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

In this episode of the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast, Sarah Ross, owner of two Fresh Coat franchises, discusses her path to creating a multimillion dollar painting company. We will be discussing Sarah’s journey advice she has for other owners looking to pass seven or multi seven figures how she minimized hiccups while scaling and much more. If you want to ask Sarah questions related to anything in this podcast series, you can do so in our exclusive painter marketing Mastermind podcast for on Facebook. Just Search for painter marketing mastermind podcast form on Facebook and request to join the group or type in the URL facebook.

com/groups/painter marketing mastermind. Again that URL is facebook. com/groups/painter marketing mastermind. There you can ask Sarah questions directly by tagging her with your question. So you can see how anything discussed here applies to your particular painting company. Thanks for joining us, Sarah. Thanks for having me, Brandon. Yeah, I am super pumped. I’ve been wanting to do this episode with you for some time, so I’m, I’m excited. I’m super pumped but a little nervous as well. Yeah. You know, I, I, I’ve mentioned this before on the podcast.

People say they’re nervous and, and to me, I’m always like, why would you be nervous? Uh I do podcasts all the time is fine and then I will sometimes go as a guest on another podcast and I’ll show up quite frankly ill prepared at times. I’m like, oh, it’s fine. I do, I do this every week. It doesn’t matter. And then I, I realize it’s a totally different ball of wax when you’re on the other side. Good. I’m glad I’m glad you at least appreciate that. I definitely do.

Yeah, I can empathize with you. I, I sort of, I kind of control the narrative here a little bit, right? So for me, it’s, it’s, it’s relaxed, but for you, it’s a little nervous. But fortunately I haven’t had any, I haven’t had any podcast guests, at least openly hate me or the process yet. So I think, I think you’ll be all right. I’m in good hands. Yeah, you’re in good hands. So, I guess if we could get just a little bit of background on you professionally when you started your painting company, what got you into painting?

Uh, just so we can get a frame of reference here. Sure. So my background is actually as a CPA working in corporate America doing accounting work and just got burned out doing that, couldn’t sit behind a desk anymore for 1214 hours a day. Wanted to be out in the public, dealing with people um seeing the sunrise some days, you know, seeing the sunset. And uh so I, I really just went franchise shopping and came across fresh coat, which is a painting franchise and decided to go that route because it, it kind of fit a lot of needs.

So the price was right, I was able to get out into the public and um be able to manage a process that I felt comfortable learning about and managing. Uh So that’s why I kind of went the, the painting route and uh bought into fresh coat in 2013 and uh later bought a second territory with fresh coat and honestly had not looked back. I, I think I’d be bad at sitting at a desk all day long anymore. Uh I, I love the flexibility that this provides being able to still do some back office work and still have some time in front of the computer.

But also be able to be out in the field and working with customers and networking and such. Yeah, it’s a super standard path. CPA, one of the most risk averse jobs ever to entrepreneur. A lot of people make that, make that leap. Yeah, we call ourselves recovering accountants. Yeah, I love it. Um Yeah, it’s quite different. So you joined Fresh Coat 2013. Uh We, I’m a little bit biased toward Fresh Coat. as, you know, we, we work with a lot of franchisees. They are very, very solid franchise.

Uh, we’ve, we’ve experienced quite a few and Fresh Coats the best, quite frankly. Um, you’ve been with them 230. It obviously went well enough that you decided to open a second franchise. When did you do that? Uh, we did that in 240 and it was actually, you know, kind of a benefit of being part of a franchise is that, you know, when other franchisees are looking to exit their business. And so we had a neighbor, franchisee who was looking to, to exit his business. So I was able to purchase his territory.

He had an amazing reputation. So that worked out really well for us that we walked into to an existing territory with some existing customers that, that we could kind of reactivate. And, uh, it, it just made sense at the time for us, we had started to scale. We were certainly, we still had room to scale in the territory that we were in and the, the territory we’re in was seeing significant growth with a lot of people moving to the Austin Texas area. Uh So it just made sense to buy the additional neighboring territory uh as he was ready to exit. Yep.

Yeah, Austin is quite the burgeoning market. Uh for painter. It’s also competitive market though. It is. It is. Yeah, there, there’s definitely a wide range, there’s other franchises in town that, that do great work as well. Um And then we have a lot of mom and pop shops but, you know, I think that’s everywhere you, you run into competition no matter what. So I can’t say we’re any different, but with the growth we’ve seen in the area, there’s definitely been a growth in businesses as well for sure.

Yeah, somewhere between, depending on where you read it. 250,210, 250,211 painting companies in the US. So you’re, you probably got a couple of competitors near you uh regardless of where you’re at. Yeah. So the, you start in 25003, I’d like to get uh just kind of a sense of what, what that beginning process look like for. You kinda wanna go through a little bit about how you started when you knew uh that it was time to scale how you scale right without breaking the company, which is always a risk of scaling and what your company looks like now. Sure.

Uh Well, again, another benefit of being part of a franchise is that we receive coaching on that. Right. So, uh, that’s why I went the franchise route. I, I knew numbers. I knew I could handle the finances of a business and kind of the back office stuff, but I had no idea what to do from a marketing or sales standpoint, certainly not a natural salesperson. So needed coaching on both, uh, marketing and sales. And that’s where the franchise system really came into play and, and got us up and running and gave us a lot of coaching on how to go out and do grassroots networking and get, get your name known in the local area, right?

That’s, that’s ultimately what you have to do to start even getting quote opportunities in the door, right? So did a lot of grassroots networking upfront. Um We still do quite a bit of that, but then obviously, over the years, we shifted a little bit more into digital as I realized how important that was to do. And that’s part of why we now consider you an important partner as well. Um You know, it’s the different generation, right? And as we, we start to have those customers age into um our customer base, uh we need to be found digitally to, to be able to get an opportunity to get out there and do those quotes.

So, uh that was kind of our initial start up was really hitting the ground running with the grassroots networking, but then also rolling out digital as it as it made sense and as the budget allowed, right, we had to get some money coming in the door to be able to uh reinvest some of that into the business and into digital marketing. And then as far as scaling uh fresh cut also gives us guidance on that. We follow what we call the rule of three. So the the rule of three stands for answer your phone within three rings, be able to go on a quote within three days and be able to start a project within three weeks.

So Fresh Coat gave us coaching on how to go look for painters and you know how to answer your phone, whether we’re using an answering service or not, all of that. And so, you know, that was pretty set uh as far as the answer your phone within three rings, but be able to go on a quote within three days. I started out doing all the quoting as do I think most entrepreneurs, right? I mean, that’s, that’s one of the toughest things I think to trust somebody else with in your business is to go, I think you should, especially with sales.

I think you should start out in that role because you’re interacting interfacing directly with the market. Good point. Yeah, it’s your face on the business. Yeah. Yeah. So you know, it, the, the concept of being able to go on a quote within three days once I got to the point where I had enough quote requests coming in that I couldn’t get to all of them within three days. That’s when I really looked at hiring an estimator. And I was lucky enough at the time that I had a good relationship with several Sherwin Williams folks and was able to steal somebody away from Sherwin Williams.

I, I don’t shy away from saying that they, they know I’m going to post their people if they get good people and in our area and I love Sherwin’s uh idea too of promoting from within, right? So they, they do an amazing job at training their people on customer service. And so they’re, they make good sales people most of the time too. So uh once we got to the point that I couldn’t get to those quotes within three days, we were hiring our first estimator. Um we, as far as laying that roll out, we really had that person doing estimating and project managing to start.

And then once that scaled big enough that we needed to split that up, I just offered to them. Which do you like doing better? Right? Do you like doing the sales better or the project management better? That particular salesperson liked sales better. So we moved them solely into sales and then promoted one of our lead painters to project manager. I love promoting burn within two when at all possible. So, uh that was kind of our first step at scaling other than, you know, bringing on painters as we needed to.

And so the other rule of three within fresh coats, rule threes is to be able to start a project within three weeks. So most customers just don’t wanna wait longer than that once they’ve decided to move forward with a painting project. Uh So that’s how we know when to bring on more painters. You know, we can all kind of get in that comfort zone of. I’m booked out a month, I’m booked out two months. I’m gonna be able to keep my team busy. Uh But if you’re doing that, you’re probably losing projects, right?

So we try to, once we’re out about three weeks on the schedule to hire another crew, hire another painter, bring somebody else into the fold to be able to keep up with that workload. And, uh, that’s worked out really well for us. You know, it’s as we’ve talked about on your other podcasts and stuff, the economy has, has been on the last couple of years, you know, post COVID. I think a lot of us took a boom and we were all trying to hire and now it’s slowed back down.

Uh So we haven’t had to go through that process in a while, but I, I think it’s gonna kick back up here. Yeah, the, uh there was a big rush for labor can’t find enough painters, can’t find the help. But now it’s kind of flip flop back to trying to get leads and get the leads to close. Right. Exactly. And it’s a great time to build your list. Right. I mean, we’re getting calls from painters every day right now, looking for work and just keep, keep building that list.

Just like you work on the sales side. Be networking uh within the painter industry to, to make a list of painters you can call on when the time comes 22500%. Yeah. And I think the leads problem and the problem of closing projects is an easier one to solve. It’s harder to solve the labor problem, right? If people, if people won’t work or, or you know, they’re not there, you can’t really materialize them. Uh leads are always going to be there. It just might be more competitive and then it’s, you have the ability to get better.

So one of the things you said that I love because I think, I think so often people are looking for the one silver bullet, right? It’s like, oh, well, right now Facebook ads is what we do or? Ok, actually Seo is working really well for me. Well, direct mail. I’ve, I’ve always done direct mail and it, it works awesome or well, I just, I only do refer, I mean, word of mouth, right? That’s what, that’s what the de facto is. If you’re not actually doing anything then that’s how you grow.

Your business is through word of mouth. However, it’s usually passive, usually not nearly as active as it could or should be. So, I like the fact that you said. All right, I started with grassroots because you didn’t have a lot of capital, right. In the beginning, you don’t wanna start throwing a bunch of money at marketing if, if you don’t have a business yet. So I’m gonna start with grassroots. Now. We come into some money. The business is growing. It’s doing well. We have a good reputation.

We partnered with you, which has been great. We’ve been working together for, I think coming up on a year and a half, um It’s been awesome seeing your growth and, and that partnership, but you haven’t stopped the grassroots, right? So now you’re doing the digital, that’s where a lot of people make the mistake. Ok? Now we’re all digital. We have an agency. We’re, we’re doing all this professional stuff. Oh, I don’t have to worry about all that networking and the in-person events and, and going out in the home shows and any kind of door knock, all that stuff just goes by the wayside.

My problem’s been outsourced to painter, marketing pros or XYZ agency or my internal marketing director and I don’t have to worry about it anymore, but you always want to maintain what I call multiple fishing lines in the water, right? Because things ebb and they flow and one lead source might go up and the other lead source goes down and that’s how you build a more resilient company. So I, I applaud you for not dropping that. Thank you. I appreciate that. And yeah, you’re, you’re spot on and I would say it’s not even, just more lines in the water.

It’s different lures too, right? You got, you gotta be using different lures to try and catch different fish. And um you know, you and I have had this conversation about, you know, me saying to you, I, I feel like I need to stay on top of it because at some point, the Facebook ball could drop, right? So if our leads coming through you on Facebook, slow down. You know, I know we’re looking at seo stuff with you. I know we’re looking at LS A stuff with you.

There’s other avenues still with you. But yeah, absolutely. I can’t stop the, the grassroots networking. And honestly, it’s, it’s another good chunk of our business. It’s about 2500% of our leads is through grassroots stuff. So I certainly don’t want to slack on that or the ball could drop and we could, could lose out a large percentage of our leads coming in. So, yeah, you gotta continue all those efforts. I think, I think your point about the SCL two is really, really important. So the, the algorithms like Google paper click for painters used to be phenomenal.

We we did a bunch of that. It was great. The cost believe was good. Uh The leads were highly interested. Now the Google paper click for anyone who’s running that the right way through which is through search and not display those leads are really expensive. So you need to, you need to have a high ticket value. You need to have a high close rate. You need to really have your sales process dialed in for that to make sense. But that’s because the algorithm changes, right? Algorithm changes, competition changes, the paid a sector in general is more susceptible to that.

So you say meta, we know we’re doing a lot of meta right now. Meta is going really well. The floor could drop out and it’s gonna drop out a lot faster than it would in seo because it’s just the algorithm just doesn’t update that quickly. Seo is a long, a long term game. Takes a long time to build trust with Google. Yeah. You know, and, and obviously my background in accounting, I, I like to have control, right? I like to know what the plan is. Where are we headed?

Digital marketing? Unfortunately, Google and Meta own that. I like to have control too. As you’ve told me before, it can be a little bit of magic, right? Um So it’s, it’s something that at least with the networking, I still have control over my time. I can say I’m going to dedicate this time to attend this networking function or to network with realtors or to build this particular relationship. I have control of that. So, yeah, I don’t want to lose that control that I have on that piece of marketing.

You gotta keep doing it. Yeah. What a good point. So the, you just will get banned from these platforms for no reason, no rhyme or reason if you’re listening and it hasn’t happened to you. It may happen to you. You, it won’t be, it’ll feel like the end of the world to you and if you’re not prepared, it will actually be substantially harmful for you. Uh But you’re not the first person, you’re not the last person. It’s a pretty routine thing where, where meta will just say, hey, you violated some pretend rule or, or you did something that you didn’t actually do.

Uh And now you’re banned or Google will come in and they’ll just suspend your Google business profile. You sub, you appeal you, you try to reinstate it and then Google may just say, hey, no, your Google business profile is gone. You’ve, you’ve got a hun 2500 reviews on there and now it’s gone. And now you get the start up. These are real risks that actually happened. So when you say that element of control, like you’re building these relationships, Google can’t come in and then just tell that realtor, hey, no, don’t, don’t pass any business to Sarah anymore. Right?

Or hey, don’t there being this whole BN I network, you’ve created all these past customers that you’re keeping in touch with, right? That you have to repeat and referral Google is not gonna go automatically kill that. And so the more you can maintain control as a business owner, the more resilient you can be. Yeah. Good point. And I would just encourage anyone that’s getting messages like that to run those past you and make sure they’re, they’re not fraudulent messages that has actually been shut up because there’s a lot of fraudulent activity around that.

A lot of fraud. Yeah. So one of the ways that we found a combat that is, is limiting the countries that can see uh when you, when you start to limit the countries that can see the pages, then you start to get a lot, a lot fewer fraudulent messages. But yes, if you’re listening and meta has told you you’ve, you know, you violated it. You have one hour, you know, to pay us a million dollars, that’s not actually what they say, but to click this link, do not click the link.

It didn’t happen. It’s spam. We’re just saying what could happen, but there’s a uh you know, an abundance of spam out there right now. Fishing. They want you to click on the link. Uh OK, so the rule of threes, I think this is just good to go by in general. Answer the phone within three rings. We know that the majority of people don’t answer the phone at all. So that would be a, a massive improvement. Um, get to the quote within three days. I think that that’s really good.

More people are gonna be able to do that than answer the phone somehow. Uh, and then three weeks start the project. And I think your point of, well, we have this sense of security. Right. We, we have some partners that work with us. They like, oh, I’m so happy why I’m booked out three months. Well, that’s problematic. That’s not. What are you happy about? Let’s fix that. Right. It depends what kind of business you’re trying to run. Exactly. Maybe that is where you want to stay and if that’s where you wanna stay fine, but if you wanna scale your business, you’ve got to get out of that comfort zone.

A little bit of being booked out and bring another crew on. You know, I like to say, I don’t bring another crew on until I feel like I’m consistently keeping my existing crews busy. Right. That is my main priority. So many of our folks, you know, they live paycheck to paycheck unfortunately. And I certainly don’t want to, to put them at risk when they’ve worked for me for years already. So I’m not going to bring on another crew until I feel like I’ve got them consistently busy and that three week mark really is a good indicator.

And then when I bring on a new crew, I just tell them, you know, my goal is to keep you busy full time, but it, it might have been flow. I’m gonna communicate to you when I don’t have something so that you can work on getting something else. Um, it’s, it’s definitely communication is key there but it’s, it’s crazy how many times I’ve been able to bring on another crew telling that. And then before I know we’re keeping them busy full time. And so you are using primarily subcontractors, correct?

We have a combination of both. OK? Combination of both. I think that’s the ideal fit. I think you should have some W twos. I agree. But yeah, subcontractors allows you the scalability a little bit more easily and then it’s, you’re not laying them off if you don’t have enough work. It’s just, hey, go, go find your own job for a couple of weeks out and we’ll get back to you. I think your point too though about letting them know because technically you don’t have to. Right. They’re a subcontractor, not employee, you’re contracting them for individual projects.

You don’t need to let them know anything but you keeping them in the loop saying, hey, I’m gonna do my best to keep you busy. I will let you know if I’m seeing a gap. So you have the opportunity to go fill that gap. That’s how you build loyalty and how you keep good subcontractor crews with you. Agreed. And I think it’s just respectful. Right. I mean, again, if they’re living for the most part paycheck to paycheck, I don’t want them to go without food on the table just because I didn’t communicate that they need to go look for, for something for next week.

You know, it’s, it’s just respect, I think most of the time and having a, a good enough handle on your own business to be able to communicate that right. Because a lot of people just so, yeah, kind of up in the air with things. Yeah, time, time management is, is not only crucial as you scale on your calendar but on your crew’s calendar, on your team and, and efficiently scheduling the team. And of course, you know, hey Brandon, just this morning, truly seven ami got a phone call from a customer saying don’t send the crew at nine o’clock today and we were supposed to start uh 100 and 30 hour project.

You know, it was gonna keep one crew busy for, for the week and she says don’t come, you know, so you, you do have to adjust and you have to, to be ready to move things around. That’s again, the accountant and the planner and me doesn’t like that part of it, but you live and learn, you got to do it right for the sun. You want to see the sun. Exactly the the, the more that, you know, I communicate with them up front, what’s happening, the more likely.

Yes, they’re, they’re gonna stick with me through those. 00, my gosh. I’m sorry, you can’t go to the project today. The customers had a family emergency. I’ll, I’ll pull something else up for tomorrow. Let me get on it. You know, they, they know I’m gonna do my best to doing that for them. But, yeah, you’re right. Not only is time management crucial on your own calendar. As an owner, it becomes even more crucial on your production calendar with your painters. So I’m, you know, I’ve been familiar with the Fresh Coat rule of threes for quite some time.

I think it’s great. I think it, it puts so many issues, right? Like setting, setting an estimate quickly. So you don’t actually lose the ability to conduct that estimate because perspectively is gonna say I’m not gonna wait that long. Uh getting a, a project out of the book. Same idea, right? Because they’re gonna say I’m like, OK, you can’t do it for two months. That’s fine. I’ll just hire this other person uh and then answering the phone for obvious reasons because if you don’t, you lose tons of money.

So the, the rule threes make sense because it solves a lot of industry issues by putting it into a specific KP I key performance indicator metric for Western track. What I had I don’t think appreciated quite as much until right now was how it allowed you to, to really plan for the scale with a three week thing, right? Because like Nick Slavic and a lot of people talk about um estimating, right? And, and job costing and knowing how to actually build in your pricing to get the appropriate margin.

So it’s, it’s math, you know, it makes sense. You just took what is typically not really viewed very mathematically like, hey, how do I know when I should be hiring when I can scale? Um, and you just made it math, you say, hey, three weeks out, like, and that maybe people listening, maybe it’s not three weeks, maybe it’s four weeks, maybe it’s two weeks, whatever it is. But now you have math, you know, exactly when does, when you need to be bringing on more crews? Yeah. No. And again, I can’t take credit. Right.

It was something that fresh coach taught me but, but I, I absolutely followed it and it’s, it’s been a key component of our success and honestly forced me to get out of that comfort zone that I probably would have fallen into as well. Right. Um, now to your point, it may be four weeks for somebody else, someone in the northern States, it might be a certain number in the winter months and a separate number in the summer months. Right. Depending on their seasonality. So, um, yeah, it’s, it’s got to be defined for yourself and your business.

But for us, the three week mark has been spot on. Yeah. So you said you didn’t create it, but you’ve certainly followed it. So that’s one of the things that I’ve noticed about you. So, again, we’re working with a lot of, a lot of friends, like over 60 Freshco franchisees. So we’re, we’re, we’re quite familiar, you know, I’m quite familiar with, with the franchisees and they’re phenomenal. You are 11 of the top performers consistently for a reason. And in my opinion, that reason is execution. And that’s one of the big things I see people going to events, people listening to this podcast, people reading books and it’s great to seek knowledge.

But if you don’t actually, you know, put pen to paper, um rubber meets the road, you don’t actually implement any of those things, then it doesn’t really translate, right? And you’re a, you’re a phenomenal implementer. I, I appreciate you saying that it may take me three times here in it before I actually implement it. Um But yeah, I’m, I’m going to take action when I see action needs to be taken. And honestly, that’s part of how we ended up in the relationship with you, right? Our, our Google leads had, had tailed off and I, I needed to get digital leads coming in from somewhere and I, I think I actually got a cold email from Pain and marketing pros that sent me that direction.

I believe so. Yeah, we do, we do a little marketing on our own sometimes for ourselves. I talk a lot about marketing so we should do so. Uh so as, as you’ve scaled you obviously within fresh code, but outside of fresh code as well, you get a lot of events, I’ve seen you at PC A women in paint PC A expo, you, you got all kinds of stuff. Uh And then I know every, every webinar that I conduct every kind of, uh, online event I’m on, you’re there asking questions, uh, constant learner.

But what mistakes are you seeing? So other, other painting companies, maybe they’re 500,5003, maybe they’re a million and they’re trying to scale and they just keep stumbling. Are you seeing common mistakes? I would say the most common mistake I see truly is on the time management side, both for yourself as the owner, but also for your team and, you know, not, not scaling when you need to and just leaving too much on your own plate. Right. So to your point and I don’t make all the events, I’m glad it feels that way, but to me it feels that way.

You flatter me, I guess, but I, I appreciate it. Maybe they’ll bring my fees down with you. We should discuss that. So that the, uh, the, the way I’m able to do that is because I blocked the time on my calendar and, and sometimes I still miss things. Right. Something else comes up and I, I don’t make that particular webinar, but I’m able to do that because I have estimators in the field going and doing those quotes within three days. So it’s not always me. Um, and I, I just, I, I try and effectively block my time to, to get it all done.

Are there still some days that I’m working 12 hour days? You bet you. Right. But that’s because I wanted to attend that webinar and I wanted to not multitask while I was on it so that I could actually pay attention and walk away with some, some action items out of it. Right. So, yeah, you, you really have to time block. Um, and, and follow that as closely as you can, I think is especially at that, that million dollar mark. I mean, I think that was the, the hardest mark for me and if I hadn’t followed the rule of threes and scaled, um, I, I think I would have been stuck there, honestly.

Um, so, yeah, for, for owners that are in that boat, definitely time manage hire, hire the right people. If they’re not the right people get rid of them quickly. I’ve definitely been in that boat too, you know, he held out, uh, trying to train someone too long who maybe wasn’t trainable, uh, and, and had to, to cut ties and move on to the next one. So, don’t don’t drag your feet when you feel like you don’t have the right person on your team. It’s, it’s time to let them go on to something else and move on to another person that might be a better fit.

Uh So those are, I would say the, the two biggest points and yeah, just don’t, don’t stop moving. Don’t, don’t get too relaxed in any one avenue like we talked about. Don’t get too relaxed on the, the grassroots networking. Keep up all avenues that you can. Uh, and the more you hire, the more you’re gonna free up time on your plate to do that. Or maybe you are hiring a marketing person. I know that’s kind of some of the sort pro model I believe is to hire more marketing folks.

If that’s not your specialty, then hire it. Right. Uh You, you may be better off continuing on the sales side and letting somebody else do the internal grassroots networking marketing type stuff for you. Yep. That’s a great point. You can hire people to actually do some of that grassroots stuff. The, the intentionality of time I think is a really big point there. I know I’ve actually struggled with this. I think it’s easy as an entrepreneur you’re growing, you’re doing all this stuff and it starts to feel like the more stuff you do, the more productive you’re being and in the beginning that’s true because you have to hustle, but then you reach this inflection point that I think is earlier than a lot of us realize where you actually need to start thinking smarter, not just at work. Everybody.

Uh, there’s a book that, that I’m reading. It’s still, it’s still quite honestly something I struggle with, uh, dare Martel, um, buy back your time and I think it’s phenomenal. It, it talks about hiring. We hire with, with sort of an org chart in mind. That’s the typical way of hiring, right? Like we need, we need a certain position filled. And what he talks about is figure out where you’re spending all your time and hire for that instead. Nice. I like that approach. I’ll, I’ll have to see if I can get it in audio.

Like I said to you when you, you handed me your book, if, if it’s not audio, I’m probably not going to get to it honestly. But yeah, I’ll have to check that one out on audio. Yeah. No, that would be great. Um And then the, like you said, some people are not trainable, right? So E OS that’s something that we’ve partially implemented. It’s a long process of working a full implementation. But uh entrepreneurial operating system, it is a good operating. I fought it for a long time just because it seemed like a fad and I, I don’t do fads, but then enough of my friends kind of beat me over the head with it that I decided to move forward and it’s been good.

But they talk about, people need to have, get it, the capa, like, get it. So I have to get it. They have to want it and they have the capacity to do it. So they might want it, but they might not have the capacity. They just might not be the right. There are some people who want the, who want the job and maybe they understand the job. They just can’t do it or they want it and they can do it. They just can’t wrap their minds around.

They just can’t, for whatever reason, understand what actually needs to happen here or they just don’t have the drive. You know, the, the drive is, everyone has our drive. Sarah, everyone works like us. I don’t know why I drive anything special. I think just some, some folks get into it and just don’t realize that it, you, you do have to keep the wheels moving. Yeah. Yeah, you’re growing or you’re dying. Uh And then one of the things you had said, which I want to circle back to because I was a little confused.

You talked about hiring an estimate, someone who is an estimator and a project manager. So, so they’re doing them both. But I know as, as a lot of owners scale they will, they’ll be doing the estimating in the project management themselves and then they’ll, they’ll hire for one or the other if they like to sell, they’ll do project management or vice versa. Are you saying that you would just hire for them both at the same time or what did that look like? Yeah. So we did and, and I think, you know, teach us on if it makes sense for you to just hire an estimate or just hire a project manager by all means, do that for, for my first fresh coat territory, even though it was only one territory, it’s geographically fairly large.

So I would be driving up to an hour and 15 minutes from one quote to the other. So for me, it made sense to hire an individual that could do estimating and project management of what they estimated and put them in a particular geographical area of my territory. So neither one of us were spending as much time on the road. We were kind of more centralized with our estimating and project management. So that’s why it worked for me just because of the area I was trying to cover and the time spent on the road.

Um, it also to me just felt a little, uh, less scary for a way of a better way to say it. I was still staying in tune with both roles. I was still doing sales and project management at the time. They were also doing sales and project management. So if it did, didn’t work out with that particular individual, I hadn’t stepped away from something I could still step right back into it and just cover that area. So again, it worked out well, we only had to do it for about six months.

And then we were at that point where I was asking him, which do you want to do sales or project management? So, uh it was, it was a way for me to scale that I think just fit because of my territory and also fit because it was less scary to me. But by all means, you can do either way that just shows there are multiple ways to scale because that, that’s not a common thing that you hear of, right? Like our, well, our, our service area is so big that I just continued to do both roles.

But I hired somebody for another part of the service area. You almost never hear that. You hear either they cut off the estimating or the project management. So I think a lot of people listening, especially younger business owners or, or business owners that are kind of early on. Sometimes the service area they say they have is a little bit excessive. Like you think like, well, if it’s 50 miles, then all of a sudden my business will magically be bigger, which isn’t really how it works. But if you have maybe a couple, like, let’s say you have two pockets, you know, and they’re, they’re kind of far away and those two pockets are really good.

That would be a super great strategy for how to say. And you know, if you have repeat business, the thing comes in from that, that’s further out. You don’t want to turn that down either. Right. Plus it, it really allowed that individual to move from. That was the one I hired away from Sherwin Williams, right? Moved from the um selling product to I’m on more of the service side and buy him time to decide which he really liked. Right? I mean, he had been in somewhat of a sales capacity with Sherwin Williams, but in the store, uh certainly wasn’t a project manager capacity, but it bought him time to really see both sides, see all of what we did and then decide what’s the best fit for him.

So I think it worked out well for him too to have that, that window of learning both. Yeah. And I think it gave you, it’s kind of a luxury when you bring in someone from Sherwood because they’re so familiar with the industry. Do you feel like, because, because there’s also an argument for hiring outside of the industry, right? And bringing and training them up up fully on what you do? Do you think it would have been more challenging, let’s say if they weren’t from Sherwood, if there were some other kind of background, would that be too much?

Well, I mean, since then I’ve hired folks just like you’re saying, that didn’t have a background in the painting industry. They did go into a sales role right away. They did not do the sales and project management. And, and one of them was actually a sous chef with his, his past life. And uh he’s my top producing sales person now, you know, so he just had the right, he just had the right personality, you know, he, he, he could get in there and really talk to customers, get them to open up about what they wanted.

And it was just training on how, what he was looking at and how to put that quote together, which again, with a franchise system, you get more coaching on that. Um So it was a, a way for me to just get him into a sales position and train him on the industry. So, yeah, I think both can work. I think again, I was a little more risk averse up front and when somebody that had industry experience and then I, I was more comfortable down the road hiring somebody that didn’t. Yeah.

And I think you, your processes improve over time. So your ability, you know, the stronger your process, the less you have to rely on the inherent talent or experience of the individual coming on. Agreed. And then the, um, the other thing that you’ve, uh, talked about, which I think is really good is this focus on personality, right? And, and the attitude like the, the sous chef obviously has. Absolutely. Nothing to do with painting, no background, no knowledge, no experience but the right attitude, the right personality and sales especially, but the same could be said of project management or really any of the roles is so critical.

Jason Phillips talks a lot about the disc personality profile assessments. We started implementing those in our company that made a big difference. Uh And I think that’s, it’s, it’s sort of viewed as this fluff, right? Or this pretend thing doesn’t really matter. But when you actually start getting into it and realize, ok, if you can understand how people tick and, and how they think and what drives them and how that might actually be a pretty big indicator of their success in a specific role. It definitely changes things completely agree.

And I’m, I’m grinning because we just went through the dis profile with your team literally weeks ago. Um It, it is crazy and uh of course, you know, they were all spot on, but the, the estimator that I was just talking about, um you know, what it, what it brought out in the conversation after, you know, confirming where he sat on the disc profile was that he, he does a great job of building relationships. That’s what he wants, he struggles when it comes to OK, I’m here to do this quote.

We built up this great relationship. Now, I have to slide over into business, right? And I’ve got to lay out some numbers for you. And that makes me uncomfortable that I’m, I’m your buddy. We built this relationship now, I got to talk business. Right. So, so it gave us the insight to be able to say, well, how do we coach you on that transition? Right. So that you can slide into it and not feel like you just damaged the relationship, you just built over the last 30 minutes. Right. Right.

Because now it, and, and it’s that sort of a version that a lot of people have to sales in general. Right. It can feel sort of icky like, oh, we’ve been friends, we’ve been talking about this stuff. So, are you going to pay me money? It’s kind of, but the, the, uh, I think one of the most effective mechanisms I’ve found for countering that for coaching people up on it is if you believe in your product, if you believe in the service that you offer, then you would be being not a friend.

Let’s say you now classify this potential customer as a friend, you would be being a pretty bad friend to not close them because there are so many, quite frankly crappy cus companies out there and that your friend is very likely to choose one of them if you don’t help them, make a better decision. Agreed. And yeah, to your point, you know, we’re, we’re almost always up against a couple other bids, uh, usually lower than ours. Um, and and that’s the point we want to get across to him too.

Most people are going to be a little lower than us. If it’s half our price, please be leary. You know, just don’t, don’t, don’t jump right into that relationship with that person really thinking through because you’re right. You, even if you, they don’t go with you, you don’t want them to be taken advantage of. Yeah, I wanna dive into the grassroots marketing that you’re doing uh a little bit more in depth because I know there are so many different ways to skin that cat and a lot of people just do a poor job of maintaining it once they see some traction.

So what are you still doing where you’re seeing good returns? So there’s a handful of, of things we do. We’re, we’re still involved in our chambers but not as much anymore. Um Chambers were great at building the initial relationships with other professionals uh so that we had some referral partners and such, but it wasn’t a, a great generator of leads, right? So we stay involved in them, but we’re not real. Uh the two that we’re most active in are networking with realtors, uh which you can join associations in your area to, to get involved and in front of realtors, uh especially as hopefully that industry makes a comeback again if we rode that way with it post COVID.

And that was wonderful. Um We’re, we’re hopefully gonna ride that way back up again. Uh And then b and I, you know, Business Network International. Uh, obviously it’s, that’s very chapter specific. I lucked into an amazing chapter right after launching my business and they would have to kick me out of the chapter to, to get rid of me. Otherwise I will never leave. Um I, I like to say that b and I kind of helped me feel vetted to, uh, you know, early on in the business.

Honestly, I felt like a little bit of a fraud right here. I am this accountant in my mind talking about jobs. Exactly. I’ve heard you say it too. Yeah. And it just, you know, at least with B and I, yes, I knew a roofer, I knew a plumber. I knew an electrician. I felt like if I was in a customer’s home and they were asking for other things. I didn’t feel as much like I was a fraud because I at least had these other professionals that are involved in the trades that I could refer.

Um My chapter has been great. My first year in business, my BN I chapter generated 40% of my revenue. So um from referrals. Yeah. So I’m, I’m pretty passionate about B and I, but I do get that. It can be very chapter specific. You know, if you, if you’ve tried one and it didn’t work out for you, I encourage you to see if there’s any others in your area that don’t have a painter. Uh But yeah, the, those are the, the three main ones that we do. B and I networking with realtors and then the, the chambers we do a little bit and there with interior designers, they can be great.

Um You know, there’s, there’s a course uh with being part of a franchise, we network with our, our own. Um But then like you said, getting involved in PC A and other painters that are partners with you um are good to just network with too. I mean, we, we started a few years ago uh doing wallpaper application because it had made such a huge comeback and the gentleman that we were referring it to kind of aged out of the market. So we got some education and, and started doing it.

Um We’ve now decided we do not want to deal and peel and stick wallpaper. So I have another uh female painter in our area uh that, that we refer that to. So even networking with other painters can help you get leads when it’s something that’s a better fit for you or a better fit for them and passing it, you know, that abundance mindset. And I think the, you know, you mentioned BN I, right, chapters specific and there might already be a painter, you might be kind of boxed out of a BN I but painters also leave, right?

So people leave BN I. So if you go and, and you check out multiple bnis, well, I guess that’s not gonna work for me. There’s a painter and everyone I can’t join. Cool. Well, keep in touch with them. Follow up every few months. People go out of business. People leave whatever things happen you’ll be next up. Absolutely. Yeah. Or they may even step into a remodel or role, you know, if they decide they’re gonna do more with their business and then that painter seat comes open. So, yeah, you’re spot on.

Don’t, don’t give up on it just because it didn’t work the first chapter you visited. Yeah. And, you know, for everyone who’s been listening for a long time, obviously, there, there are a million different ways to skin this cat. We’ve talked with tons and tons and tons of successful painting company owners. So what works for Sarah may work for you? It may not work for you. You have to be flexible and try all different kinds of approaches. Right? And we, we haven’t gone the, the door knocking route.

I’ve, I’ve heard on some of the webinars. I’ve been on that. You’ve been on, you know, it’s, it sounds like a really good approach. In some areas. We have a, a lot of um no soliciting neighborhoods and area gated communities where it’s really just not allowed. But, you know, we still do yard signs where we can sometimes that’s allowed. Sometimes it’s not, we still do our home and garden shows three times a year. You know, there’s events you can get out there and do that. Um, will certainly build those opportunities.

You know, if you can do an event once a month it’s, it’s worth pursuing. Uh, even if it’s a little neighborhood within the area you want to be in those little neighborhood, uh, trade show type gatherings can be very beneficial. Right. Yeah, that’s chess, not checkers. It’s a small, it’s a small, little little show. Think. Well, how many projects am I gonna get? If you get one project and it’s a neighborhood you want to be and you can start doing door hangers or yard signs, you can start getting referral, you can get, you can do a phenomenal job.

You could create tremendous amount of wealth for your business from that one little neighborhood specific trade show. There’s one example I can give and I wouldn’t say it created tremendous wealth as an example. But uh first year in this sense, there was, there was a little neighborhood show and uh you know, I even asked the the chamber that was putting it on, will we be out of place as a trade, you know, industry? And they said, oh no, come on set, set up a table. It’s like $50 you know, and I’m, I’m next to these people selling jellies and jams and you know, for houses that they built and I, I honestly felt so out of place.

But truly, we got, we got three leads from it. One job from it. It was a great project size wise for us at the time. And, and that couple continues to refer us 10 years later, we’ll get a call saying so and so referred us and it was that $50 show. So yeah, you never know. Yeah. And sometimes feeling out of place is great because it means you’re, you’re the only company like that there. So you’re much more likely to draw attention. You go to some of these big home shows and there’s, you know, like a million different vendor.

You, you don’t really stand out, it’s hard to stand out in something like that. Uh I kind of a weird, a random question with real estate because it just my own ignorance. I just found out something. Uh I didn’t know what wholesale do you know what wholesaling real estate is? Yeah, I had no idea what it was. This has absolutely nothing to do with the podcast, but sometimes I like to go on, on just a totally random tangent. Yeah, there’s a, we met a guy, my brother-in-law met a guy uh over the weekend who wholesales real estate and I guess you lock in a contract so you go like find typically off market properties that can be either residential or commercial.

You lock in a contract and then you go and sell that contract. So you never actually buy the property. So, and, and now ever since then I’ve, I’ve been just past couple of days listen to a different podcasts and I feel like I keep hearing it and maybe it’s one of those things that it would just always go one year out the other because I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. But anyway, like I said, has absolutely nothing to do with this podcast. But you talked about realtors and just where my mind went.

You, you, you can’t leave painter marketing pros though. No. Yeah. No, I’m not. I, I wouldn’t. Well, there’s this whole ethical debate about and, and I actually sat down and I thought about it. So I used to work in private equity and private equity. You buy companies, we did leverage by so we, we leverage debt. Um but you buy a company and then you on, on like the simplest terms, you make the company more valuable and then you sell it. So you flip companies. Uh I found it fascinating because I got to learn a lot about business and operations, how to make companies valuable.

But I also found it uh somewhat hollow because when you sell it, it’s, it’s at the end of the day, it’s a deal. You know, it might be a deal that lasted a couple of years, but it’s a deal and, and you take some money away and you have a little deal toy and you can show it off. Um, but I sort of felt like I wasn’t building anything and that’s after spending multiple years improving companies. So I know if I were to sit there and flip houses or commercial building, that would be not something I would enjoy.

And then you dive into. Ok. Why are you targeting off market properties? It’s because they’re not, they’re not marketing. And a lot of times you’re looking for people who don’t actually understand the value of their property and then you’re going in to me it, it starts to feel like a, like a pretty unethical or, or I’m gonna say ethically gray, right? I don’t, I don’t wanna like, be overly judgmental, but we’ll call it a gray area that I would not want to build my wealth in. Understood. Yeah.

But anyway, like I said, absolutely nothing to do with anything, sir. So maybe we’ll, we’ll like go through the edit and be like, ok, Brandon, you know, was like drinking that morning or something. So maybe we’ll just move that part out. But I don’t know when I listen to podcasts. Sometimes I like, I like hearing random stuff. So maybe people will be doing that. Um Cool, Sarah. What other thoughts? What other advice do you have? You’ve obviously had the, the opportunity to learn from a lot of coaches to learn from other successful owners in your franchise.

But anyone listening to this podcast, a lot of times they’re involved in some sort of network as well. Right. Whether it be Fresh Code or the PC A or any other number of groups. Um, but what other advice do you have for painting company owners listening on, on what they should do to scale? Right. The, the seven figures, multiple seven figures. Yeah, it, it’s just like you said earlier, you know, don’t, don’t be afraid to take action. So you’re, you’re taking the time to attend these events and network with other painters and coaching and although you hear something at that time and it not may not be for you right, then it might be three months down the road.

So file that away whether it be in your notes in your mind. Uh But don’t be afraid to bring those ideas back up when you think it’s right in your business and take the action when it’s time for you to take the action. Uh You know, I I’m lucky now with my team that um they, they are very supportive, they want to see the company grow. And so even within the company, sometimes I’ll bring up, you know, hey, I’m thinking about this marketing idea, that idea or scaling in this way.

What, what do you guys think and get their take to, you know, don’t, obviously, there, there’s some things you need to keep close to the best in, in your business, but there’s also things you need to share with your team and get their feedback on because they’re the ones really out there driving it day to day too. Right. So, again, don’t be afraid to take action when you need to take it. If it’s not advice you’re gonna take right then store it away because it might be a few months down the road and get other input when you feel like it’s, it’s something you, you need other people’s feedback on. Sure.

Uh, action trumps perfection. And that’s something that you’ve, you’ve done a really good job of. So we, we use different Softwares, right? We, we use our CRM with you. We have a whole thing built out and go high level and cr MS and software things have mistakes, they have glitches, things happen. And so there have been incidents where maybe a message went out that it wasn’t supposed to or maybe it went out at the wrong time, right? This happens for everybody everywhere that uses technology. There are various responses that we’ll get some people.

It’s the end of the world. Oh my God. My business is ruined. This person got a, a message an hour early. It said I’ll be there in an hour, but it’s actually two hours. It’s like the estimate shot. The business is shot, we gotta close down. That’s it. Uh, you, it could be something worse, something quite frankly bad, right? Like they get a message at four in the morning or something crazy happens with the CRM. You’re like, hey guys, heads up, woke this person up. Don’t want to do that again.

Let’s look into it. But this idea when you take action don’t be afraid of mistakes because as you take action, you will make mistakes, but you have to view the net. Is it net positive or net negative? Right? Yeah, that’s definitely a concept. I’ve heard, I, I know you’ve done stuff with Brandon Lewis too. It’s, it’s something I hear Brandon Lewis say all the time too. And yeah, you, you just sometimes have to get the ball rolling. It may not be perfect yet, but you’re gonna work out the kinks as, as you go through it.

And I think you’ve heard me say when, when we’ve talked about various topics like that is, you know, I’m not saying the sky is falling, I’m just brainstorming. What direction do I need to head? What’s coming my way and how am I gonna handle it? Right. So if you have the opportunity to think ahead on some of those things, just start thinking through the various scenarios and, and know what your plan would be for each and then you’re ready to go when it hits. Yeah. Yeah, there was a, um, so I used to when I was a more nascent business owner, I used to get kind of freak out if something went wrong. Right.

I think, get really embarrassed. I think everybody cares. Nobody cares. And, and then as I went farther along again, I realized nobody cares and, and that it’s more important just to keep doing stuff. And so I, I have these, these podcasts but then I’ll do round tables, I’ll do live Q and A webinars with people, things like that. Brandon Lewis and I have one coming up in two days. Um And, and I’ll send out emails this CRM before, like, hey, this, this thing’s coming up, you know, you’ve received those emails and, and I sent 11 time.

I think it was in, I think it was last year maybe uh in, in like April or May. And it was like, hey, you know, I have this, I have this thing coming up May, we’ll just say May 10th, whatever with this person. I, I forget exactly who it was with. Well, the email said that I have a webinar coming up January something with Jason Perris tune in. It’s now end of April, right? In this example that my dates are probably off, but it’s like end of April.

I’m sending an email to about 2500 people with the subject line saying that I have a webinar coming up on January, whatever and tune in to a webinar that happened four months ago, I realized the mistake I had made, which would have been like really mortifying for me quite a few years earlier than that. And I was like, cool, don’t care, just corrected it, sent it out, no explanation or anything. It was my most, one of my most attended webinars everywhere because they’re probably like, why is Brandon, like, sending out all this crazy stuff?

I think it got more human. Right. I think we all make mistakes and I don’t, I don’t want to feel like I’m coming to your webinar and I can’t make a mistake in what I say. Right. So it makes you human that you’ve done it and, and we can all do it. Yeah, we will. Right. That’s you just got to own it and move on from it. Yeah, there was uh again, I, I’m all over the map. Sarah. I like you. I, I like talking with you so I just kind of gone all over.

But the uh there’s a guy I follow Alex or Modi, not a lot of people know who he is, but he’s big into the marketing. So in the, in the marketing world, people know him. Uh and I went out to Las Vegas a few weeks ago and did a workshop at his team. He runs a private equity company, I think they manage oh goodness like $500 million or something like companies that do that kind of revenue, I mean, pretty substantial and they were talking about Google Sheet empires and things like that, right?

People tying all this stuff together with Google Sheets and as opposed to using a like a holistic project management system. So, so kind of hacking hacking technology together on the back end, which is common for, for, uh, businesses as they grow. And I got to talking with one of his executive team members turns out they still use a bunch of Google sheets. Like, while they’re saying don’t do this, they do it, they run, they run companies at $500 million. Like everybody has something. They, they’re, they’re gonna train others how to do it as they do it as they try to get there themselves. Yeah.

Really interesting. But s is there anything else you want to add as we wrap up this episode? No, Brandon II, I think you’ve covered it. You’ve asked some good questions. I’m glad we had an opportunity to have this conversation. But as you mentioned at the beginning, I’m, I’m happy to chat with anybody. If they’ve got further questions, don’t hesitate to reach out all Sarah. I appreciate you. I appreciate you taking the time to share your wisdom here. Thank you so much. This was awesome. Thanks Brandon. Take care.

If you want to learn more about the topics we discussed in this podcast and how you can use them to grow your painting business, visit PainterMarketingPros.com/Podcast for free training, as well as the ability to schedule a personalized strategy session for your painting company.

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Hey there, painting company owners. If you enjoyed today’s episode, make sure you go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Give us your feedback. Let us know how we did. And also if you’re interested in taking your painting business to the next level, make sure you visit the Painter Marketing Pros website at PainterMarketingPros.com to learn more about our services. You can also reach out to me directly by emailing me at Brandon@PainterMarketingPros.com and I can give you personalized advice on growing your painting business. Until next time, keep growing.