Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast, the show created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over 1 million in annual revenue. I’m your host, Brandon Pierpont, founder of Painter Marketing Pros and creator of the popular PCA 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 Bourne.

Painting will be sharing how he has grown his painting company to over $5 million in annual revenue and will be providing some creative options for other owners. Looking for explosive growth. In episode one, we’ll discuss the mental transition he had to make from painter to business owner and the hurdles he needed to overcome along the way. In episode two, we’ll discuss how to create a killer client experience that builds a repeatable and profitable book of business for your painting company. In episode three. Will 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 that laid out his approach to employee retention and how maintaining key team members has allowed for sustained growth. And in the final episode, episode five, this episode 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 what 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 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 will 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 will, what’s going on Brandon final episode? Last one, man. It’s uh it’s a little sad. It is a little sad, but we’ll uh we’ll fortunately be hanging out in person very soon. So, yeah, we see pretty soon here. Um Cool man. But I know uh I know I’ve heard you speak before and I’ve heard you speak about gutters and adding them.

I want to think about, you know, how you should add them and how you built it in your business model. And I know that’s a, that’s a common uh question. Right? Is like, well, should we add this, should we add that? Should we, should, we, should we even do full residential painting or should we only do exterior? Should we only do cabinet? So, I think this is a subject matter. A lot of people have questions about. Yeah, I get this question a lot. It’s probably one of the most uh popular or, or frequent questions that I get is how did you start doing uh debtors and most people when they say, oh, what do you do?

I’m like, oh, I, you know, I do A B and C and they go OK, they lump I go, you know, we do interior exterior painting, we do cabinets, we do floor coatings, we do, you know, gutters and we’re starting a nano coding business which uh we’re just kicking off uh next week, which is gonna be pretty big. We’ve been selling it for last year, but we’re gonna really push into it now that we all have time. But when I say those things, people like to lump the cabinets in with the painting, they like to uh lump in the coatings with the paintings all you’re doing with the brush and roller and sprayer.

Ok. That’s the same thing. And then all they hear is that? Oh, you do gutters? Well, would you, what’s it gonna take to do gutters? And so, you know, the topic is like, are we adding in another trade or are we adding in other legends? And so for me, you know what we talk about is like when you say, hey, you’re a painting contractor. Yes. Yes, I am. And they go, ok. Oh, so you do cabinets and you could do gross wars. I’m like, well, no, I treat all these as separate things.

So, you know, for us, uh the uh cabinets falls under a widget, right? It’s not really another trade, you know, people that look for cabinet people that we finish, they usually look for painters. So it kind of falls under that same umbrella, but we treat it as its own baby. You know, it’s got its own budget, its own marketing, it’s got its own crew. The cabinet guys don’t paint, the painters don’t do cabinets. So I try to educate people and go well, ho hold on here. No, we actually do.

We run these separately, you know. And so when they go, oh, ok. And then they go OK. And then you did uh gutters and I said no, you know, we try doing four coatings and we treat that as its own, complete separate entity and that’s its own trade as well. So it’s not a widget, it falls under trade. So educating, re educating because a lot of painter thinks they’re poor. A lot of painters think they could do floor coatings and it’s just not a feasible thing to do it. Right.

And for the most part, what painters will do is they’ll take, you know, a garage board, dump ura acid onto it, you know, to etch it and then clean it, dry it out and they’ll neutralize it and then they’ll, they’ll coat it and they’ll flake it and they’ll be on the races and they’ll get X amount of dollars for it. So it’s not a, a great thing but, you know, you, you can get by with it, but it’s not really um uh feasible if you treat it as its own entity and you treat it as its own business, that’s something you can really take off.

And um you have to have your own self script for it. It’s got its own, it’s its own baby. So that’s a different trade. And so we moved into um a failing trade which um was m my, my mistake, my, my, uh my lack of, of, of education and mostly just ignorance of bravado and ego, you know. So we started doing painting and we did cabinets and that was going fine. And then we started doing um countertop, resurfacing and bathtubs enclosures. And so that right there was the shiny option, you know, I’ve been thinking, well, you know what?

This is actually a pretty good deal. Uh There’s a lot of money to be made in it. I think I could really crush it. And so we went out and bought a franchise from, uh, get a grip really good people out there. Um, uh, Sharon and, and Glenn and her son are real good people and they, um, you know, got us set up but that, uh, we didn’t do what they asked us to do and not enough training. And so, um, not enough training as far as, um how to, to market and sell it, plenty of training on how to do the job and how to go to like uh apartment complexes and that’s where the bread was buttered.

Um, but we just didn’t really fall into it, you know, it was, it was a, a shiny object for us and we thought it was gonna be good and ended up turning to be a nightmare, you know. Um So you guys started with, with just paint, was it interior and exterior or did you start with just one of those? We started with interior exterior, then we move the cabinets. How long, how long did it take you to go into cabinets in three years before I got my first cabinet job, you know, and if anybody knows anything about cabinets, um, our first cabinet job is doing black.

Um If anybody knows about finishing anything in black, it’s a pain in the ass. A lot of hard lessons learned, but the job came out looking great. The homeowner loved it, you know. And then before I knew it we were killing cabinets and then, uh, was that an accident? Like you said, you got your first cabinet job? Did it didn’t happen? Yeah, because in the beginning, you know, if you asked me to paint something, I would paint anything. You asked me to paint, I would just go online and look at youtube for five hours the night before and, and then, you know, guess the way my guess to make my way through it.

Oh, yeah, I got that. Yeah. Yeah. And then I’d go ahead and repeat everything I heard on youtube, whether it be, you know, uh, this guy’s video or this guy’s video. So I didn’t care. I would just go. Yeah. Yeah, we can do it. And then the guy who taught me to paint worked for me when I had my own business and then he did cabinets and he was no problems. Let’s go do it. And so he taught me about black cabinets how to do cabinets. And so I was ok.

And then I had a guy I hired that loved doing woodwork and then one cabinet job turned to another and then to another and another. And before I knew it, we had a cabinet division that was just killing, you know, I mean, we were booked out pretty much every week of the year. Um, and then it was a good day. For us. So you’re doing the, the painting, the cabinet thing just kind of happened. Then it turned into a really, really great thing for the business. Uh How long after you started doing cabinets until you started, uh trying to do countertop, resurfacing, resurfacing and bath enclosures.

Um I probably spent a year looking into it and then I pulled the trigger, you know, went to Albuquerque, New Mexico, met with them down there, get a grip, bought the franchise, the rides for the area. And um we did it for about a year and it was a mild success. Nothing major. You know, we, we realized that the same effort to pick up a phone call to get a $200 job was the same phone call that could get us a $5000 job. So we ended up partying um uh ways with them.

Um No bad blood. It just wasn’t for us anymore. And then, um what was the appeal of it? Why did you do it in the first place? Well, we like the fact that you can make, I get, uh one guy could make me 1000 bucks a day. You know, I was like, well, shit, man. If I get five guys working for me making me $5000 a day, that was gonna be a good deal. You know, the material cost isn’t out isn’t, isn’t crazy. The labor wasn’t gonna be crazy.

So there was a lot of room for money to be made. Um But like I said, it’s uh it was a shiny object and um we should have spent more time looking into it and how it actually functions. And that was my mistake, as I thought, well, we can do it. We’ll get a painter to do it and it’s not gonna be a big deal. And then that was just my ignorance. You know, we ended up hiring a guy who actually runs all of our concrete division right now.

He was, I hired him as an employee to, we taught him how to spray this stuff, how to lay it out, you know, get everything prepped up and then he kind of just moved up and now he runs the concrete division. He’s the PM there. So he crushes it now. But, you know, I put myself in a position where I was uh not making a ton of money at it and it was just costing more money, you know, we were having product failure because we were going through employees and that wasn’t gonna be, you know, anything I was trying to deal with.

And so a lot of problems. So we learned a lot of hard lessons with uh countertops and then uh you know, I keep messing you up. Sorry, man. It’s what I do. Um I wanna, I wanna dive in for a second because you said you said the, that you guys looked into it. For a year. But then you said you should have looked into it more. So I’m assuming you mean probably more in depth because I gotta think a year is long enough. What, what did you overlook?

So this is more of my ignorance and thinking I, since Captain has been doing so well, I thought I had it figured out I had money in the bank. You know, I looked at, I spent a year looking at different materials and different products and different qualities. We ended up settling with that. What I should have started looking for was how do I market the stuff? How do I sell it? And then what’s my real r I gonna be like that? So I didn’t do that. I did that.

You were looking at the product, you weren’t actually looking at the business, correct? I was looking at the shiny when I heard, oh yeah, a guy makes 303 1200 bucks a day. I was like, I got 10 guys working for me, man. They can be making me 10 grand a day. That’s a math. Yeah. So many work days in the year. Oh my gosh, this is it, man. I would be cleaning it. I didn’t look at the business side of thing. I was looking at the shiny side of things. So guys are out there and they’re like, hey man, I wanna do this or I want to do that.

Yeah, it’s shiny and it looks good. But unless you know how to run that business, you’re gonna have problems. And that’s just like with uh cabinets, it was like, yeah, you could be a painter and do cabinets, but rather I would rather be a painter that paints and then the cabinet guy that does cabinets. So we learned a hard lesson there. And so since I started out doing floor coatings before I was a painter, I’d always looked at floor coatings back and forth, back and forth. But we ended up deciding, you know, to, to pull the trigger on floor coatings.

This time. I um linked up with a company called Pentech. They’re out of um where’s that at? Where is the Minnesota? They’re out of Minnesota just outside of uh Minneapolis, a small company, I think. Uh Well, it’s not a small company. They do probably 200 million a year, 300 million years. I don’t know, they’re, they’re a big fucking company. Um But if that’s a small company, you’re, you’re uh bigger than my leg. So, yeah, I would probably say they do a couple of 100 million a year. Um And they’ve got over 200 dealers and they have a great training program and their biggest thing was, is like, OK, you sign on, you gotta sign on for X amount of dollars, you gotta have X amount of dollars and then we’re gonna train you from start to finish how to run operate install a profitable codings business.

So if you literally have no clue how to do coding and you call Pentech up and say, I wanna be a coatings dealer and you have $100,000 they will have you operating a million dollar business probably within the 13st 18 months. And, um, I can’t say enough positive things about them. Yeah, we don’t do any business with them anymore. We’ve since parted ways. Um, but I’ve got nothing but positive say there’s nothing and we just, we went in a different direction. Um nothing negative about them. You know, we were running into issues with their product.

Um and we found a different product that’s very similar. They came in at a better price point for us. And then we ultimately ended up going with uh Sharon Williams because they bought out some attractive um uh vendors that we liked working with. So we uh we’re currently, we are unwilling to as the last six months. So nothing against bench. It’s just a money decision that we made and I can’t say anything bad about the guys are all good over there. Um Real good guy, John, you know, John Zimmerman over there.

I mean, Kyle, those guys are all smart, they all know what they’re doing and they literally will do everything they can to make you successful to the point where they have their own marketing department. If you don’t wanna do marketing, you can hire them to do your marketing and they will literally feed you the, it’s a great program. Highly call, I highly recommend calling pen. But we went with them because of all that support they had, you know, they taught us how to do everything from top to bottom.

And then we weren’t using their marketing and not, and then we finally started using their marketing, then we start understanding. Wow, this is really, this is really a big thing. Like these guys really haven’t figured it out. They’ve really figured a niche out. And so, and by then, I probably a year into that, we had brought marketing into our in house. And so we stopped using our marketing and started using our own with their strategy and their blessing and we were crushing it. And so we kind of just been running from there on out.

So coding is, is great for us. I mean, currently codings booked out to November for us was coding is what you added after you added um after you rolled out the countertops and then you added, but you had pulled back the countertops before you added coatings, correct? So we did coatings. That was the disaster in all things, you know, and that was the disaster because of me and my ignorance and not doing my due diligence in my homework. And then we added coatings after that, you know, I probably a year after that, maybe less than that.

Um you know, uh and it’s been great, you know, so, so that you felt better about because you had a background in it. You already understood the business model and, and I understood the material. Um Pentech helped us with a business model that was specifically for codings. You really can’t be a painter trying to do codings. If you want to oo add coatings in as another trade, then you have to treat coatings as its own baby. You can’t be like, oh, we’re painters that do coatings, in my opinion, it’s not gonna work.

It’s very confusing and really all you’re doing is being a painter that’s a jack of all trades and a master of nut. So, you know, with, with the treat, treat it like its own baby. So I wanna understand what that means exactly because let’s say let’s talk about um even cabinets, cabinets and interior painting, right? A lot of times those, those two things are around your hand in hand. So if we’re running them almost separately as separate divisions, how does it work in terms of cross selling up selling, you know, and, and the same thing could be applied to concrete coatings.

How does that, how do you really treat those as separate entities? Ok. So let me give you a great example. So for the painting side of things, we’ll just, we’ll talk painting and coatings because they’re two different things. So the painting, coding, the coding has its own website its own email, its own ein its own marketing budgets, you know, its own Facebook social. So it’s not Battle Born painting, it’s Battle Born Con and coatings, ok? So it’s its own baby. Same thing with the um uh the the cabinets and the same thing with the painting Battle Born uh cabinet finishing.

So it’s its own baby and the same thing with the um now we do plenty of times cross promote those on each other’s platform, but they essentially have their own marketing budgets and they keep moving forward with it. So, you know, codings budget isn’t dictated upon the painting one and vice versa. So it’s like we’ll spend X amount up for painting to get the leads that we need to come in, you know, so and then we spend whatever codings needs. So we’re like, if we don’t go like, oh well, we’re short on coding so we can spend more money over here.

Now, we don’t do that. So they have their own budgets, their own setup. And so they’re do they have their own team members or do you guys have some people that like in office? The coding guy only do coatings, the painters only paint the cabinet guys only do cabinets, the gutters only do gutters. How about the in, in office staff, the in office staff is, is, is headquarters. So they, they, they, they coordinate it all. So we have, you know, two people answering phones, we have one person doing marketing, overseeing that kind of stuff.

And then she uh come, comes down to her two people and then we have the sales force that does the selling. And so currently right now for each trade, we have their own salesman. Um although we do cross sell sometimes, but for instance, like Jason Phillips out there, you know, dad, he’s one salesman can sell everything. But for us it doesn’t work like that. Our painters typically just sell paint. Our, our, our, our sales consultants for paint, just sell paint. So you guys don’t cross sell that much.

We don’t do it a ton because everything is running as its own entity. So if, for instance, um and we’ll, we’ll eventually get there. But for the moment, for us, it wasn’t feasible to train everybody on the, on the different trades. And so we just kind of been running forward on it. You know, honestly, it’s probably something we need to start getting doing uh sooner than rather than later. But as of the moment, you know, those people only sell what they sell. And I mean, we could, but let me give you an example, like if we go to sell a ca a gutter job, we’ll go out there and then our gutter salesman go, hey, man, you need to, you have to get these, these, these facial boards painted or it’s pointless.

So a lot of times they’ll shoot a price that they know, is kind of like a general rule for a single story house for Facia, you know, 15, 1800 bucks on a, on a standard house, nothing under, you know, nothing over 200 or 2000 square feet. So, they’re kind of, they got a little, uh, a leeway for that. So they’ll kind of do those kinds of things. But in general, if it’s a full house that needs to be repainted, they’ll go, hey, you know, we need to get a uh uh one of the painting uh consultant out here for you as a business person hearing all this, I’m super excited for you because you’re already above 5 million.

And I feel like you’re sitting on really a golden opportunity like really dialing in the cross selling up, selling, using lists from the different entities for the other entities um where you could stack a lot. Yeah, we are. You know what I learned in the past was if I try to do too much at once, it doesn’t end well. So I’m OK taking our time and kind of easing into it like a gentleman. Um And so that’s why I say we uh treat it all as such.

So our new entity um battle Born and Antic codings, that’ll be full force here. It’s already has a Facebook, it’s already got an email, it’s already got its own ein it’s its own baby already ready to go. And so we just needed to pull the trigger. Our last thing is to shoot some footage that we can start promoting and then we’ll start selling it. And so that’s, that’s, that one is an easy one for us to sell because there’s not a, there’s not a ton of technique so anybody can sell that stuff because it’s literally measure your width and your length and then times your pricing and you’re off to the races.

So you’re, you know, you’re treating it as its own baby. This, I guess, did you always do it this way? Did you kind of learn from trial and error? Like, hey, these, these products are sold differently. This service is different because obviously this is abnormal. This is an abnormal approach, right? So we, we used to roll it all into one. but we found when we did uh counter touching and bathtub enclosures, it was hard to keep track of a lot of things, you know, commissions installs, all those kind of things.

So it wasn’t really worth it to us anymore. And then when we got partnered with Pentech, Pentech was really the one that said, hey, listen, you should really separate these two um and really focus on this as your own business. And, you know, I think mainly because they didn’t care if I was a painter or not, they just want to be buying their material, which I understand. But once we followed the advice, it kind of seemed it was a good fit for us. We like the fact that I kept it all separate.

You know, I like the fact that somebody doesn’t happy with their floor and they try to sue me. I’m not gonna, not gonna take out my painting company and my gutter company and vice versa. So, you know, it was a little protection, a little asset protection for us. So we’ll probably just kind of keep moving along with everything being its own little entity, you know. Are you doing flooring? Yeah, you don’t do flooring, installs. No, just four coding. Got it. Ok. Yeah. Or coatings. And then, so you moved into, to concrete coding and then how long after that until you moved into gutters, uh we’ve been doing gutters, I wanna say 2.5 years, 3.5 years.

Yeah, 2.5 years. Just two. Gutters is a pretty significant portion of your business, I believe. Um I don’t have the numbers in front of me right now, but I think we’ll do this year in gutters alone. I think we’ll do probably anywhere but I think somewhere around a million eight, somewhere around there. So that’s pretty significant. I mean, it’s close to 303%. Uh Well, that’s just the numbers this year. I haven’t looked at them in like the last three weeks uh because I’ve been traveling. But uh yeah, I mean, I think painting and uh paintings, paintings, paintings already over a million and four coatings is, is approaching a million.

So it’s, they are probably 35% maybe at the end of the year. I don’t know. I’ll look at it, I’m not one of those guys that looks at the numbers every day, you know, I look at it once a week and as long as they’re trending this way, I, I don’t pay a lot of t, yeah. Right. Yeah. As long as it’s trending or needs to trend, I don’t really look at the small number, you know, like today we had a breakdown, you know, uh for instance, a we need to sell 22,000 to be last, last year’s, last year’s number.

So, you know, Derek and Chris are like we can do that, you know, hey, if this lady signs what she says she’s gonna sign, that’s 18,000. Ok, cool. We should break that. So, you know, they’ve got, you know, X amount of leads they have to go on to this week and, you know, they both are going to do their best to be 22,000 so we can beat Ly. So I, I don’t, I don’t think it’s gonna be a problem but, you know, as long as we still beat that number, I’m fine.

So the, and I think that that’s good just having set Kpis and, and then let you know, other people managing what actually makes those KPIS happen. But the um gutters, I mean, that seems pretty different. So what, what led you to, to say, hey, our next move is gutters. So we had looked at gutters for a while because we’d sent so much work out. And so I called a friend who I sent all the gutter work to and said, hey, man, um, what do you think about me getting the gutter game?

Oh, well. And you would have asked me last year, I would have to jump all over. But this year, every guy with a gutter bender and a truck is just killing me. I’m doing 2000 blah, blah, blah prices. He like it’s just saturated. I said, have you met painting dude? Every guy in the truck and a brush is pain. I said, come to painting, you wanna talk about saturated, come to painting. And so I, I hired this kid um after we painted his mom’s house on full intent to make him uh a part of our gutter crew.

And so I hired him for floor coatings and um he had, I think three years of gutter experience and uh he came to me, uh finally came to me and was like, hey, man, I think we can start a gutter business. And I said, don’t you write me a business plan? So he showed up with a one basically in cran crayon, crayon. And uh I always say crown, I was like, hey, can I get a crown? Because for the kids and, and she’s like, excuse me, sir.

And I didn’t understand the problem. Wife’s like you’re at Disney World. They think you’re asking for like a tiara or something. Yeah, I said the same thing. Thank you. And I’m gonna make sure my wife knows this and I’m gonna let this not the only one. He’s always busting my CHS about it. Yeah, he basically wrote it in crayon and, uh, uh, we, you know, we both put in some money. We’ve been partners ever since. And, uh, you know, it’s been a good thing and he’s a hard worker and he’s a fast learner.

You know, he’s 24 now. I think he started me with 15183. That’s what I was looking for because I wasn’t really looking to take on any more workload for myself. I was looking to my work. So it was a really good fit. And so, uh, actually he’s my, uh, nano coding partner now. We just so by that today. And so he’ll just, uh, you know, basically I’m trying to get him tied up so I can buy his coach to retirement. Smart. So you guys added the gutters, the primary driver.

There was that you’re just outsourcing a lot of work, not outsourcing. You were, I was sending enough away to be, I was sending enough work away to realize that I was sending money away, but I could have been doing it. It started to become painful at some point, you know, I, I, about 80% of the houses we looked at either need a gutter repair or gutters. So it just made good sense. And then when Eric finally came to me with his big boy pants on, uh, you know, we, you know, we shook hands and put it in writing and then we’ve been running ever since, you know, we’ve been, it’s been a good relationship and, you know, he, he understands he’s here to learn and, you know, um and he, he’s a really good uh partner.

I couldn’t ask for more. Uh And I’m very, very fortunate because I’ve had bad partners in the past, you know, and I’ve swore I’m never gonna do it again. It’s never gonna happen then, you know, here I am with a partner and it’s, it’s been the best experience ever. It’s so I appreciate him. Yeah. And so when we added gutters, it was one of those things where I’d had enough experience by then, you know, I knew all the shit I wasn’t supposed to do. I learned a lot of that with the countertops and then I learned all the stuff I needed to do along with Pentech and for coating.

And so all we did essentially was just mimic that, you know, we started its own entity, its own baby, you know, it had its own Facebook and social pages, its own ein everything. And so it was off and running and it took us probably about um, six months to figure out the recipe to bake that cake. And I can tell you for six months we lost money. You know, we were just feeding money in and it literally like the six month boom, the phone lit up and Eric, I think sold 900,000 that first year, almost a million.

So we were off to the races and then we had to bring it on sale staff and then those guys are gonna crush it this year. And so when you’re looking at this stuff, it sounds easy when I, when I talk about it, right? But there’s a couple of things you have to have in place before all that. And so, um, I wanna make sure anybody listening to this understands that it’s not as easy as I just said, it wasn’t a bad experience and a great experience when you’re moving on. Right.

There’s a lot of things I had to have in place, you know, for anybody looking to add on another trade, I would highly suggest you have to at least be doing a million dollars. And the reason why is because you need that flux of cash to be coming in to float yourself out. Um If you’re doing around a million, you probably have an admin, you probably have somebody answering your phones, right? This is not a thing to do when you’re operating from a cockpit. You know, you can’t be sitting there in a jet fighter and dealing with all this.

You gotta be in a big jumbo jet where girls can help you out. And that’s kind of what you’re looking for is, is that setup of somebody answering the phone? Somebody doing your hr somebody doing your payroll. You got a PM out there. This is not something that I recommend to people going. Oh, I can do this all by myself. I don’t need anybody answering my phone. I can do this and I can run my jobs. Yeah, you can, and you’re only gonna get so big and you’re essentially only creating another job for yourself.

And that’s really not what the, the point of all this is. I uh I really like that analogy that you just came up with. I never heard that but the, uh, you know, like a fighter plane versus the Jumbo Jet because I think so often it, it feels so discouraging and I know a lot of our listeners are, you know, we have listeners of all different sizes, but we’ll have a lot also that are smaller, running smaller companies and it feels so discouraging when you see these bigger companies.

Well, it’s, uh, it’s not fair. They have a team, they have, you know, someone to go out and actually conduct these estimates for them. They have an office admin, they have actually a physical office. But when you’re small, you have agility, you can do speed. You can, you can totally transition. And I think people miss that a lot. So I’m, I’m gonna, I’m pocketing that and I’m gonna use it for the rest of my life. Thank you. Go ahead and take that. That’s ok. I knew you knew it. Yeah.

That’s the only reason I run this podcast is I just look for things like that one day. But I’m like, speaking on this huge stage, I’m gonna take all these little analogies and stuff and it’ll just be the world’s greatest speech ever presented. I think you should do it. I think you’d be a fool. Not to, yeah, not. Um but the, but, but I wanna dive it. So you said, you know, there’s, and I appreciate you in putting that caveat because that’s, that’s what this whole podcast is about.

Not just the shiny, you know, like, hey, here you can do it, be motivated, go do it. But actually the nitty gritty of what it takes. And so you said it took you six months, you were losing money for six months. That’s why, you know, one of the reasons it’s important to have some scale before you do stuff, something like this and then you gotta have the money for it. You know, the one of the things that you’ll probably appreciate just too is that it took us six months to figure out the correct marketing.

Um Well, the message, right, who’s your avatar, what’s your messaging. What’s right. Oh, we put this out. It didn’t do anything, we put that out, it didn’t do anything. We tried this avenue, it didn’t do anything. Marketing. There’s a lot of testing that goes into it. Yeah. And, and, and you know, this, and I’m sure you had clients come and go because of this exact reason. Marketing is not a light switch. You know, it’s, it’s supposed to be order, taking the sales and marketing, you eliminate the sales piece.

It’s just let me just give a little blurb. If anybody’s listening to this, they hire a marketing agency. I don’t care who you hire. If you think it’s a light switch, you’re, you’re 100% incorrect. And if you think you’ve got it figured out after working with somebody after six months, you would be incorrect too. It’s a literal day to day evolving monster. You know, our girl in the house does an exceptional job because she watches it every minute of every day. And if something isn’t working, she pulls it and plug something else in.

So for anybody out there looking to hire a marketing company or if you have in-house marketing, make sure that you have a realization that this is not a light switch, that you have to figure it out. And once you figure it out, you’re gonna have to figure it out again next week and the week after the week after and the week after. So let me just say that for marketing people that uh do marketing, if it’s anybody’s listening to this or anybody’s looking to hire a marketing company, it is not a light switch, man.

It is a process that never ends for sure. So the, the six months took you guys six months to figure it out and then it, and then it started really taking off and you said there’s a lot that people need to put, I guess. What did you figure out? You know what, for day zero, it’s not your, your sucking cash, day six month. You know, now of a sudden it’s printing money, what, what changed, you know, the biggest thing was just finding who our client was in our area.

The average marketing company was charging $68. We charged double that and so we really needed to number one, educate, number two, find the people that would want to buy our service and we’re not even the most expensive. We’re actually the third most expensive in town. There’s two other countries that charge uh 30 40 50 100 percent more than we do. And so, um it’s, it’s, we’re not being the most expensive. So we had to really find out what was it gonna take and who we needed to get in front of. And once we figured that out, which took six months, um it’s, it’s been nonstop.

So at this point, we can either turn it up if we need more business or turn it down when we don’t. And so that’s kind of what we do right now. How do you deal with, how do you deal with a separate entity? So, painting and gutters being separate, but obviously you said 1003% of the, the house you paint need some kind of gutter work or gutter replacement. How do you deal with the Cross sells there? Um So what will happen is, is if, uh, a, uh A A PC sells a gut job, which doesn’t happen too often.

If they sell a gut job, we just write a check to the other business or then vice versa. You know, if those guys sell a paint job, which is very rare, we’ll send out and usually we’ll send out another estimator, um, you know, a project consultant, you know, a bidder, whatever you wanna call it. Um, you know, if we’re doing one and they’re like, oh, we gotta get painting done, you know, ASAP, they’ll have somebody out within that house either that day or the next day. So they get top priority because we wanna sign both contracts.

So, for instance, we, we just did one today where Kristen had to go out, turned out to be like a 15 $18,000 paint job and it turned out to be a $10,000 gutter d holy cow. So it was a good day. Yeah, it’s a good day. It was a good day. And so, you know, that’s, you know, that’s too big for her to try to figure out, you know, on a cookie cutter house, you know, four sides of square, she can measure that out and drop the price would be ok.

Yeah, man, it’s a great day. So then when, when people are looking at this, let’s say someone’s listening, they’re like, ok, great will, I’m over a million, you know, 1.2 million, 1.51. Uh got an, got an ad man. I’m certain I have a little bit of help and I want to potentially add gutters or I want to potentially add cabinets or concrete coding. What’s their, what’s their kind of litmus test or what kind of mental thought process should they be going through? In terms of whether or not this is a good idea because the, the good idea is always gonna, it’s always gonna seem like, well, you’re already in the house, a lot of these houses need that work and therefore you should add it versus, oh no, this is a shiny object.

It’s the, the countertop replacement and it’s gonna kind of screw me. Yeah. So for us, what we found out was, um So for us, it’s like dollars, right? It’s dollars to doughnuts. So we realize the phone ringing. If that person, if we have an office c pick up that phone and that’s a $200 job, that could easily be a $5000 job. So that was a big reason why we got rid of cabinets or a, a countertop resurfacing because every time the phone would ring, it might be a $18003 job.

But I’d have to do, you know, 20 of those to replace one garage floor. So, what’s your time worth now? I do know guys that do countertop resurfacing, they crush it and that’s all they do because they don’t have any time for anything else for us. It just wasn’t feasible. So you gotta ask yourself, what’s your time worth for us? Garage floors was, was worth our time and countertops and, and uh bathroom enclosures weren’t worth our time anymore. So like the ticket value, like what’s the average sales price, correct?

And how to be? Was it in our wheelhouse? Was it something that we could, you know, an easy crossover? Could I cross train some guys over then ease them in? And that’s what we did, you know, we had guys that was doing the, the, the countertops and the enclosures and then I made uh Luke uh slipped into doing four coatings and taught them up and learn them up. So he became a master of that and then it was easy. It was an easy transition because all the countertop material is all two parts and you gotta work with thinning it down and rolling it out and then shooting it on same thing with four coatings you know, you gotta roll it on, mix it two or three parts, whatever it’s gonna be and then roll it on and we look for your bait time.

So it was an easy crossover for Luke. He just was on his hands and he’s opposed to standing up. So that was a great transition for us. You know, we saw that there was plenty of call for people to get their cross floors done. And so that’s what we did, you know, we knew there wasn’t a company in town doing it like we wanted to do it. So that’s where it was at. Same thing with gutters as we looked around, we realized that there were gutter companies in town, but no one was doing it like we were doing painting, you know, no one was doing garage floors like we were doing painting like we do, we paint your house in a day.

Garage floors. Typically in this town, 80 90% of the companies take two days. We were doing it in a day, you know. And so we leaned into that same thing with our gutters, you know, gutters, everyone. If you’re not in the gutter business, you don’t know how long gutters take to install, but that’s what we sell. Hey, we’ll get your gutters done in a day. Ok. People love it. So 95% of our workload gets done in a day. So that’s a super important point. And I wanna I wanna make sure we don’t gloss over that because you’re saying, I know there are some companies that are charging more but you’re going out, you’re doubling the price of the average quote.

So that means if they’re getting multiple quotes, you, yours likely seems very high but you have a competitive, a true competitive differentiator. That’s saying, hey, we’re gonna, we’re gonna get this completed for you in one day. Yeah. Well, we have that, you know, and we show up that people are in uniform, you know, there’s a bunch of things that add into that. And we’ve talked about in the past podcast of like how important it is to have your vans wrapped, how important it is to have your crew, you know, in a uniform.

So people understand because that’s what makes people safe. You know, you’ve got Mrs Jones over there with her two girls. You don’t want a guy showing up in ratty clothes, dirt all over him, you know, cigarette hanging in his mouth. So we sell that as well too when someone calls up and says, well, they’re doing half the price we’re asking like, ok, well, are you OK with us doing half the work? Well, no, I want what you guys do. OK. Well, then you gotta pay us cause they’re doing half the work with the material.

Not as good, you know. Are you worried about who’s showing up? We guarantee the people out here are showing up your house are fully vetted, you know, drug tested and background tested. So these are the things that we sell, we’re selling that service. You know, the gutter is just the job we have to do. Yeah, it’s the widget. The, so people listening, I mean, there, there are so few painting companies that I know of that offer gutters yet it’s obviously such a natural extension. So people listen to that.

Should everyone just go out and, and I mean, should this be a, uh a focus? Uh Like I said, if you got somebody answering your phones, so there’s a checklist. Now, you gotta look in the mirror. Is there somebody answering your phones? Yes. Somebody doing your payroll. Yes. Somebody doing your hr yes. Is there a PM on the job? Yes. Then it’s time to add another, another trade. If all those things are being done and outsourced and you’re not doing anything and all you’re doing is overseeing everything, then you have time to add in another trade because it’s gonna take some time.

It’s gonna take up a lot of your bandwidth to make sure it takes off and start doing well. Correct. So you don’t wanna be worried about having to pull off of what you’re focusing on your new trade to go do a job walk or you gotta forgot, I, I gotta go do an estimate or a proposal or a bit like those things. Don’t, don’t plague me in the daytime. So if you find yourself working a couple hours a day, like I do and most of the time, you know, you’re not working, you’re just kind of sitting around waiting for something to happen.

Then you’ve got time to add a trade. That’s a great time. You’ve got it. But if you’re still painting or if you’re still doing estimates or if you’re still running payroll, these are all things that are gonna take away from those things. So you have to make sure those things are getting done first before you take on a trade. That’s just one man’s approach. That’s my opinion. I know guys that do other things that do all that sit in the cockpit and do it all, but all you’re essentially doing is creating another job for yourself.

And in my opinion, that’s kind of pointless. You know, I was just in Ireland for eight days. I didn’t get a call from my staff. I didn’t get a text message from my staff with any problems, you know, uh Eric, my partner was with me and Kristen, you know, or, or BPSL, she was with me. Um, everything ran normal and that was, we’re the three biggest players in the house, you know, me, Eric and Kristen, nobody got a call. Nobody got a text message. Nobody got an email.

That’s what you’re looking for. The ability to walk away for a week with no problems that come back. Yeah. And I came back and I didn’t do anything. Last week, I came back on Wednesday and I do nothing. Thursday and Friday, I answered one email. I went back to bed and that was it, you know, same thing with Eric. He had no problems. He, he did a few estimates on Friday. Kristen did a few ss on Friday and that was it. So that’s what you’re looking for.

You don’t wanna take on another trade while you’re still doing hr payroll running jobs, doing jobs, doing estimates. There’s no purpose, then you haven’t mastered what you’re doing yet and to be pointless for you to go and do something else. And that was a part of my problem. I was still doing sales or I was still at the PM. You know, when we were doing uh countertops, I just made a lot of stupid mistakes. You know, I’ve told a lot of guys here and I, you know, gave a class that said, I’m gonna give you a lot of bad advice and these are all the things I learned.

It’s cost me thousands and thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands of dollars. These mistakes cost me it. Take my lesson for free. If you don’t have all those things in place, do not waste your time adding on another trait because you’re only gonna put yourself in a position of working longer and harder, which is really not the point of what we wanna do here. Yeah. Yeah. And it, it’s so, even though it’s counterintuitive, it’s so tempting because kind of the grass is greener on the other side.

If you’re caught in your business and, and you’re, you know, you, you’re putting out fires, you’re actually doing the, the payroll or whatever else you’re doing in the company. It seems like, well, this will be easier. This is a way to make it more, worth more. My time will be, I’ll make more money this way. So all this stuff I’m doing makes more sense. But all you’re gonna do is, is just complicate your life and ultimately make less money. You know, there’s two ways to look at this and there’s, you know, there’s the one way that says, hey, man, I wanna buy a, I wanna be a $5 million paint company and that’s great.

And there are guys out there that crush it and do 5 million and I’m happy for them. And then there’s guys like me that go, you know, I don’t wanna do 5 million, but I wanna do multiple things. And the reason for me is, is the painting slows down. Gutters, picks up floors, picks up. So a lot of these things hold each other over during slow season, you know, for floor coatings, it doesn’t slow down too much throughout the year. It’s pretty steady because we can do them inside your garage.

So I don’t have to worry too much about weather unless it’s windy. Right. You know, when it starts getting the winter time, you know, the fall hits in the, in the winter. That’s when gutters picks up because now people are like, oh shit, man, my house is flooding or I forgot the concrete is gonna freeze up because we ain’t got gutters. So it’s busy over there. Right. And so these things all complement each other and, and counter, excuse me, cabinet is always just, you know, it’s always steady throughout the year.

It’s usually better throughout the spring and winter time. But it’s, it’s always pretty steady, you know, 12 months a year. So for me, I like that, that diversity of income coming in. So I, I don’t, I’m not a big fan of like putting all my baskets in one basket so that all my eggs in one basket. That’s just me. I’m not saying you don’t have to do that because a lot of guys have asked me, well, why don’t you just keep your painting company up there and running and just full force and crushing it.

Well, I’m, I’m ok. I’m ok doing a million half, you know, million eight or whatever I do in painting, I’ll be fine with it. So there are, um, I’m gonna ask a question that comes up every winter. There are usually don’t make a ton of money on this, but there’s some companies that absolutely crush on it. Uh Holiday Lights what’s your thought on that? I mean, I know two guys that do holiday lights and they both crush. Um, you know, I, I think probably the one that stands out the most is Kobe Davis.

You know, uh, if anybody was at PC, a last year or this last or something, Kobe’s there, he had a little stand and he’s crushing it right now. You know, you wanna talk about a hero in painting if anybody wants to follow anybody. Uh Look at Kobe man. Kobe is a uh man, he’s a rock star. He’s really doing things right now. He’s got his, he got all his es and lined up and he’s, he’s really crushing it. Um I think uh life is a great thing.

You know, we explored it in the beginning probably 56 years ago. We looked at it and explored it. Um, at the time it wasn’t a good fit for us because we didn’t have any place to store everything. And so we since have a, you know, a big warehouse now shop, um, we might look at it again, but I think, uh I think Holiday Lights is a very uh cheap way to get in to make a lot of money. You know, I think it’s uh I think you should absolutely do it.

If you got nobody in your area to do it, we have like six or seven guys in our area to do. So I don’t know if you have a saturation issue. Um You know, we haven’t looked at it enough. I, if I, if I, I probably, if I looked at it and decided to go through with it, I would just, you know, put everybody out of business because that’s just the kind of guy I am when I, when I go in for it, I, I go in for murder, you know, you know, same here.

We had codings companies out there trying to take his head on. So I mean, we put them out, we put two out of business. And so I’m just that guy, you know, I mean, the people that work for me are more important than the people that work for you. I’m sorry to say that out loud and maybe some people don’t like that or you know, the sons for everybody and there’s enough business for him. Well, you know what cool for you man. Great story, but I’m gonna worry about me and my people here and the people I call family number one.

So I’ll put you out of business at my place. You could take their, take their uh employees under your wing after you put them on. There’s a lot of that, that’s happened too. There’s uh we’ve had a lot of uh red cats come on through and you know, bleed our colors after a while. So the uh OK, holiday lights, I gotta assume and I, I don’t know what the stats are here. But, I mean, that’s a recurring business model right there. Right. You’re gonna create relationships with the homeowner.

You do a great job. Now of a sudden you, you keep in touch with them a little bit over the week, you don’t have to win that business over and over again. It’s gonna happen every year. Unlike painting, which might be every few years. Yeah. Typically the people that have, you do their decorations for their lights. Those people aren’t worried. They’re not a, they’re not a big income flux, you know, they have money for that. So they’re, they’re usually gonna have that stuff done every year. You know, another good uh uh trade to bring into your house is uh soft washing, you know, pressure washing.

Um That’s another great one. You know, that’s, I think that’s, that’s, that’s, there’s just so many different things you can do to bring into the fold that do. Well, you know, I think those are the top three though, I think, you know, soft washing, pressure washing lights and, and gutters um are probably the three easiest things to get into with. Um Yeah. X amount of cost, you know, I people ask me, hey, man, what do you think about floor coating? Because it sounds attractive and it’s, oh, well, I’m a painter so I can do floor coatings. Yeah.

Yeah, you probably could. But to do four coatings, right? Is not cheap. You know, you gotta buy a truck, a grinder or a generator. It’s not easy. It’s, it’s not cheap. I mean, for us it was about $153,000 to get started to buy all the equipment and all the trucks and transported. So, you know, gutters, you can be in the gutters pretty cheap. 25,000 to get you a gutter bender and a trailer and then you have a truck to pull it. You can be in that pretty cheap. And then lights, lights are just buying your lights.

You know, you got a storm every year, but not too crazy. How about the, uh, the profit margins between three businesses? Yeah, I would imagine soft washing is pretty strong, um, for us, for us and I know other gutter, um, uh, companies, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re part of the gutter community as well. I know gutters is not as strong as us for us. We’re around 230%. 21% is usually come, we see that, you know, when we do our numbers every week, we’re around 230 21518%. If I see something in the fifties, I’m like, what happened?

You know, our painting division, we’re around that 2100 21800 18003 gross profit. You know, um, soft washing is probably the highest out of all of those because the chemical is so cheap and you’re just, you know, your, your main water, your main cleaning is water and you get that from the client’s house. So I, I’d imagine out of those things, you know, we looked at that and there’s some companies that want to partner with us, we’re probably never gonna get into pressure washing or soft washing. It’s just not something I wanna, uh, pursue.

Um, especially it’s so dry here. I just don’t see the money in it for us, you know, and other places where it’s humid, you got moss growing everywhere. Then I’d say you’d be a fool not to add it in there cause it’s a pretty cheap one. You know, there are these machines and these rigs that go for 21800,21 230 $70,000 for super high end soft washing. But man, you can get started with a truck and a pressure washer, you know, and you know some pump chemical, you know, uh Hudson spar, a backpack spray and go and do it.

The old fashioned way for guys looking to add on a tray that’s cheap. It’s not a bad way to look. You know, the only thing that sucks about lights is you gotta have guys that are skilled to do lights. You know that all the ladder work, you gotta have all the ladders and you gotta make sure you got all the hand tools. So not too, too crazy, but I mean, I don’t know what the margin on the lights are. I’d like to know. Sure. So yeah, this was uh well, this was helpful.

I think you gave pretty good litmus test here. I think that week off for a week and can run without you with and you don’t come back to an absolute nightmare. You come back and it’s easy. Well, then you might be in an opportunity to, to roll out another service offering. Yeah, I mean, just so everyone knows that’s not like a, but I’m gone pretty much every month. At least a week. I travel 12 to 13 times a year. I’m gone every month. My staff knows I’m gone. I’m either on a training thing on a speaking thing on a vacation, a trip.

I’m doing something every month. So I’m always gone at least 5 to 6 days a week if not a week. Plus. So if you find yourself that kind of time and you want add another stream of income, then then it’s time. It’s time. Yeah. You know, um I will say this though is anybody wants to learn a lot of these things. They want to learn a lot of these tricks, they wanna learn all of these tips. Um I’m speaking at uh Jason’s uh summit at Jason Phillips Summit. There’s a lot of good speakers there.

Uh I think you’re gonna be there. Are you speaking? Yup. If you be a fool, if you guys think come to see Brandon speak. Uh He’s a pretty brilliant guy, Ron Adams Jason Phillips, of course. Uh I will be there speaking. I will be giving a full class on how to negotiate with vendors and I promise you and I’ll even put it in writing. Tell me this, if you don’t make the money back within the 13st 30 days of just the information I give you, I’ll give you your money back in the class.

That’s my guarantee if you come to this class because I said because will Rees said come to this class. And I just what I teach you, if you don’t make that money back, I’ll give you your money back to that class myself. So that’s, that’s a bold, that’s a bold guarantee. That’s 100% money back guarantee for a conference. That is not 100% not even being paid for. Guarantee this from what I teach you, I promise you, you will make that money back in 30 days from just what I teach you.

Not uh Joe, not Jason, not Ron Adams, not anybody else in there. If you just listen to me and do what I ain’t saying, I promise you’ll make that money back from that class, that whole trip, your airfare. I promise you’ll get your airfare back, the class. I promise you get your class back. I will promise the food anything, you will make all that money back within the 1st 30 days. If you listen to me and do what I say, that’s uh that’s what’s called an irresistible offer.

Yeah, but you gotta come, you gotta, you gotta reach out to Jason at it. Contractor Freedom. You gotta, you gotta put it out there. You gotta sign up for the class. You gotta say, oh, will told me that what he teaches me and they’re gonna go, yeah, he’s probably, then if that’s what he guaranteed, he’s a man of his word. I promise you. I think that. Do you remember how much the class was? Is it like 1518 100? I think it’s like 1800 something like that. Yeah, 15, 1800 bucks plus you’re here for, I promise you you’ll make that money back in the 1st 30 days and then every month after that it’ll pay you.

I promise you. It’s amazing. Mhm Well, I love it, man. A man of confidence. I’m very excited for this, very excited. Um So brother, this has been a good series, man. We, we discussed episode one, your transition, mental transition, episode two, the killer client experience. Uh episode three, your applications, tools and tricks. Episode four, employee retention. And now finally how to know whether it’s a shiny object or potentially good business opportunity. Brother, as we wrap up, you have anything else you want to add? Uh Just like I said, uh every other time, man, I mean, if you need help yourself out there, I’m not the only guy out there helping and sharing, you know.

Uh So if you do have any questions, please reach out to me I’ve had a couple of guys reach out to me for some of my time and then I’m gonna devote some of it to them. Uh cause uh they asked and uh I’m not opposed to helping anybody else out, but please look around in your area. There’s other guys out there that are willing to help. Thank you. Well, I appreciate you man and I, I appreciate what you’re doing for the people who are reaching out to you who have listened to this series.

It means a lot. Uh Thank you, man. This was a wonderful series. No, man. Thank you. I like that. It was, it was nice to be a part of and I hope people got to uh learn something and uh maybe had a couple of laughs at it at least. And now we’re gonna, we’re gonna flood Jason’s event. I, I anybody who doesn’t know you’re gonna be kicking yourself, you missed out. That’s all right. Thank you, Will.

No problem, buddy. Talk to you.

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

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