you know, I’m probably dropping the ball here. How should they be starting? Like, where, where, where would a good starting point be for a smaller company that knows they need to be doing more marketing? Um, I mean, the great thing about these platforms is they’re all free. If you wanna put money behind stuff, you can, but yes, just with a little bit of time and effort, you can do as much marketing as you want, as much marketing as like you want to put the effort in for.

I mean, one job for me will give me 3 weeks of content. Easy. So I’m always, if I’m on the next job, I’m always filming, doing that, but I’m consistently posting this marketing out there every single day, which is just, it’s free, yes, it’s my time. I love doing it, but I, you don’t have to throw a bunch of money in if you just take the little extra time, if you have crews filming the guys, even. You know, a lot of young people love social media. Maybe you have a younger person on your crew that goes around and documents a job site, takes 1520 minutes every couple of hours just to document this stuff.

Then you’re getting in time content that you can post later that day, whenever, but if you’re just filming everything that you and your business do like do to represent what you want your business. You have endless content. You don’t have to post it all, but just get in the cycle of filming and documenting everything and then you can blast out as much as you want. So I think the answer to this question is, is gonna vary greatly based on the size of your business and the goals of your business cause what Christian is describing works obviously brilliantly for his company, but his company is him, me, right?

And you said to me yesterday, you need 2 jobs a month to keep working. I need to sell 0003 to 25 jobs a week in order to keep my guys working, right? So doing, you know, focusing more on an organic posting for us would be an absolute devastating, uh, result. We’d, we’d have no work. So if, if you’re, if you’re a smaller company and that’s, uh, that’s where you wanna hover 1234 guys, 100% organic social media, you could probably get a lot of bang for your no bucks by doing it that way, right?

If you are, if you’re trying to grow, if you got a team, you want to add a second team, you want to get from 1 million to 2 million, I think it’s very important to actually start spending money in marketing. And a lot of things that, that the bigger companies do, what we do could be done on your own. But the reality is you need to have some self-awareness. Um, who here is a marketing expert? OK, the guy that works at a marketing agency. Nate’s a marketing expert. Uh, Brandon described me as a marketing expert.

I’m not, which is why I pay marketing experts to do all of our marketing. Uh, we, we budget up to 10% of our goal revenue. Back into marketing. So not based on what we made last year, right? It’s not based on $3 million last year. It’s based on the fact that we want to sell $5 million this year, which means going into 2024, I was willing to spend $1003,000 to generate the leads necessary to sell $5 million worth of business. Now, I can tell you so far year to date, we’re at 6% cost of marketing.

It’s pretty good, right? So we’re under budget, thank goodness, but we’re willing to, we would spend up to that 10% if we needed to. So for you then, the question is, what do you want to do in 2025? You want to sell $1.5 million? I would say, and they may agree, if you really want to grow quickly into that $1.5 million you need to be willing to spend $150,000 back in your marketing. And the most effective ways, uh, the quickest return, I still, I think it’s Facebook, Google Ads, and then maybe some sort of direct mail campaign.

And you can get a lot of bang for your buck on those marketing dollars. Yeah, I mean, gosh, you guys. Is this still working? Um. I think it depends how much control you need of your marketing. That’s the way I would describe it. So the bigger you get, the more control you need. So if you are a $33,000 business, you probably just don’t need quite as much control. Let me say that in a practical way. As a selling owner, you probably could have one week where you did 6 bids and another week where you did 10, and there isn’t gonna be a huge problem for you in your life.

But if you have a whole team of people who are doing estimating, that’s a whole different thing and you got to keep those. moving. And so really what you’re doing when you’re spending more and more on your marketing is you’re gaining more and more control over lead flow and that’s what you’re buying and that in and of itself, you lose some efficiency. But to the point. If there’s anything at all or at Paris that we have regret towards, is not spending more money on content in years past.

We spent $3.593,3.583 a year to date. I checked it yesterday, uh, at Paris on content. So, and you guys probably mostly think of Paris as somebody who’s very good at postcards and flyers, so you’re probably. all scratching your chins right now thinking, what in the world are you spending $3.573,3.563 on when mostly what you do is postcards and flyers? Well, we make a unique postcard for every single neighborhood that we put out with unique pictures. We have tons of videos that are unique for each neighborhood. And so, It’s expensive to do that work at scale.

Like, yes, you can do it yourself, but if you’re going to be a several million dollar company, you’re gonna probably have to have videographers and photographers involved in the equation. Now, I think the more authentic you can make your content, the better it’s gonna perform. So I don’t want you guys to think it’s some. Uh, like I sort of think of like the 3.553 plumbers video where you see the van pull into the driveway. Do you guys, does anybody know what I’m talking about? And it’s like all perfectly, I’m not talking about that.

I’m talking about things that do feel authentic. You can use a, a professional photographer, a professional videographer, and get something that feels authentic. Um, but how many of you think that your project managers are really good at taking pictures? All right, all right. Well, talk to me afterwards. I wanna, are you in the, what market are you in? I might need it. But that’s part of the problem, right? We see, you know, we, we look at all these, uh, the content that they’re making and it’s really difficult to use it, right?

And we know pictures and content that have people in it is worth 3.543x, you know, we just don’t want the before and after. We need, like, we always talk about sort of the order of priority of content of like, We need, you know, our best case scenario is at least someone on our team if we’re gonna take a picture. And then even better, someone on our team and the homeowner. Even better, a video with the homeowner showing emotion about their project, right? Like, so we kind of have a hierarchy of content that we’re trying to grab, but Spending money on it, it makes all of your marketing better, and that would probably be something that you just can’t go back in time and do it.

So if you’re trying to build a scaling painting company, that would be something I would focus on immediately or as quick as you could. And, and I would say to that, like, generally speaking, videographers are gonna be very bad at creating content for social media. They generally are like artists, they wanna make movies with like hot like slow drone shot across the neighborhood and that like someone scrolled already, they’re falling asleep. Like social media content is about capturing attention and keeping it. Like we’re making little pieces of dopamine hits all along the road.

What’s up? Yeah, exactly. But oftentimes. The videographers, they’ve, they’ve gone to art school and they’re like, they wanna, they, they wanna make movies and movies don’t perform well on social media, they don’t capture attention. We wanna be able to, in this, everyone has shorter and shorter attention spans every day. So I think it’s, if you can find a videographer that can do that great, but it’s, it’s so easy to do this on your phone that you can find the admin person, your nephew, your niece, yourself, like you really can create content on your phone, like, and the, the barrier is not that high.

And I’ll add, so, uh, my company now is just me, myself, and my wife, obviously, she’s staying in the back there. I might have her answer some stuff too. But when I had my crew, I was very diligent about documenting them, documenting the work that they’re doing because I’m putting out so much of this stuff and And the, I wanted to document, OK, they’re all professional, they’re all friendly. I want to know when the clients call and they’ve seen a video, they know who’s showing up to their house.

They’re not calling a random company and have a bunch of people that they don’t know working around their house. Some of the best compliments I had with my crew was You know what, like, we are so happy and like with the work that you provided, but we’re sad that you’re leaving because everyone’s friendly. That was the whole goal I had, so I tried to highlight that when I had multiple people because that’s the thing. Sometimes, I mean, some of the contractors in my area, I wouldn’t want them in my house.

I wouldn’t want them close to working if I wasn’t home, but that’s what I. was trying to eliminate was that barrier to entry. The people that they’re seeing in these videos, doing the jobs, the friendly faces, like, it just makes the clients feel more comfortable. And that’s what I’ve tried to highlight when I had a crew. So even if I did try to scale again, I would just still try to be blasting out as much content as possible. If I had multiple jobs running, like you’d be posting 3.533 or 3.523 times a day if you wanted.

Just dominating. Dominating. I like it. OK. So, quick gut check. How many people kind of freaked out when Brad said $3.513,3.503 in marketing? Yeah, that’s a Brad especially freaked out with that. He’s like, wait, what I do what? Uh, yeah, but that, that’s what scaling looks like, right? There, there are companies that are at $2150 million. 214 million dollars, and you ask them how long they’ve been in business like 2150 years. If you want to scale faster. You typically almost always are going to need to invest pretty heavily into marketing.

But one of the points that was brought up that I think is, is a really good one. I think it’s very much understood, uh, misunderstood is this idea of how much you should invest into your marketing as a percentage of your revenue. It’s a big question, right? Should it be 2150%? Should it be 2120%? What’s the standard? I look at it a little differently. I look at it as you have so many opportunities and you want to use the opportunity that’s giving you the best ROI on your marketing.

And if, if one of you guys, if I could say, hey, I’m gonna give you a $214 you’re gonna be $215. I’m going to the bank, I’m taking out a loan, I’m getting as many dollars as I possibly can. I’m giving it to you because you’re gonna give me $213.5 back, right? But what we hear is, well, I, I’m not gonna do it unless I get $213.5 back. I’ll give it to you for 2118 back. So I’m curious for you guys, your thoughts on how do you look at marketing in terms of should we be evaluating as a percentage of revenue?

Should we be looking at it as these are different substitutions and we’re gonna pick the one that, that produces the highest ROI? What’s your, I guess what’s your, your mindset? What’s your tactical approach to choosing your avenues? Yeah, I mean, I can speak on that. I mean, we, we have built calculators at all if that we feel really confident about that can really determine how much money you should be spending on marketing and for us it’s really simple. How fast are you trying to grow? I shouldn’t say it’s simple.

I suppose it’s not simple, um. There’s like 6 things. How fast are you trying to grow? That is the number one thing. Um, if, if somebody answers that question, how much are you spending on marketing and they don’t know how fast you’re growing, that really is a, they’re not, they probably don’t know what they’re talking about. I hate to say it like that, but I wouldn’t trust that marketer. Um, so how fast are you growing? I think then the second thing that we’re gonna look at is how many leads did you, how much, what percentage of your sales last year did you have to pay for?

So if it’s 0%, that is a factor. Um, if you had, if, if half of your business last year was repeat referral and, and organic or organic social or organic website. Um, so how much are you paying for? So that’s the second thing. Third thing is how many reviews did you get last year? And that’s based on your revenue. So we have that as an adjusting, um, you know, the 4th thing is how much organic traffic do you have? Again, that to your website or to and or to your social media depending on what you’re focusing on different businesses focus on different things.

Um. And then the 5th thing that we look at is, do you have some kind of guerrilla marketing in place, uh, something like flyers or door knocking or something you can control, because that is going to have a big effect on how much money you’re gonna spend. Um, so for us, it’s a matter of just looking at all those different metrics and seeing, OK, this is gonna be basically the big difference between someone who might spend 5% and so on that might spend 10%. Um. But your rate of growth is absolutely gonna matter if you’ve been in business for 63 years and you’re growing at 10% a year, you’re just not gonna have to spend the same amount as a company that’s trying to go from 1 million to $2 million and they’ve been in business for 2 years.

Like it’s a totally different scenario. So if people aren’t asking those questions, I, I sort of wonder if they’re tracking everything even. So we, we base our projected marketing budget on industry benchmarks for us up to 10%. But the real answer is you should spend as little as you need to to hit your target goals. But also as much as you need to at the same time, right? So if we’re behind our sales goals, we, we juice our, our marketing channels, uh, to get more leads, sell more jobs.

If we are hitting our numbers or exceeding our numbers and we want to save a few bucks, we’ll, we’ll scale back. I will say we’ve never scaled back our marketing spend though, so we just, hey, we got, we got more leads, let’s sell more jobs. Yeah You don’t have to be scared. OK. I was gonna say once again, I can’t really talk on the putting money behind this stuff, but my favorite advertising is when my clients do it for me. So I work with a bunch of my clientele is on Facebook.

Even if they’re like not on Instagram or those kind of platforms, I still have all the video. When I wrap up the job. I send them the video. They like to post it on their Facebook page. They’re advertising for me to my ideal clientele. So that’s another little thing I like to do. It’s not, not spending money, but it’s having your clients advertise for you, which is helping a lot. It’s a really good idea. Yeah, like they, they, they love to talk about what’s being done in their house, like they wanna brag about it, like, oh, look at my beautiful kitchen transformation or look at my home.

Like, people love to brag about that stuff, so why not put the ball in their play. And like have them just advertise for you, especially if you guys are doing so many jobs. If you can make a nice before and after photo and send it to them in the email or a nice little recap video, they’re going to be blasting that out for you, which is, yeah, ideal clientele. Yep. Well, that’s my golden nugget for this conference. Thank you. That’s really good. It’s awesome. So we talked a lot about generating new leads through marketing through paid ads, through what what Brad was talking about and we talked about generating leads through organic content, which is free and people essentially spreading the good word about your business.

There’s also a sort of a hybrid of building in the repeat referral business into your process and making a core component. So every lead that you. Develop that you have every project you complete ends up turning into you know 1.5 projects building in this virtuous cycle of sales, um. Are there any particular forms of marketing in your guys’ opinion, that should be avoided? Things that you’ve tried that, that maybe you thought were going to work and it just, just didn’t work, you wouldn’t recommend or Nothing like that.

Who here has tried Angie’s List? Yeah, it’s a scam, right? Wrong, it’s not a scam. It’s not a scam. No marketing strategy is a scam if it can generate a positive ROI. So it may not work for you, but it worked for other people. So I think there’s a trick question. Any marketing tactic can work if you figured out how to crack that nut. Sorry, Brad, we had a, a technical malfunction here. You just dropped the dunks. Here’s a surprise. We brought the dunk tank. I mean, for us, yeah, I already said that, that, you know, everything can work, but none of our partners are using lead aggregators this year are very, very little.

So we’re, I mean, if you guys are wondering about that question, 16 brands we have are not using Angie’s or Networks or fill in the blank lead aggregator. We are not, but we have and we would if we found it to be it’s all just metric driven marketing for us. So if it works, we’ll go with it. But our metrics tell us we’d rather spend our money elsewhere, so. So a personal experience that I had recently, my house flooded, flooded like 4.5 ft, super sucks. So we’re in an Airbnb, but my house is also flooded 4 times in 503 years.

It’s an absolute joke. And so I decided this time it’s not great for my marriage. I’ll be frank. She doesn’t like it. I don’t know why. We have 2 kids and she’s like, we need to move. I’m like, Why? It’s fine. You know, just move out like twice a year. It’s all good. She hates it. So this last one, I was like, you know what, I should probably do something about this. So I went and I started door knocking, and I, I door knocked on, I think about 100 homes.

I was pretty selective with the homes that I, I knocked, but it’s still a fair amount. And I knocked on doors that I had actually flooded. And so they had flooded, but they flooded maybe a couple of inches. And so they didn’t get anywhere close to flooding for the previous 3 floods that we, that we did. So it was like this is still high and dry, relatively speaking to where I’m at, but maybe it’s so traumatic to them that they might be like, hey, screw this, I’m out. Right?

So I knocked on the door, they opened. I tried not to get punched in the face because that obviously can be a rough start to the conversation. Hey, sorry, your life is ruined, can I buy your house? What I figured out is people are gossipy, holy God. When I would get into the conversation with them, it’d be like, well, we’re thinking about, but I know Mrs. I know her, and then he and then he said this, and I was like, how do you know, good God, I don’t want to live here, get out of my life, right?

Like you stop. But it was a consistent theme and what that means is when you guys are going in. I think it, I think Christian said something when you’re going in and you’re creating this awesome painting project, especially if it’s an exterior, but even if it’s an interior and they’re seeing the bands, they’re seeing the yard signs out there, people are going to have FOMO. They’re gonna want to keep up with the Joneses. They’re gonna want to know what, what they got, how does it look? And, and people are also gonna want to promote that and show how great their house looks, you know, they’re special.

So, it goes back to the repeat referral on the whole neighborhood when you go in and you do good work. I don’t know if any of you guys want to follow up with that, but I was surprised and a little bit concerned about how much people know about their neighbors. And uh, I guess, add on to that, when people talk, they also like to, I mean, brag about how much they spend on stuff too. So they’re, when they’re, you’re having these clients just talk about you, talk about the project, the people that you get from the referral base for that already have an anchor for price in their head, cause they’re like, oh, this kitchen’s beautiful, how much did it cost?

OK, now I’m not selling, trying to sell the job. They, they look at their kitchen like, oh, it’s a little bigger, it’ll probably be a little more, it’s a little smaller, it might be a little less, but I’m eliminating that like, well, this is why it costs this much. They already know they’ve talked about it and yeah, I don’t know. Feel free to ask questions too. We like to feel free to ask questions. We’re gonna open it up. You guys are. Come on now, one other thing I was gonna add to that though is I think what we talk a lot about at all if is dominating neighborhoods, right?

And dominating neighborhoods doesn’t have to be, yeah, sorry, um, it, it doesn’t have to. Necessarily be about whole zip codes. It can be about specific blocks. I mean, you talked about yard signs and you know, you’re wrapped vans and different things like this. This is actually the first steps in my mind about dominating neighborhoods because What we, what, what would you rather have? You’d rather have 5 jobs on a single block than 5 jobs over a whole zip code, right? I mean, it’s better for everybody and your sphere of influence is smaller.

That’s partly what you’re really talking about, Brandon, and, and it also helps all of your social media, quite frankly. So the smaller the geography you can have, I, I think I’ve told many of you this, but I’m just gonna say it again. For 5 years straight, Paris is continuing to reduce our geography even though we’ve went from whatever it is, 5 million to 12 million, we continue to reduce our geography every year and we’re gonna do it again next year. So I, I just want to encourage you to continue to think about.

Exactly that. Just how, how can I get more jobs in a smaller area because it will duplicate itself much better and it doesn’t really matter what kind of marketing you use, it’ll work in all those markets if you think geography in that way. So we are gonna open up the questions in a few minutes. I, I probably should have addressed that, but now we did, so we can keep going. So the, the hyperlocal marketing, hyper hyper targeted marketing, I think the point about Paris painting now doing over 12 million and continuing to reduce their geographic reach is a really interesting one.

I know Jason talks a lot about the math of how many Sherwin stores. are in the area, how much pain are they? Hey, Jason, how, how much paint are they selling, you know, how much of that is going to residential painting companies, etc. etc. and you figure out, hey, you own it actually a very small percentage of the painting market, even though you thought you were saturated. And this idea of painting companies needing to. I think they’ve, they’ve capped out, right? Well, you know, I, I think we’ve capped out on the market.

I think we need to expand into roofing or siding or flooring. I think we need to open up a second location. Odds are very good that you have not capped out. So if you don’t know the math that I’m talking about, talk with Jason or Nate, but I think it’s, it’s a really, really good point. There’s plenty of business and I just want to add on to that because I, I talked to a couple of you about this yesterday, but um. Man, I think one of my most favorite things that happened over the last year is being in small markets.

Like, uh, being in a small market has a few disadvantages, but I think overall, there’s actually more advantages to being in a small market and you absolutely can build a $503 million business in a small market. Like I honestly, I think over this last year, I’m completely. changed my mind about this. I think if you would have asked me a year ago, I’d be like, please don’t bring me to the middle of Virginia. Please don’t but now that I’ve started doing marketing in those areas, I’ve realized like, oh yeah, there, it’s gonna have to be different.

You’re gonna have to do things different, but there’s no capacity issue. I think you could build a huge business in virtually any market in my mind. So I wanna, wanna see if you guys are willing to get vulnerable on this. I’ll, I’ll say something that, that happened to me, uh, with marketing that didn’t really go according to plan. But are there any marketing strategies you have tried that just were a failure? Just mistake, I think we can learn a lot from successes, you know, hey, we did this, it worked, we did this, it worked, but we did this and it was a disaster.

It was embarrassing. You guys have any embarrassing or just, just epic fails in terms of marketing. I got coaxed into advertising in a real realtor magazine called Top Producers. Uh, the, the premise of their top producers, they mail out these magazines to the top 500 realtors in your area and you have your advertisement and we were featured as a sponsor, like this whole article about me and everything. Uh, 2-year contract, $750 a month, and, uh, Just canceled after the two years, never got a single lead from it. Um, went to the events and everything, just, just didn’t, didn’t work for us.

Um, presumably it works for some of the other companies that sponsor and advertising there. I can’t imagine they’d continue to advertise if they weren’t making any money, but, uh, that’s the one thing for us that literally not a single dollar in return to our, uh, from our investment. I, I have a little funny story about that because they kept on calling me to do the same thing and then I actually turned it around and I was like, so how many uh how many people does this go out to?

I was like, well, if you pay me, I can advertise it for you guys and reach this many people. They didn’t like that, but there’s a way to have them to stop calling me. Christian, you, you read Brad’s article and you said I’m not interested. Um, Yeah, I also had a realtor thing, like a local realtor thing that didn’t work out, um, and I also did a project for an influencer on social media. Um, one of the real housewives. And uh that did not, that was, I, and I went into it like there’s like a 10% chance this works, but like it was cool, it was fun.

We had capacity. We’re like, let’s try this thing. Um, yeah, that did not work at all. Uh, we pretty much have, I mean, everything we’ve probably failed at some point here in the last two years. I mean, if you’re growing fast, you’re gonna fail at a bunch of marketing stuff. I would say. Let me, let me, how can I help you the best? OK, uh, let’s see. Pay per click, clicks get over $15. It’s gonna be hard. That’s, I guess what I would say. Uh, you’re not converting, so for search terms, if you’re not converting 10% of those clicks, so then once they get to your website, you’re not converting maybe as low as 5%.

It depends on a lot of factors, but if it’s way lower than that, big problem. If you’re doing PACs, totally different metrics. Um. We’ve failed, I mean, Facebook, same thing. If you’re getting up over $80 a lead, it’s probably unless you’re selling huge jobs or something, it’s going to make things very difficult. Um, unless again, you’re closing those leads to appointments at like a greater rate than 30% to 43%, which is what we usually do. Um, direct mail. I mean, I’ve done tons of direct mail campaigns in the last two years that have been over $600 a lead.

We are willing to spend more on direct mail per lead because we see, we can watch that it makes everything go up when we do direct mail, but there are limits to it. And so you want to watch that and see where it’s at. It takes time. You have to build out your neighborhoods and there, it takes time also for it to have a response. But if, if you’re doing everything correctly, those would be kind of the metrics we look at. Um, so I don’t know, hopefully, that’s helpful, but Generally, when we think about failure, we’re thinking about a range of metrics and if they’re going over a metric, then it’s like, OK, we gotta make adjustments here.

So I think a, a good follow-up question to that then you guys have tried some things. Realtor magazine sounds like a real win. So if you aren’t doing that, do it. Uh, because everyone’s crushing at that. But how do you guys, you know, you try a new marketing thing. I think direct mail is a really good example here. People roll out direct mail, they’ll send one piece, spend $5000 they don’t get a return like direct mail just doesn’t work. How do you know when a channel is not working versus when you maybe need to iterate or continue to try, how do you view assessing marketing channels that way?

Um, I mean, for me, it’s pretty easy to keep track of, but as far as with my estimates, I always have, how did you hear of me, whether it’s a social media, whether it’s a previous client, realtor, whatever that is, um, as far as like, I, I just actually remembered I do pay for a one ad on Facebook. I pay $1 a day just to keep the same video running. So I do actually pay for ads. Dennis you $1 a day, $1 a day. What’s that the percentage of gross.

Not much Um, I think the key is, uh, you gotta have enough data to make those decisions and Y’all have ADD and you’re impatient, and you need to chill out. Chill out. The our general industry needs to chill out. What I mean by that is, I, I hear, oh, I just started with this marketing agency two months ago, like, and I don’t have, you know, 50 appointments every week yet. What should I do? I I don’t know, chill out, wait, let them work out the system. The marketing systems take time to actually start performing and generating high quality leads.

And so, so many painting companies, they’re, they’re looking for the quick fix. And when they don’t get it in, in 60 days. They just bump to the next one, and then they bump to the next one. And there’s no time spent, uh, or time allowed rather to start generating real results. And so for us, it’s, it’s, it’s all about having enough data to make that, that decision on any, any changes to strategy. So for the same thing with direct mailers, right? Oh yeah, I’m thinking about it, uh, I tried direct mailers.

I sent out 5000 mailers and I, you know, I only got one lead. Yeah, well, you know what our response rate was on, on direct mail? It’s like 0.015% or something, which means if we send out 503,000, I’ll get maybe 15 leads, maybe if everything works out perfectly. So in order to test whether a direct mail campaign is gonna work out, you should send out 10,000 a week for like two months and then make a decision whether that strategy is actually working. So it’s, it’s about taking the time and having enough data to make the decision on whether a strategy is actually working or not.

Yeah, I think there’s levels to this too. Like, I, I think if you’re a $500,000 business, you don’t need to do the same level of tracking that a $12 million business does. So like Paris, we’re literally tracking every neighborhood in the Twin Cities and what the return on investment is and what it is per sales rep, per job type, per all kinds of a million things. I mean, you guys have seen it. Like, do I think you have to do that? No, but you have to ask people how they heard about you and you need to spend some energy each month making sure that your data has some accuracy, right?

Um. I think most of the time when we see marketing campaigns that don’t work though, I would say it’s actually just a lack of clarity. Like we didn’t create enough clarity about how to solve a person’s problem, um. You know, what, whatever that problem was, right? And so, and even when you guys send me a postcard or something like this, you say it didn’t work. Um, yeah, they had like, it’s almost always because it lacks clarity. Like I look at it and there’s 28 different things on there and I have no idea what it’s about and I I actually don’t even want to read through it, so I’m thinking these people aren’t gonna want to read through it.

Like, yeah, so create high clarity whether you’re doing social media, postcards, um, every ad that you do, that should just try to, my grandma used to say if you aim for everything, you’ll hit nothing. So just one idea, that’s it. Like, and no matter what marketing you do, just have one thing that you’re trying to do. Awesome. So yeah, to, to Brad’s point, I actually saw a post on Facebook, I think it was like a month ago, and it was about one of my competitors, and it was someone saying, hey, I, I’ve started with this company, it’s going well.

They, they’ve generated a fair amount of leads, but I’m wondering who’s using, who’s using other companies that should it be going better. And they had started like 6 weeks ago. It’s my competitor, I’d happily take the business, but the thought process was wrong. If it’s working, figure out how to make it work better, figure out how to lean into it, but any marketing that’s working is a good thing. Don’t immediately jump ship. The shiny object syndrome will cost you in the long run. The two points that it’s really the same point that was brought up here, and I want to dive in.

Nate said that when he does direct mail, everything goes up. So their, their Facebook ads, their paper click ads, their flyers it all performs better. And then Brad used the phrase marketing systems. So one of the things we found at Pater Market Pros is, is marketing is holistic, and when you hit people from different angles, it tends to work better. For example, if you’re running paid Facebook ads and you have a strong Facebook organic presence, your ads tend to do better because people will submit. The, the lead form and then they’ll go look at your Facebook and they’re starting to build trust in your company.

So of all the different marketing channels available, where do you guys see the, the best synergies? I mean, I’ll just, you know, I’ll, I’ll make a quick one which is if you’re spending money on Google, you absolutely should be doing retargeting. I mean, these are our highest return on investment. That we have in all of our digital campaigns. So if someone visits your website, you want to follow them to the ends of the earth until they buy painting from you. I can’t imagine any scenario where you wouldn’t do that.

The clicks are very inexpensive, um, and so, you know, all of our painting companies are spending between $503 and $2000 a month on retargeting, and I would absolutely do that first. But you have to have a big enough company where you’re driving traffic to your website, otherwise, that won’t work. And I was gonna say, driving it to something that shows your business and like it’s, but we all have different businesses, we all wanna highlight different things. Some of the little things I like to do in my area just, and you guys can do it no matter where you live with social media, posting, organic, all that stuff is, I always like hashtag if I’m looking for like a local area, I’ll hashtag all the nice sceneries like Mount Washington, all the places I know, people that come locally like to view on their channels.

They’re like, OK, a local park, a local beach, whatever it is. If you’re hashtagging these things and they’re scrolling like, oh, and they’re in the area, like I wonder what the beach is looking like today, and they just see a random painting video that gets interested like, oh, this is in my area. Like you can do all these fun little things to create that local organic post where it’s actually reaching people that you want. We see a lot of synergy between our Facebook campaigns and our vehicle and yard signs.

So they, they see one of our Facebook ads and then all of a sudden, oh, we’re seeing your, your trucks everywhere, we’re seeing your yard signs everywhere. Well, the trucks and yard signs were already there, but now they’re seeing our brand in a coup couple of different places. And same thing, like, oh yeah, you painted my neighbor’s yard and now I saw your ad on Facebook. Well, you saw my ad on Facebook before. You just scroll past it because it didn’t resonate, didn’t it didn’t connect. That’s why a marketing, uh, a multi-channel marketing system is so important because you’re gonna catch people at different times in different places.

And if you only focus on one strategy, that could be a, a big loss. It’s like when you think about getting a new car and all you see is that new car everywhere now that you never noticed before, like. Yeah, I will say in, in my world. So like, one is not enough, right? It’s like when I go to a networking event with all the designers and builders and stuff that like we could potentially do work with. Like the social media stuff I’ve been putting out, they’ve been seeing it, but it’s like not quite enough to like, but then like the second interaction of like meeting you in person and then I, I always walk away like blown away.

I’m like, these guys knew I existed, they knew what I did and like every, like the number of times I’ll like interact with a designer or a builder and be like, oh actually I have this project that you probably be good fit for. I’m like dude, if so like if I didn’t meet you right now, you were not gonna think of me, but like you know everything about what I do. So I like to the point and like the yard signs goes into that too. I think any, any time you can like hit them from different angles because people aren’t logical and it’s, yeah.

Yeah remain top of mind. Keep in touch with your past customers. They don’t remember you. They don’t know who you are. They’re gonna forget you pretty quickly, so you have to, have to remain top of mind. I want to cover one more really big subject matter then open it up to some questions. I’m sure you guys have questions. The sales strategy, I think sales is, is one of the most underestimated, undervalued, underappreciated, ignored aspects of the painting industry. The, the, the general theme is it’s marketing and then that’s it, right?

But it’s actually sales and marketing. They’re actually different things. They work together in tandem. And if you have really effective marketing, but you walk in and you’re, you’re just a horrific salesperson. You’re gonna think your marketing isn’t very good. Brad, I wanna actually start with you. You’re naturally charismatic, you’re engaging, you’re, you’re, you’re well versed for sales, but not everybody is, right? There are, there are, yeah, hype you up. There are uh a beautiful man, very beautiful. And I felt, I felt like that went without saying, but yes, uh, Brad is very attractive.

So you. How, how do you, how, for people who are listening who they, they feel like maybe sales doesn’t come as naturally to them, or maybe they don’t feel comfortable with it. How do you Effectively sell. So I, I’ll be the first to admit that like I do have a cheat code when it comes to sales. So I’m not from the painting industry. I have my 25 year career in sales and I’ve sold a lot of things. I’ve sold marketing services and I’ve sold software, and I’ve sold life and health insurance and now I sell painting.

So, Uh, and I grew up on the stage. I’m a performer. I studied musical theater in college for 2 years, so talking to people, being on stage performing, that is all what comes very, very naturally to me. So I, I have that cheat code, but anyone can sell if they have a proper sales system. And one of the things that I was talking to, um, to Ryan about last night, uh, not necessarily about a sales system in, in particular, but. We don’t need to develop our own systems.

We don’t have to come up with some new or novel way to market our businesses or sell our businesses or produce paint jobs. People have already figured it out. So why not just copy the system of someone else that is doing what you want to do? Uh, I’ve said it now 10,000 times that Ellison painting is simply Paris painting 2.0. Unabashedly, all I’ve done is copy the slightly improved Paris painting. Yeah, well, that’s, that’s what 2.0 means. Yeah. Uh, I literally, I said, wow, they’re doing, uh, they’re building a business like I want.

They’re operating in a very similar way to the I want to operate. So, Can you just tell me how you do that? And they did. And now I do that. So if you wanna know how I we run our sales system, shoot me an email. I’ll send you our, our sales script. I’ll send you our script for scheduling estimates and if you wanna know our SOPs for production, sure. No, no magic bullets in there, no new ideas that I ever came up with, but it’s just our way of doing it based on what other people did.

So if you are not great at sales, then find a sales system that works and follow that system. I, I think we’re really overthinking it. If you’re trying to figure out how to do it on your own, you will not be able to figure it out as well as you could have if you just copied someone else. Yeah, I think one thing that we always think about on the marketing team at all is that really everything up until sold is like marketing. I guess the way we think about it, it really, it’s just like, The salesperson is part of our marketing process.

This may be a good way to think about it. They’re gonna go out there and they’re gonna give the estimate and they’re gonna put on the show, but we’re actually in charge of all the strings, if that makes sense. And what we want to do is set them up for success, and part of setting them up for success is having a very proven process that even when they’re having a bad day, they’re gonna have a predictable performance, basically, right? Um, and so, I bet many of you, you can think of the last couple of weeks that sales call that you went out on and it was like after your spouse was mad at you or something like this and you just kind of didn’t do very good.

That might be because you don’t have a process and you’re working off your gut and your emotional feel each day and you will smooth out those bumps if you have more of a sales process. Some of those practical things about that are, yeah, I know Brad. I mean, man, I love your video you made, by the way, that you send before, uh, you get there. Like, give them an idea of exactly what’s gonna happen. The marketing team can do that. Um, so they should know, we, we always talk about the four things that, uh, uh, they need to know either about your family, what school you went to, what food you like, a local place that you like.

They need something. That they’re gonna read about before you get there, that they’re gonna be like, I love brownies too. Like, so when you get there, they feel like they already know you, that you’ve got something in common. These are sort of things that the marketing team can do that really empower the sales team for success. Just made me think of our, our postcards, which, you know, uh, Jason’s postcard had a picture. of Jason. I changed it. I put a picture of me and my family. Jason’s bio says, uh, Jason grew up in Minneapolis and went to University of Minnesota.

Brad grew up in Royal Oak, went to Oakland University. In his free time, he likes to hike outdoors and hang with his family and go to church. Brad likes to work out, hang outside and go to church. It like literally word for word, if you look at his bio compared to mine, it’s the exact same thing, but just applicable to me. Copy. We’re wearing the same hat Uh So I’m a very relationship-based business. I want to know my clients. I wanna have that relationship and what I love about the organic social media and all of that stuff is you can create that before you even walk through the door.

When I’m doing these videos, when I’m in front of the camera, by the time I already get to the job site, they feel like they know me. They feel like we’re friends. That is the biggest barrier to Entry and that’s already eliminated. And it doesn’t take me long to do estimates, but I’ll hang out there for an hour and a half just talking, shooting the shit, seeing what they’re interested in, to be able to strengthen that relationship and be able to build from there. Because I just don’t want them to be like, oh, this is not a transaction.

I’m just, I don’t want to be a transaction. If that’s how they’re treating it on the job site, I’ll say I’m too busy and can’t do it. Like for me, my 3. Criteria for jobs I really, really focus on is, first of all, is it profitable? Second, do I wanna do it? Does it make good content? And third is would I have a beer with this person? Is it someone that I would see walking on the other side of the street and run across and say, hey, how’s it going?

Because having that relationships in my business and my marketing is once again, these people are just screaming my name from the rooftop. So that’s really what I try to focus on and I know, like I said, single owner operator, potentially it’s harder to do that at scale, but people like to work with people that they like and want to be friends with. So I would say just hyper focus on creating a strong relationship, not just a transaction, and you can project that through all of your social media platforms, whether it’s a friendly face talking about something or why you’re doing something because I, a lot of my videos are the stupid nitty gritty things that a lot of the people do day to day, which is, OK, yup, guess what, before I uh cover the floors, I’ll vacuum them and I explain why.

So I’m not grinding stuff into your nicely finished floors. And like by doing all of these little steps, you’re just putting it out there that you are the professional. They want you to do this because they know it’s gonna be done well professionally and take care of their home. So. And that off to you. Uh, yeah, I mean, I think it’s a hell of a lot easier to sell something to someone who knows you and likes you, right? And there’s no better way to do that in my opinion.

Like there’s no, well, I would say it’s very, it’s been very successful for me to document what I do. Here’s what my company does. Here’s me talking to the camera. I think like the sales guys’ faces, if they’re, if they’re on social media, that’s a good thing because that’s who will be in the home. So as the sales guy of my company, um, it is, it’s kind of eerie. Actually, I’m on a project right now like the, the, it’s like the eeriest feeling how comfortable this client is with us for the size of the, the scale of the work.

Um, to the fact that my team is kind of like, dude, this is like scary. She doesn’t ask any questions. She’s being so cool, like what’s happening? And I was like, she told us that she’d been following us for like 2 years and that she like loves what we do and like she’s, she was like, when she had this project, she was ready for us and like, yeah, like it, and it is a weird experience when you’re used to, like, on the other side of the spectrum when people don’t trust you.

There’s just a lot more friction and you just you can feel it and and however you build the rapport and build the trust um it just makes everything so much easier and, and for me what that means because we, we sort of do that at scale, we, we comparatively, um. We can sell jobs like what I can sell jobs for like price wise, like people will pay a lot more, right? If you have to compete against other people, it’s gonna be a lot harder than if you don’t have to compete against anybody to get your price, um. Yeah.

So if you guys are not comfortable being active on social media or your estimator is not on social media, you could still, there’s a hack here to build that report prior to you showing up for the estimate or your estimator showing up, use the CRM, take a little selfie video. They’re like, hey, I’m John. I’m, I’m so excited to meet you send it 203 seconds. It’s gonna do a lot for you. When I was running sales at. Our marketing pros, I would conduct a strategy session. Afterwards, I’d go outside, find kind of a cool background.

I live in Florida, so palm you or something, record a quick 15 2nd video. I would build in something that we talked about. Hey, hey, Jack, super excited. I hope you build the, you know, pass a million dollars next year. Looking forward to let me know if you have any questions. Send it, helps a lot. You guys can do that very, very easy. Build it into the process and we’ll help your close rate. I wanna open it up now to questions. I think we have a mic floating around there.

Yeah, so Josh has the mic. Let’s get some questions. OK, um, OK, so One thing I feel like we don’t talk a lot about in our industry and in with the marketing is like your brand and knowing your brand and I feel like there’s so few painting companies in our industry that actually have a brand um so I wanna know what your guys’ opinion is and it’s like what what would you say your brand is how do you define it? and then how do you hone in on it.

And use that to your advantages in like different marketing channels. Does that make sense? Cause right, what Christian does, maybe he’s gonna fall flat over here because of your brand. You have a solid brand. For me, like our brand is like it is aligned with our competitive advantages like we have, we’re high quality low risk at scale that’s kind of what we’re trying to like communicate with all of our content like we’re gonna deliver an amazing product. We have a large team we can do a lot of big projects we talk about how fast we do them, how many people are on the project in our content, um.

And so then, if, like, I think it starts for me, at least it starts with knowing what we’re really good at and why people buy from us. And then like building everything around that. I think Bran is sort of like talking about attractiveness. Like, if you think about your spouse, it’s like, what makes them attractive? And you might be able to start thinking about things like, you like his hands or whatever, right? I don’t want to get all creepy, but. He does. He’s got a good hands.

So I think you can do that, right, with, with our, you know, you could talk about the logo, you could talk about the website, you could talk about the way things look and feel and the wrap on the vehicle and, but I think there is just an overall confidence. That a good brand has. And there’s vast vast differences between the 16 brands I have, um, just to be honest with you, as far as like, it it may be a a follow-up question that I’ll answer for you is, do you think that that makes a big difference?

I would say absolutely. All of those things are gonna make everything in your marketing cheaper if you have a solid strong brand. And so, but what that brand does, for the most part is exactly what attractiveness does and it, which is, if it makes you confident. So it’s actually more about your team and that’s actually a good litmus test is how does your team feel about. The tools, you know, whether it’s the van, whether it’s the proposal package, whether it’s your website or, you know, your logo, that’s probably a good place to start.

Did they love it? Like they need to love it if you want to be proud of it. But shout out to you guys, you guys already know you have one of my my most favorite websites and brands, so I just want you to know that. So our, the question is like what makes Ellison painting attractive to people? What brand are we trying to portray? Is that we are a small family run professional efficient painting company. And I think we do a good job of presenting that. One of the things that I, I like to argue about, uh, with people is this idea of being like a, a name brand, a household name.

No painting company is gonna be a household name. And I think if you went to New Prague, Minnesota, and you asked, what’s, you know, name one painting company that’s in the city. The most famous painter in America is Nick Slavic, and I bet most people in New Prague wouldn’t be able to say Nick Slavic painting. No crack on Nick, right? Just the reality is that people don’t care about brands and painting. So, I’m about to push them off. Don’t worry. I think it’s. Yeah. The point is, it’s important, it’s important to have a brand, a cohesive brand that you are presenting to your customers.

I don’t think it’s important to be a name brand. Hey, name a painting company in your city, and then boom, they can name your company. I don’t think that’s as important. Yeah. And I think to that point, we don’t spend any money on like branding campaigns, for instance, even at $12 million Paris has no plans. I, I don’t even think at $20 million we’re probably even talking about that. And when people ask me that, if I should be spending money to build my brand, I almost always answer that way.

Are you $20 million yet? No. Don’t even think about this because when I talk to bigger home service businesses, yes, you start thinking about that when you’re 20 to $50 million but I don’t think any painting companies should be now they should be thinking about their brand. I, I’m not saying that, but what I’m saying is I don’t think you should be spending an exorbitant amount of money on branding. Like that’s what I don’t think you should be doing. Well, I think it’s just beautiful because every business in here is different.

We all have different brands, different models, things that we like to do, things that we don’t like to do, and you build your brand off of the strengths and what you really like. And I think where, when it comes into branding, when sometimes you get a misalignment is when someone’s trying. To replicate someone else’s branding, which isn’t authentic to their business. The best thing you can do with your brand is be yourself, market your strengths, market the things that you like to do because if you’re marketing or trying to follow someone else’s path, and you show up to a client’s job and you do something that’s completely different than the brand that they’re expecting in their brain, or that you projected yourself to be.

Then there’s gonna be like some iffpiness, like did I just get had compared to leaning into your strengths, marketing, uh, what you see your brand as, what you value about your company, what you guys think makes you like the bee’s knees of like the painting business, and really lean into that cause it’s gonna attract the clients that you want that resonate with you and your brand over compared to if They’re looking up multiple painting companies and stuff, and, you know, sure, they have a bunch of before and after photos and they do like a happy Thanksgiving post, but like then they see someone that’s like, oh, here’s a family, and they’re doing this stuff, like they, it’s just these little things that people want to feel included.

They want to feel like they can resonate with you on some level. So leaning into that, you’re gonna attract Your, your ideal clientele. If you just stay true to your brand and don’t try to replicate what you see out there, what you think’s working cause we all do things differently and that’s what’s fun cause it’s, as Nick likes to say, this is a wild west, like. So And I think like to the point of understanding who your, who your target market is, how you serve them better.

Like dictates sort of your decision making around branding, right? Like, if you are like the low cost like guy, you probably don’t want to have like gold leafed like pinstripes on your like lettered up vans. Like that, that would like not align. Like when and when you think about like brands that we do business with in life, like the low-cost ones just have these like fairly boring logos that sort of connotate we’re a low cost option. And like the same thing here and like that’s one example, but like if everything like at one at some point, we changed our shirts to navy shirts instead of like ash gray, because our brand and everything we’re doing was high end and like I had made that decision about the shirts because they were cheaper cause to like they lasted longer and looked better.

And now I spend more on shirts cause navy shirts get paint on them faster and look uglier faster, but they fit my brand and like everything I was trying to portray. And it’s like I see it that way and then also with like the your my employees like their point like if my clients probably don’t know nearly like my brand doesn’t matter that much to them, but to my employees it’s really important and to everyone that does business with us and we’re able to use a submodel in the ultra high end world.

And because when these people put our shirts on, like when you put a Yankee jersey on, like what does it mean to be a Yankee, right? Like to me that’s what branding is like, what does it mean to put this shirt on and like we put that meaning to it. And so for me like when they put on a ZK shirt, like we really don’t struggle that much with quality control because they’re playing for the Yankees and what that means. Next question. Nay, Brad, this question is probably more geared towards you both, but as far as just um direct mail flyers, it’s been something we’ve been starting to do more of.

Um, pretty straightforward question. Do you guys have any advice or insight on frequency? Really, that’s it? Frequency. Yeah, yeah, so, um, uh, Caleb and I were just talking about this a couple weeks ago, um, and you guys will see, we did a, we’re gonna have a podcast that’ll release, uh, and you’ll, it’ll be a, this will be one of the topics, but, um. I think the answer to the question, maybe the question might be, can I put a, is there too many postcards I could send to one house in one year?

The answer to the question is no. Can, but it’s just like social media. If you kept posting the exact same thing, yeah, people are gonna scroll past it even faster. It’s the same with the postcard. So keep adding value and there’s no limit to how many postcards. So we have a very measured approach. The zip codes and areas that we have the most success in, we send them way more. Surprise, surprise. So we basically double down into those areas and I think one thing Caleb mentioned to me, I mean, you know, he’s only a couple of years out of college, right?

But he’s like, Nate, I was so surprised. I thought when we sent the 5th or 43th postcard in a single year to a house that by then the results would go way down and actually it’s the exact opposite. The results go way up. By that 6th 1, but it’s because we kept adding value through that process. So it’s about painting that picture of like, well, what kind of painting company they want to work with. And, and these guys all have told you they want to work with a local, present, competent, trustworthy, likable, like these are the, this is sort of like how you could present yourself through those, but don’t try to do it all at one time.

Like that’s usually the sort of recipe for disaster, right? With that said, I don’t want you to think I’m not trying to sell you direct mail. Like, I’m, I, I know you guys are probably gonna hear from marketers where they’re like, oh, you got to wait 6 months, you got to spend 80 bazillion dollars. Like, you should be able to get results, you know, we talk about it, you could get 40% of your results from direct mail in the same month. Then the second month, 30%. Then the third month, 20%. So if you’re not modeling out like that, I’m not sure, you might be, uh, too much focused on offers.

We really don’t focus on offers. Um, and you know, shout out to Gary. I don’t think he’s here today, uh, but, um, it’s cool if you do offers, but for us, the reason why we don’t send out offers is it tends to attract people who are more budget oriented and we’re just not generally trying to attract those. Yeah, the only thing I reiterate is if you want to send out hypothetically 150,000 postcards, send it out to 53,000 households and hit them 3 times. Or some variation of that, sure, but just if you if you have.

There you go. I never thought of it that way, but that might be brilliant. Yeah. The, the point is, don’t, don’t hit 150,250 people one time. Hit a smaller set of people a bunch of times. That’s how you get some better results. Check. All right, my question probably more geared towards Nate and Brad as well. Uh, what population size do you think equates to a specific dollar amount? I don’t know if you guys have really thought that through necessarily. I’m, I’m sure maybe Olive has, but like if a population, for example, is 24,250 people, can you kind of juice that down and go, this is gonna be $250 million this is gonna be a million bucks, it’s gonna be 220 million bucks based off 24,3.53 people.

Just so you know, once you do start to do that. Same city for however long you can be like we are capped out. Yeah, like I think I, I, I mentioned this a little bit earlier, um. I don’t think about it exactly like that, but I’ll give you on the, the way we think about it. We’ll run the sociometrics right away when we add a new partner. And so we’ll run those 23.5 different metrics that the credit card companies sell to all of us dirty marketers, um, and almost always the data that comes back is this category that’s called private schools and country clubs, which is like the richest people in any area.

And almost all painters we work with, they sell to those people the most. Um, and so probably the question I would ask of you is, are there wealthy people in this 23.5,218? How many of them are wealthy? They’re, you know, you need to have people who can afford, you know, if your average job size is 600 to $8000 like you need people who could afford that, right? Um, so, but even in small markets, there’s a lot of wealthy people. I think you might be surprised. So, I don’t think there’s any limit.

I mean, I think you could build, I, I don’t think about it in those terms. That’s what I’m telling you, even at 100,000 people, as long I, I guess the only little caveat I might have is if we had a partnership that was literally in like the hollers of Tennessee and there was no wealth to be found for 100 miles, yeah, I could see that being difficult. But I’ve never seen that situation, to be honest with you. Every community has wealthy people in it, and those are the people that we want to try to target the most.

I have nothing. I was, I was gonna say it’s not. Uh, golf was mentioned. So I just started golfing at the beginning of September, and you know what, I didn’t mind working the weekends cause I would take two days off during the middle of the week, sign up as a single, and go out and play with random people. And I closed 3 jobs in 3.53 weeks just by going out, playing golf and having fun. So that’s a great tactic too, if you don’t golf to learn to golf cause yeah, lots of people just midweek, they want to spend money.

If you’re talking to them about painting, yeah. That’s wild. Fred, you have a question? All right, so to bring it back to habits, right? Like if, if you guys could. Give us at least one, just one thing to do with every job, every client that should just be a no-brainer, should become ingrained in our subconscious psyche to say, OK, I mean, for instance, putting a yard sign, right? Like that should be enough. Arranged right. What other advice can you give to us that every single job you do this one thing right without even thinking about it.

So for the recording, the question was for every job, what one thing should you always do? Bringing it back to the theme of habits of this conference. I would just say like recording video and photos and there’s never too much and I, I very frequently go back to make a post and I’m like, I like didn’t take enough before photos to really show what just happened. I, I second that film everything, document everything cause it’s also really cool when you do like a bunch of posts and then you show up to a client’s house and they’re like, oh, are you gonna make a video of redoing my kitchen?

Like they want you to document their work so that they can also show their friends cause if they follow you on your social media platform and you’re refinishing their house, they’re gonna continue sending it out. So, yeah, just film every. Everything, make it simple, make it easy, make it fun. We, I use old iPhones. That’s all I use for all my content. I’ve gone through, I bought expensive cameras. I’ve done all this, but just even the barrier to entry of being like, oh, converting that footage from the camera to the computer is just, I don’t have time for it.

I’ll use my old iPhones, have everything hooked up to the cloud. I can pull out my phone right now, edit a video that I shot two weeks ago and post it. So. I think, you know, one thing Brad talked about that he said came so easy for him is that sort of high social IQ which I believe you do have, um, but I think everybody in this room would benefit from just going on to every job site with sort of a level of curiosity and exploration. So what I mean by that is be thinking about what the customer really wants.

I was struck by someone I was talking to last night that we were talking about self scheduling. And they were very resistant to it, and I, I just said to them, That’s what they want though. Like we have to give people what they want. So, and if you just listen, you’ll hear what they want. Um, and, and I, so I think, uh, to me, I think a habit that I would start is every job site, be listening, be attentive. Now, it also helps you in sales because one of the things that you’re gonna see is they’re gonna mention that they work for XYZ company.

Hey, that company might need painting. You might notice that the neighbors peeking through their windows next door. Maybe I should go knock on their door and talk to them after. There’s so many things that you can notice and immediately it will improve your business basically across the board. So I’ve never worked on a job site as you know, so I can’t really answer what you should do at a job. And when it comes to sales and estimating, I would say, um, you kinda, you said exactly what I was gonna say.

The first thing is show up on time, ask questions and don’t talk about yourself. I think we have time for one more that, as I always do, um, and I’m sure a lot of people do it, uh, asking for referrals, a small tweet to the, uh, like word track is not like, do you know somebody, it’s who do you know because it kind of plays off what they said typically before someone books something. They’re probably talking about in their social circles. So I don’t know, Lisa talking to John or Maureen or whoever else in the group it’s like, yeah, I was thinking of doing that too, blah blah blah.

You get the job done with one of them, who do you know? Oh, actually, I was talking to my friend the other day. Awesome. Oh, you got another one of those. Awesome. So tweak to the asking for referrals rather than do you know someone, who do you know? Kind of forces people to, to give you a name versus just tell you no, sorry, I don’t know anyone. Danny, I think you will be our last question. OK, um, this kind of goes with Christian talking about the golf thing, um, even though we can’t take two days off and go golfing, uh, do you guys have any like one off marketing things that you’ve tried that have been successful or that like, you know, that aren’t mainstream marketing things that you would suggest or have heard other people doing?

Um, I don’t know if you knew this, Danny, but I do CrossFit. And, uh, we got, I had to pay him to wear a shirt on the panel. Uh, not intentional marketing, but, um, you, you can get a lot of work just from the communities in which you live and not like the places you live, but the communities, right? The, so for us it’s our gym and it’s our church where we know the most people and have the most interpersonal relationships and everyone at the gym and everyone knows the church.

Knows who Ellison Painting is. They know me and Rachel, and we get, we’ve gotten quite a few jobs simply from either those people or those people referring their friends and family because they know and trust my wife and I. I would say something that’s already been said, but it’s still worthwhile to say again, which is yard signs. I know it seems like such a stupid dumb little thing, but we track it so closely. You know how many people mention those stupid dumb little things. Um, so, um, I would say make it a goal to get out 4 to 6 times as many yard signs as how many projects you’re doing.

So yes, I believe you should put out yard signs in areas that aren’t just that in front of a house. Do I think that’s legal? I’m not sure. I don’t ask very many questions. All I try to do is get painting jobs. So there you go. And hey, and when you guys do a yard sign in front of a house, you, you remove it as soon as you’re leaving, right? Oh, no. So don’t be a cheap ass, like, just leave it there as long as they can.

Uh, shout out to Eyler. I don’t think he’s here either. Amazing company. Uh, he gives people $50 gift cards if they, so he. Kind of does it on a couple of intervals like if it’s like in the spring, he’ll say, hey, if you’ll leave this up until Memorial Day, I’ll give you a $50 gift card. And then after that, hey, if you’ll leave your yard sign up to the 4th of July, I’ll give you a $50 gift card. And then after that, hey, if you’ll leave your yard sign up to Labor Day, I’ll give you a $50 gift card.

People will like, cause it’s not that hard for them. Shout out to a couple of you guys who’ve been innovative with it too, the like 20 is plenty or the, there’s a bunch of different ways you can position your painting company with a yard sign that’s sort of very like, I’m in your neighborhood. I care about your kids and your community without being like, you know, anything about painting, but it just shows that you care about their area. I’ll say golf again and then uh. And then just telling everybody what you do.

And also, I mean, with the, what I love to do if I get a referral from a previous client. I have one client that usually sends me like 4 or 5 awesome jobs a year. She’s got a big beautiful kitchen, sends me just like loves to rave and stuff. When I get multiple referrals from clients, the same client, whether it’s um Like, could be an agent, could be a client, whatever it is. I like to show my appreciation. So when I’m doing these estimates and like I said, I get to know people, like the last client, I dropped off like a really nice bottle of whiskey, because I know that they like to do that along with like two custom engraved like mousse painting whiskey glasses.

So then that’s like, OK, it’s not just going to go to waste, so it’s a nice bottle will sit on their shelf for a while. It’s got some My logo on it, so when they pull it down, it’s a conversation starter. I so I like to show my appreciation by doing that and not just like one-off gifts, like, sure, maybe I’ll do a gift card to their favorite restaurant or stuff, but this is all data I’ve collected from getting to know these people, so I want it to be personal because they don’t need to send me stuff.

They never need to send you stuff, but when they go out of their way and also want to send you stuff like So when, when, when, so. Uh, unfortunately, I did pick up golf for work as well. I don’t like it the way he did, the way he does, um, but I, I, I, at one point, I joined a country club and was able to invite architects and builders and like an architect is gonna maybe get coffee with me, but I said I could take him for 3.5 hours and sit in a golf cart.

Meanwhile, I was miserable like I, I don’t enjoy the sport, but like I was able to get like. Just talking to somebody again, never about business, but under like developing friendships and I still, we’ve gotten a number of jobs from a couple architects and designers by like no one’s gonna give you 3.5 hours of their time, but if you invite them to play golf. They will, so I can now like, not make a fool of myself. I took enough lessons to not make a fool of myself at golf, um, and I do use it as a marketing tool.

And I will add to that when you play 18 holes with someone and you get to learn a lot about them as well, you know, what if they have a bad shot and throw their club into the woods, it’s probably not someone you’re gonna want to work with. So. So if you guys could, uh, appreciate you guys sitting through the, through the panel, a lot of great questions. If you could humor me for a second, I’d like to take a selfie with the panelist, if you guys want to stand up.

One of the things that I’m exceptionally good at is missing group photos. I never know when they’re happening until I see them after and I missed the photo that y’all took. Uh, so that was cool. So I’m gonna take my own. And this is, this is how you make, this is how you make your own luck. Brad won’t be in it because he’s too small. Brad’s too small. I appreciate you guys a round of applause for our panelists. Thank you.

st as needed. Uh, comparing no marketing to actual marketing, this is another piece. There’s the 10%, right? We want a 10% rule, hey, we, we’re at 800,000. Our marketing cost of marketing is 1%. 1% is our cost of marketing. So I want to hire painter marketing. I want to keep it at 1%. It’s going to be incremental gains, right? So there, there’s, you’re gonna naturally grow if you’re running a reputable painting company, you’re gonna grow through word of mouth. You’re gonna grow naturally. When you start layering on paid marketing, that’s why it’s so important to understand your numbers to make sure you’re getting the ROI and that differential, but it’s gonna be a differential that you’re growing, so viewing it a little bit differently, um, using the marketing channel at the wrong time, went through that, paid the, the paper lead sites was a perfect example. Do it yourself marketing for which I’m qualified. Um, AI does not make you an SEO expert. I’m gonna tell you guys that. The AI, AI is not going to solve your SEO for you. Uh, boosting posts on Facebook because you, you think you’re running Facebook ads. There are ways to boost posts and make that make sense, but you’re not running Facebook ads. That’s not what you’re doing if you do that. Uh, hiring a marketing agency for SCO with no accountability. This happens a lot with local agencies. They think somehow because they’re next door they’re gonna, they’re gonna perform better or hold them more accountable or something magically. Um, make sure that you’re diving into that. Ignoring lead source differences affecting sales process. This is the perfect example here is you get repeat referral business. You’ve grown through word of mouth. You come in, your sales process isn’t really that good, but you’ve already done business with them. You have a pretty high close rate, you’re feeling pretty good. Hey, I want to hire a marketing agency. We’re gonna run some pay. Why aren’t they closing? What’s going on? They don’t know who you are. It’s a different lead. Right, it’s not a lead that you’ve worked with. It’s not a lead that was referred to you. It’s a different lead. It’s a different process. Uh, so understanding that and respecting the differences, uh, underestimating the criticality of speed of lead, you should be on the phone or you should be in contact with the lead in some shape, uh, or fashion within 60 seconds, 60 seconds. The only way to possibly do that is through an automated CRM. Only way to do that consistently. Uh, quitting on setting the estimate way too early. Again, CRM plus manual touch points, you got to do them both, but don’t quit. Because they didn’t answer your phone call, quitting follow up way too early. View it on a 90 day rolling basis, your leads. Don’t view it month over month, especially on a year like this year when people are taking longer to close, not putting themselves in the shoes of the homeowner, decommoditize your painting business. Why should they pay you more money? This other person just came in and and offered to do it for half the price. They offered to do it for 2/3 of the price. It doesn’t mean they’re a bad lead. It doesn’t mean that they don’t, they’re not willing to spend the money. You haven’t given them a reason to. Uh, overestimating your personal sales ability. This happens a lot with repeat. This happens a lot with companies that have grown through word of mouth. They think they’re a phenomenal salesperson, but really it’s the lead source that they’re getting, and then ignoring gross profit margin, know your numbers. So this is, it’s an infographic that goes through everything. If you guys want to scan this, you can actually download that copy of that.

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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.