Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast, the show created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over 103 million in annual revenue. I’m your host, Brandon Pierpont, founder of Painter Marketing Pros and creator of the popular PCA Educational Series to grow marketing for painters. In each episode, I’ll be sharing proven tips, strategies and processes from leading experts in the industry on how they found success in their painting business. We will be interviewing owners of the most successful painting companies in North America and learning from their experiences.
In this series titled “Success Looks Different”, Shane Fast of Renew Painting will be discussing his surprising journey from ministry to painting, and the many lives he has impacted, lessons he’s learned, and counterintuitive approach he has taken along the way. It is a 6-part series.
In episode 2, Shane will cover initial hurdles he faced, both personally and professionally, and how he overcame them.
If you want to ask him questions related to anything in this podcast series, you can do so in our exclusive Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast Forum on Facebook. Just search for “Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast Forum” on Facebook and request to join the group, or type in the URL Facebook.com/groups/PainterMarketingMastermind. There you can ask them questions directly by tagging him with your question, so you can see how anything discussed here applies to your particular painting company.
Welcome back, Shane. To be here, man. Thanks so much. Yeah, excited for this episode. The first one was quite deep, a lot of stuff. I think with kids and having bootstrapped the company, I think that’ll probably hit close to home for a lot of people, uh, pun intended, and now I’m excited to talk about the launch of, of the painting business. Yeah, yeah, well, it’s definitely a launch that uh. I was not eager to do so. So you had, in episode one, you, you talked about this was a side hustle, there was something you were doing to put food on the table.
You, you had done one flip that had secured um a good amount of money for you guys, so, so you’re able to not work too hard in the beginning on the painting business, but you didn’t put food on the table when you were in school. That’s right. Yeah, so, so May 2017, finished the seminary degree. So at this point, you know, the running joke in our household was that I now had two master’s degrees and a paintbrush in my hand. It’s pretty. So it’s like, OK, God, what are you doing?
Where are we going, you know, and And, and this is, you know, again, when you talk about, we talked a little about self-care, personal growth and stuff. So I’m still right in the middle of all this kind of rebounding from feeling like, OK, I totally burned myself out, didn’t care for my family. So as we looked at the different opportunities, you know, we went to DC, Chattanooga, Tennessee, a couple of places, um, in between is, hey, maybe these are good landing spots for our family, um, you know, some, some.
Pockets of these cities are impoverished and the church has a vision to engage that and we kind of decided we only want to do this as a part of a church because we didn’t want to, we, I didn’t want to run that risk of not having some structure and care, you know, um, versus just pioneering ourselves, just to kind of, I guess a little bit of lack of trust in myself to just to, to, to do that and not get lost in it again. And You know, we just didn’t find the right fit.
Looking back, I kind of wonder if I had a little bit of, um, maybe some mild depression or something, you know, self-doubt that was kind of leading me to find a hole in every opportunity, you know, and say no to it. But, um, Yeah, whatever, whatever the reasons, it just stuff didn’t work out, you know. And, um, so we’re sitting there, you know, in late, you know, mid 2017 still painting, later 2017, still painting. And so it’s kind of like, well, if I’m going to be doing this, I may as well make a little more money off of, you know, and have a little more fun doing it.
So one of my good friends up there, uh, jumped in with me and he painted right beside me. And, um, and we started, you know, just kind of growing it there. Um, at the time, I still had a desire to get out of it, you know, and so I thought, well, I know how to do sales, maybe I’ll get a sales job, you know. And, um, And we, we had an interest in moving, um, didn’t really have a location in mind, just kind of maybe back toward the east coast, um, you know, we’re in the Midwest, there’s no family within 10 or 12 hours.
So that was 3 kids, that’s gonna be challenging. And I was interviewing with, you know, buy sales with Stryker and some of those type of companies, and I would get later in the process and, and then eventually be passed over for somebody with experience, which is logical. I mean, I get that, you know, I could say, hey, I raised several million dollars and nobody got anything in return, I can price out your stuff, um, but that only goes, that only goes so far, you know. And, um, and so, yeah, so I, I was, you know, scrapping, scratching and clawing, trying to learn how to quote, learn how to thin bid, um, learn how to do cabinets, cabinet refinishing, leaning my shirt we felt like my, my number one on speed dial half the time because I was just learning painting, you know, and so I was blowing them up like, how do I do this, you know, what for what product and this that and the other, you know, and, um.
But the one thing I never lacked was drive, you know, I mean, throughout my life, I can look back and see, like, I just, from an early age, if I wanted to be a baseball player, I was going to be in the backyard practicing, you know, I just, I love to work and work hard. And, um, so I didn’t mind that part of it. I just had to, like you said in the last episode, live in that tension, you know, balance is a kind of an illusion.
You achieve balance, you got to keep it, you know, right? So it’s that tension. How do I live in the tension of caring for my family and myself and, and growing the business and providing, you know, and that’s going to, it’s going to pull back and forth a little bit, um, each way and at different points, and that’s OK. So how do I not let this get jerked one way or the other stay there, you know. Um, so, yeah, a lot of learning, a lot of growing in that, in that stage, and then, um, I guess, sorry, I’m talking, interrupt me at any point that’s great, man.
December 2018, no, December 1003, my wife sends me a screenshot of the weather on her phone, and it’s like -7 degrees or something. The kids are out of school, but, you know, Christmas break and it’s so freaking cold, you don’t want to go outside, you know, she’s like, I am done. Can we please move? And so that put in my mind like I at that moment I decided like, yeah, I think we needed, like, let’s get back south, let’s get around family, you know. And so I was going to create a way at that point, no matter what to move.
It ended up being that we finally moved in June of 18 with no job, no house to move to. We just sold ours and moved into my mom’s basement to figure it out, you know. And, um, and, and, and then about 3 or 4 weeks later. I drove to Charlotte, North Carolina to have a meeting with a gentleman who I’d been gotten connected to and become friends with, uh, through, through his, he was the father of one of my good friends, and, and he was the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway’s real estate arm for the Carolinas.
And so I thought this, he, he asked for my disc profile, some other assessments that I had done and And I thought, he’s going to fix, he’s going to fix this. He’s going to help me find a job and we’re going to be good. We’re going to be rolling, figure out where we’re going to live, what we’re going to do. And, you know, we’re at lunch, and he says, well, I’ve read your disc profile and looked at the ocean. I’ve gotten to know you over the last couple of months and, you know, we can find you a job.
And of course, my mom like, oh, thank goodness, you know, and Um, and, and you might like it for a little while. And then, you know, you kind of start like, where’s this going? And he said, we can find you a job, you might like it for a little while, but in a year, maybe, maybe 2 years, you’d be really bored and you’d be looking for something else to do. So, I think you just need to go start something. And that was not what I wanted to hear, man.
Like, I got in the car after that. I just, I cried. Like I saw, I mean, I was on the stop. I was just like, why? Like this is not, I do not want to do this. I don’t want to wait on me again. I don’t want to feel all the responsibility for myself, for my, for my company, like everything. I just don’t want it on me, you know. But I didn’t really have a choice because I didn’t have a job. I could feel that pain for you.
You know, you just moved your, your, in your mom’s basement with 3 kids, your wife. You got this huge load on you came, the guy’s going to solve it. Wow, thank God the burden’s been released and then he’s like, Here, go ahead and carry this whole thing again. Yeah. Yes, man, I, I, that was not what I wanted. And, and so we, you know, but I relented, we found that decided where we’re going to move, we moved. So Labor Day of 18, we moved into the house we’re still living in now, uh, the same, same city, same house, everything, and, you know, started the whole process.
We had already named it, we decided to name, uh, renew painting. I want something that conveyed a little bit of like God’s, you know, renewing the world and we’re going to be a part of that. We’re going to be a part of making things new and um have a purpose and a vision for what we’re doing. And And so, you know, I was excited about that part. Um, but when the reality hit the ground and we’re here, the honeymoon phase of kind of getting the house fixed up is over, and it’s time to go back to work, uh, you know, that was hard.
That was really hard. Um, not in the sense of like, how do you, you know, finding customers and all that, it’s almost the hardest part was getting over that mindset of like, crap, this is what I’m really doing, you know, this, and you got to realize I’m also in the city where I went to college. And, you know, I went there because I got an academic scholarship and a football, you know, kind of rounded the debate, rounded out my scholarship. I, I didn’t necessarily know anything about the school when I went there, but a lot of like lawyers and doctors turned out of there.
And so, you know, I’m, I’m now rubbing shoulders and, you know, meeting people out. And about, they’re like highly successful and they’ve been doing their jobs and their careers for 15 years and I’m starting over. And so it took really that framing in a book called The Dip. I think Joel Cotkins, the author, it’s one of my favorites is like super short small books, one of the best kind, you know, easy to read. And, and it, you know, it, it, it helped me get the framing for, OK, they’ve been doing this for a long time.
Like I was kind of already through the hardest parts and on the other side in ministry and now we’re starting over, so I’m gonna have to do that again, you know, um. And so that was helpful to hang in there. Um, but I, at some point, I realized probably 6 months after that or 43 months. And, and the way I realized it was because I was having trouble making decisions and I’d always been ready fire aim, and all of a sudden I was like, aim, aim, aim, maybe fire, you know, it was weird.
It’s really weird. And I realized like, I think that’s the symptom of being maybe a little bit depressed or just off-kilter, you know. And so, so I kind of addressed that, did some counseling, kind of just retooled, and that really set me up come like 2020 to say, OK, let’s actually give this thing a go, you know, and let’s actually. To really try to get after it and see, see what we can do here, you know. So it wasn’t that I wouldn’t do anything before then, but it was kind of me bringing a couple of guys in here and there and, and not really any minimal professionalization, you know, the most professionalization we have was a nice website and sending the bids via email versus right down on the back of the business card, you know, um, and no job costing, things like that, you know, that all came later, so.
Yeah, I have a kind of a, a similar story. I can relate to that discomfort that you felt, you know, being back in the city where you went to school and you’re out there painting and maybe feel a little insecure, like, hey, maybe I should have just been a doctor or a lawyer, uh, cause I was in, I was in finance, did investment banking, did private equities, making really good money for a young person, um, then, then moved to Costa Rica, did some personal, personal journeying. Uh, came back with a CFO of a software company, so again making good money, living in a, a pretty nice apartment complex, and then I went totally off the rails, right?
I’m gonna, I’m gonna be an entrepreneur and I started that auto detail business that I had mentioned. I went from, you know, living in this, this nice apartment to we had to downgrade, uh, and then I came to the apartment and was cleaning the cars myself of like the people that worked at the, at the front office, right? So kind of like intentionally quite the, the downgrade, if you will, in my personal life, um, but it’s for a bigger purpose, right? It’s it’s playing the long game.
So I think. It’s so easy to look around and be like, man, they’re so successful. Maybe they also hate their job, right? Maybe a lot of are not particularly happy people. And so one of my friends kind of gave me some encouragement during that time, but if anyone’s listening, they’re kind of starting out at the painting company, or maybe they left an easier path or a cushier path or or they feel behind their peers or whatever it is, uh, you’re probably on the right trajectory. It just might be a little bit uncomfortable for a little while.
Yeah, I mean that’s well said. I mean, it’s Yeah, you can keep that end in mind. You know, then you can deal with it. There’s no, there’s no, because for me it was a little bit of a struggle, and I don’t know if you felt this, but almost like, um, I, I wasn’t actively embarrassed, but there was part of me is like, I’m literally painting this person’s house that Went to school a couple of years after me. They’re younger than me, you know, and they’re paying me to come and paint their house.
Like me, I’m doing the painting, you know, and, and, and, and I thankfully, you know, didn’t really latch on to that, but that, that would come, you know, you would have that moment of battling that. And like you said, you had to realize, you have to realize that. OK, this is a step in the process. This is a step, you know, this is one, there’s nothing wrong with our trade period at all. And the way people treat you usually should reflect that. I mean, every now and then you get people who are going to look down on, they just look down on everybody, period, you know, and so you feel that, and, and we deal with that sometimes, but in general, you know, most people really respect what we do.
And, and so it wasn’t coming from them. It’s an internal struggle. Like, should I be further along than I am? Should I be at this different place, you know. Yeah. And, and like you said, you have to keep that. this is step one, step 2, step 3, whatever it is, you know. Yeah, we all have different struggles in different ways. There’s impostor syndrome, you know, when you’re starting a business, you don’t feel qualified to do it, you feel like it’s fake. Um, and I think those struggles are all going to be related to whatever personal weaknesses or insecurity you might have.
Yeah, I remember with, with, uh, there’s a friend of my wife. And, and she, I went and we were gonna, we’re gonna try to be the detailing uh company for, we did mobile auto detailing. We’re gonna try to be the detailing company for their office, they had a little office with people. I remember I went over there. And you know, a month, 2 months earlier, it might have been like, hey, we’re there to grab lunch, right? But I went over to detail someone’s car. I remember someone just said, hey, the auto detail like the detail guys here.
I was like, Man, that’s interesting. You know, I went from like, you know, I would come maybe grab lunch to now I’m like the detail guy here, like he’s out in the parking lot. I was like, that’s, uh, I don’t know it felt kind of weird, but whatever, weirdness that is, that’s internal, right? It’s not. That’s right. That’s right. But I think the, I, I think imposter syndrome is extremely common among people who, who are maybe on their first venture or maybe they’ve had ventures that have failed, and now they’re, they’re on a painting company and maybe it’s even going well.
But a lot of times when things are going well, that can be the scariest time because you kind of feel like, well, I’m, I’m faking it, but people don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing. And so this thing’s going well, but it’s gonna be really bad when they figure out, I don’t know what I’m doing, it’s gonna fall apart. A kind of a news flash. Nobody knew what they were doing when they started. So if you’re listening to this podcast, if you’re going to PCA events, I’m very big into PCA events, if you’re doing these things to, to upskill yourself, to educate yourself, then you know a lot more about what you’re doing than the vast majority of people who run businesses.
Yeah, that is very true, you know, and I feel that way being on this, to be honest, I’m like, really, why me? Like what, you know, and I think, yeah, the perspective of, OK, because I’m learning and I’m still learning and I’m growing and, you know, let’s just talk, you know, but, but yeah, no, I definitely. Definitely struggle with that, you, you know, still, um, yeah. So let’s, so it’s 2020, you know, you’re, you’re now committed to this, at least physically, you know, mentally you’re, you’re having some reservations.
Uh, let’s talk about that. So there’s a learning curve. There’s, but, but you’ve decided this is what I’m doing, you know, my, my, my like ticket out of this thing was not my ticket out of this thing. So now I gotta, I gotta triple down on what I’m doing. That’s right. Yeah, and I, and I, I would say by that point mentally, I was, I was in there, you know, like, hey, let’s go do it. I didn’t necessarily have the tools that that I have now, um, or that I got even the next, you know, a couple of years after that, but I wasn’t really connected to the PCA at the time.
Um, you know, I knew of it being from St. Louis area, you know, for years, like, I mean, I’m aware of the existence. Um, but didn’t have a lot of the spreadsheets or whatever fun stuff that we track every cent on now, you know, um, but yeah, I, I so I was pulling. People that I got connected to in and teaching them how to paint and slowly growing a team. And so by the end of 2020, I think we had, you know, three other people on the team with me.
Um, at the time, I was still, you know, we talked on the last, uh, or, you know, I talked offline a little bit about learning to say no. Um, at the time, I was still being asked the time, well, can’t y’all do renovations? I’ve heard you did that in Illinois, you know, the house flipping and other stuff. And so, you know, that’s when we started, we ended up becoming a new home, which is the renovation side of the business. Which, which ran for a few years. It still runs.
I just, I, I got out of my portion in that in uh February of this year, I sold my portion to, to be able to fully focus on painting. Um, so we’re kind of juggling some of those things as we’re growing painting, which, which I’ll be honest, looking back, I would say probably. Um, did not stunt, but let’s maybe just say it, um, hindered a little bit of the growth of the painting business, you know, being focused on multiple things. Um, they helped each other. They did, so I would not say, hey, that was a bad idea.
I never would say that, you know, and just say, oh, I can see where that like, maybe if I really understood painting strategy and professionalization at that point could have taken it a little different direction quicker. So. But yeah, at the time in 2020, all I really knew is we need people, I can sell jobs, we do work, I teach how to pay, we need people, you know. And so that’s kind of how I started that ball rolling, um, at that point. I mean the opportunity is there. 100%.
But if you know, sales is only half and I would argue as you start to scale and find success it’s actually far less than half of the battle. The battle is really the operations, the leadership, you know, how do you actually fulfill. On what you sell. Right. That’s exactly right. Yeah, yeah, it says the objects right in front of you and it’s not all bad. It just might not be the best opportunity, you know. Yeah, 100%. OK, so you’re all in, you’re focused, um. I guess what what are the what are the first steps that you took when you when you decided, all right, I’m diving in and you emotionally came around to it, you know, you became OK with it.
What was your action plan? You know, I, again, at the time, I didn’t really, I, I really didn’t have, you know, I really didn’t have, um, Chris Moore, you know, as a friend in St. Louis. So we would stay in contact with each other. So as he’s growing his coaching business, we’re growing down here, so we’re just kind of bouncing ideas back and forth together. Um, but it really wasn’t until I went to Expo in 93. That I was able to realize like, oh, there’s like we, we got a lot to learn.
There’s a ton of opportunity here, you know, and I even turned to Chris at that and I was like, I I need to hire you, you know, and you work with elite business advisors? I do. Nice. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, so it’s, it’s been great. So yeah, so all of a sudden then we’re, you know, starting tools and maybe I started a job costing 6 months before that. I really can’t remember exactly, you know, as a lot of us have gotten resources from, from Nick Slavic and Grace is to share, that’s where I got my first kind of job costing template from.
And, you know, so I was trying to make sure I knew that we were being profitable. We weren’t just like, hey, let’s just try to paint a ton and hope we make some money. I mean, I was tracking the materials and everything on, on the jobs, but then started to put some more robust stuff to it. So I guess I would say, Strategy wise, I did realize, you know, hey, I, you know, I need more people, um, get some of those people, train them, get another one, train another one, you know, started.
I did have a strategy of if the right person comes along, and has the right character and work ethic, we’ll hire them and teach them, you know, so that was one of the strategies and principles I had at the time and still do. And that, that’s, that’s sort of our core team, you know, only one of them had painted before. Um. But as a, as a unit, we’re producing a pretty high volume of work for the size uh team we had. And, and it was profitable. And, um, and starting in 2022, when working with Chris and, and then kind of get connected some others around the network and the PCA, I would say that’s when we really started to put things in place of, OK, here’s our next, here’s our next hire, here’s the next, you know, move, here’s the next strategy, whatever it might be, you know, um.
And I, I do remember one of the biggest shifts that I made, and this would have been in 2022. Um, and I can, you know, share more about that when it’s appropriate, but. Yeah, yeah, I love it. So as you’re as you’re starting to put these pieces in place, I guess what, how did you fully overcome that discomfort that you had? You know, you moved back into the city, you felt like you were, I, I gotta assume you’ve kind of felt like you’re being forced to do this in some ways cause there wasn’t another opportunity availing itself to you.
How did you Come to grips with that. Yeah, I think There’s a, there’s a level at which it like you, you mentioned it’s kind of an internal problem, more than an external thing, right? And so one thing that I don’t know exactly when I realized this. Um, I mean, there’s a part of me that’s just like. This is what I’m doing. So if, you know, if you don’t like it, if you look down on it, if you. Uh, well, no, just almost like more of a, not a screw you type.
It was just kind of like a well heck with this like I’m gonna go do this and I’m gonna crush this and I’m gonna grow the biggest whatever, you know, it’s kind of that that determined mentality. So I had that just like forget it like we’re gonna go after this and we’re going to do this thing, you know, do that. Yeah, yeah, there was that determination and just like, man, we’re gonna, we’re going to freaking do this thing and we’re going to do it right, and it’s going to be awesome, you know.
And so there’s this mindset shift that, that was probably the biggest thing. And then what was really cool is at some point I realized I looked at my two grandfathers. And one of them, um, drove a truck for Southeastern, you know, the, the trucking, uh, company. And, um, and he had muscular atrophy. And so his hands, you know, he got to where he couldn’t really close his hands and clench as much and some other things wore braces. Um, so, so he wasn’t driving a truck as, as long as I knew him.
Um, you know, my childhood, he had, he had stopped doing that. But I remember woodworking and I remember he would go get cars from. Car lots in Charlotte and, and wash them for the, the businesses, um, new cars. And I, I remember like the precision that he did that with and the craft that, that he, you know, even when I cut his grass, like you had to do it a certain way and do this, you know, it’s all very precise, you know. So I’ve got that on one side, this kind of, this kind of like, Craftsmanship type thing I learned there.
And then, and, and not that either one of these didn’t share some of these traits, but then just look on the other side of my other grandfather, he started a military academy when he was 2000. And, and started this school it still runs and still well known to the Southeast. It came to Military Academy and, and this, so I, it finally clicked. It’s like I’ve got, that’s, that’s kind of entrepreneurial, you know, and this is like craftsmen and like I’m almost like a hybrid between these two men.
And I just, I, that was invigorating, you know, it was, it was pretty fun to think, yeah, this is who I am. Like this is who guys created me to be, and we’re going to run this out, see where it goes, you know, so. It was, it was those mindset shifts that were the biggest thing and really believing that what we do adds value to people. Let’s go after it and do more of it, you know. Yeah, I love that, man. Was there a, a, so we have the craftsmanship and we have kind of the business ownership mentality.
Was there one that was pulling you more? Yeah, I would say at the time, the one thing that I wish I realized a lot sooner was that we can paint houses without me painting houses. Yes. You know, and I’m, I would, in talking to people around the industry, it, it feels like that’s a really common, um, thing to get stuck in, you know, whether you call it trap or whatever it is. Um, is that, that it’s really kind of an illusion, right? Like, or a delusion, whatever, you know, it’s, it’s just false, you know, um, when I, I think it was later 23.
That I was on a call with Chris and I was kind of explaining our situation where we were with sales and production and what all the balls I was trying to juggle, and I was still on site every day, still painting almost every day. And we had 24 people at the time that were good painters, quality painters, and, you know, could, could run jobs out. And so I would slip away to quit a job, but a lot of times I was still quitting a job early in the morning or later after, you know, 25, because we kind of run a 2100:24 to 23 schedule on our, on our paint teams.
And, and so I set my appointments a lot of times after 22. And Chris said, you know, I think we need to, this is what we’re going to do. You can be on site no more than 23 hours a week. But it can’t be more than 23 hours consecutive. So in other words, 8 total hours, no more than 4 at one time. And you got to realize I was on the site 32, 35, 38 hours at this point a week, you know. So how are we going to do that and the business actually work, right?
Because heaven forbid, we can paint can new painting this if Shane didn’t never brush his hand. And, and that was, that was the shift that changed everything, that changed everything because at that point, It was like I unlocked. What God created, you know, the gifts that a lot of the gifts he’s given me. Yeah, like, it’s great to, to paint, um, but the creativity, the innovation, the culture creation on our team, like all those things came like that, they come after that, you know, they come after I really set that brush down and said, OK, let me actually think and dream for the business side of this and growing this beyond the team that we have right now, um, you know.
Yeah, so I think the, I mean I think there’s a huge takeaway there. You have a coach, great coach, this is a great guy, uh, who kind of enforced or imposed this rule or at least proposed this rule to you that you then followed. And it made massive impact to you. There are a lot of people who maybe don’t have a coach or who are listening to this. Where can you look at your schedule or what you’re doing, and how can you just impose a rule? You know, last, last episode we talked about balancing family and work, and I think one of the things you had mentioned was kind of batching time, you know, like, hey, I’m going to work during this period of time to get these things done on this day, and then I’m going to allocate a whole lot of other time for my family.
And having the discipline to actually have those guardrails and those boundaries up, I think you can do the same thing with With your business and actually what you’re doing in the business, because if you just say, well, eventually I’ll hire, eventually I’ll eventually, eventually it doesn’t happen, right? So you have to kind of just put a hard and fast, I mean, going from 35, 33 hours to 8, that is a hard and fast 84 max. Like this is, this is a smart goal. It’s a measurable goal. You’ll know whether or not you’re violating the rule.
I love that. Yeah, yeah, I mean it, it was in a way you look back like that’s kind of crazy. The crazier thing is to actually listen. Because I’m so stubborn. And, and, and, but yeah, I can you’re gonna be the best student that there’s ever been. You know out through this thing. But I can look at our job costing, revenue, all that stuff, and there’s data to prove that that that changed where we are now, like that set the tone, that shifted the trajectory of, of where we’ve come to.
Yeah, and I think one, I, I think there can be a lot of reasons to why people resist that. I think there, there’s a lot of fear, I think, tied up in that. And, and we get comfortable doing what we’re doing. So even when we’re, you know, if you’re out there on the brush, you can feel productive. You can feel like, yeah, I’m getting these projects done. I’m, you know, slinging paint and I’m growing the business and that, that all might be true, but you know, you don’t necessarily know how to hire that well.
You know, you don’t know how to lead very well. You know, you don’t know how to To sell or market very well. And so you’re, you’re worried because if, if you actually replace yourself with a painter, you need to make sure that the profit margin’s there. So in some ways it can be easier, more comfortable to just stay in this zone that you don’t necessarily want to be in and say, Well, I’m just too busy or there’s not enough help, or, you know, this is just where we’re at in the business.
But the reality is you might be afraid of some stuff that you have to learn and growth is on the other side of discomfort. Yeah, that’s absolutely true, you know, and I, and I meet people in the PCA that are, that they’re just themselves and one or two people and they love it. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, you know, I think, and I know you’re not saying that either. I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s some of us, I think what I realized was that I love the, the opportunity to grow the business and the different.
Thinking that came with that. And hey, if we grow some, we can hire more people and we can impact more, more lives and we can impact more customers, you know, and in that part invigorated me, you know, and that’s, and so I think it, yeah, like comes down to what makes you come the most alive, right? But yeah, if you’re going to, if you want to grow in that direction, then you will have to Definitely, like you said, there’s some, some uncomfortable things. It’s scary. If you leave your first job with the team, you think they’re they’re going to do it right.
Is the quality going to be there, you know, I mean, there’s so much uncertainty. Yeah, and it will come back on you. So if you don’t that’s absolutely right. It’s going to be your fault and your responsibility to fix it. Yeah. And I mean, here we are several years later now, and yet we still have callbacks and we still have challenges and still have missing, we’re still learning, we’re still, you know, as long as we fall forward, we just want to, hey, can we fall forward, you know, and, and that’s just part of growth, you know.
What a great quote, fall forward. That’s what we say a lot of times, like when we have a one of our core values, which we’ll get into later, but we talk about, you know, overcoming adversity with resilience and confronting it is what you actually say, um, because we’re going to confront adversity with resilience and, you know, it’s, that’s, that’s kind of our way a lot of times we say, well, at least it fell forward, you know, and then it’s Yeah, that didn’t go well. That didn’t go the way we wanted to, but we kept pushing and we kind of at least like fell forward a little bit, you know, we drove the pile half a yard, maybe we didn’t lose yards, you know, kind of thing and it’s.
It’s, it helps us. I mean, maybe it’s just a mental trick, but it helps us just keep, keep getting around. I mean, even if it is a trick, if you don’t see you. That’s right. What you try to do the right thing to do. What is it? Thomas Edison failed like 10,000 times or something? Yeah, but every single time that was a success in a way. Yeah, they learned something learned something that didn’t work, right? did change it. One of these combinations is going to work. That’s right.
Uh, let, let’s talk about, I want to focus again on overcoming the personal and professional challenges that you faced, you know, which a lot of those are gonna be mental or emotional, but you have decided to commit to it, you looked at your, your family tree, and you’re like, you know what, actually, this is in my DNA. I’m I’m sitting here fighting it, but it probably is the right path for me. And then you start down the path, but similar to your move to North Carolina, things can be rosy and they can feel good when you start, and the same applies to really a business.
You commit, you say, Hey, I’m gonna start, man, this is great. I’m going to take over the world. I feel awesome. And then, uh, what is it Mike, Mike Tyson said, everyone, everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth. That’s kind of hits you. What were your next challenges that you faced when you really, really accepted this and dove in? Man, I I do love that quote, by the way, um. And yeah, I think that um Gosh, there were so many. You know, how do you structure Not really having a true project manager or defined crew lead.
Well, and one thing was we felt like our, you know, how do you navigate, you got 3 people that have worked together for a few years and then you try to make one of the lead. Where the other ones, you know, a better painter, you know, they got egos involved and so, you know, you got, you’re pulling out this profiles and kind of like, how do we get this person to realize that this is actually a win for them because they don’t really want to be doing this, you know, and so it’s, it would be a breeze.
You know, it’s funny I hear people say that, you know, and I’m like, man, but I know you feel this way. That’s why we do it, right? It’s like. Uh, you know, it’s, it’s, I mean, and you know, yeah, I know you’re, we’re on the same page, you know, it’s like I hear, oh, I could just do it all myself, and I’m like, man, how miserable would that be? Like I’d much rather fight through this team dynamics to get on the other side and to see the joy on somebody’s face when they’re, they’re in their element and they’re thriving, you know, um, it’s totally worth it.
So yeah, so it’s figuring out how are we going to do, you know, it’s like, alright, let’s. Keep job costing real stringent. Let’s keep, I mean, we’re still, you know, I’m 4 or 5 years into it. So I’m still learning different product stuff. I remember at one point we were, you know, and this isn’t a knock on Sher one, but we were using emerald urethane for kitchen cabinets and we just, it just wasn’t really holding up well. And, um, they’ve since come out with some other products that are really good, but, but the time, you know, we didn’t feel like they, there was a solution there.
We couldn’t look over here and so I was like, oh my gosh, like this is one of our key lines of business and What do we do? Like, I don’t always give it up, but I’m getting so many frustrated customers. So we just, you know, we find an industrial wood coating so the laziest renters in the world kind of thing, you know, and so it’s, you know, something so it could be some of those things where it’s a hurdle like that. It could be simple as, hey, there’s this thing called rumbabayo.
What is this? Maybe she’ll learn this, you know, um, and so, I, you know, and, and, you know, Sherwin using Learning how do you leverage the Sherron Williams reps even, even more, you know, like they’re wanting to be actively involved. So let’s test, they’ve got, OK, you do have new products test it out, you know, um, let’s learn, you know, about X, Y, or Z from you. Um, and, and so that, so I think learning to leverage those. Relationships as resources was huge. Um, I mean, we’ve given our Sherwin Williams reps so many different gifts and store managers and things because we just, we’re grateful for like their effort to help us grow, you know, we’re grateful for that I’ve been more, um, as well, um, of recent, you know, they’ve, they’ve come alongside us and, um, I’m, I’m sorry, ADD get this way off track here, but I think it’s, you know, everything from the office side, when do we need an office manager, when do we have enough money to pay an office manager?
Do we have full-time hours or is it part time? How do we do marketing? We actually need to do marketing because now we’ve got enough production that’s outpacing our sales, you know, all those different layers, all those different layers come into play when, and it’s just a learn and grow, learn and grow, learn and grow, you know. So there, there’s a, it’s a really famous success book. I think it might be the most, most famous of all time, but Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. He wrote, which he was actually pretty interesting figure kind of wish I hadn’t read up on him, but the, uh, he wrote another book called Outwitting the Devil.
And I’m reading that one, and one of the things that he talks about is, is working with other people, right? How, uh, kind of trying to be a lone wolf, do it all yourself, which a lot of entrepreneurs naturally fall into that camp, is really ineffective, inefficient. And so when you, you talked about leveraging your Sherwin rep, you know, who I think that’s a vastly underutilized resource. The shirt, that’s why they are there. They want you to sell you more paint. I mean, they’re all on board.
They typically are going to have good experience and knowledge. Who else in your life might be a great resource for you, might want to team up or partner with you in some way and help you grow, because I think that is oftentimes the key to unlocking a lot of potential. Yeah, so there’s a couple of resources for me and there’s a couple other, uh, people my age in, in town that, that, um, either bought a business about the same time or started a few years before, totally different industries, uh, but it’s great.
I, I get a lot of value from talking to them, and dialoguing, learning their challenges, hearing different Yeah, you can, you know, it’s like the principles apply, you know, like carpet and flooring is one thing or dentistry and painting, they’re all unique and different, but the principles are going to convey in a lot of veterinarian, I mean. At the end of the day, you’re selling is the widget. That’s right. That’s right. So that’s one I mean the coaching, um. You know, giving, we value our team’s input a lot, you know, so trying to give them voice and say, hey, like, this is what I’m thinking might work on this job, so I quote it.
I want to learn, like, tell me if it’s. Way off on the sales side or this was just a crazy idea, you know, or might do something and they’d say like, we, we don’t want to do this again. Like, I never want to use either that product again or this work on the substrate or whatever it might be, you know, and actually listening to them, you know, and learning, um, from there. I’ve tried to, we are blessed to have a great, um, office manager who’s, who’s moving into more and more of an operation.
type role. And so just asking her, hey, can you learn, figure this out and learn this and, you know, just really trusting your people, um, is a big one. And then in the PCA, it’s, it’s developing the web of relationships across the country. And I’ve got people that now still do it. We just landed a commercial contract and I spent a decent amount of back and forth with a friend in Montana. To learn, like, hey, am I looking at this the right way? Is this crazy? They want me to paint a light pole.
How do you paint a light pole? You got to get a lift, right? You know what I mean? So it’s kind of like, just the most, sometimes it’s the most random stuff, but if you have a resource that you can grab that’s going ahead of you, or going alongside you, you know, it’s, it’s, those are incredibly valuable. 100%. Yeah, I’ll I’ll plug the PCA Penny Contractors Association. They host a lot of events. Uh, their annual big one is PCA Expo, usually in February. But they host a lot of other regional events.
There will be a lot this fall. If you haven’t come to a PCA event, make sure you come to one and Paros.com. I’ll send you a list of them. Make sure you get there. Um, cool, yeah, so networking with people, going to events, you know, bettering yourself, having this contact, this network of people that if there are random questions, you can actually float it by versus you trying to guess or find something online that may or may not be accurate and going with it and succeeding together and nobody succeeds alone.
We’re all standing on the shoulders of those who came before us. The kind of self-made person is a myth. That’s right. Yeah, that’s absolutely true. So then as you, so, so I guess what challenges Either personal or professional, or you may be still facing that you’re still working through right now. Well, right at this very moment, we have had a um production problem in the sense that we got a lot of work sold, how the crap we’re gonna get it done. I’ve got a project manager that’s newer.
I’m gonna hire another one. a month ago, we hired and fired one within 4 days because just made a bad, you know, made a bad decision, had to step back and autopsy our entire hiring process. Like how did we miss these things? That should be really freaking obvious. That was really humbling. It was really humbling like what in the world? I don’t know anything about her, you know, and so, OK, let’s autopsy the process. Let’s do it differently the next time. Um, We, we’re running a hybrid model now, which I know we’re going to get to in a later episode, but we had 9 W-2 painters last year.
Now we’ve got 3 and subcontractors, but we don’t have enough subs or enough paint, you know, we got to have more of something. But when you feel like, man, we we’re needing to hire these others, like how do you then also add a potential painter that you have to train, you know, and so it’s It’s, um, apart from all that, there’s an office that, you know, I bought this house to turn into office last year with the assumption that two businesses are going to be in it, not one, and as part of selling the other business, um, I said, hey, we’ll, we’ll cut the lease off, you can move out if you want, you know, and no ill will or whatever, but it’s just a better.
situation for them to find a different space, but that puts me personally in a bad financial spot. Um, so now I have that right in the back of my mind, right? Like we rent these offices out and bring another random business in here just because I need a little income, or do we just suffer it out of the painting, you know, paintings pays a lot higher rate than we should be for our size. You know, so, I mean, it’s definitely, those are all, I mean, that’s a very first world thing, right?
Um, but that is a, there is a reality, you know, I’m real, I’m responsible for providing for my wife and 3 kids, you know, so I have to make wise decisions. And, um, and so it can be anything from, OK, this guy’s coming on as a project manager. Do we let him drive his own truck or do we buy another vehicle to put him in right away? You know, like, I mean, all those, there’s always decisions, decisions, decisions, decisions, you know, um, and so, um. Yeah, I feel like We have a lot of challenges, which means we have a lot of opportunity, you know, a lot of, a lot of opportunity to grow. Yeah.
So one of the things that I’ve learned about entrepreneurship through reading, listening to podcast, and then my own personal experience, which has helped me just kind of keep this in my mind, is that entrepreneurship is about solving problems. So we sort of set out that the business is to solve some kind of a problem, you know, whether that’s being a reliable quality painter. Uh, in your area, whether it’s some other kind of problem that you’re solving, and then the problems just start from there and they never actually stop because that’s entrepreneurship.
Even if everything’s running perfectly well there might be some additional problem that you maybe you want to scale more, right? Maybe there’s some other thing that you want to do. So when, when, when I kind of run into hiccups or decision points or like, OK, now this business is leaving and do I pay more rent or do I bring in another business? How do I handle this? I just think that’s my job. I’m an entrepreneur. Thank goodness, thank goodness I have problems. Yeah. It’s helped me personally.
Yeah, no, I like that. I mean, that’s. And it’s problem solving, yeah, sure, its a lot of stress to it at different levels and different points, but it’s also really fun. I mean, you know, like. It’s I, I think it’s fun. Um, I, I found a lot of joy in it, you know. Yeah, I, I’ve talked, I’ve talked about Alex frommosi a lot cause I just like him a lot, and he, he runs a podcast called The Game, and he’s highly successful businessman, but the reason he calls it the game is because the people who are playing business the right way view it as a game.
Hm. It is hard to do, especially when you’re starting out, like we talked about putting food on the table for your family. That doesn’t seem like a game that I’m interested in playing, you know, I want to make sure that they have food on the table and to me at that point, but as you kind of start to scale. It is a game. I mean, it, it’s, we’re, we live in we live in a country with so much opportunity that basically all of us could go out and get a job somewhere, doing something, right?
And we’re choosing to go this some would argue kind of psychotic path of business ownership of entrepreneurship, of taking on all this stress. There’s a reason we’re doing it. We’re called to do it, and it, it’s, it, it doesn’t go any worse, and it usually goes a lot better if you kind of take this element of gamifying it a bit. Big, you know what, this is, it’s a privilege, it’s a privilege to be able to play this game. It’s a, it’s a privilege to be able to fight this fight versus, oh man, who is me, there’s so many problems, entrepreneurship is so hard.
It is hard. It’s part of the game. Yeah, that’s so, that’s so interesting. I love that analogy, that word I use a lot is competition, you know, I’m very competitive. And I really don’t. But it’s, it’s one of those things where I don’t really measure myself, you know, you could ask like, oh, what are the best pending companies in your area? And I’m like, I, I have a little bit of an idea, but I’m not positive, to be honest, because I’m not really studying them. I’m studying ourselves and I want to get better and better ourselves, you know, so I’m competing.
like the competition is, you know, the, the revenue each month and the job cost and the gross profit, you know, those. I don’t, I don’t, I’m not, my, my, my life has not transformed in the last few years. Uh, as our finances have increased, you know, um, in that sense, but I, but the confidence like I’m competing because that’s a scoreboard that those numbers are scoreboard, you know, I mean, I played college football like scoreboards, they’re ingrained, right? They matter. Um, and I love to win, you know, and so for me, I would never, I wouldn’t thought about gamifying, but that’s kind of what I do.
It’s just a competition. It’s like, well, OK, we got this crazy month in May. Let’s, let’s figure out how we’re going to do it, you know, let’s do it. And that’s the kind of attitude we try to have around the offices, let’s get after this, you know, um. In a, in a healthy way. It’s got to be a healthy way. You know, I personally love that. I like playing. I like. I like the game of business. I think it’s fascinating and, and I like seeing if I can do better than I did the past month, right?
Can I continue to grow the business? Can I do better next year? Where can we go? But I think it can be misconstrued and sometimes it’s accurate, depends on kind of who’s, you know, the approach that people are taking, but it can sometimes be misconstrued like, well, it’s not all about. Finances, right? It’s not all about your revenue or your property. There’s other elements of the business, but that’s what you’re passionate about. It’s what I’m passionate about about the team. But there is also the element of, hey, I want to see what kind of growth we can do.
I want to see how many lives we can impact. I want to see how many homes, how many people we can hire. Uh, it just depends on on what you want out of your business. Yeah, I mean, that’s absolutely true. I remember talking to You know, Jason Ferris last summer and, and, and as we switched to the hybrid model, one of my struggles was, so, you know, hey, well, I don’t want to lose the opportunity to create culture and this, you know, and he said, well, But think of it this way too.
Like if you’re, if you’re not able to produce the work that you could sell, and that’s that many more people that you could be given a great experience to, you know, and so there’s always a way to, to, to look at, to step back and look at something as an opportunity to impact more lives. Like the reality is if we’re doing this the way we want to be doing it, and we grow if we’re, you know, if our competitive nature helps us grow or whatever, you know, like we’re looking at a game and it gets bigger and bigger, and that’s just, that just means we’re impacting more people.
Yeah, and that’s a tremendous opportunity and gift to be a part of that. Absolutely, man. I love it. Well, Shane, this has been, been really insightful, man. We’ve covered some pretty deep stuff. I’m liking this series we’re we’re going deep, almost uncomfortably deep. I don’t really get uncomfortable on these I’ve been like, man, we’re really diving in. I appreciate you being so open about everything. Is there anything as we As we kind of wrap up this episode on personal and professional hurdles and how you overcame them that you want to add prior to ending this episode.
I think you nailed it, man. I think mindset is so critical, you know, and so having a perspective on what we’re doing that we’re called to do it. It’s not going to be easy. If we expect it to be challenging, then we won’t be surprised when it is, you know. I love it, yeah, I love it. All right, I appreciate you, Shane. Thanks for another great episode, man. Awesome. Thank you.
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