Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast. A show created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over 6563 million in annual revenue. I’m your host, Brandon Pierpont, founder of painter, marketing pros and creator of the popular PC A educational series. Do 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 painter turned big business owner will Reyes of Battle Born painting will be sharing how he has grown his painting company to over $6553 million in annual revenue and we’ll be providing some creative options for other owners looking for explosive growth.

In episode one, we’ll discuss the mental transition he made from painter to business owner and the hurdles he needed to overcome along the way. In episode two will discussed how to create a killer client experience that builds a repeatable and profitable book of business for your painting company. In episode three, this episode will is going to outline some of the application tools, tricks and styles to paint that have allowed his team to create superior results for their clients and earn an enviable reputation in his local marketplace.

In episode four, will will lay out his approach to employee retention and how maintaining key team members as allowed for sustained growth. And in the final episode, episode five will is going to deep dive into how to think about adding other trades or widgets to your painting business. When is it a good idea? And when is it likely shiny object syndrome? If you want to ask, will questions related to anything in this podcast series, you can do so in our exclusive painter marketing mastermind podcast form 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 those questions directly by tagging him with your question. So you can see how anything discussed here applies to your particular painting company. What’s going on, brother? It’s going down. We are back. Yes. You still, you still haven’t worn the painter marking pros hat yet. By the way, I think you said you were gonna wear it in the second episode.

I still have yet to see you wear it. Notice how I waited, waited until we started uh filming before I merchandizing brilliant strategy, sir. We’ll cover up the bald head here. We don’t wanna give uh too many of the fellow’s uh head in here. There it is. That looks awesome material that there we go. I take my shitty logo and get rid of that third one. Obviously there you’re killing it, man. Don’t forget the shirt. OK. Cool. Perfect representing uh and then you got that, that jacket that Michelle gave you this jacket right here.

Uh a ton of sentimental value. Uh That jacket will literally never leave my chair because um every girl that comes in always puts it on because they get cold and I’m always, I always have ice cold in here. So they always grab that jacket and put it on. So it has become a very famous jacket in this office. That is awesome. Yeah, I’ve worn it a couple times. Um But I don’t, I’m not a very cold person so I usually just leave it sitting there and then all the girls jump in here and they throw it on.

So it’s, it’s always been like, hey, throw me the battle worn jacket, which we don’t have any but Michelle was so kind. She made her SARS so much love to her. I love it. Yeah, cool man. So what are we uh what are we talking about today? Uh We’re talking about painting a house and you know, I um you know, a lot of people don’t know this but I was in the bar business for um 6543 years before I got into the paint business and a lot of similarities, um everything comes down to a process um And how you execute um A B or C in the bar business and same thing within a paint business.

Um What I’ve seen in the past is most painters and most painting companies don’t have a great system of executing a paint job, quality, paint job, bad paint job, whatever you wanna call it, paint job in general. Uh Just like the bar business. Every painter I’ve ever met has been the best painter. Um I can’t tell you how many journeyman painter I know that are the best painter you’ve ever met. I thought myself for the longest time, I’m the best. I, I’ll paint circles around everybody. Those thoughts have come and gone with me, you know, but just like bartenders, every person you meet who is a painter is the best painter.

They can cut the straightest lines, they can blow, they can spray, they can roll, they can, you know, I don’t care, you know, I can use this brush right here and I’ll cut in the straightest lines with my beard. You know, I don’t care. You can cut off a squirrel tail and I’ll make it happen. I’ll, I’ll paint, you know, mustache on a cricket. So every painter I’ve ever met has always been the best painter. Very few painters I know were actually good painters and the ones that I know are good painters don’t have a really good way of sequencing what they do.

They don’t, um they don’t replicate what they do, you know. So they typically, what happens like much like me. I was a painter for a guy. Um, you know, and he was from Louisville, Kentucky and he’s a breast paint man. I’m a great, I’m the greatest painter in the world. Couple of stress lines and business willing, you know, one fastest brush in the west, but he never taught me how to paint. You know, he taught me what not to do and I kind of just self taught.

Um A lot of good lessons came from him and we’re still friends and we talk almost every day. Um So not saying anything negative. Um But uh Shane was a great, uh he was a good painter, but he wasn’t a great teacher. And so what we did here, we had a lot of that in the beginning where it was like we needed painters, but then they have their own way of painting. You know, every guy I ever hired was the best painter. You know, it didn’t matter what you, what you had or what you did.

But then we would start finding out guys weren’t as good as they thought they were. They were just their biggest cheerleaders, you know, same thing with bartending. Every bartender I ever worked with, I’d say 6533% of them were trash. They just thought they were good. So we had to create a system that would be something reputable and um profitable was the biggest thing too. You know, we found in the beginning we used to go. All right, we’re gonna paint three houses this week and I was proud, I would drop off two guys per house.

All right guys started on Monday. I go drive over there Monday. Do do do, do, do, do you guys know what we’re doing? Everyone? All right, cool. We get them wind out for the week and at the end of the week, I’d get three paychecks after about a year or so, two years of doing that not being super profitable. I was like, man, this is crazy. I’m bringing all this money in. But then when we looked at it, I looked at the numbers and I’m like, man, I’m paying 6523 hours a house.

And so when we started looking at a little different, um, it didn’t make much sense. I went to PC A I think one of my first ones I ran into uh Chris Barry, who’s a buddy and I asked him what his system was and he told me and I thought it was bullshit. So I tried it when I got home. You know, he’s like, I got one crew and you know, I put it on there and we get the house done in a day and I’m like that’s impossible.

We tried it, you know, put three guys on, it was a little faster. Put four guys on a little faster. We got 6513 guys on the house. Things are going good quality wasn’t what I wanted to be. And so we needed to tone back and we found that our sweet spot is six people in the house. So we paint one house in a day. If it’s under 6503 square feet, we can paint that house in a day. So we’ve got proper training, proper tools, uh proper job sequen engine, which equals proper execution and proper execution equals higher profits.

So, uh for people that wanna know and I in some groups, I’m a part of, they know this already, you know, our gross profit on an average job is anywhere between 216 and 2137%. And so a lot of people shoot for 21650% which is great and that’s fine if that’s gonna cover your bills, but I don’t fly in the back of the plane. I only fly first class. So that’s not gonna cut it for me. And uh people are gonna say you’re bougie, you’re uh arrogant. Sure, I’m all those things.

You know, I worked too hard to sit in the back of the plane. I weigh 21200 pounds. I’m 21500, I’m wider than most chairs. So I don’t ride in the back of the plane. So I had to figure out how to make more money. So I don’t have to ride in the back of the plane. So anybody’s out there, let me give you some motivation. Don’t ever ride in the back of the plane. We work too hard, too long, too hot, too cold. You know, painting was, was one of these, these, these, these plus jobs where you’re inside like H VAC most of the time or plumbing, most of the time, you know, we paint when it’s blistering hot outside, we paint when it gets damn cold.

So anybody out there listening to this, you work too hard to fly in the back of the plane. So work up and get it together up in the system. Yeah. Similar, similar concept to just kind of thinking profit first, right? With a business like you have certain revenue and lifestyle goals that you want to achieve and you need to manufacture it with, with how you run your business and how you’re able to achieve that profit margin. Uh And also just before we fully dive in. Well, I’m actually, I’m super, I wasn’t really sure entirely what to expect of this episode.

I’m super, super excited. Uh because we’ve never actually done this again. You’re bringing a lot of firsts to the, well, I can tell you, I just wrote it all down this morning because your system, yeah, because most of the time, the stuff I do sits in my head. Um, and then we execute it by training. Um, this is the first time I’ve ever wrote down what we do. Um, but it is actually probably a good idea. Yeah, I’m thinking you should have that. Probably put it in our playbook.

So anybody else I will get this professionalized and make it look pretty and spell check because, you know, there’s a couple of hieroglyphs in here and some scratch and some things that only I can read and a couple of foreign languages. Uh, but I’ll get it up and if anybody wants it, I’ll send it to them. So, you know, if they, uh, forget what we say or they don’t wanna listen to the whole hour that we talk, uh, they’ll have it in print for anybody that wants to talk about it.

And so, uh, if anybody else I’ll have it, you know, then probably in a month or so cause I got a couple of things I gotta get, uh, taken care of first. Cool man. But yeah, we, we always focus on the business and the mindset and, and all those things are important but we, but we never actually talk about the actual, what I would call the widget what’s actually being delivered. Exactly. And that’s, um, so much of what education is and whether it’s through a, a PC A or this or that, we talk so much about money and we talk so much about how you’re spending it and the marketing and the branding and I looked around and this is something I’ve always talked about in the past.

I’ve never seen anybody just talk about slapping paint against the house. You know. You know, you got a lot of painters if you ask them like, hey, how many mills did you put that on? They go, I don’t know, I can to get two coats. You’re like, ok, well, what does that mean? You know, two goats, I can give you two windbreakers. But is that two coats? No, no, you gotta put on two real coats. What does that mean? So for somebody like me, that’s, you know, not the smartest guy in the world.

I need a, a unit of measurement. So I know how to hold myself accountable. And so, um, you know, we do that and we explain it in our sales process and, um, and when we execute it, we do it there too. So, um, you know, we can, we can talk a little about, um, uh, how we do that. And so, um, for us just about everything that anybody does about a war and has a script, uh, some type of outline of how we need it executed and, and that’s, that doesn’t.

And that includes the crew, you know, you know, the boots on the ground, the employees, your guys, whatever name you wanna get them. Um, you know, they all have an idea of what needs to get done and how it’s supposed to be structured. And so, um, we’ve had a lot of people come through these doors and talk about how great they were and I always promise them that, you know, regardless of how long you work here, I promise that you’ll learn, you’ll learn more here in a small amount of times a year here than you will in the last X amount of years you’ve been painting and I’ve yet to have anybody walk in and say I was wrong about it.

You know, we’ve had people to quit to come back and shake my hand and thank me for the lessons. We’ve had people that, you know, unfortunately, if we have to let go and come back and shake my hand and thank me for the lessons. And so, uh we think we have a lot of offer and, you know, hopefully people get up something uh out of this podcast right here. I love it, man. So I guess let’s go through uh your typical project, you know, what does that look like?

So, a typical project for us, um You know, is, uh so let me start by saying we have two crews, our typical house, we get done in a day. So we do seven projects a week on average. You know, we have five houses for the six man crew and we usually have two houses for the um uh the three man crew. And then the three man crew on Fridays get split up cause we have one guy doing power washing throughout, you know, for, for the houses for the following week.

And then we have maybe we have some touch up, we need to get done or we need some help on the house to get done early in the day and the guys wanna get knocked off. Um And so we have a system that kind of works with everybody. You know, we’re not one of these companies where it’s like, um everything is so hard and so rich, it’s a little more fluid. So somebody’s like, hey, do you mind if I take Friday off the other guys go, yeah, cool.

We’re gonna have this pull this guy. So we have a six man crew and a three man crew and our three man crew is what I’m gonna be talking about most of the time here. And so anything under 2170 square feet, we usually put a six man crew on and we can get the house done for the most part in a day. Now, I’m not talking about a three story uh house where you need a boom or you gotta put scaffolding on. I’m talking about a very cookie cutter house, very straightforward 2120 square foot house, you know, and we’re looking at 2100 square feet or 2165 square feet and we got 2170 square uh 1000 square feet of garage something like that.

So, you know what happens is, is that our lead painter calls the night before and says, hey, you know, I’m gonna be out here tomorrow. These are your colors. Everything’s good. And then he gets there about 10 minutes early before everybody else gets there, they go over the scope, they go over all the details, any questions are answered and as the crew is getting there, they start to do the walk around and then our crew is starting to pull tools out, you know, ladders out, you know, all the things they need.

Um And as they’re walking around, it’s a part of our uh system for um our lead to introduce everybody on site. So that person know who’s staying in their house. Um The other thing is, is that that way our um our crew employee or staff um they know who has their pain. So it’s not like, oh just the lady or, or, or the dude or the guy, you know, it’s, you know, it’s, oh, it’s Sandy’s house or it’s Mike’s house. So it, you know, our clients like that everyone has their own a first name basis.

You know, our clients have a hard time remembering everybody’s name, but all of our crew remembers the client’s name so they can go oh, hey, you know Cassandra, hey, you know, uh you know John, can I come through here where we gotta pull the doors open or we’re gonna yank it off or whatever. So it’s a really good thing for us. Um So we’re building that uh that bond and that reputation that people are does that and the tools are loaded. Um So your lead painter, he’s getting there 10 minutes early, introducing himself, basically setting the stage.

Uh And I think we’re talking about one day projects, but I’m assuming if it’s more than one day, that’s not the case on the second or third day, we’re just talking about the first day right now, correct? Probably 98% of our projects are finished in a day. We don’t like to take on a lot of products or projects that take more than a day cause it starts eating into our profit and the way we do business. So if we have a two day house, it’s gotta be worth us to be there for two days.

I feel like a lot of people right now, you know, are gonna be feeling um jealous or excited about what you’re gonna say. Here’s a guy who’s doing over 5 million saying he, he doesn’t like to do projects that take more than one day saying that he has a 70% gross profit margin. I mean, this is this kind of seems like the dream here, man. You know, I’m a part of a lot of groups and when I, you know, when we talk about it, a lot of guys, you’ll get the guys like no way.

It’s impossible. And I go, ok. Cool. And then every week I’ll take pictures and I’ll send over the numbers and go. Oh, really? How, how, how, how and I go well, and it’s very specific to my area. Uh, a lot of things you can’t do in certain areas of the country. Like, for instance, if it’s very humid where you’re at, this is probably not gonna work for you. Our system won’t work for you. It’ll make you a better painter and it’ll give you a better edge, but it’s not gonna work for you because a lot of times paint won’t dry in, in, in, in states like Florida, you know, and, and, and right there on the coast so it won’t work.

This is four areas that, you know, paint will dry and you can apply it in the correct manner and then you don’t have to worry about, um, they running off the walls that you put too much on and what we paint on. Wet paint. Right. Exactly. So, you know, in Nevada it’s dry. I mean, we can spray a wall, come back and it’s already tacking up and then we can shoot it again if it’s not already completely dry because there’s just no moisture in the area. I mean, you get off the plane and you get in the, in the Nevada, Reno, Nevada.

I mean, you’re gonna put el, uh, lotion on your elbows, it gets dry for us. We’re lucky in that manner. And so we get all that right. So, you know, our guys get to the job and you’ll hear a guys that listen to me and go impossible. He’s an idiot. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And that’s cool, you know, blessed with little hearts, but this is what works for us and I’ll walk you through it. So after our lead gets there, you know, he pulls but you know, we just do a quick um uh take a knee with our guys and go, hey, you know, everybody pile or you know, gather up and um, you know, we, we set the tone, hey, this is Mrs Johnson’s house.

These are the colors, this is where they go, you know, we’re, this is how we’re gonna execute it. And then our process is this for the six man team, our lead is already giving everybody a job, ok? You know, hey, Victor, hey, Tony, you guys are gonna be in charge of, of, of shooting out the house and they go, ok? Cool. Rest of you guys, you know, we’re gonna keep backing up, they get into a pump and then once you get off, you know, I need, you know, A B and C and trim and then D is gonna be on absence, you know, or whatever the, the the that’s gonna be right.

And so we’ve set the tone of the job, right? So we’ve got the exer we’ve got the uh the sequencing all ready to go. Um and then the proper execution. So we start the paint job and, you know, six guys start on one side of the house and, you know, everybody’s equipped with the tools, you know, you’ve seen guys or you’ve seen painting companies where, you know, uh you got three or four guys in there and there’s like two maskers, you know, or, or they’re using the nine by 513 box plastic and then, you know, they tape around the edges of the window and then they throw the plastic and they gotta cut the plastic.

Uh when we found that everybody having a masker, the time you’re saving is an insane. You know, then you’ll get, somebody says, oh, well, it takes, you know, expensive, you know, and we’re using only blue frock, which is four bucks a roll or $3 a roll or whatever it is. So I get it. I understand that stuff is expensive. Sunt do add up. But that’s why, you know, you put it in the cost of the paint, you know, you add it in there. So if, as long as you’re adding it in there, that shouldn’t be a problem.

You know, back to the sales process. Correct. I’ve talked to painters in the past. That’s impossible. You can’t do that. You know, you, you take your car to the shop, they go to $400 to fix the car. Ok. No problem. Then you get there and they pick it up and they go, oh, we had to diagnose something else that was at 100 and $50. And then you see that little fee in the bottom shop fees. That’s all it says $25 and you go, or $75. Hey, what is this? Oh, that’s for all the little things that, you know, we can’t account for rats but connectors tape this, that and people go OK?

And they just pay it. So that’s one way to add it into your cost. If that’s what you’re worried about. We don’t, we give one price and that’s the end of the story and then we move along to the, you know, to the next um sales opportunity. So we’re not worried about that. So for each one of our guys that work for us, you know, after you get hired on and you get past the um uh what’s it called? The uh the uh the pro Well, you know, I guess orientation um you get outfitted.

So uh once you start with this, you got a test, I guess it’s kind of what it is. We road test. You make sure you got what it makes and really we’re just seeing if you can handle and work the crew, you could do all those things, you know, you gotta show up in the five and we’ll provide everything else once you get hired on. We, you know, you get equipped with a list of tools, you have to have a paper masker. You gotta have a blast masker, right?

You gotta have a caking gun, you gotta have a five in one. You have to have a knife in that. You get a two gallon bucket in the grid, you get a four inch roller and then you get a three inch sash, right? So you have all that stuff, right? A block standard goes in your back pocket. And then depending on where you’re gonna be. You have to put, you get a, you get a 4 ft ladder or you get a 6 ft ladder right on the job site, all the trucks have the ladders and so wherever you’re gonna be, and we start on one side of the house.

Now we started on one side of the house. You got six guys on one side of the house, right? And we got one guy masking the fence, right? He’s running duct tape, running the paper on the fence. We got a guy pulling back all the, um, the rocks against the, the stem wall or pulling the bushes back or putting protection on there. Right? And we’ve got a guy on a window. Well, if you walk up to a window, you gotta cock that window prep that window and you gotta mass that window before you walk away, you don’t get to just cock that window and then OK, I’m gonna come back and then I’m gonna cock all these windows and then when I’m done co at all and then I’m gonna come back and mask them all or I got a grape or this or that and that when you walk up to a window and the frame is there, you’re scraping.

When it needs to be scraped, you’re s you’re scraping when it needs to be scraped, you’re sanding, everything needs to be sanded. Right. Right. Business and uh personal man. It’s one and the same for an entrepreneur. I can tell you if anybody knows, everyone knows man. When your kids come to the shop, it’s always gonna be something that goes on. And so my daughter comes in and a big breast and like there’s nothing I can do. She can have whatever she wants. I don’t care. She, so that’s what I was saying.

So everyone gets their tools and when you walk up to that part, you don’t get to move 3 ft until that whole section is completely done. So if you have a man door that’s, you know, peppered up, you got to sand it down, you gotta get it cocked, you gotta paper it all out and get it ready. Pull the feather stripping on it. You know, if you pull the door handles the door hands, if you don’t mas the door handle and get that door ready, you don’t walk away from that area until that ready?

That’s ready for paint, right? I see so many guys just do a little bit and come back to the beginning and do a little bit and come back to the beginning. And I was one of those guys, I would, you go out and me and two guys, I would start painting a house. We do a little bit at a time and come back and start over. But it didn’t make any sense. I was already there. I already went up a 10003 ft ladder. So I didn’t need to go back down to mask it.

So everyone’s got to carry all these tools on them at all times, right? So if I pull somebody go, hey, I need this done, we need to get started painting. They have all the tools on them. I don’t have to worry about them looking for the mask or looking for their, their cocking gun looking for their five and one. And so all these things just become an instant, right? So you look down one side of the house and within 10 minutes that house is ready for paint bushes have been pulled, tied back, rocks have been pulled back.

You know, we dig it away with a hoe against the set, the the foundation of the stem wall. You know, all the windows are copped, prepped and ready to go and you’re gonna get guys go, oh, you can’t do that because the, the tape can stick to the cocky. We’ve never had a problem with it. All the cocking isn’t dry. You can’t use that. Use QD. You know, QD. 1040 from Che Williams Dries in X amount of time, I think as soon as you finger it, you can paint it no problems.

So there’s an answer to everything but there’s always gonna be somebody out there that tells me how I’m doing it wrong. Well, I’ve been doing X amount of years and as soon as you can throw your paycheck next to mine, we can have a conversation so then have a Coco smile. Shut the fuck up and learn something. Yeah, man. The uh that’s interesting because it does, you think it makes sense and it does seem to be the more natural way to, to go and do the activity like, hey, we’re gonna cock all the windows.

That’s what everybody does. But a lot of, especially when you get up ladders, it becomes really obvious like going up and down and moving around and, and it’s all these, it’s like silent killers like a time assassin. You know, you move in between all this stuff. You don’t even realize how much it adds up until you move to a system like what you’re doing here. Oh The, the, the seconds add up to hours so fast, you don’t even know it if we need you to go up and start prepping face aboard and you’re in a, you’re in a prime bucket.

You’re walking up there with a sander, five and one, a block sander, you know, electric sander, block sander and a five and one, you know, uh, a razor and then you’re in the prime bush, you don’t just walk up and scrape it all and then go back and get your prime bucket. No, that doesn’t work with us. You go up one time, get that prime, then your painters coming behind you and get that all done with the top coat, right? And so these are like the small things that people don’t think about.

And, and I was one of those people I didn’t think about that. I was like, yeah, you know, I’d get in there and like, you know, it’s all good. We’re good. We’re good to go and um you keep moving right? And that’s how you make your money. So will with uh knowing that, you know, there are gonna be listeners and people who say you can’t do it that way or it’s wrong or whatnot. Have you ever had push back internally? So, painters work for you not wanting to do it or, or trying to correct you on the process?

Oh, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a new guy come in and we always ask him like, hey, man, do you know to do A B and C? Oh I got this. We go OK, cool. And then we go OK. Do you want us to show you our way or do you want us to show your, your art, art your way and they go, you know, we go, you know what, how about you? Show us something new. You’ll teach us a little and then they’ll go out there and my guys will, you know, kind of giggle and laugh and go.

Ok. Hold on, let me show you how we do it and then you’ll get guys that go. Oh, wow. That actually is a little, that actually is a little better. A little faster. I only have to go up the ladder one time. Well, yeah, if you’re gonna go up there and prep the window, why wouldn’t you bring your pa your maskers? Everything you need, you can leave your paper mask at the bottom. Run up with your plastic, your blade and your five and one. Get it prepped up, sanded, clopped and moused.

Why, why would you do? Why would you walk up more than once? But I don’t know. That’s, that’s how I’ve learned. That’s how I was taught how I’ve always done it. Yeah, that’s how I’ve always done it. How many times you’ve ever heard somebody there just take it to the grave. That’s how I’ve always done it. Well, that’s how you always done. It doesn’t mean that there’s not a better way. Sure it works. I’m not saying what guys do don’t work because it does get painted or there might be a way and it might be a little crazy that you make a little more money if you do a couple of things that I talk about outfit all your guys with the tools they need.

You don’t have to have, don’t have one master have um, two maskers per person. Uh They’re about, you know, 100 and what is that? I think for, for one is like $56 you know, for less than 100 and 20 bucks. I got two maskers and you can’t even, you’ll make that on the first job to save in time. You know, your guys walk around with a ladder paper, master plastic mask on there. Five more in their pocket blade in the other side, cocking gun hanging off their hip around the ladder.

I can tell you you’re just printing money when you do that, you know. So we get our guys in there and we get one side within 1015, 20 minutes depending on the house, sometimes 30 minutes on the house and that gets masked out. Right, man. Can you imagine that one side of a house ready to go? I can’t tell you how times I’ve got people in here just blown away. We hired a new guide two weeks ago. He tried out with us a month ago. We said, you know what?

You’re great. We got, we have a lot to teach you really? I thought I was doing well there. I said, you’re doing great, but we got a lot to teach you. I said, what do you think about today? He was like, you know what the best thing was? Everybody just knew the job because I didn’t have to tell anybody, I didn’t see you yelling at anybody. This is one of the times I was on the job and so you have to tell him, oh, hey, come back and do this.

He goes, everybody just knew the job. And I said, yeah, that’s how it works. And so, you know, he, he was somebody, we were kind of out and came on board and first weekend, man, I can’t believe it. This is so refreshing. Everybody knows their job. And you know, I’m learning like, you know, this guy never sprayed with a big pole. Like I know guys that spray with just a gun. You know, our on our job site. If you can’t spray with a 63 ft pole, you’re not a spray guy in our job.

So, you know, you get a 10 ft ladder, right? Average guy, you know, 5 10 6 ft will call and you got a 6 ft pole. Guess what? You can spray 20 ft top to bottom. People don’t think about this. Oh, you can’t do that. You’re not gonna get the quality. Well, I do, you know, we paint seven houses a week. So if anybody has any questions re in Nevada, come on out to see Willie and we’ll learn you up if you wanna say we’re doing it wrong. I mean, we’ve got more than enough reviews to see how good the job is doing.

You know, people don’t even realize a 6 ft pole. Ah, it’s too hard, it’s too heavy. It’s out too far. My arm can’t do it. We do it every day. We really do. This is gonna, I’m gonna go a little bit out in left field here. Uh, but I can because it’s my show. So people got to listen, they listen to the podcast, right? Um I, uh there was a, like a storage unit that I used to drive by and they had a cut out of a security guard, which I thought was kind of weird.

They were, they were having like the second story window and it’s clearly a cutout. Clearly, not a real person of a security guard, like a flashlight looking at you. And I think it’s, I was like, well, there’s probably, I mean, it’s like a U haul storage unit. It’s probably a psychological factor there just reminds people like, hey, there are, you know, consequences if you try to break into storage units and get caught. Um But I feel like at the next PC, a expo or, or the next one of these events, you should come like with a cut out of what your guys look like, like the 10 ft pole, the whole thing will have them just stand and be like, this is what every one of your painters needs to look like.

I, you know what I think that’s a good idea. That’s a great idea. Just have a full, you know, just decked out two masters, a gun, two blade, you know, five, just way up in the air. Yeah. Just like if you can’t paint 20 ft up, you know, an 373 ft ladder, 10 ft ladder, then you ain’t for us. So, but like, when are you battle Born ready? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Are you battle born ready? That’s a great thing. I’m gonna write that down. Actually. Hold on, please. That’s right.

I’m gonna, we’re gonna get, we’re gonna create a 2nd, 2nd business here for you. We’re gonna get you like a vendor space and we’re gonna, we’ll, we’ll just be selling like outfitting. I think it’s a good idea. Yeah. We’ll bring in your guy. Are you a painter? Are you a painter? Oh, yeah. Get in here. Put on all the weights and then throw a, a quick story. I used to walk around with a 20 pound vest. Uh Just for exercising. I would paint whenever I get my guys.

They would, I would always, you know, they would always ask, what are you doing that for? I’m like, ah, you know, a self punisher, who knows? And I would always give it to him. Here you go. And they would always grab it and just hit the ground. That’s what you had on your back all day long. I go, yeah, I climb ladders with that and they go, why am I? Because I can’t, because I can. So that’s like one of those things. We can get somebody in there deck them out with all the tools.

Ladder pull and then put a 20,000 vest and when they ask you can go at, that’s above your pay grade. That’s the next level that you got the free. That’s the light. That’s the premium package. I can’t tell you why. I love it. They’ll be battle more ready. Exactly. Battle more than ready. What is the 20 pound vest? You gotta ask, you can’t afford it. Sorry guys. That’s right. So, you know, these are the pools that would make life easy and, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve met somebody that, that’s had 1015, 20 years experience.

Never put a pole, a 6503 ft or 3 ft, a 4 ft or a, a 6 ft pole in their wand. You know, but when I say it, it makes sense now and there’s a lot of guys out there that do it. Yes, I’ve used the pole, you know, I use a three footer. That’s all I use. Or I only use a four footer. Our bands carry the three fours and six. So we have them all and, and it just depends. But for the most part, the guys grab the six the most because they can get more done in a single pass than anything else.

So, think about it. You can paint two more feet higher. You got a house that’s 15 ft. How tall you jump on your 6 ft ladder? You’re 6 ft, there’s 12 and you got a 6 ft pole. You’re not, you’re on a, a frame now. You’re not on a, you know, an escalator, you’re on an A frame. That thing slides a lot cra a lot faster. You got your back roll, guys sitting there bunny, hopping your A frames and you’re just painting it wrong. I mean, just painting along. So those hour, those seconds add up to hours before you know it.

You got six guys standing around and you know, they’re waiting on the spray guide to get past this or that. You get six guys standing around for just 10 minutes. You burnt an hour, you burnt an hour. Our average job size and I can tell you this because I’ve got it written down here because it’s in my book. But our average job last week was 2003 and $48 an hour. So I, if I get six guys to stand around for an hour, I just lost 100 and 50 bucks. You imagine that do that once a day for a week.

How fast that adds up. So when I tell people like efficiency is, is how you make money not how good you are or not how fast you can run efficiency. One step to get everything done per, you know, uh uh the, the whole entirety. If you’re doing a window, that’s one step. You’re doing a, uh, a sliding glass window, you gotta mask it from the side, not the top and bottom. You know, there’s all these small little things that a lot of great painters know and I’m not reinventing the wheel there and I’m sure there’s other painters out there to do exactly what I’m talking about.

But I’m the one here. Yip, yapping and jaw jacking about it. So I wanted to share with many people I can, if I can raise our trade five percent because we’re not a cheap pain guy because of what we can offer people. I don’t have to tell my clients, hey, you gotta lock up your dog for a week. Oh, man, I gotta count him for a week or I gotta find out who’s gonna watch them. You know, I only have to inconvenience people for one day. Can you imagine how much we, we get just for that people?

Like one day. How is that possible when we walk them through the system? Ok. You know, we only collect a $500 deposit. You pay the balance at the end of the house when you’re happy. Ok. No real risk. I don’t need 25%. I don’t need half down. I don’t need 25%. And then another 25% when we power wash and then another 25% when we started. And then no, I collect 500 bucks to put you on my schedule and you pay me at the end. Ok, great. I’m only there for a day, so I’m making money.

I’m not financing jobs for a week hoping I got enough to cover payroll for a lot of these smaller guys. You know how they’re working hand and out there’s nothing wrong with it. I was there too. I completely understand having to pull money out of your own savings. Have to cover payroll, right? But isn’t it great that I don’t have to worry about that ever? I don’t have to worry about that when I get, when I start a job that day I’m done that day. You know, there are guys out there, they, they stay on job.

Red Reddington, you know, one of my favorites and, you know, the godfather of painting, you know, got his hat right here. I mean, he’s on a house for six months. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the cookie cutter guy, you know, the blue collar guy doing the fancy stuff. I’m not Zack Kenny doing the five paints of Europe, you know, charging X amount, all types of craziness. I’m the boring guy. I do the same house. I want the same house every day. You know, our concrete division.

Our guys love and do they love doing the metallic? I love doing the same garage every day. Our system to do the same garage is 5003 man hours. Can you imagine that I can get a job or average job size is $3800 on the garage floor. I get it done in 12 hours. Do the math on that. I want the same job every day. I’m not trying to be special. I ain’t trying to do uh Victorians in San Francisco charging, you know, a half a million dollars. I’m good. I want the same little house every day and we have a system that works with it, you know, and, and it really works well, you know, once we start, I got my notes right here.

So I’m trying to make sure I go through and, and, and, and give everybody as much as I can. I know we get sidetracked cause you know, we start, you know yip yapping here. Um You know, once we get started on the job, every crew member walks the house, we start preparing the house like we’ve just been talking about cool. I pass this part of my notes. I gotta go on the next set of my notes cause you know I’m starting to get yip yap in here.

You know, after we get done with that one side of the house, two people drop the pain, right? And they start painting what we just prepped up. The rest of the guys are moving along with the paint and these guys are, you know, doing the, the full paint, we paint 2.8 mills or greater. If anybody wants to get in a conversation about, you know, you’re not putting enough paint on. Oh, great. Let’s grab the data sheets, you know, and, and we can look at what we’re really putting on.

Every house gets painted with 2.8 mils or greater which every paint manufacturer says is two coats. You know, they don’t ever walk out there and go. Did you put two coats on? I need a video of that. No, they pull the paint out the house if it fails, which I’ve never seen paint fail. Well, actually, I’ve seen it go twice a year. Um, and then they measure it and when they measure it as long as they have their 2.8 they’ll back up the paint. Two bells I’ve ever had one which was Cheryl Williams on the quick dry.

It somehow cracked two weeks later after I painted it, they had a bad batch. Cheryl Williams is great. They paid me to go out there and repaint the whole house because it was every crack in the house. I couldn’t f it in. And then we had a real funky situation with the last America. You know, it’s, it was weird, you know, it, it didn’t lay out even. And Sherman’s like, oh, it’s too hot now it’s too cold. And then when, when we came back with all the data and showed it to him, they took the test and they said, ok, they paid us 15,000 repaint this guy’s house.

Um, so those are the two paint beers I’ve ever had. Other than that, I’ve never had those problems. You know, I don’t have that. It doesn’t happen, but she will, has always been great. You know, they always have been a good partner with us and, and working with us. So we’re always happy with that. So we got one side of the house has been painted. Two guys dropping the paint, the rest of the guys keep moving after the house is completely paint or prepped out, bagged out and ready to go.

Some guys get into trim. Some guys get an accident and then they, you know, some guys get into whatever special. So you gotta do the mailbox or whatever front door, whoever, you know, once we get done painting the house, our average time to shoot out an average house of about 2000 square feet is 2.5, 703 hours. I know you’re gonna get somebody out there that says it’s impossible. No way. I the you guys are skipping steps. I promise anybody to challenge me. You wanna think, you think I’m skipping steps.

Come out here, spend a couple of days with us. I promise you learn something cause we don’t skip the steps. You know, it’s just all we’re doing is making everything efficient. I’m not taking three trips when I can take one. You know, I don’t have to move the ladder up two more rungs because I’ve got a 6 ft pole in there. So I went from a 4 ft pole to a 6 ft pole. Well, I mean, imagine that a house is 15 ft and you can only get up 12 cause you’re in a 4 ft run or in a 4 ft pole.

Well, guess what? I’m just doing that much faster than you. So, yeah, our average house to paint it out, it is about 2.5, 3 hours. Those guys get done. That guy, you know, the, the sprayer or whoever, you know, the back road gets cleaning the pump and then whoever doesn’t clean the pump drops in to start cleaning up behind it. Right. They go through, make sure there’s nothing else that needs to be sprayed or touched up and get messed on the house. They walk around and then that person will get into clean up, right?

They start pulling plastic from, you know, the stuff. They already finished the side. But this time you, you know that the side we started spraying on is already done. It’s already done. It’s been, um, painted, the trim is done. Accidents are done and then that guy is in there pulling trash, pulling, you know, getting the garbage cans all filled up and, you know, dragging it around. Once the guys get done with the pump, pump guy walks around and he gets into the touch up. He starts looking for the smaller stuff that under the lip, you know, to the, for the door handle that yet.

Perfect and all these small little things and they just, they just chase around the other around the house until the house is done. You know, our guys, we have a two man touch up crew. So they two guys randomly who the lead picks. You know, it’s never, it’s not always the lead, it’s not always the spray guy because we like to mix and match because they haven’t been getting nose blind or, you know, you know, snow blind in the house. They walk around the house, they look for everything they can touch up.

You know, they’ll throw a piece of tape on or they’ll, you know, tag it with the trim brush. So we don’t forget it or, you know, we make sure we see it and we’ll go through and touch all that stuff. But by the time we’ve done our to our touch up and we probably do two or three. You know, we’ll walk around it this way, walk around this way, jump on the top, make sure it’s all good up there. You know, get that thing going. We go to the client and then we ask the client, hey, Miss Jones you’re ready for your touch up and they go. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, we’re ready, you know, we’ve got the house cleaned up. We’ve got a paintbrush and body, we got a paintbrush and trim and whatever the action is. So we walk it with our clients, make sure they’re 203% happy with the house touch ups. Usually last 5 to 7 minutes. You know, and, and we’re not one of these people that, you know, try to explain something away or we hope they don’t find something. I want them to find something. You know, I want them to find as many things as they can.

That way. I don’t have to come back in a week, right? But if we do, that’s not, that’s fine too. It’s a part of the cost, it’s a part of the business and we do that. But we want people to be picky particular, a pain in the ass. You know, we want those things, a lot of painters don’t want to deal with that, but we enjoy it because then I know when we get done with that, that person is gonna look at my crew and go. Thanks guys.

You know. Thanks Gonzalo. Thanks Tony. Thanks Joey. Thanks Victor. And you know, and they’re gonna ask two questions what we always ask at the end of the crew or at the end of the job, we say, hey, did we earn a good review? And they’re gonna say absolutely and then we’re gonna look back to them and go, we just need to collect, collect final payment. You know, we only collected 500 bucks that doesn’t even cover the paint. You know, as soon as we step on the job site, we’re already in a deficit.

So we have to get the job done. So that is our process right there. I love it. I think when you brought up the, the client experience that was huge and I wanted to make sure we touched on that because that’s a big deal. You know, people don’t want you guys there forever, they want you there minimally as possible. So you being able to do it in one day is huge. Can be a huge part of the, the sales process and a huge part of the review process, you know, like wow, what, what a hassle free experience that was, oh, it’s, I can’t tell you, it’s one of the, I mean, it, it’s a focal point.

We will, we let them know like, hey, you know, we’re only gonna be here a day and we go through the whole process, you know, and when we’re, and this is a little, a little different when we’re talking about today, but in the sales process, we we, we zone in on that like, OK, you got another guy in there coming out and oh yeah, they’re gonna do it for this not lesson OK? And, and how much less are they? 26 $237. And are you boarding the dog? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I gotta board the dog every day. What’s that cost of you? Oh, about 2650, 2200 bucks. So it’s cost you no more. Oh, it’s about two or 2500 bucks. Ok. But then you’re gotta pick up the dog, you know, you gotta load in the truck and drive it down the kennel place and you gotta pick it up at the end of the day and back and forth. So once they start seeing these things that they thought didn’t matter, like I don’t care, theirs is outside and like, well, hold on, we are outside, but I need the front door to be unlocked.

So we gonna paint that. I need the man door to be unlocked. We gotta paint that, you know, if they got a slider in the back and that can stay locked or if they got a regular manor in the back that’s gonna be locked. So they’re like, oh, the house is exposed. I don’t wanna leave it exposed all week long. You know, even though all of our guys are, you know, background tested, drug tested are all coming and we go through a whole process, make sure we’re not sending any criminals or predators or anybody of that sorts right there.

But people are still gonna think, you know, it, it’s just human nature. Like I don’t wanna leave my house open for, uh, uh a, a week or, you know, and that’s, and I don’t blame them, you know, who, who would want, you know, do you, do you want to leave your house open for a week or people you don’t are coming in out? No, but a lot of people are more, you know, accepting of, ok, I can take off one day of work or I can work from home.

These guys are in and out and the house is completely painted and it’s painted correctly because I know it’s gonna be painted correctly because they explained it to me and their reputation online says everything that you told me in person is gonna match up, the crew shows up, they do everything. I’m gonna say that they’re gonna do and they’re friendly, they’re shaking everybody’s hand, you know, it’s, it’s a win, win for everybody. So I would suggest anybody listening to this saying will’s an idiot or you know what the fuck he’s talking about.

He’s a gag who he’s allowed now. And I’m all those things, I promise you, I agree with you. I’m all those things but try just some of it or all of it. And if it doesn’t improve your money making, then you can come and kick me in the face fine with me. So I have uh two things. First is I would assume this creates more accountability within the crew because if, if someone’s up there like cock in a window and, and then somebody’s up masking it. And I mean, I feel like it’s easier to start to point fingers if something goes wrong, if a bunch of people are touching a certain area and prepping it, than if one person is just fully accountable for it.

Has that been your experience with this? So, uh so this is two parts. So yes, in the beginning, we were like, hey, who, who, who, who prepped that window? Who backed out that window? That was uh, you know, so and so, ok, hey, get over there and get it fixed. Um Now it’s to the point where we don’t have that often and when there is a myth, whoever up now it’s protocol. If you see it, fix it and then we’ll talk to that person, but we don’t do the and because we were that we were creating a second step and everything is about efficiency with us.

So I can be efficient about painting the house. But if I start going, oh, hey, you know, Vic, you, you didn’t mask off that elevation change. Well, Vic’s gotta go back there and do it right. Well, is if Tony is the one telling him, Tony’s up there, the only way he knows is because he’s up there, you know, prepping something this or that or he’s doing uh a prime job or whatever it’s gonna be. Well, he’s already there and he sees it and needs to get done. Guess. What?

Now it’s his job to get it done. Now, once it’s done, then he comes back and says, hey, to the lead, hey, Vic, then get this. We need it done. Hey, Vic, this wasn’t done. You gotta keep an eye on it, you know. Don’t let me catch you, not doing it the next, you know, three elevation changes, make sure you get it because sometimes the guys just forget or they get wrapped up or they get zoned out, you know, or what have you. But we don’t create extra steps, but you’re right.

It does hold accountability because we knew who was there. But do we don’t create an extra step, sending that person back to fix it? Sure. So now let’s get into uh kind of a bigger question here because a lot of people listening, you subcontractors, right? And I guess depending on how you compensate them, whether it’s a percentage of the project or whatever that arrangement looks like, you know, you’re able to fully control the process because you use W-270 employees for somebody who’s subcontractors. I could still see their potentially being benefit here in terms of training them, the subcontractors being able to do it faster, you potentially being able to pay them a little bit less them and while they still make more money, what are your thoughts on, on that?

So it’s two parts, right? You’re paying the subcontractors and you’re actually paying him more. If you, if if you adopt the system and it’s, you know, it’s applicable in your area. The subcontractor actually gets paid more and let me explain why. Because now he’s using a job that would have took 003 200 hours. So, if you have a subcontractor, he’s like, no problem Brandon, I’m gonna get this house, I’ll have it, we’ll start on money, we’ll have it done by the end of the week. Right. Well, that’s 265 hours.

That’s 270 hours. Think about that 80 man hours. Well, that’s not very profitable. If you’re a subcontractor, you’re getting paid the next amount of rate. Ok? Now, if you can get that same job done in 50 hours, you’ve just saved 39 hours. So you’re getting paid more. You don’t have job fatigue, which is a real thing. We have things that mitigate that stuff. Clients aren’t allowed to be on the job site while we’re working. You’re more than welcome to pop out. We’ll stop the work, questions it, but you can’t be on there while we’re actively working.

It’s in the contract. So if anybody has a problem with that, put it in your contract cannot be on the job site while actively working. Well, it’s my house. I totally understand and I appreciate that I can respect that, but this is a job site. Our insurance doesn’t cover you, slipping and rolling your ankle on one of our tools and we leave them all around because we’re running back and forth. So now people don’t wanna be on the job site. So that’s for people there. So, if you’re a subcontractor and you’re spending, you know, 60 70 80 hours and you can get these jobs done in under 653 you’ve just given yourself a pay raise.

Imagine that you just give yourself 30 hours of a pay raise if you’re a subcontractor and you’ve got six guys and you got to spread across three jobs, try lumping up a bunch of job and running it the sequence. You is very important. You know, I can’t tell you how important sequencing a job is, you know, proper training, making sure everybody knows where they’re supposed to be at. Have all the tools ready for them. Now, this is not a thing where you go, I put six guys on a job.

Well, and it didn’t work well. Do they all have two maskers, a cocking gun? You know, 51, a blade. Uh Do they have all the right tools? A bucket, a four inch roller, you know, for all the trim work they’re gonna be doing and, and a brush? Well, no, you know, we, we only have three rope master and, you know, two more plastic and one’s paper like, ok, well, then that’s not gonna work. You gotta have all the tools for that. You know, you can’t call me up, but you gotta have all these tools and then if it doesn’t work, then come and call me and then we can have a conversation, you know, you know, if you don’t, I roll up a newspaper and hit you upside the head with it until you come. Correct.

So that’s gonna work for subcontractors. That’s how they make more money. Right. Now, if you’re the person selling the job, you’re making more money because now instead it’s just giving that guy three jobs a week with his six guys, You can give him five a week. Right? So now you just up your, your, your, your production for the week. So you’re like, I can only send this guy three jobs because that’s all I can do. Well, now I can send this guy five jobs. I can sell two more jobs a week.

So now you’re making more money and your subs making more money. So it’s a win, win and you can, you can probably charge more because now you’re getting the project completed faster. Well, we charge more. I mean, I, you, I told you what our GP was and that wasn’t by accident. It’s not an, uh, a mistake or, you know, it’s very methodical and it’s very thought through. So, yeah, it’s, it’s a definite benefit. You know, you look at somebody like, well, they’re 1000 bucks less than you. And you go, well, I totally understand and you go and measure the apples and you find out they’re giving you oranges and then you go into the protection side.

Well, how long is it gonna take them? Oh, they said be here four or five days. You know, if they have to finish on Saturday, they’ll come on Saturday. They’re ok. Working Saturdays won’t charge me extra. Well, I’m only gonna be here a day. You don’t have to worry about your dog. You don’t have to worry about your kids. You don’t have to worry about pulling your car in, out of the driveway. You don’t have to work cause we gotta start at 6:37 a.m. and you wake up at nine for Pilates.

Do you want to deal with that all week or you just wanna go one day of being put out and they go, yeah. What’s that worth to you? And they start looking at them and they, I don’t wanna, you know what? And then you present your product and go well, everything I’m, I’m talking about sounds like you want to do business with us and then I go, yeah. And then you go in for the kill and the sell the hard clothes or whatever your, your sales presentation and your approach is you go for that.

But that’s another thing you put to the feather, put in your cap because for people like me that only fly in the front of the plane, I’m buying service, you know, and more people will pay more money for service as opposed to the, just the job. That’s just me there’s a, a million different ways. There’s other people that want to do and you’re gonna get guys out there. Go wills an idiot. You don’t know what he’s talking about. People aren’t gonna pay for that. Well, that’s fine too.

I mean, you can drive a Lexus or you can drive a Toyota. They’re both gonna get you there. They both are just as reliable. But I drive a Lexus Boom. I did. Now we drive a Jeep W or a Jeep Wrangler Wagoner. Wagoneer. The old family wagoner. Yeah. So it, uh, I mean, I think the customer avatar too, who you guys target, you know, the, the more upper middle, upper, upper end homeowner is more likely to value service right? In paying for that. Ok. Do you really wanna deal with somebody who’s nickel and diming you, you know, on your service?

I don’t, you know, I mean, we go through our service calls or excuse me or sales calls every morning and probably once a month somebody will go, we’re not doing business with the person. What’s going on. All they would ask about is money. You know, they didn’t care about this, they care about that. Ok, cool. What do you wanna do? You wanna pass on it? Ok, we’ll pass on it. So there’s, there’s people out there that aren’t your customers so they can’t appreciate you putting together a system that makes their life easier while providing value to their home.

That’s probably not gonna be your client. I can tell you it’s not gonna be my client. What do you do when, when you guys decide if clients probably gonna be a pain in the butt, you want to pass on it? How do you have that? Uh, you know, I make it very clear and it, it’s a, it’s a family and that’s a great question. So, in the sales process, once they do and, you know, I’ll get one of our, uh our sales associates. So I, I don’t want to deal with this guy.

You know, yesterday we got one this, you know, she was like, this guy is a race. Ok. Well, we don’t need that. We don’t need that. We just send in there and go, hey, you know what, this is not gonna be a good fit for us. Now, that’s before we get to sell we have on probably about once a year. This happens. Our crew will get on site and somebody will come out angry because we got there at 650 instead of seven, like I said, or we rang the doorbell and woke up the kids or, you know, you ring the doorbell and the dog starts barking and then that, you know, wakes up somebody that wasn’t.

And we’ve got these situations where people, like we can’t park in our driveway and, well, I gotta get all the tools up. I mean, your driveway is, you know, 200 ft long. I gotta get the tools here. Uh Yeah, you gotta drag him back and forth. Ok? And then, you know, we give in this situation, if our lead walks on the job and he feels that this is not a good fit, we’ll pack up and leave, we’ll give them back their money and we’ll walk away. Um, if we feel that our crew is gonna be disrespected at any time and, and, and for a lot of guys, they’ll sit here and go, well, you can’t do that, you know, I already took half their money, but we don’t take a deposit, you know, we don’t take that big.

We take a 500 apo, I had no problem. Give it back to them, you know, we don’t do any of that even though our contract says it’s non refundable. Um We give it back and we don’t want any ties with them, you know. Um And then we’ve had people were like, all right, our, for our, our, our lead. If I, we can’t get a hold of the foreman cause he’s on a job walk or he’s doing something. Our legal just go, you know what? This is not gonna be a good fit for.

I can already tell. So we’re gonna go to back our tools and then we’re gonna have the office refund your money and they go, no, you’re not. Well, hold on, then we’ll get people to go. Never. Hey, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. And I got no problems walking away from the job because we make 70% gross profit. We do seven houses a week. Right. So we’re in control of what we do and, and, and how we do it. So I don’t let clients, customers who want to call them control us.

So if we ever, at a point where we’re like, this is not a good fit, we’re very, very comfortable just walking away. What an awesome word to control. Because I think so many business owners live in fear of their clients, right? Of, of like whether or not they’re going to get a bad review, whether or not they’re going to lose the project to a little bit competitor, like the client’s fully in the driver’s seat, which is why, then it becomes this race to the bottom commodity versus commodity, you know, who can be and ultimately just an unprofitable, miserable game and you’re, you’re inside, you, you are in control.

And I think, I think people need to sit on that and think about it because that, that mindset is, is everything really, you know, it’s, you know, you’re bringing up a great point. Obviously, I, I said it, but you’re, you’re honing in on it. It’s like control, right? If your client’s controlling you, how are you getting the job done? Right. If they’re coming out there telling you how to do the job, how are you getting the job that you don’t work for somebody like that. But if you’re out there doing what you just said, guys race to the bottom, right.

You know, this morning I get a call or one of my sales come in. He goes, we lost a job. I thought we had it. What happened? The guy called and said, somebody do it for half price. They got a great, they got a good reputation. They’ve been around 20 years. He said, what do you want me to do? I said we lost it. That’s just what it is. I said we lost it today. We’re gonna be fine. I go, but the guy that did it for half price wanted it today, but he’s not gonna be fine.

He’s gonna put himself into a position where he can’t pay the bills and go out of business. You can’t do these jobs for half of what we saw on that, you know, and stay, uh profitable and stay, keep your head above water, right? So, if you’re out there charging a premium for what you do, right. That’s the first thing, right? Second thing is that you create a crew and a culture of your staff that wants to stay around, that wants to do a good job, right? And then wants to be efficient.

It doesn’t matter what the client says, I’m gonna give you a bad review. Cool. Well, we’ve created this system where I’m catching three or four reviews a week. Four or five star reviews a week. I’m not worried about the one star because we decided to pull off the job. It wasn’t a good fit because, you know, uh, you know, Miss Mary walked out with the curlers in and we got them before she put on her face and now she’s angry so we don’t need that. We’ll walk away.

Um, I’ll, I’ll help you all over. Great. Cool here. I’ll send you the links. Yelp me, Google me, Facebook me, I’ll make it easy on you once army, I got no problem with it because we’re getting, you know, three or four a week. Right? So now I’m not held hostage by this person. I’m not in a position where I look at the guys and go guys, we just gotta shut up. We just got to deal with it. We gotta, we gotta go and do the job and guys just, just ignore, you know, if there’s a problem just come to get me.

Like that’s a horrible feeling. And I’ve been in that position in the past where I’m like, you know, I just get there and just, you know, put your hats on hand, you know, I’m sorry, Mr Customer, we should have never rang that doorbell. How dare us, you know that, you know, we were here, you know. 00, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t use foul language when I slammed my thumb in that hammer. That was my mistake, you know, we’re not, we’re not in those days are gone for us. And if you guys guys up there, there’s people listening and you’re in that position, raise your prices, bring your standards up and find a crew that wants to be with you guys, right?

If you got constant reviews coming in, right? And you’re charging a premium for what you guys do and you’re catching 65 70% gross profit. You’re not worried about a bad review that comes in unjust, you’re not worried about that. Somebody comes out and acts like a dick to you and your crew and you gotta work for it. You can walk away. That’s a great feeling to have. You know, I’ve walked away from a few jobs and I’ve had some of those people call me back and I won’t come outside.

I promise. I’m sorry. I, I’ll, I’ll leave a check on the front door. You don’t even have to look at me. That’s a great feeling when you can pick and choose the jobs you wanna do. Do you go back? I did one time I did one time. It was the first job I walked on. It was the first job I walked on. I’ll never forget her name was Jane Lighter and I, we prepped her fence and we got it going. I sent two guys to get moving on the paint job and I get a call, her son’s here.

What’s going on? Oh, he’s popping mad. So I get on site and go what’s going on. And he said, you’re not doing it right. You gotta roll this. And I said, well, no, that doesn’t. That’s not how you pay the fence all of a sudden, he was an expert. And uh I looked and I said, well, I don’t work for you and you’re not a painter. So you know what you’re doing? He kicked me off the job. I’m calling the police. This is my mom’s house. Ok. We had prepped that fence so deep.

No other painting contractor wanted to deal with it. She had four come out to look at it. I know this because the neighbor had us paint her house. She gave us all the teeth. We had prepped it so good to a point, but we only had half of it done. And so they were like, we don’t wanna touch this and I had a reputation because everyone knew me in that corner of town. They’re like, oh, who did it? Oh, it was will about war. Like we don’t want to mess with that.

You know, then because it was me. Uh my first employee who’s still with me who’s bigger than me and a good buddy of mine like a brother who’s just as big as me. And so everyone’s like, we don’t want to touch it. So nobody wanted it. She called me for a week straight crying on the phone and I finally said, ok, answer the phone said, Jane, there was never a problem. You could ask whatever questions, I’ll leave the check on the doorstep. Uh You won’t even have to hear from me again.

Uh Will, I’m so sorry. My son won’t ever come by again. We went back, had it done that day. And I said, are you happy? Let’s look around. We went there. She was over the moon, baby right there. That was the only time I ever went back. And then I told myself I’ll never go back again because I don’t want to put myself in a position of like exposing myself if I go in there and then I start the job cause it could have went south again if I start a job, that guy’s a jerk.

And then I’m sorry, I’m sorry, we get there and then one of my guys, you know, trips in the paint spills and there’s a drop on there. We already saw the true colors. So, but this lady was a very, very elderly lady. You know, I couldn’t be loud. I had to talk very slow and shrink myself up. Um But um from then on, I was like, we’ll never go back. As soon as we walk away, we walk away from the job and don’t even give us, I thought go ahead one start on me.

I’m OK. I’ll get over it. Yeah. And I think once you, once you figured out how they react to things, especially when nothing has happened. Then how are they gonna react when something happens? Exactly. That’s the, that’s, that should be a quote. You should quote that. If it’s a big deal, when nothing happens, what’s it gonna be when something happens? Yeah, it’s absolutely true about it. Um, well, man, this was awesome. That was super insightful brother. Another first time for the podcast. I haven’t had that before.

Is there anything else as we wrap this up that you want to touch on? Uh No, just again, man, if anybody’s got questions, reach out to me, you know, I was an ignorant fool too. Um And if you’re looking around and you think, you know it all, I promise you, you don’t um I know about this business more than a lot of people and there’s even more people that know more than I do. So I looked at them and if you’ve got questions and you’re a dude and you’re painting and you’re fully tattooed and you know, you’re bald and you’re scary looking and you’re out here trying to make it.

I can promise you there’s an opportunity for you because I didn’t think it was for me. I thought I was just gonna be painting and go back to the bar business now. It’s my life and I don’t wanna do anything else. So if you got questions, reach out, you think you know it all and you just found out on this podcast. You don’t reach out. I I’ve got no problems helping anybody that reaches out to me. I love it. Will. Thank you for your generosity. Thank you for your time, brother.

Another another great episode in the books, man.

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.

—-

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.