Episode #6: Nick Kelley, CEO & Founder of Elite Paint Home Renovations (Client Spotlight)

Transcript:

What is going on. We are live. I see two people live here with us. This is the Service Legend Podcast episode number six and the playlist section of the Client Spotlight Sessions with the the world famous Nicholas Kelly. Nick Kelly. Nick, welcome to the podcast, man.

Hey, how’s it going, Ryan? Glad to be here, buddy.

Hey, just to set the stage here. So we have Nicholas Kelly. Nick Kelly and Nick Joe. Which one can I call you today?

Yeah. So you call me Nick. Nick is obviously my. My normal name. I do. Nick. Just to kind of separate some of the business that way. You know, you don’t have people always just looking for him. We kind of try to separate I’m sorry, because I’m a I’m a big family guy, but yeah. You call me Nick.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, Nick. Well, I feel like you need no introduction. We are live on my personal page. We are live on the service legend page, my public figure page, or even live in the the painting contractor Facebook group that Tanner Mullen runs and that you and I help in there as well. And then also.

Jobs. Man The drip jobs.

Man Yeah, the drip jobs. Man Shout out to Tanner now, man, I love the shirt you’re wearing. Can you show everyone? So we have service legend painted. Okay, let’s get started with a quick bio. So, guys, this is Nick Kelly and he is the Gucci of the painting industry. He said soon to be, but he he is the Gucci right now and he’s also second to that. He’s also the CEO and founder of Elite Paint Elite Paint home renovations out of Fraser, Michigan. And Nick is. I’ve been super inspired by you, bro. Just. Just like. You’re just an awesome dude. Like, I’ve seen it. You’re out there, you’re being active, you’re doing golf, your family, man, you’re a good leader. There’s all these things, man. I’ve been inspired by you. Even though you’re a client of my marketing company. I’ve been inspired by you, man. Thank you so much, dude, for what you’re doing for the industry and really elevating things. It’s awesome to see.

Absolutely, man. I love it. It’s it’s funny because I’m a big guy on researching, right? So like I remember, I remember when you guys were DXM, okay? And we first got onto the Painting Contractors page, right? And it started popping off and we started getting a lot of people on there. Right? And I remember just researching and checking Tanner out and checking you guys out because I’m just one of those people who like to know everything that I’m getting into. And I think I had a call with Danny one time before and I was like, Yeah, you know, because I was just starting out really trying to professionalize my business and what a great decision it was, man, you know what I mean? The one thing I like about service legend for sure is they’re honest, you know what I mean? They tell you they’re straight shooters and they’re going to tell you, you know, especially with the CEO. They said I was going to take a few months. Right now, I think I’m a little over six months with your guys’s program. And it’s it’s way better after six months than they actually anticipated with me. And I like how they leveled out the expectations for me because that’s one of my biggest things. You know, I’m a straight shooter. I tell people exactly how it is, you know, even when it comes to cabinets like, you know, grain fill, some people want full grain fill. Some stuff’s too heavy of an oak. So I let them know, hey, we’ll probably get about 80 to 90% there, you know what I mean? Because you just want to temper expectations with everything. And I love that was one thing I loved. And you guys kill kill the expectations the so far I can’t wait to see where we’re at in a year.

Yeah, man. Well, thank you so much for those those kind words. Hey, so if you guys are listening live, if you guys could put in the comments, hashtag live. I’d like to go back through over the weekend and just see who was live and see how our engagement is. Also, if you could share this on on your Facebook, on your Instagram, etc., on your stories, it really helps us reach more people just like you, more painting companies that need help, more coding companies that need help from operations perspective. They need motivation, whatever it is, we want to reach as many people as possible. There is no feed. I like Andy Priscilla’s podcast. He says. There’s no fee for the podcast besides you sharing the podcast if you’ve got value. So I’d like to take a similar approach. You know, this is all about elevating the painting industry, taking things to the next level. And so if you guys are alive, hashtag live. If you’re on the replay, hashtag replay, but still please share it. Even if you watch it on Sunday or Monday would have you things like that. And if you have questions, specific questions for Nick while we’re doing this interview, you can drop them in comments. And so we got some people that are live here. And also, if you guys could, when you guys make comments, use your name. So typing your name in the comment and then say what you want to say, because sometimes it doesn’t let us know who it actually is. And so that will help us as well, just to see who’s who’s who’s engaging. So without further ado, let’s just get started with telling everyone just a little bit about the business, like how long you guys have been in business, approximate revenue, how many crews you guys have or employees and kind of the services that you guys offer in the markets you guys serve in?

Awesome. Well, I’ll kind of go a little bit back. So I was a union guy, so I started as a union painter. I was really young when I started there. I was probably making scale within the first three years, so I was probably like 23 making scale and pretty much I wanted to move up. Being a young guy, I was like, I’m not going to do this and make this amount of money for 30 years. So I tried going to my boss at the time and I said, Hey man, I’d love to get into the estimation thing. I mean, I was doing side work the whole time myself. The whole time I was in the union, I was still establishing the elite name, so I had it as elite painting and drywall. At the time I was a one man show, but I still did very quality work. I was still very professional, showed up when I was supposed to doing everything like that, when my boss pretty much said, Hey, you know, we’re not really looking for an estimate here at this point in time. I really dove into because I mean, after you paint for so long, I’m sure all the painters know it’s second nature, man. You can go on there. You can listen to whatever you need to get, whatever you need to done. I picked up a lot of podcasts. Gary Vee was one guy I really listened to a lot.

Tony Robbins and I would just listen for 8 hours, man. And I eventually was like, You know what? I’ll always be able to get a job back here or get a job somewhere else. I’m a quality painter. I was pretty good at what I did, so I made the jump, started doing stuff by myself. That’s when I actually hopped into, though, hiring employees and everything. And that was about about a little over a year ago, maybe a year and some change ago. And as soon as I quit my job, I already had jobs lined up because I was doing side work and stuff like that. So I already had about a month worth of work and I recruited a guy from from the company that had just left. He was my first employee. And funny story was he worked for me for a week and it worked for a week. And then he ended up getting this other big side job and went out there. So I basically picked it up by myself, picked up some guys and I realized, you know, instead of just throwing them out there, I taught them all the systems that I knew that I did on my own work already. So I worked alongside with my guys for about six months. I hired one guy, I then hired another guy, I then hired another guy. We’re up to about seven guys right now.

It was kind of a tough time to jump into the the hiring of guys business because it was like right after the pandemic and everything like that. I’m getting a little bit better at it with getting guys, quality guys in here and stuff like that. But right now we last year, our first year, we did I think like $330,000 in our first year, which I mean, for me that was awesome. You know, compared to the side work I was doing after going to the PCA expo, though I did, I made sure that it was it seemed like something that was important. And a lot of the people that I aspired to be like, we’re going out there. So I went out there and man, it’s unbelievable the amount of information and just how green you are to how big you can make things, you know what I mean? And just how easily if you go up to the right people and you ask the right questions, they will just give you the answers. They’re just like, Hey, man, that’s a great answer I’ve been doing. I’ve had an office like when one was a secretary, like, Hey, when do you think it’s time to get a secretary? This is and and they’re like, Oh, that’s great. I’ve been there before, and they just give you the answer, you know what I mean? So it’s just such a great event.

It’s crazy how that works, right? You ask to receive, you ask, you see.

Yeah, it’s nuts. And I tell everybody, man, with marketing company, we were actually talking about this before we got out here. Marketing coming. Anything you do if you don’t have a vision of what you want your brand to be, I think brand is the most important thing. I don’t care what anybody says. The first thing that I did when I started my company and started Professionalize it is I wanted to make a brand because people buy Nike. They buy Nike because it’s Nike. Okay, so I knew that I was like, okay, if I make a brand and make my brand stand for something, quality painting, quality customer service and things of that nature, I knew that people would just call me based on that no matter what, you know what I mean? So I think that’s like the most important. I think that’s what people lack a lot is they just try to do good work and good work is going to get you. So far, you’ve got to do good work and you got to become a brand that people are like, Hey, no matter what, if I’m getting a painting estimate in Macon County, we got to make sure we get a painting estimate from a lead paint. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. I love that man. And I agree with you. I think you know, I think brand is is first and Dan Antonelli of Kickstarter says this all the time Ryan Kettering a prolific that a lot of a lot of times when we start our painting companies or or or a coding company and really any business I guess for this matter is we we think of the customers or getting leads first or getting the jobs first. We don’t really necessarily think about the brand first. Same thing with the marketing company. It was DXM and I maybe paid $100 for the logo and and then we’re like, okay, you know, let’s, let’s dial in the brand. And we did it later. So, you know, I think a lot of people fall into it. Young.

I bought my first week, I quit the job. I bought a brand new truck, brand new Ford. Okay, I wrapped I’ve got two vans. I wrapped all of them. I had them wrapped official. I mean, because and I had multiple people in my first year. Okay, tell me, oh, man, that’s the cleanest, nicest truck that’s pulled up yet. And it’s my first year in business and I already have people saying that. So people are already recognizing that. And yeah, it was an investment. Yeah, it was like, you know, dang man, I’m forking over some bread. But it worked out for me because here I am a year later and people know who my know my brand, you know what I mean? They know elite, you know what I mean? So that’s the one thing that’s great. And I think that, you know, just keep piggybacking from that is awesome. And the one thing that I’ve really, really learned and I’m implementing more each and every day is systems. Man systems are the most important thing. If you want to stop working, stop painting and really just like dive into the business aspect of things, right? You have to have systems in order. Like I don’t even have another salesman right now. I’m a salesman. I’m a good salesman, you know what I mean? But I already have a sales process to give someone or when I need a salesman, you know what I mean? Those I just that’s one thing that you hear about all of the really successful companies that are doing what I want to do.

That’s what they’re doing, man. They got systems for everything. And it’s it’s so funny because I remember being the guy that I was like, Whoa, what do I put? You know? I mean, how do I start? And I’d ask you, I remember, like, messaging people like, hey, man, I just want to know, like, how do I just write it down? And then once you do one, you’re like, Man, I made this way harder than it was, you know what I mean? Because it symbolized. You’re telling them what? All right, how do I sell? What are key marks that I had on all my sales? Do you know what I mean? So it’s just so funny how difficult you as a business owner, you can overthink things a lot of times. And biggest thing I always say is you just do, you do. If you fail, do it again and try it a better way. And you might fail nine times, but you’re going to figure it out. You know, that’s how I became a good painter. It wasn’t like I was just a great painter. No, I started painting by myself. I had a painting job for six months and I started taking side work after six months of only painting. And that was the best thing I ever did, because I learned so much so fast, and I did everything good because I messed things up and I had to fix them. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I love that about you. And you are a a true visionary. And I’m a big believer in the Colby test. If you ever take a Colby test, I I’m a nine quick start, and I bet you you’re the same. Just you’re just an executed man, and you are a vision. You are a go getter. And I just love that about you. I think this is Brad Ellison. And he says, Hey, Nick, who do you think is the best painting company in Michigan and why is it Ellison painting?

I love Brad, man. I know. What I like about Brad is that we actually sat down because like I said, I’ll ask anybody any questions before I was anything, man. I had seen Brad. Brad knew one of my brothers or whatever, and we had a seat. We sat down and we talked. This was when he was working for his other company and, you know, just crunching his brain and stuff like that. And we still sit down. We had to sit down, sit down within the past month and a half just to see what’s going, because he’s on the west side. I’m more so do work on the east side, but we’re constantly trying to help each other and elevate this industry. And what’s so nice it’s it’s nice having people like Brad to bounce ideas off of and stuff like that Tanner as well shout out to Tanner Go, man. I’m going to tell you right now, if you guys do not have jobs, I promise you I’m a salesman. I got a little business aspect to mine. But if you don’t get jobs right now because it literally does most of the stuff that you would initially have to think of as a businessman, it’s already helping you.

And I’m not trying to just plug it because like, Yeah, Tanner’s a cool dude, dude. I love him, but his software is amazing, man. It really is amazing. Constantly evolving it. He’s constantly asking me like, Hey, man, like, Oh, you guys want this, this and this. Like, you just raise your hand. You’re like, Yep, this is what we want. Oh, he wants out. Okay, let’s get into making that. You know, it’s I had House Call Pro. That was one big thing I used that I use Joyce and I would I have drew jobs. I got rid of both of those. You know what I mean? And I love it. I love it. It’s so good. I tweak things in mine now. Now you got the automatic setup. Once you kind of figure out how you do things, there’s ways to tweak drips and things like that. But what a great system and and Google calendar is popping out. I know that’s just going to be that’s going to. I like it even better. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Shout out to Tanner. Okay, so let’s walk through this a little bit, because I know. I know there’s a lot to talk about here, but who is your guys is ideal customer at at the painting company. I know we’re talking about this a little bit before the pod started, but.

So my ideal customer, I’m going to be real to you. The way I set my company up was okay. So we were in college, right? So I wanted to broadcast my stuff to a higher middle class, upper class. Okay. So and the reason why is, is that because if we ever come into a recession or anything like that, I know my clientele is still in place. They’re still going to spend their money with me because that’s you. Now, it’s not saying we don’t do smaller jobs here and there. I mean, for the right people. Absolutely were always one thing that our company is truly about. I tell people all the time, we are more of a customer service business that does a fantastic job at painting. That’s what we do, like communications, huge. I mean, I run into issues sometimes where people might scrape a wall that we just painted, right. And they call and say, Oh, you know, I got this scrape. We come look at it, we know it’s from them, you know, but we just take care of them. When you’re in the early stages of being a business owner, right. You really don’t have time to, like, argue with a customer over something that’s going to take someone 15 minutes to fix. Right. That’s one thing. Like once you get enough enough reviews where you got your solid and that’s one thing. But I mean, sometimes you’re going to deal with customers that that aren’t right. But in order to make it right, you’ve got to act like you’re right, you know? And I think that’s one thing that people really need to understand is that early you don’t have really room for messing up like that.

If you get a bad review or a couple of bad reviews and you only got 20 reviews, you’re in trouble a little bit. You might want it might be time for a rebrand sometimes, you know, especially in our area, in our area is a little bit competitive. We got some pretty good companies that not only do a good job at painting their customer service pretty solid as well. So that’s one thing that’s really big to us is just really trying to take care of our customers and not only with painting, but like we color coordinate. So like I make sure that my customer is in love. I tell them, I always say to my customers, You got to sleep with the color. You got to love it in the morning, at noon, at dinner and before you go to bed, okay. Because I tell people all the time, even if I do like cabinets, we do tons of cabinets. Right. That’s our that’s our goal, too. That’s our moneymaker. Right. So if we do a set of cabinets and they’re flawless, look great. You could put your cheek up next to it. Right. But it’s not the color they like. They’re still not going to be happy, you know what I mean? So I think that’s very important sometimes. And I think that that’s one add on that any painting company can really add to to really boost the value of your company.

Man Yeah, I love that, man. Customer satisfaction. Now what is your guys? Is your unique selling proposition like? How do you guys position yourselves in the eyes of customers? Obviously, everyone’s got us. But what is your guys is maybe top three or just a couple there?

Yeah. So so pretty much what we do here is like so when I go on the sale, so when I step foot in the door, I always park my truck right in front of their front door because I want them to see my truck. Okay? I want them to see me walk out of that nice truck. I walk in very cordial now. Drift jobs does a great job for us of of doing the communication before I mean obviously we call so I’m still going to make a call. I’m going to say, hey, you know, I like letting them hear my voice because I’m very customer like, hey, guys, how’s it going? I’m super excited to come and meet and figure out this project and try and get this done for you guys. I think you’ve said that in your sales cone is huge. If you call someone right and you and you answer the phone like, hey guys, is a lead paint home renovations, how are you helping? I don’t want to talk to you. I’m always like, I don’t care if I got to turn it up a notch, bam. I’m like, Oh, my gosh, how’s it going? Like, Oh, my gosh, that beautiful day outside ball because people want to talk to people like that. Okay. So when I walk into sales, one of the biggest things we have and I actually brought one, we have a folder, so we have a purple folder in this purple folder. It has there is this one.

Get my receipts out of here. So as our drip jobs proposal work order, that doesn’t have any prices on it, pretty sweet. Okay. So that just basically tells everybody exactly what we’re doing, the scope, and then it has our soap next to it. Right. And I bring this to it to show them because what I tell my customers is this we have a checks and balances system set up at our company. The SLP is part of it. Right. So our team leader, Joshua, I’m going to introduce you to the first day of the job. I usually show up to make sure introduce the crew and team leader, and then Josh would basically assign one through four to Dan, you know, five through ten to Craig, 11 through 16 to because we have another Danny on that crew. Danny Right. And then so they check off as they get those done, he checks them off as he gets them done. And when I stop the job, whether it be that day, the next day or whatever, I go down the list, I say, okay, you guys are on 25, right? And then I go through and I say, That’s how we get the same results. So we have a five star rating everywhere, so we don’t have one bad review at all. So and I make sure of that. I want I want to keep that going for as long as I possibly can. Right. So I tell them it’s the checks and balances.

It’s basically I tell them that’s our way of making sure that everything gets done exactly the way that you want it along with. I always give my guys time to clean up. That’s one big thing that people don’t understand. If you tell every day, I get my guys 30 to 45 minutes a day at the end of each day to make sure your house is completely spotless before they leave. Well, when you got poor guys eating up an hour of your time, people look at that and they say, Wow, that’s great. You’re willing to take away 4 hours of work basically through your four employees to make sure our house is clean. That’s a big thing. We don’t take a deposit. I don’t take a deposit. I know a lot of people frown upon that. I like it in our industry and the customers that we deal with when you get sometimes when you get these now obviously if it’s 10,000 or more or something, yeah, we’ll take a we’ll take a deposit on that. But anything under ten grand, usually we don’t take a deposit with our clientele. A lot of times they act like you’re on a retainer. Okay, so you take 500 bucks from a $1.2 million house and any time they call you, if you don’t answer the phone, it’s almost like they get upset about it sometimes or something, you know? So I think it’s just a very good president, especially when our average cabinet job is around 60500 to $7500.

That’s like a basic kitchen cabinet job. Okay, so when we do ours, like that’s one thing that they like about it because they’re like, Oh, okay, well, these guys are so confident in their work that they’re going to get the material, they’re going to come here and take care of business, you know? So those are kind of some of the things. But I really try. I spell out from when I step into their door, my crew does to when they leave exactly the experience that we’re giving. Like we walk our customer through the job every single day, every day. So my team leader at the end of each day walks them through it and says, Hey, so we got these ceilings done or we got this done. How does everything look so far? So it gives them the opportunity to say, Oh, you know, I see this little thing in the corner. And then first thing in the morning, either my team leader or one of the guys he sends is taking care of and addressing anything that we have with the finished product. That way at the end, when we walk through the job, they’re just looking at the walls by that time, you know what I mean? So it’s a very easy like we don’t go like our touch ups typically take. It takes longer for us to clean out our brush, then it doesn’t touch up.

I love the daily agenda. You know, obviously if there’s listeners here that are in the coding business, I mean, most jobs are one or two days, but the larger projects. Small commercial. Maybe if there’s a pool deck or a larger. It could be three days, depending on how many crews you have. And so I really like the idea of the daily agendas. And obviously for painters, you know, projects are going to range from, what, two to 2 to 7 days? I mean, who knows, right? But like, yeah, that daily agenda. Could you elaborate on that more like how did you come up with that? Like, was it just was there issues happening or like how did you come up with that daily agenda thing?

So the daily agenda thing, really, I, I do a lot of CI work on myself. That’s really where it comes from. And I didn’t, you know, since I was going after work from the union, right. I didn’t have time to come back to these houses and do touch ups. So the best way I did it was like, okay, so I’m going to do all the trim in here and I’m going to do all the ceilings. And then when I was done, I would go get the customer and I’d say, Hey, come in here. So these ceilings are done. So I knew when I went there the next day, if I just had walls left, I had two little touch ups to do and everything was done. But for my, my guys, when they because we use a customer sign off sheet now, which is relatively new, but when they leave the job, it just makes it so much easier for them because they know the last day like, okay, we’re good everywhere. We just on the stuff that we’re finishing, we got to make sure it’s really tight and it’s really a lot easier for my crew as well to make sure that just the walls are perfect before we leave.

So it really helps a lot on going back, you know what I mean? And that was one thing because like, you know, you get these jobs done and then someone calls you for touch up or someone calls you for touch up. Because we always give the guys because like if I leave on a doom and gloom day, right in Michigan and the sunlight hits one day and they see something and your customer calls say, hey, you know, I see this just one little spot. You know, it’s not a big deal, but it’s doom and gloom. And they open the sheets and we did just one walk through right the last day and they go, oh, my gosh. And they see all these things. Well, then I got to send a guy there for a full day, you know? So that’s one thing I really try to I don’t really like going back to jobs. I really don’t. I don’t I like sending one guy that being there for an hour tops and then getting back to the production.

Yeah. The go back or touch up like going back to the House schedule issues, I mean, customer complaints. I mean, it’s just it’s a disaster. Yes.

One thing that’s nice is hours are usually so minor. The customers never. It’s never the customer is disgruntled or anything because like I tell people all the time, like, you know, it’s natural light is a painting is a painting killer. So like natural light doesn’t always play games like at 4:00. Natural light at night by night might not be hitting the exact room that we’re finishing. Right? So I always let my customers know because the one thing my customers know for a fact from a lead is that if you find anything that you have an issue with, you can call us and we’re going to come back out and take care of it. Because I tell all of my customers that a five star company isn’t only going to just do a great job, show up on time and all of that stuff. But if for some reason you do find an issue, we’re not only going to answer the phone right away, we’re going to come make sure and see what the problem is, and we’re going to address it as soon as we possibly can. And that right there is a very good selling point as well, because in my actual reviews, people have said multiple times that exact thing. And that is one of the things that people, when they’re hiring a painter and a painting company, that’s one of the big things is I ask the question, Tanner knows all about it. Hey, so what’s going to make this a perfect painting experience for you, ma’am? You know what I mean? That’s my go to.

And I’m telling you, some people are, like, showing up on time or coming back if we call you. You know what I mean? And I like to hit them. I got two reviews in my envelope, like I’m in my folder just saying, Oh, is that okay? Let me pull this out and show you these two reviews stating that that’s exactly what we do. You know what I mean? So you just got to when you hear a rebuttal sometimes, like what I do is when I hear a rebuttal and I didn’t have the greatest answer to it, I figure it out. And then I put it in my little my little folder. So I’m ready for it again. Like, Hey, come at me with that, please, because I’m about that. I’m not that guy. I’m not one for you, you know what I mean? Because I love sales. I’ll be real with you. I love selling. I love meeting new people. I love going in there. You know, I love hearing about people who have bad contracts, experiences and having art and having the opportunity to work for them. Because I know for a fact that if you use another company and you use our company, you are going to be super happy 100%, because that’s how I have like we don’t like professionalism in our industry, in our area. There’s a lot of guys that come show up at 9 a.m., going to take off at 1130, stuff like that, or, hey, we’re going to start this job.

It’s a three day job. They show up on Monday, leave for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, show back up Wednesday. So a two day job turns into a two week job. So like we don’t ever pull off jobs either. Our crew, if they start a job on Monday, okay, they’re going to be there Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. The exact same faces you see seen the first day until that job is completed. And that’s very important to our customers as well. They love that. They love because you don’t know how many times I hear, well, you guys are going to stay here when you come here, right? I mean, we hear it all the time and I’m like, absolutely, we are. I and I always tell the story because I got tile done at my house. Right. And I have kids. I have five kids. So it was my kitchen floor. So the guy said, he’s come in, he’s like, all right, we’re going to rip this bar. It should take three days on my perfect. Well, he rents my floor out. I gave him a deposit, 5000 dollars deposit, rips my floor out and I left for four days. So I got five kids. I had to, like go by gates at Home Depot, put them around my kitchen and everything like that. So that’s like one of the biggest reasons why I kind of I have set up my company because I remember feeling when I gave that guy the thousand $500 and then he’s not answering my calls and I’m like, Well, I can’t really get someone else because I’ll be out there at 1500.

So that’s one of the reasons I kind of modeled my company the way I did was just from that specific experience that I had with a contract. And I said, You know what? I if I get my own company, that is something I want to make sure I never do is leave someone in because people have sometimes are scheduling around you guys. I don’t think they realize that. They’re like if there’s three days, they’re scheduling around that. So even if you go a day over sometimes like I’m big on hitting my deadline, I’ll pull another guy off the job to hit my deadline every single time because they might only have three days where they have scheduled for you guys to be there. So if you go over that fourth day, you’re really inconveniencing your client, to be honest with you. So I really make it apparent that’s one of my big sales things, too, is if I tell you this is going to be done on Thursday, it’s because usually if it’s a two day job, I’m going to tell them it could take two and a half days because just in case something goes wrong, they know that I’m already bidding it for that third day.

Right? So I always bid for worst case scenario when it comes to time, telling the customer time, I’m never going to tell them, Oh man, this is going to rock out great. It’s going to be two days no matter what, because sometimes things happen and it drifts into that third day, right? So I’m just going to tell them off. Rip. It’s going to take three days that way. If I get done in two, they’re like, That’s what I’m talking about. You know what I mean? You really got to set up expectations for your customers the right way. If you give them the right expectations, it makes it so much smoother of a process for you guys. And I think sometimes people they don’t they they get scared to tell customers something. No, man, you if you find something wrong, you got to tell them right away. Because if you tell them in the first day of the job something rather than the last day of the job or something, it’s a whole different ballgame. Okay. Because if I tell them something the first day I’m there, right? I’m like, Hey, so I’ve seen this, this and this. I might be this. They’re more so like, Oh, that’s fine, right? Third day, they’re like. Getting done, like they’re disgruntled by that time, you know what I’m saying? Because they feel like you’re getting over on them. So I feel like that’s very important.

Yeah. Yeah. I love all of that, man. And in in terms of marketing you, what is the entire mix? Like you can go so you have online marketing and then offline talk about what you do online. I do not want you offline as well.

Yes, I do a bunch. So we do a bunch of stuff here. So I have. So I actually originally started running my own Facebook ads. That’s how I when I first started, I ran my own ads for about eight months, almost just doing it myself. And I actually did a pretty good job for myself considering my ad spend and all that I did. I did really well for not being a company that anybody knew and keeping people. I had four guys within the first month of my company working for me and we stay busy all year. We didn’t have any layoff time, nothing. But now I do SEO, so I got SEO out there. I dip and dab and Google ads here and there. We were doing that for a time being when bumping up that SEO score. We do. We just signed on with you guys for Facebook ads right now, and I have door hangers made. So when we’ve done two houses in a sub in McComb right now, literally the next door neighbor, both of their cabinets. Plus, we did her sister and her mom’s job at the next door, neighbors as well. So we I have door hangers and I’ll have one of my lord after they get the guy set up, I’ll tell them and they just go put them on every each and every door. They don’t talk to anybody. I don’t even talk to anybody. I just put the door hangers on there. It’s got a QR code on them for our drip jobs link our request a quote link. So they just scan with their phone. Oh yeah.

Our code goes to the drip jobs appointment request form.

Yep, it goes right to the form and then it goes right into our software and it gives us all the information we need. On one big thing I do for our company because we’re looking for a specific clientele is I always look and Zestimate and Zillow, the house. I want to know how much the house is worth, okay? And it’s not me being mean or anything. It’s just like I know my prices and I know that if I have 150,000 house, there’s probably a good chance that I’m not going to pay 70 $500 to get my cabinets done. You know what I mean? So that’s very important. So, like, you know, I hear a lot of people say, oh, you only want to throw out 10% of your leads and stuff like, I’m be real with you, man. I, I sell very good. So if I get the right customer in front of me, I know that I have a very good chance of closing them. So I’m more searching for the exact right person to go on their doorstep and and devote my time to that person rather than just going on multiple leads and just, oh, I’m just going to keep going on these and I’ll hit one of them like I’d rather not I’d rather not waste my time, to be honest with you.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there’s, there’s what’s funny is there’s I feel like most clients that we have, I would say, aren’t as good as sales as you, you know, and and it’s very specific that you find someone who understands the the painting business understands how to from a technical perspective, but also understands the sales side. And it’s really a recipe for for success if you feel like your ability to sell and your knowledge of sales has helped you kind of, I guess, keep the marketing engine running more to.

Oh hundred percent. So like I actually so I took a sales so I funny I was a fundraiser they call it a fundraiser so you would you would cold call people and it was like 1600 people in the company. A one was for the Navy Veterans Association. The other one was breast cancer. Right. I was the third top fundraiser for that company within the first go. So yeah, I love them all.

And everyone we have found the Golden Nugget.

Was the first. Yeah. So they had a one week course they gave you like this long spiel. Right. So what I did was I was like, you know, you’re trying to listen to this long get up. So I broke up the things that needed to be said, put my own twist on it. And I and I just rocked it out. And I actually was teaching the class, the sales class that I took at that company. I was actually one of the people in there doing that as well. So I have a very it’s so funny when people call and try to sell me like I had a guy, a young kid come to my door, sell doorstep trying to sell Bibles. Right? Which was cool. I’m going to give you money no matter what because you’re selling Bibles and your kid. That’s awesome. But he had a whole like you could tell he was reading off something out of his mouth. Right. And I told the kid, right, that I was like, man, you’re a kid selling Bibles. You’ll be way better off just freelancing that thing, because I know that. I know you memorize that. That’s great. You’re great for doing that at the age of like 12. But Kid was like 12 years old, was crazy. But that’s one thing I try to tell everybody. You really can’t. If you sound too salesy, you really got to you got when you’re trying to sell someone, you got to get to like like I always try to relate. Like I walked into a house the other day, seen a bunch of GMs stuff, right? That was the Michigan State University. So as soon as I went in there, I’m like, I’m a shell man.

I’m a michigan guy. I don’t know, am I the right guy for this job right now? And we’re laughing and stuff like that. As soon as you break the ice like that with someone, it’s. So much easier for them to tell you exactly what they want or how to sell them. I should say that’s the best way. How to sell them. They’ll tell you like because I’ll joke around. Oh, you ever got a painting? You had a professional paint job? Oh, yeah, we did. And the one thing I couldn’t stand about them was they’d always want to show up at, like, 11:00. Like, you know, you can have half the house done by then, so they’ll tell you what you need to say to them, you know what I mean? So if you can relate to them on a base, I look around people’s house all day. When I’m walking in, I’m looking for something all around like, okay, what can I touch base on? Like they got kids, bam, exposed. They have three or more kids. I know they’re going to love what I’m going to say because I’m like, Oh, man, because a lot of times I’ll be like, Oh, quiet down back there. I’m like, Oh, you’re telling me I have five children? Three of them are little. Okay. I was like, This is a night in the park right now for me, you know? So you really got to just try to relate to people and and make them feel like they’re not being sold. If they feel like they’re not being sold, they’re going to tell you way more. And then you can sell them, you know?

Yeah, yeah. That’s awesome, man. And in terms of the marketing, like, that’s a pretty awesome mix. By the way, do you guys do anything offline other than door hangers? I mean, so you have door hangers, wrapped vehicles and you guys have yard signs because you are.

Yeah, yeah. So we do yard.

That.

We are going to do direct mail. We’re going to do actually they’re going to be door hangers sent directly to certain subdivisions so you can like pick them out. Actually, Brad, shout out to Brad. He’s the one who hooked me up with that guy.

He’s showing he’s the door hanging automation. I think he’s going to be the king of that. Like he might just yeah.

Yeah. He hooked me up. So we’re actually diving into that because we’re really, you know, because I kind of know certain subdivisions we’ve done multiple jobs in and stuff like that because one thing is two is like word of mouth is great. But if you start doing neighbors. You are just. You know, that’s why we started walking and putting the door hangers on jobs that we have multiple jobs going because it’s a very easy sell. If you see someone, oh, we’re walking down the street, I don’t know if you know a bar down the street, you know. Oh, yeah, we’re doing her cabinets right now here. Well, hey, even if you don’t need any painting done right now, put that on the back burner for when you do. Thank you so much. Walk away. But technically, most of the time I don’t even want to run in it. Just put them on there. You know what? They come and look at our company. They’re going to they’re going to see our vans and our trucks in the subdivision. They’re going to see that they’re going to if they need paint, then they’re going to want investment from us.

And if they go to Google, they’re going to find you there. If they go on Facebook, they’re going to find you. They’re getting retargeted, idle, things like that a lot.

I mean, and the other thing is, when you’re first starting out, hound your customers for reviews, like like hound them, I would literally I mean, I remember I’d be like, hey, so I would sometimes like I remember Skyler was talking about getting on someone’s phone. I mean, I never literally made, like, actual. Yeah, he did say that, didn’t you? I never did that. But I’d be like, hey, you want to grab your phone real quick? So we’ll pull up the actual Google Review and they’ll do it right there in front of you. But I’ll actually text people like multiple times and be like, Hey, just wanted to touch base with you and see how how the job looks. Oh, my gosh, looks fantastic. That’s great. And I always think this is the one thing you always got to do. I always ask for five stars. People don’t do that. They just ask for a review. No, man, you tell them five stars is tremendously going to help us out. I appreciate you so much. You got to condition them to give you a five star. Don’t even have it. Don’t even leave me a review. If it’s not five stars, that’s how I feel. Don’t even give me one, you know what I mean? But like, that’s one thing I hear people do all the time.

They’re like, Well, here, can you leave me a review? You know, tell them what kind of review? Do leave you like, hey, you had a great experience. That’s great. Here, give us a five star review. You know what I mean? Because no one’s ever been mad at me about that. No one’s ever been mad about just saying hey, because I always ask, hey, how did everything turn out at the job? And usually like, Oh my gosh, it was so great. Oh, my, my girlfriend came over and she couldn’t believe how much different look, you know, and then after they say that it’s the perfect time to ask for a five star review, like you just told me that everything went great. Give me a five star review now. Thank you. You know what I mean? So that’s one thing I’m not scared of. I’m not scared to ask anybody any questions. I’m not scared to fail. I will fail 90 times, but I am my head. I am driven. I want to make millions of dollars in this industry. I want one thing that I don’t have that I want to do is shout out to Nick. Is that training, man training from within? I eventually, yes. Yes.

That guy is an absolute legend, dude.

He’s a monster. And you know what I love? I love just how everything is set up with him, like the training from within. Like, look at the market right now. We’re having a hard time hiring people, right? Sometimes, right. If you have a training system built, like with an apprenticeship program, you don’t ever have to worry about that. There’s nothing to worry about. Like you’re you’re literally building employees yourself. So that’s a model that right now I can’t do right this second, but I 1,000% am going to do that in the future. That’s something that I just think is so smart, because you’ll never be without guys. You’ll always have guys. You know what I mean?

Well, shout out to Nick Slavic Jason Paris and the PCA, because I think one of the I guess staples of the PTA is really the training aspect and elevating the industry from a professional perspective. And I remember Jason Perez said on one of the podcast that, you know, the painting industry and really just has not gone through the renaissance of professionalism. And I think it’s starting with guys like you and I talking about it, Nick and Jason really leading the charge, talking about it, the PCA. So if you’re not a member of the PCA yet, you better sign up because it’s got.

To get.

To that next level.

You got to I mean.

Your experience with the PCA.

I’ll talk about that. Okay. So we went to the PCA expo. I brought one of my team leaders, Josh, which I’ve known him for years actually. Funny story. We started painting with the same company I did union. He went somewhere else and then later I ended up funny. I couldn’t get a hold of my dad, his number. I knew where his mom stayed, so I drove to his mom’s house, knocked on her door. I swear to God, it’s a true story. Knocked on her door. She was like, How’s it going, honey? I’m like, Where’s Josh at? Can you give me his number? She got him right on the phone and that’s how I got one of my team leaders. So yeah, that’s how we went to the PCA. And it was I already had knew a lot of guys from the painting Contractors Facebook page, so I had seen Nick seeing Jason, seen Brad seen you, seen Tanner Schuyler as well and just went there it was. I don’t even know. So, like what you would think. Okay. And time’s up by 1000. Like, literally, if you are really trying to like, in your head, you’re like, listen, I want to make $1,000,000 company. This is something I want to do. If you don’t go to the PSA, you might as well just crumple it up in a paper and throw it out. That’s how I literally feel because when I went there, it not only brought in my horizons to that, but had me reach out to multiple people after that, like this year. And I was telling you this before we got on.

It’s like I am I’m scheduling. Bunch of events to make sure that I’m at this year. I just feel like it’s a fast forward button to where you want to be, you know what I mean? If you go around the right people and you can’t be scared, that’s the thing. You’ve got to mingle. You’ve got to ask questions. But if you do, they’ll answer them. They’ll just give you the answers like, Oh, you’re trying to hire a secretary. What? Time’s up. Oh, here, let me show you what I have my secretary do every night. You know what I mean? You’re just like, Oh, do that thought. Hey, what’s your email? Email? You email it to you. You know what I mean? And it’s just such good stuff, man. And it’s like I said, if you’re engaged and you really make it a priority to talk to people and to reach out to people and to like like I had a notepad. Nick Slavic was actually the one who said this. He had his notepad from his first PCA, and that’s what I’m doing. So I had the notepad, I took notes whole time. I have it literally tucked away for this year. I think it’s a New Mexico this year. I can’t wait. Oh, me either, dude. That’s what I’m saying. So I’m going to do the exact same thing there. And it’s so funny because you know where I was at last year, where I was out of the PCA and where I’ll be at this year, like we’re on pace to do over around 550,000 this year from 330, so 200,000 more.

And all we did was add two guys. That’s it. We added two guys, systemize things and and just realize the one thing that people don’t realize is you guys don’t charge enough. We don’t charge enough. All of us. All of us do not charge enough money like our our like to do cabinet job. Like, I don’t think people realize like it’s very, very fine to me. It’s like you’re an artist, man, you know what I mean? So, like, doing something, like doing it, like you’re doing a living room. It’s not the same thing. Like you are an artist, like you need to be paid like that, you know what I mean? So the one big thing that I think that is just so important is that you guys got to realize that like, just because we use our hands doesn’t mean we’re not worth the money, man. You know, we make magic happen. I mean, I’ve literally done so little bit of my background for my union days. Like there’s a place called the Townsend Royal Park Hotel. Quicken Loans is big with us. Like I’ve, you know, ran and been out a lot of those jobs that we did. The owner of the Pistons, the suites at Little Caesars Arena, you know, we’ve done all that kind of stuff. So these guys, I know how much they’re charging and they’re charging way more than anybody around us are charging. Right. And and it’s not that they’re doing anything.

Right, like Nick talked about all the time. It’s like it’s a limiting belief. And I don’t exercise about this. I think it was a well, in in Nick’s events, he talks a lot about limiting beliefs. And that’s one thing I’ve learned a lot from Nick is is like just that right there. It’s like, you know, taking ownership of where you’re at in life and your business is exactly your fault. You know, I’m going to get to that next point. That’s your own limiting belief of like thinking that you can’t get there, thinking that you can’t do the training thing, you can’t do the sales or whatever it might be for you.

100%. Yeah, with me. I’m with you. I just don’t have any of that in me like I always think I can do. I legitimately I’m going to be real to you. I think every human being on this earth can do anything that they want. I literally don’t care what age you are. I tell my kids all the time. I conditioned my kids to understand that like you, it’s not. It’s not about. It’s so much. You just shortchange yourself so much, man. So much. And I tell my kids that all the time, like, how much work are you willing to put in to be what you want to be? That’s what it is, you know what I mean? And yeah, I’m tired. I have five kids at home. I’m doing this a business and I we don’t even work Saturday or Sunday at all. Never. We don’t ever work. Okay. That is pure family time for me because I tell people and Brandon Brandon from, you know, Brandon, what was his he was Brandon Monaco. Yes. Brandon Vaughn. He was going to say that time is the most. Valuable thing in this planet. Okay, time. And the more you professionalize your business, the more time you get. Like money, you can always make more money. I don’t care what anybody says. You can always make more money. And that’s why I think family time is so precious. Because, you know, I can always keep building this company up and up and up. Right. But if my kids, all they see me do is work like that is the most important thing to me in this world. I love business and I love trying to excel. But if I’m not being a good parent and a good father to my children, it doesn’t matter how successful I am as a businessman. I don’t think that I’m a successful person myself.

Yeah, I love that man. Love that. So. Talking about marketing just to kind of clear up the marketing. What is the most profitable marketing channel that that you’re doing right now just for everyone?

I would say honestly, it’d be see, this is the thing. It’s hard for me because I get a lot of leads from Facebook, but a lot of it, which is so crazy because people say it’s vice versa but like am I close percentage I’m Google leads is astronomical. Like I if I go on to Google lead I like close it like. Ten times. You know what I mean? So I might not get as much volume from that. But with the with the volume that I do get from that, I am huge on on closing that deal. Facebook, I get a lot of volume of leads, but they’re not as committed to buying. So but I’m really you’ve got to be everywhere. You’ve got to be everywhere. If you’re trying to bake a big company, at least in my area, areas are different and I can totally understand that. But in my area you have to be everywhere. That’s why I do everything. If you’re trying to have a brand that is seen that people know you have to be everywhere, yeah, it’s going to cost you some money, you know what I mean? But if you’re worried about I’m more worried about the money it’s going to make me, then the money I’m spending. So if I’m spending 4550 $500 a month on marketing, but I’m selling 60 to 100000 worth of work from that, that’s a win.

You know what I mean? That’s a win. You can’t lose that. So but the problem is, is we’re we’re so focused on the money we’re spending because we’re like, oh, my gosh, that’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of money. And I get it because you have to like condition your brain to realize that that’s actually more money. So like that money that you’re spending actually turns into way more money than if you didn’t spend that money. Do you hear what I’m saying? So you have to it’s very hard to condition yourself and sometimes you have to actually see it before you can actually get into that mind frame. But if you can get into that soon and like the sooner you can get in that, the more money you’ll make. If you’re trying to make an actual like professional business with multiple, multiple crews, that’s the best thing I can say is that and I told you that from the first time we talked, I said I was like, I know I’ll eventually I’m going to need this. And then I finally just said, I’m going to get it. Let’s do it. You know what I mean? And I wish I would have done it earlier, to be honest with you.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that, man. So you talked about reviews. Could you speak to the strategy a little bit there? Because you’ve got five stars only. What do you guys do specifically or specific strategies on how you guys track down?

I mean, realistically, what I base my company off is like how make is good human beings? So I feel like you can make any, any body into a pretty decent painter. I mean, mostly anybody, not everybody I’ve seen a few guys got it, but mostly anybody. So I hire quality people because like, that’s one thing that my clients really like is that not only am I like this, all of the people that I’m around is good vibes only man. Like if you come to my job and you’re, you’re a, you’re at my job, I’m just going to get shake your hand and say, Hey, man, it was a pleasure. This might not be the company for you, because I just think that that’s so very important. But our basically what we do is pretty much we do that final walkthrough. Once the customer is totally satisfied and they sign off that sheet, it’s pretty much the next step. So we try to get them to do that right away. So hey, can you leave us a review? We’ll pull it up on their phone or I’ll text them. You have you have from your my business or it’s on Google Maps now you can share the link to them, right? So I’ll share the link. The one problem we have sometimes is that people don’t have Google, you know what I mean? So that’s like we ran out last week to match. We did these four great jobs and I was so excited. I’m like, Oh, these are five star all day right now. I’m at Google. So I actually had one lady. I was like, Hey, so because I did her sister, I was like, So your sister, her daughter has a Google, right? And she said, Yeah. And her daughter left us a five star review for her because she didn’t have a Google account.

So you just got to ask, I understand if you do a really good job and the people are very happy with your product, it’s just like going to the bank. I say this to my on my sales every time I go. Reviews are just like going to the bank. They say, hey, can you if you if you leave this little survey, it really helps me out. My name’s Sharon, right? You’re like Sharon. You were awesome today. No problem. You walk out, you’re in your car, you crumble up and everybody inside because, you know, you just don’t remember it, you know? So you really what people don’t understand is that it doesn’t matter how good of a job you do. You’re once you leave someone’s house, they’re back to their day to day life. So the more you kind of can get them already dialed in, or sometimes I’ll even click it for like the older ladies, I’ll click it and say, Yeah, it’s as easy as this. You just hit the stars if you want to put something on there. We would love that to talk about your experience, but if not just press send after that, no problem. But 99, like I said, if you look at mine, I think I only got a couple of them that just have stars. Most of them will explain like what we did, how good and stuff. Like, like I’m really some of my reviews I’m going to pay people to give me better reviews for real. And that was one thing I was like, I like, man, these guys are going to think, I know this lady. I even know this lady. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I’ve seen them. You know, when you see these longer reviews and you see a bunch of them within a painting company or coding company, you know, there was a lot of intentionality there. And it was not just like some link that you send out and the automation behind it is obviously great, but that really that one on one hands on boss jobs.

Jobs actually sends. So even when you go to invoice formula automatically send them in anyway. But I say I try to get it before I even have that form. You know what I mean? Like, I mean. Where I walk out the door. I mean, it sends them in again automatically. So I send them at once, JibJab, send them it again, and then I text them again. So I’m trying to get every until I got about what I’m at 500 reviews, maybe I’ll chill out a little bit, but like that’s where I’m trying to get like 505 searches because what? How does everybody buy everything? Now you go on Amazon. You say, oh, okay, there’s these two stud finders. This one’s got five stars. This one’s got four. You know what I mean? Like, that’s how everybody buys stuff now. So, like, that’s what’s important. And people got to understand, like, and also with SEO, and I know this from your team, it only works off of the last two weeks. So like if you haven’t got a five star review in the last two weeks, like it doesn’t help your SEO at all. You kind of got to keep getting these so you could have 100, but if you haven’t gotten in six months, it’s not helping you at all.

Yeah, it’s like sales, right? Like you have to have a quick four getter and it’s just like everything in business. Everything’s moving along and so do we. Now, do you guys talk about company culture? So how do you build an amazing company culture in a painting company?

Like so I knew I had I’m gonna be real with you. I had bad bosses. I had bad my union boss, he was cool, but he was like he did everything based off fear. Like, if you got jobs done early, it was just like a pat. It was no pat on the back, no nothing. So when I started my company, I thought it was very important to like like I want I want people to be happy to come to my job. Okay. So we did. I just took the guys we had front row at the Tigers game. I treated them all the fish going for our top sales, our cabinet crew, because they were killing it. They did like I think somewhere on like over 50 grand in 111 month or something, just on on cabinets, something like that. I forget exactly the number but yeah we took them to that. We do. Did Topgolf for one of our crews as well. I think that’s very important and I think it’s very important for them to see me as a normal person and as their boss. They’ve also worked alongside me. So they know I know what I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but I’m pretty good painter. So, you know, there’s been times where we’ve had to throw, they’ve needed a little bit of help and I’ve thrown down with them just to make sure that they make their mark. And they, they really respect me for it, you know. And I tell them I go do it. I got five kids at home. I’m not trying to babysit at work, you know what I mean? So if you guys just can’t come to work and do what you do, but big thing is swag. I mean, from day one, I spent 1200 dollars on sweatshirts, shirts, hats. When I bought my trucks and wrap my vans, I wanted to I wanted all of my team to look exact same. I buy boots twice a year. They get boots. So we don’t wear whites, we wear jeans. I was I always thought I looked weird and whites because I’m big.

Debate, right?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I like I mean, I get it. I’m sure it’s like I look just I just look a little weird, right? You know? So I always wore jeans, so we do.

Kind of look, like, a little bit, right? You know?

Yeah, I feel a little better about how I look. Right. So we do boots two times a year. We get on shirts constantly. I mean, literally, probably once every couple of months. We do themes too. So like we’ll do we just did 4th of July shirts. We do our Christmas attire. Yeah. With like we have one with like Christmas trees. We do, we’re going to do a Halloween brand and customers just like seeing that when they’re paying the money and they see that you guys got Halloween themed shirts on in October, they know that you’re about your business, you know what I mean? And they know that, like, okay, they’re willing to like obviously they’re only going to wear these shirt for 30 days, you know what I mean? But I just think that that’s I’m telling you, brand is very important when you’re trying to be the higher priced. If you don’t look like someone that they want to spend more money with, then they’re not going to spend more money with you. Simple and plain.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s so true. Love that, man. I really love what you’re doing with this stuff. And I. I just think it’s so cool with the seasonal swag. Yes. So cool, man.

How we try to do my my Christmas. My Christmas do it. It’s so sweet. So, I mean, I really got to I’ll send a I’ll put a picture in the service legend thing or whatever of them. But the Christmas ones, man, people act like this year I got extras getting extras made. So when we’re going to leave one with our customers, like a hoodie or like I’ll let them pick one, usually we’ll do hoodies. But I had so many people say, that is so cool because it’s like the elite theme, but it’s got like so on the roofs because we have a roof on our elite logo. So we have Santa Claus looking like he’s about to get into the chimney, right? And then it’s got the reindeer on the side of the thing. And then along the front it has our name and it has the reindeer and Santa flying over top of it, you know what I mean? But people love it, you know, just people like that stuff. And it’s just something cool to make you different and unique from someone else. Because I’m really I don’t know anybody else in our area that’s doing that.

Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s awesome. I have a few questions left we’re getting towards the end here a little bit. What is the best advice you’ve ever received?

Oh, best advice I ever received, man. And that’s a great question. I had to say, man, it takes money to make money, man. That’s the biggest thing. And I mean, that’s just coming from a business standpoint is that you really don’t understand it. It takes money to make more money. You’re going to there’s going to be times where you’re spending more money than you’ve ever spent on any and on certain things. And it’s going to feel awkward and weird to do that. But I promise you, every time I’ve ever done that, I’ve made a substantially more money from it, you know what I mean? Because that first time I had to reach out of my pocket and go, Here’s $3,000 for SEO or whatever SEO and Google ads, you know, you’re like thinking you’re like, Man, that’s crazy. But it’s made me so much more money and it’s made me get so much faster to where I want to want to be at, you know what I mean? And it’s a very hard thing to wrap around in your head because it just doesn’t make sense until you are a business owner. You know what I mean? Because every time you spend money, you’re like, Man, I’m taking money out of my pocket. Nothing ever comes back and more, you know. So I have to say, it takes money to make more money. And you just can’t be scared, man. Like, I just feel like that’s one other thing that a lot of people are scared to take risk and chances. And like anybody very special, I’ve read Kobe. Kobe has a they have a book out on Kobe. They have a book out an epic basketball guy in golf guy Tiger Woods as well. And all of them have the same thing. They’ve failed so many times, but they kept trying. They try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try, try. Perfected what they did and it became great, you know what I mean? And I just feel like those things are a couple of the things that I did that took me a while to realize.

Yeah, I love that man. And I’m a I’m a I’m a big fan of Kobe, too. And his I know there’s a story, I’m going to mess it up, but I think it was after a finals game or something like that. And he stayed after like a couple of hours shooting free throws while no one was there and it was in an away game. So he was at someone else’s stadium by himself, shooting and practicing the shot that he missed. Right. Have you heard about that?

Oh, yeah, I know about. Yep. Yeah. I mean, those are the type of people that I grew up on. Michael Jordan, idolized as a child, Kobe Bryant idolized after MJ left. Those are two of the people that I really looked up to and they both had. There’s one thing they were the hardest working, working people. So when I that’s one thing. Like I don’t ever go home and say, man, I had such a hard day. I can’t be a great dad. I don’t do that. I, I dedicate I try to be a great leader when I, when I get ready in the morning and I’m on my way to work, I put on my big boy pants and it’s time to do business. You know what I mean? Like, there’s tons of stuff that I don’t want to do every day. Tons, but I do it. And the more that you do that, the easier it becomes. And like now I don’t fight myself on it as much. You know, one of the biggest things that I have a problem with, honestly, because I’ve got all these children, is making that morning routine for me at first because I’m like, Man, I’m trying to just like roll out, go to the office and do a few things there. But I started having a morning routine and now it’s so easy, you know? I mean, it’s like you get up, I meditate, I don’t even touch my phone. I meditate right away. That’s one thing that’s very important to me. It calms it’s for any curveballs that come on for the day. It makes it a lot easier to handle them because sometimes if if I don’t get that little calm, like I’ll pop off, you know what I mean? A little bit. So I think that for me personally, that’s something that really helps me to to understand that, like, not only is business important, but like I do a gratitude, like envision things that I’m grateful for before I start that day and realize that no matter what happens in that day, like, I’m in a fantastic position. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I love that, man. And that’s it’s such a like such a clear sign of an amazing leader that you are to be able to say, hey, here’s here’s what’s happening today. I don’t care what’s happening today. I have a choice. And I’m going to be a good leader. And obviously we have off days what have you. But I really like your approach to putting your big boy pants on. And also I love what you said when you get home because we had a rough day as home service entrepreneurs and we have plenty to complain about and be stressed out about. You name it. But when I hit that door, that’s not a justification to to to be a mediocre father like that. Oh, that’s what it’s about. Like when we created Service Legend, it wasn’t. So obviously service legend is short for Home Service Legend, and it wasn’t just about the company making a lot of money or the owner being just an amazing entrepreneur. But it was about the entire picture of being a legend or a coding legend is, Hey, I’m an amazing father, I’m a great leader, I’m a great husband. And I pour into my core, into my team. You know, it’s it’s more than just the business, man. I love that about you, man. I love that. Oh.

I mean, it’s just it’s so important to me. It really is. And I mean, you we’re friends on Facebook, so you see, I mean, I spend tons of time with my kids. I had them with me at the shop. I had to shop the guys who were spraying doors or whatever, they just wanted to come to work with me because it’s summer vacation. I took the kids with me, propped them up some chairs, and we were hanging out at the shop, getting some work done. So it’s just like, I just think it’s important. I just think that that is the most, most important thing in my life. And if you’re a good role model to your kids, it’s going to be really easy to be a good role model to your guys. You know what I mean? And I think that it goes hand in hand. If you can be a fantastic father, a fantastic husband, because there’s going to be times there’s times where you don’t you don’t feel like you want to do certain things, you know? But that’s just part of being a good dad and being a good business owner. And trust me, your guys and your kids will definitely see that.

Yeah, I think a lot of paying contractors, what I’ve seen is like and just small business entrepreneurs is, is you have like, okay, I have my family life and I have a work life and I think, you know, who we are in our personal lives is how our businesses end up being, you know, and so.

And I’m a strict believer. I’m a strict believer in this. The thing you are who you hang out with. And I I’m at the age where if I feel like if I don’t get good vibes by you or I don’t feel like you’re you’re like, I’m trying to make millions of dollars and I feel like you’re not even trying to make $600 a week, you know? And that’s your mentality and your brain and everything’s negative and everything like that. It’s just not someone I want to be around. Like I want to be around people who are trying to elevate me and people that and I want to be around people that I’m trying to elevate as well, you know? So your crowd is so huge, man. And who you big thing to, who you bounce your ideas off of. You know, sometimes family members and team members aren’t always the best people. Sometimes you have to reach out to other people that have what you want or have the same ideals that you want and bounce the idea off of them so they can give you an honest. Because my parents didn’t want me to quit my union job, my parents wanted and said, You have a this is a great opportunity.

You got five kids, blah, blah. And I was like, Dude, I know I can do this. And the worst comes worse. I know they’ll give me my job back. They love me here, you know what I mean? So but that’s a funny story because they didn’t want me to quit. I talked to my buddies who owned brick companies around here. I have two friends. There are ones my I consider both my brothers pretty much. And they’re the ones who are like, Dude, you’re going to murder it when you quit your job. You should have quit six two years ago. You know what I mean? That was the type of people they’re around. And I feel like that’s a lot of the reason why we’re on that, because I talked to these guys in there elevating their game like my one buddy just brought on two more new salesmen and three more crews this season. I mean, the other one brought on operations manager and a secretary, plus a new crew, you know, so they’re elevating. So, like, I feel like I’m like, oh, I got to I got to make some moves here, dude. You know what I mean? So it’s very, very important who you bounce ideas off of.

Yeah, 100%, man. And Joseph Greeley says your network is your network. That’s true. So let me ask you this. What is the worst advice you’ve ever received?

Oh, man. Worst advice I’ve ever received is you talk about the best, the worst the worst advice you could ever receive is that you just if you just are really good at painting, that you’re going to have great business. Like, that’s all. That is the fastest thing. You could be the best painter ever and do the best job ever. But dude, that does not mean that you’re that you’re going to succeed. So I think sometimes people got to realize, like, you could be a great painter. It’s like you say all the time, like we’re all selling the same thing, man. Everybody can paint a room pretty good, okay? That’s not what people are buying, you know? And a lot of times I think that that’s what people think because, like, I’m just really good at my craft. I’ll figure it out and it’s just so it’s so not true, man. It’s not true. If you go into a painting business with that mentality, it’s going to be pretty rough for you, I’m telling you. You know what I mean? So you really just got to understand that there’s so many more aspects. There’s any other thing. I don’t care if you’ve been painting for 50 years. I don’t care if you have a $15 Million painting company. You can learn something new every single day from anybody. I learn stuff all the time. I am so open minded that I do not even my children. I listen to what they say. Okay, so once you stop trying to to elevate your game for your customers or just for you personally, I feel like you’re losing you’re going down instead of up, you know what I mean? So that’s one of the biggest things that I can say is that, you know, you really got you really have to do those things.

Yeah, I love that, man. Okay, final question here. And this is a really good one. I like asking this one. What is the greatest insight that you can share with our audience that has helped you find success in your painting company?

Brand A man. Brand Get a company to help you. Brand Be everywhere. T shirts, logos, software. Like I know I look professional. Not only when I walk up, my software looks professional, my trucks look professional. That that’s everything, you know what I mean? So but you just have to be super no matter how successful you’re doing. Like, I just seen someone say something about ego. Yeah, ego is is crazy, you know? But you also have to know what’s profitable for you and what’s not profitable for you, what type of jobs you sell. And because that’s just called data, you know what I mean? That’s not ego like because I don’t want to go to a job that necessarily is a lower budget. It’s not because I just said I didn’t want to do that. It’s because the data shows that they don’t buy my product. You know what I mean? That’s really big. But you always got to be humble, man. I know there’s a one guy around me that that became business owner, was really cool and ended up kind of not being so cool anymore, kind of know.

And that’s one thing that experience I went through, he fired a lot of the guys that started off the company with got cheaper guys, stuff like that. So humble. It’s huge, man. I, I’m so blessed with everything that I have. I mean, even if I stayed put at exactly where I’m at right now, I would think that I live. I’m living a fantastic life. And I and I tell people all the time, as long as my family is is healthy and happy, I know no matter what, even if you said I couldn’t think tomorrow I’d be able to go make some money. So that ain’t going to stop me like that. So. But yeah, it’s huge. But yeah, definitely. Don’t forget where you came from. 100%. You know, I see a lot of guys that get these big heads. I’m not one of them. I am. I’m exactly as nice to the guy, Joe Schmo down the street as I am to the guy who’s making millions of dollars. I am I am a straight shooter as they come.

Yeah, I love that man. Well, thank you so much, man, for being on the podcast. Any final thoughts? Anything that you want to share with the audience?

Nah, man, it was a pleasure. One big thing, obviously, everyone knows that I use service legend, love them. The one thing that I was telling him before this, though, if you’re using a marketing company and you don’t have a vision, okay, so like because you have to help your marketing company because I have a vision. So I know exactly how I want to broadcast to my customers who I’m broadcasting to and everything. Right. Well, it makes it a lot easier for your marketing companies if you if you have that, if you just think you’re going to get a marketing company and they’re just going to come up with ideas and you’re not going to, like, call them and say, hey, I’m not really that cool about that before and after. Let’s switch out some of the words, blah, blah, blah. Like that’s what I do with with with service legend. You know what I mean? We have Zoom call meetings where we’re literally going over things like they have ideas and then I have ideas and we try to get them together and then we put them out there and we see if it works. If it doesn’t work, we figure something else out, you know? So it’s a lot about like that sometimes. And I think some people have a misconception with marketing companies and stuff like that with that, because I have that misconception. That’s why I’m saying it, because I came into marketing thing like, Oh, do we like they should know everything? Well, every company is a little bit different. So really you’ve got to kind of figure, you’ve got to figure out a vision for them and know what you’re exactly type, what you’re trying to broadcast to everybody you know, and then they’ll help you along the way. Do exactly what you want to do.

Yeah, I love it, man. Love it. Thank you so much for your business, for being a friend, man. And have a fantastic weekend.

Thank you as well. You as well. Thank you, everybody.

 

 

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