Transcript:
Well, happy Friday, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of the Service Legend Podcast. I have an amazing, amazing treat for you today. I know Nic’s going to smile here and blush, but I think everybody that I bring on to this podcast, guys, is guys that I look up to that I think are doing amazing things in the industry, spearheading and trailblazing this industry, whether it’s painting, concrete, coding or any home services. And Nick is, is, is nothing short of that. So Nick, welcome to the podcast.
Wow, super flattering and thank you for the opportunity. I was watching your intro. That is a beautiful professional intro. Ask a painter has never done anything that professional in the history of its time, but. Profit freedom impact was those are the three things that you said there. We are aligned on that.
Holy cow. Well, you know, I thought about it, too. I was like, okay, why do people get into home services? Like, well, normally it’s like other entrepreneurs, whether you have a nail salon or a home service company, I mean, you’ve got I mean, you want to make money, so you have to have the profit first to have any sort of impact in this economic world. I mean, how are you going to provide upward mobility for employees or benefits without any money? So you have to make more profit and then you can have an impact not only on yourself and your family, but the team more importantly, and your customers. And then after that, you you kind of establish the team and a leadership team and systems and then and then you get freedom. So it’s like more profit, more impact, and then we get freedom.
So I had I had this great experience this morning. It is the 15th anniversary of my business and I am not good at celebrating wins. And and the 15th year actually crept up on me. I was doing the math one day and I was like, wait a second, 2000, seven, 2000. And I was.
Like, It is the 15th.
Anniversary. So as as a good person would do, they would celebrate a win and do this. So I’m going on a sort of like a brand awareness campaign this year where we’re actually going to like people see my vans, they see the stuff, and that’s not us, though, you know, It’s like it’s that deep empathy and care for humans and the love of freedom. So we’re trying to do a video project for that. And this entire morning I had my favorite videographer over doing this, and all we talked about was freedom. And when you keep distilling it like you can go through all those things you just talked about, like the ability to do the craft your way, the ability to make money at the craft, the ability to help others around you and this. But when you get down to that foundational level of what I would consider freedom is the choice to do or not to do something. And I, I completely the more I talked about it this morning, the more I realized that I thought about this craft and the business of this craft completely differently. When I was forced to do it for my family versus when I chose to do it.
And now I get like the best of both worlds, which is I can practice this craft however whenever I want. And not only is it like owning your own job, owning your own business, it becomes this beautiful art that you can choose to practice now. And it is. I mean, think about it. Like at its base level, guys like you and me, I had a very tough childhood, right? Like I rebelled against everything. I was screaming at humans. It wasn’t because I was a bad person. It was literally because I was an entrepreneur and I couldn’t find a place. I had this itch just like, let me be, let me do stuff, let me go create. And when you’re young, you can’t you don’t have enough maturity to voice that, and you don’t even know that about you yet. Nobody pulled me aside and said, Listen, you are a jerk right now, but this is going to be a super power for you later on in life. I wish one person who was the later version of me pulled me aside and did that at its best. I’m sorry I’m so long winded. I’m taking.
This over. This is actually so amazing because I feel the same exact way. So this is I feel like it’s just you and I right here. So it’s all good.
So at its base level. So think about this. The ability to practice the craft or not the craft and at your choosing is a beautiful thing. You think about it differently. I will never have a boss. I will never have somebody review me. But you’ll probably notice in that Painting Contractors group, I actually posted my performance review.
I saw that always.
To be reviewed by my leadership team. And when you choose to be reviewed, it’s way different than getting called into the office of your boss getting reviewed. So that’s a long way around of saying. When we think about money, we think about time, time, freedom and things like that. But the ability to choose if you have a boss or not is is at its foundational. You are beholden to nobody but yourself and your own aspirations. And I love operating in that space.
Yeah, man, I love it too. And I got to tell you, when I was growing up and even now, you know, I’m 29 now and I feel that same way, you know, I’m just like, so it’s inspiring to hear that. And hopefully the listeners that you guys are listening, whether on Apple, Spotify or here in the group, I guarantee you you probably resonate with this as well. So if you resonate with this at all, type in the comments hashtag live. I’ll look at Bradley. Okay, here we go.
Oh, our friend Bradley’s in.
For one broadcast. All right, guys.
I have a feeling that Ryan is making up for my lack thereof. It’s skewed more on one end than the other, so.
I’ve gained some weight in Q four. So I got some work to do before the PGA to keep up with Brad. I was texting Brad. I think it was like this week. And so I think he’s going to work out every day. And I was like, Dude, I’m going to go golfing. And he goes, No, no, I’m going gambling. I said, Well, hey, gamble on your golf game. So but we’ll see. Yeah. So if you guys are live, type in the comments, hashtag live. If you’re on the replay, typing comments, hashtag replay. Would love to kind of get a better idea of who’s live, who’s on the replay and things like that. Okay. So if you guys don’t know Nick, which I mean, there’s probably like three of you out here that don’t know who Nick is. He’s, he’s, he’s absolutely everywhere. But on the basic form, Nick Slavic is a skilled craftsman and successful business owner. With over 25 years of experience in the painting and restoration industry, He runs the Nick Slavic Painting and Restoration Company, which employs over 35 people and operates at full scale and a full scale finishing shop. He’s also a host of the Ask a Painter live show. If you guys don’t know what this show is, it’s incredible. There’s no other person or industry that is sharing so freely.
That is stupid enough to do that for that.
I mean, you know what? I’ve even told Marco, I’m like, you know, Nick could maybe charge for this stuff. I’m like, No, no, no, no. Like, but anyways, if you guys don’t know what that is and you’re in the painting industry, you’ve got to tune into this. What is it, Every, every Friday. Nick Or every Saturday?
Yeah. So it depends on the time of the year. But in this time of the year it’s every Saturday morning because I can hit the most people. Eventually I switch it back to sometime during the week so I can just have a pure weekend with my family. But we’re deep at the start of every year. I go back through the mastering the basic series where I dissect step by step the steps to professionalization and we go. It used to be an hour deep dive. It’s a two hour deep dive into the eight steps to become a professional company, and they are literally like a treatise on what I did from one person to now 30 to 40, depending on the time of the year.
It’s incredible. Don’t miss out on that guy. It’s a weekly show. It’s been going on for over six years. I mean, in business 15, doing this for six, it’s just incredible for me getting into this industry and owning businesses for maybe like three years or so now. It’s just inspiring to see what you’re up to. He’s been awarded over 15 national awards for craftsmanship in the last five years, and his company has completed large scale restoration projects, crazy historical projects. He’s also a family member of this old House, which is really, really cool, and where he contributes content about his craft. He’s also a sought after speaker. He speaks everywhere. I’m sure you’ll be speaking at the PCA next month.
Yeah, I am. I am. So I am the vice chair of the board of directors for the PCA. So I am I am the utility player. I basically am their marionette. I stand there ready with a microphone and they say, Mic, we need an emcee over in the the river ballroom. Go. And I just show up and I dance like a puppet and we do that. So it’s.
Hilarious, man. He speaks on entrepreneurship, craftsmanship, trades, recruiting. I mean, anything you can think about operations, anything home service, anything, painting. And the coolest thing, which is at the bottom of this bio that I have here, is your your training program for new painters, your apprenticeship program, and you train people. And I kind of want to start there with you. Obviously, your business did about 3 million or so last year, which is absolutely incredible. But I want to talk about the training here for a second because I believe that I’ve got a mentor, Tommy, that his company is just crazy. He’s going to be on our webinar next week. And the biggest thing I’ve learned from Tommy in terms of running the business is his ability to train others, his ability to create leaders versus followers. And I think you’re a shining star of that. Like if you could just give us some roadmap or some framework on how you train your folks, new people, or how do you train leaders and also kind of like why that is so important to you.
Yeah, buckle up. We are now going to go live for eight and a half hours into a treatise on that. And I’ll tell you how little I know about it now. So I. It is not good to try to professionalize or grow or do any of this on your own, like you really do need to reach out to people. There was a couple of weird unintended benefits of me doing this all on my own early on, which is I didn’t have any of the bad outside influences. I didn’t have any of the good either, but I didn’t have any of the bad outside influence like the stigma of the industry. So when I wanted to grow a company, I just did what everybody did. I put an ad out looking for painters, right? And you would get all the normal things that you got. You got some of the scariest operators on the planet, right? Like I’m I’m 62. I got a chemical dependency problem. I wrote I won’t roll over in bed for less than 40 bucks an hour, but I happen to be out of a job right now. And you’re like, Wow, that seems weird, right? Like, and I hate to be stereotypical like that, but stereotypes are there for a reason.
And what I found is you bring these people into your company and they couldn’t paint and they certainly didn’t share your core values. So that is not the company I want to build. So all on my own I thought, Well, there’s only one way, right? And we have to find decent human beings and then teach them the craft. Now, this turned into be years later, a very novel concept in the trades. I did not know the statistics of the trades. I was just reasoning on first principles, which is this way that everybody does. It does not work. I’m going to not do that. And I always thought that my my market was just unique. Well, everybody else can find all the experienced painters they need and we now know that that’s not true. So we started the decent human being process, you know, probably ten years ago where I just got people that I like to hang around with and shared my core values and then taught them. And then recently, about three years ago, three and one half years ago or so, we actually made a training facility. So all the core functions of what we do, we’re probably a 70%, 30% interior exterior company.
So we train on interior stuff, we have a fake bedroom, we have a two scale replica, 15 by 15 foot master bedroom. We have a mini kitchen, we have a bathroom, we have a stairwell, we have door and window modules. We have all sorts of stuff there where people can come in in a real apprenticeship, much like the union, and basically just learn this craft in the safety and of the standards of our company. That’s 1 to 2 weeks. And then they get paired with a mentor and a crew leader and that training extends for a year and we have quarterly dates of things they need to do. Like for example, in their first three months, they need to paint that test bedroom from start to finish in 4 hours in order to pass in their apprenticeship. And there’s there’s gates in there their first year, and it’s turned out to be a wildly successful thing. And we can basically, in a world of no good people, we can recruit, train and retain all the labor we need. And in fact, this year might be the first year in the history of the company where we actually do not need another human, which is weird.
Wow, that’s incredible. I know Tommy’s got the same thing. It’s like a whole, like, crazy facility where he trains. So is that facility is that used at all, or is it only used for for painting? Like it’s only used for training?
No, absolutely not. So it is a very modular thing. So we own, I don’t know, 2300 square foot building. It’s just a commercial building and it’s got an upper floor mezzanine. It’s hashtag Slavic shop. You can follow along for me building the whole thing out. We just went through an office remodel, so we probably have about 800 square feet of conference room and open kind of stand up desk office area.
I love the conference room, by the way. I saw that. Sure.
That tables awesome custom built table brand new. Anyway, we can go down a rabbit hole there, but it’s a place that we love to work downstairs. Everything’s module everything we own shelving racks, everything besides our spray booth is on wheels, so it’s all module. And when we fire up an apprenticeship program, we do that four times a year at the corner. Two weeks before the end of the quarter, I start recruiting. We go through the interview process, bring people in. They start on the first day of the quarter, week or two in the shop, and then we get after it. In those 11 weeks when we’re not doing something per quarter, it’s a finishing shop. And so we roll out all the prep table, the drying racks, and that bedroom actually becomes a drying room Now. So we everything is utilized in a different way, modular and it’s a beautiful system that’s crazy.
And every person that I’ve ever met like you that that I can look up to that’s leading the industries that that has been doing something of value for for a significant period of time always has the most high production value training Can Goodrich Tommy, you got I mean just I mean you you got Jason. I mean anybody that’s that’s developing an amazing company from from my knowledge has the most robust training systems not just training people to do the things or the task, but also training them to do leadership and communication and helping them out with more things like here’s a41k, here’s how to save money. And it’s it’s it’s it’s the concept of developing people versus cracking the whip and making them do stuff all day. So I love that about you, Nick. If we could just take a step back for a moment here. I always like to like just to kind of dig in a little bit like who was Nick before Nick Slavic painting company, like. Who was Nick? How did you get started? Why did you choose this craft? I think a lot of people fall into it, Right. And know their dad was a painter or whatever it was. So just give us a little framework and of like, who Nick was before the company, maybe young Nick College and things like that.
Yeah. So I was a super angsty, super rebellious loudmouth that couldn’t find his place in the world, like I told you. So it was 0 to 9. I standard youth. Both my parents were English and journalism majors, and they wanted to get into the newspaper industry. They could not find their way in there. So my dad started a painting business, which he did in college. So two origin stories in the painting business. You either did it in college or your dad did it. My dad did it in college and my dad made me do it. So we encompass all two of the main origin stories of painters. And yeah, so 0 to 9. I grew up in a trades, a family trades business, and it’s that stereotypical thing Dad does it. His sons help in the summer. He makes Ma do the books. That’s how it works, right? And from 10 to 18, indentured servant to the family, right? Like evenings, weekends, holidays, whatever else. After that, I did four years of active duty service in the military. Between 2000 and 2004. I did Afghanistan, I did Iraq. I did all that fun stuff that young cowboys do. Came back, used my GI Bill to.
Get a service, by the way.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Yeah.
I did. I use my GI Bill to get a college education. I have a bachelor’s degree in business with a double minor in two forms of accounting tailored to a family small entrepreneurial, trades based businesses. And yeah, shortly after that huge inflection point in my business and my personal life was had to sit down with the old man and he basically told me, there’s no place for you here in the business. So 15 years ago this year, I started my own business in 2007. So it’s been yeah, it’s been an interesting ride through all of that, I bet.
Well, especially oh seven going into 908. Right. I mean how did you make it through that. Like, I mean you just started like, I mean like, how did that go.
So what, what, what people I know you’re I know you don’t want to hear this, but typically what people would love to hear is I knew what the stock market was going to do. I had a strategy. I knew exactly who to market to, what services to offer. I capitalized. It was that. So here’s the deal. It was my first year of business and I live in a town of like 6000 people, right? And there’s two Slavic painting companies, my dad and me and.
You guys, we’re competing.
Well, listen, you leave your own family business. My dad didn’t just pack up. He’s still operating, you know, And he’s still operating to this day, I think. And so you can imagine a town of 6000 people. We literally lived on the same street six blocks away, two historic homes, and we both had shingles in our yard. Slavic painting companies. Wow. So as a 26 or 27 year old young male does, I vowed to crush that old man like I was out there. Like all the idiotic, stupid, not helpful things that a that a male with not enough life experience would say. So I went out there and the good thing was, again, not having any other input, I martyred myself for my clients. Anything you want. Any time, I’ll do whatever it takes to establish the business. And because of my community connections, my veterans organizations connections, I sit on a city boards, all those groups and volunteer things. People came out of the woodwork and supported me in my first year, and it was a beautiful thing. I literally have not had downtime in this business in 15 years, and it’s a lot of because of that just being a decent human being.
I live in this town. I’ve been a good citizen in this town and magically good things come back to you for it. So honestly, I was completely disconnected from the stock market. From the housing market there was craziness and I still feel the same way today, which is what I didn’t know then. What I do know now is that there is a dearth of professional home service companies out there to service the demand that’s out there. So you may think you’re a genius and and listen, with respect for marketing, for sales, for everything else, honestly, right now, if you if you answer your phone and can promise and deliver a good service, you’re already ahead of 98% of all other trades businesses. And once you get to my level in your level where you need extra work that doesn’t come in, then the marketing, then the sales training and things come in. But right now, do what you want. But if you do the basic principles of business, you will have a avalanche of work on your plate.
Yeah, it’s incredible. That’s a really good point. I think I love what you and Jason talk about in terms of the renaissance of professionalization in the industry. I think it’s the most profound thing that we can talk about is. Yes, because you know what Jason was telling me? I think it was like two weeks ago that I chatted with him is there’s never been a better time to differentiate yourself in the market. And just when if you’re just professional, Hey, this is Ryan with Cardinal Codings. How can I help you today or how can I make you smile today versus, you know, I’m driving and, you know, hey, how’s it going? How can I help you or whatever? If you could speak to that a little bit, Nick, around professionalization in the industry. And I know we don’t have 4 hours here, but speak to that a little bit on how important that is to you and the PGA, the industry and things like that.
Yeah, I want I want to set the proper expectations because you and I talk about professionalization, like, hey, the big guys are doing it. This is a really cool thing. You must do it. There is no there is no must be nice. That’s not it’s only for big businesses, literally gas stations, car washes, Best Buy, Target, Sherwin-Williams, your companies. I mean, the electrician that put in these lights here, they have standard operating procedures. They have an employee handbook, they have a pay scale, they have a review process. They have job costing systems. They have all the systems in the business down. It is not nice to have those things. It is a requirement. You literally will be out of business in 1 to 3 years if you do not do those things. So to set the proper expectations, this isn’t like here’s the next level, here’s the secret. This is like, you better do this. Otherwise you’re going to have a shovel full of pain dumped on your head in the next couple of years. So that’s why professionalism is important. They are things you must do not must be nice to do. And when we look at the stats in the industry, the average painting business is 1 to 1.5 people. They take home 43,000 a year and they go out of business every 1 to 3 years. All those stats like that’s 99% of our industry. We are deeply fragmented. This is not a this is not a value judgment. This this is never in the history of ask a painter or this is there a value judgment on small business versus big business? Professionalization means doing all the things that gas stations and best buys and targets do, even if you’re one person, and that literally all the questions that people have. Ryan, how do you schedule what do you charge for X? How do you find people? How do you know if you’re making money? Professional professionalization solves every single one of those.
Yeah. You know, it’s so true. I mean, you know, I think we’ve all gone to a restaurant or a gas station and had a good experience and a bad one. Right. And. And okay. One. And it’s nothing different than here, right? Whether you’re a marketing company, a nail salon, your Nick Slavic, you’re Ryan or whatever it is, you can provide incredible value to your customers by just doing simple stuff like simple stuff, answering the phone, returning the emails, getting that estimate on time, following through. I wanted to ask you, like, was this something that you did originally in the business or was it something that scaled up like, like over time, or was this like something they did right away that you wanted to do? Because I think there’s a lot of painters, right? Like everyone’s getting into home service. I mean, you have private equity coming into home service like never been done before. You know, there’s multiples that have never been seen before. I mean, I think Ken Goodrich, forget all the HVAC, got like a 21 X of EBITA, 21 X of EBITDA. So was that something that you did early on? Was it was it something that was a process for you or speak to that a little bit?
I am. The more I talk to other people in the industry and more people talk to me, I realize I am the most stereotypical story that has ever occurred in a home service based business, which is I got dragged into it by my father. I did it very unintentionally. I made a lot of money by working two and one half versions of this job, so I was putting 100 grand in my pocket, but I was working 100 hours a week. And if I had to take that and divide it by the hours, I was literally making $9 an hour. But I was making up for it with brute strength. That is the story of the trades, right? Yeah. And I literally was in this trade 25 years before I got serious about the business side of it. So I encompass the entire hero’s journey of every painter that has ever lived in this thing. We all come into this as master crafts people and not business owners. There’s very few people who have a business degree survey, the entire United States, all the industries and pick painting as their thing. We all come to this as painters have to learn how to be business owners. It’s very difficult. So really my inflection point was five or six years ago I had three people working for me. They all left on one night and I said, That will never happen again. Or if three people leave again, it won’t affect the business.
And my dumb, dumb approach to that was just pile up a bunch of people. You know, if you have 30 people, if three leave, it’s only 10% of your workforce gone and said 100% of your workforce. So I started for a year or two very unintentionally, just adding stuff as you do sooner or later. And there I found out about the book Traction. I got involved in an economic gardening group, I got involved with the PCA. Jason Paris reached out to me. I met other painters and the huge inflection point went right up from there. So the story of that is I was that flightless dodo bird on the island doing everything myself, brute strength. How could you ever solve this? Every business on the face of the planet is solving it. You’re just too stupid to ask another person. So yeah, it was that was the big inflection point. And literally what you guys know of me now ask a painter has only been around for six and a half years. My business started over at that time. If you go back to ask a painter one, I was a single person painter figuring this out. And if you watch all 346 episodes, you can see the exact story from 1 to 40 as it is now. So I only got serious in the last couple of years.
Man, I love that man. This is incredible. So guys, if you are here and you’re in, you’re struggling, you’re you’re being challenged, you’re going through adversity and you think you’re alone. You’re not right. You are not alone. But it does take the initiative for you to get after it. Right. And that’s what. Nick I love that about you. Nick, too, is because it seems like this this this concept of you getting after it or you having that grit or have the initiative to develop the company and things like that, it came from you because back 15 years ago there wasn’t Breakthrough Academy, the P.K. These coaching programs and these events like the synergy event that we that we hosted there, not around back then, right. So how did that happen for you? Like, you know, I think there’s a lot of painters out there that feel alone, right? Like they feel like, Oh, I’m doing I did 700 grand last year with 5% net profit. I don’t know what to do. Right. They should come to the PTA, They should watch Painter live every, every single week. They should be in the groups asking questions. But for you, like without all of these resources, how did you discover any of this? Like, was it just you just woke up one day or, you know, like, was it was there a mentor or a coach or something like that for you?
Yeah. So, like, you know. I have a very interesting story of the PCA. So my in the most kismet sort of chance encounter, my wife was friends with another person, an Instagram influencer. Way back in the day. Her husband was looking for a job and got a job at the PCA, the Painting Contractors Association, And through this Instagram person and through my wife, they’re like, I only know one house painter. That’s that. Nick Dude, the husband of my wife’s friend from Instagram. So I’m going to talk to him. And I was like, Wow, that’s interesting. I’ve never heard of this trade organization. And you know, from the APC magazine that that Pcas logo look like a union logo. I never knew what it was. I was like, What the hell is that for? But I wrote him a treatise. He was asking me about the painting business, and I said, I’ve got too many thoughts, man. Right. Like I was I was a water spigot on the side of the house. And he came by with a hammer and just knocked the end of it off. And I just had so much information. I wrote him a treatise. It ended up being multiple pages. He took it there to the interview and the people were like, Who the hell is this guy? Like, Bring him in, get him in here.
He’s got thoughts. And that started my relationship with the PCA. And Chris Shank actually ended up being the education guy for the PCA and in charge of finding voices in the industry. And boy, did he find one. He couldn’t shut me up after a while. So that’s how that’s actually how I got involved with the PCA. Just a weird kismet chance encounter. And that is that is the story of my professional history, which is if, if I go to a College of Entrepreneurship up in Minneapolis and St Paul here and I get my four year degree in entrepreneurship, they instill in you collaboration working together. Nobody builds Google alone, nobody builds Tommy Melo’s business alone in the painting industry. We think every other operator in our space is the enemy because we come into here as tradespeople first and not business owners. It is not obvious to anybody in our industry that open collaboration with a painter in your hometown is going to lead to your success in every other industry. That’s how it’s looked at. So even before SOPs and the PCA and everything else, the kindest thing that people like you can do as influencers in our industry is just instill that ethos of collaboration, togetherness. A rising tide lifts all boats, lifts all boats like you do.
Yeah, I love that. It’s that abundance mindset. I mean, there’s there’s so much to go around, There’s so much to go around. Business friends, some of my closest friends are, are competitors actually, you know.
And you know, honestly it’s a funny you say competitor because yes, they are right by the by the book definition. Jason Paris and I are competitors. We own businesses in the same space. We see each other’s yard signs, we see each other’s sales people. But when Jason, as an as an economist, breaks down our entire market. Jason controls, as far as he can tell, 1 to 3% of the painting market in the Twin Cities. And you’re like, Wow, that’s a.
Measurable or that’s yeah.
It’s like, wow, that’s I mean, it might be five, let’s call it five. If he controls 5% of the market. I was like, you know, the knee jerk reaction from a craftsperson, not a business owner would be, Wow, 5%, you got 5%. Jason, as a realist, will turn around and say you can have 95%. Is that okay with you? You know, And you’re like, Oh yeah, I’m stupid. Of course I will do that. That’s perfectly fine. So yes, we are competition. In reality, we’re not competition. I mean, you could have 40 Jason Paris’s and half the market will still be not served in the Minneapolis St. Paul area. And you feel like an idiot when you’re presented with that because it completely changes that abundance mindset from scarcity to abundance thinking, guess what? We love making excuses. Oh, Jason Paris is the boogeyman. He’s got 1000 people in the field. I see his yard signs everywhere. I’m never going to make it. If you think somebody who controls 1 to 5% of the market is stopping you from success, that is not abundance mindset. That is that is an excuse that you’re using and it is not true.
That’s law number one. It’s the law of the lid. Number one in this in this workbook. Have you have you gone to this workbook before?
Yeah, I was actually looking on my shelf. I don’t see it immediately. I believe it’s in my I had six bookshelves in my in my war room here. I bet you it’s on that shelf somewhere.
So all the line. That’s so guys, if you’re on the video side of this on YouTube or here on Facebook, the law of the lid, the leadership ability determines a person’s level of effectiveness, which is I think a part of leadership is is realizing that there’s there’s plenty to go around. And I love seeing you and Jason on stage. You guys are like, it’s perfect. He’s like this, like more clean cut and you’re kind of like, more like me rough, you know? It’s perfect.
Interesting. Now, Jason ebbs and flows. There was a time where Jason wore, like, business suits from the eighties with shoulder pads and bow ties, and you can catch him in his phases now. And sometimes he shows up like we had one of my master’s class, like my homecoming master’s class in Minnesota at the Graco factory with the robots. We had 100 people turn out, These are my people. And of course, I invite Jason as a special guest to do some talking with me, and he messages me. He’s like, I am showing up, not shaved with a backward hat. And I was like, Haha, Jason Paris. So literally I am in a suit jacket. I wore a tie to my homecoming master’s class. Jason shows up like one pant leg is stuck in his socks backwards hat. I was like, You were not kidding. Where are you? So it’s it’s the ebb and flow. Ryan You’ll see us, but at the expo you’ll see a professional version of both of us.
So, yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I’m looking forward to it. We got burgers laughing over here. Burgers?
Perry Burgers He has, absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah, he’s. He’s over here laughing at us. So what’s up? Burgers? Okay, so let’s talk about the company for a little bit. If you could break down like it’s winter, right? I mean, January, it’s probably snowing where you’re at right now. Yeah, it is. It’s cold here, too. I’ll tell everyone. Here it is a. 52 degrees. It’s freezing. It’s going to be hot. But like in the winter, like, how do you guys kind of maximize and optimize the winter, whether it’s keeping guys busy, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s sales, whether it’s, I don’t know, preparing yourself like we talked about, when you open this up about preparing and kind of having a great start to this year, if you could speak to that a little bit because I believe that a lot of people are struggling. You know, they’re confused. They don’t know what to do. They want to get all of the leads now and not generate the the effort in July. You know, if you could speak to that a little bit and kind of give us some advice on how to stay busy, how to be productive and optimize the winter.
Put a pin in that leads in the winter. We definitely got a hit on that because, boy, do I have thoughts business for me in the winter. It is hard. I’m just going to look everybody in the face and say it is hard. It’s all about right sizing your business. In the 15 year history of my company, we have never laid a human off and we likely never will. It’s because we are intentional and we’re doing those unsexy, mundane, boring things, those principles of business to actually make sure we have business. So to to strategies to make winter successful, rightsize your business and intentional marketing. Rightsize your business means that we we operate between 30 and 40 people, 30 in winter, 40 and summer. It’s a combination of our flagship W twos, our leadership team. We have part time W twos, we have seasonal W twos and we have subcontractors. So obviously we ebb and flow with that sort of thing as the demand goes up in summer. So having the right workforce there in place is is important. It doesn’t mean I don’t want for people to take away that you have to have a lot less people in winter because you don’t necessarily have to do that if you have good marketing.
Our marketing strategy part two of that two legged stool, the right size, your business, and then marketing, which is we expend 60 to 70% of our entire marketing budget in the six months of winter here, because over the years data plus feelings, the feeling is winter slow. Like, yeah, exactly. We actually have the data of the natural flow of leads that come in if we do no marketing. And yes, there’s a huge glut, especially in Minnesota when it’s cold between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, it is the Bermuda Triangle, man. Like you need to basically just shake every damn tree. You have to keep your people busy. So what we do, 60 to 70% of our marketing is spent in the six months of winter. We do very intentional experiments in the first two months before quarter three and four or excuse me, fourth, four and fourth one. I take that data from new experiments, add it to the things we know work and we likely spend if we want to keep our business running. We spend anywhere between 12 and 18,000 a month in about eight forms of marketing to bring leads in from all over the place. Now what you have to be careful is pigeonholing yourself, which is, Oh my God, Google AdWords is killing it.
Angie’s List is killing it, Flyers is killing it, Push the pedal down, get sell all the stock and put it all in that every year is going to be different. This year I’m tracking with a bunch of other very large businesses the changes in marketing, and we’re seeing the things that have sometimes traditionally worked, not work as well, cost acquisition up. So I did two more experiments with two different avenues of marketing, and even if they’re not great, they still produce leads and you’re diversifying your leads. So very long way around of saying you track your data, you figure out, number one, how much revenue you’re going to do, how many leads that you’re going to need for that. And that includes success ratio, average job size, everything else, basic data tracking. You can actually figure out how many leads you need in the winter. And in my company, we need anywhere between 26 and 42 leads a week coming into the business. And that’s just how it is. And we craft a marketing plan to do that and we fight for it and then we taper it off in the spring when natural demand goes up.
So do you spend more money in the winter like so like you spend more money top line. But does it get like a lower cost per lead at like at the bottom line? Like so are you spending more money to achieve the same results?
Yes, because the natural demand curve, if I do nothing, if I don’t spend a dollar in marketing this year, what will happen is spring a huge spike. It’ll kind of level off in summer. There’ll be a couple of little gluts, you know, in late, late August or early September. And then before the end, right before fall, there’s a spike again and then there’s a natural taper off to Thanksgiving and then a deep trough between Thanksgiving and probably the third week of January, which we’re kind of sitting right now. Leads go skyrocketing here again. So basically, if you take that demand curve of super high at the peaks low in summer, what we do is we take that 60 to 70% of marketing and we drive those leads to level it off. So we have steady business like this. So yes, you can look at I mean, obviously the biggest mix of our marketing, 25 to 40%. Sitting on the corridor is word of mouth, repeat and referral. And those are the gold standard, right? Like, those are free. They’re perfect. They’re the best leads you can get. But yeah, those go up and down and we need to find other sources there. So we yeah, we do just about everything we can. We shake every tree, we get active and yeah, because I don’t want to lay any of my people off. So yeah.
I love that because what I’ve seen too like so in Q four you have all the holidays, right? And who, who comes in in the holidays. Everyone e commerce. So Facebook ads, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube ads, Google ads. You have all the e commerce companies coming in and just dropping millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars. And then we’ve got Nick Slavic Cardinal, all these companies competing with Coca Cola, competing with Rosetta Stone, competing with all of these e commerce companies that are coming in and spending money. So, you know, there’s only so much space in the news feed on everyone’s phone. You know, there’s only there’s only so much space. And that space gets very competitive and gets very expensive. And what I’ve seen is if you spend more money in the winter and it’s very counterintuitive because you’re going to spend more money to get a lower cost per lead. So, I mean, you’re still producing leads, you’re still producing opportunity, but you’re spending more money to get there, but you can still achieve somewhat of the same cost per lead. But it does go up. It does go up for sure. But I love that you mentioned that because a lot of clients of ours that don’t stay around forever are ones that that are not professional.
They don’t commit to their lead to sales cycle. They don’t commit to what you just mentioned in terms of a doubling down on the on the slower times. They’re not hiring and training, things like that. So I think it’s amazing to share these these tips and strategies with these these companies because it’s so important. It’s so important. I mean, if you go to Coca Cola, right, these big companies or you go to some big organization at Amazon, the training, the leadership development is so robust, but us as small businesses, sometimes we forget that that’s even a thing know. And like what you mentioned, it’s a prerequisite to starting a home service company is developing these, these trainings and, and being professional. So let’s go into some sales stuff like, like are you there’s like, there’s this big concept of like estimating versus selling, right. If you could kind of break that down with you guys. So like, are you guys going out there and selling or are you guys going out there and estimating out there?
Yeah. So this is going to be a very unsatisfying conversation. What I know of you, you strike me as a good salesperson, right?
I’m not very good. I’m not very good. I like to think maybe.
That you say that you have the personality, you have that outgoing people, personality, like, Listen, man, I don’t like making eye contact. How good of a salesperson do you think I am? Right? I’m an introverted, passive aggressive dude from the upper Midwest. Like, if I don’t have to function with other people, I’m good. But I was the main estimate for my company for 13 years. So here’s here’s the deal. I got a crash course in what is sales versus estimating in the last two years as we develop our sales team, they are two insanely different things. Think about hunting versus farming. Farming is I spend 12 to 18000 a month in marketing. Leads come in, I hand those over to my farmers and they go out there and use the combine to bring in the business, right? They react to the things that I create for them. Sales is you need to make the leads to and then you need to harvest the leads like that. Those are hunter gatherers right there. So what everybody needs to know, which you know, is that those are two drastic, different personalities. They are rarely found in the same human any any true salesperson, somebody that can go out there, cultivate relationships, cultivate leads, bring them in and bring it through the entire cycle, create it, harvest it, and bring it back in, is a very special person. They can absolutely react to to leads. But estimators, if they don’t have the right personality, they don’t do well. When you make them go out there and create and hunt themselves.
That’s a great point. Yeah, it’s a great way that you mentioned that I feel like there’s this a lot of home service business owners or painters or whatever that don’t don’t spend enough time like selling their service or just selling the value of what they bring to the table, you know, So if you go out to a job and you just estimate the job and then you leave, I think there’s missed opportunities, you know, So but I wanted to break that down a little bit more. So estimating, though, could be a bigger picture because if you’re going to estimate, then somebody called back from the office. But if you sell, are you going to go out there and you’re going to give a bit on the spot, you’re going to handle objections, all these different things. Good.
Good, good clarification. So in my business, we’re all going to use these like a project manager and an estimate and a office admin are all going to have different job descriptions in different businesses in my in my business and estimate. Is somebody who makes house calls and I would like them to make between 12 and 18 house calls a week to estimate the project, go with their tablet and their printer and their vehicle, complete that estimate while the appointment is taking place. Print it off, bring it back in. And at that point, you can say the selling begins where you’re where you’re offering. You’re describing the process, all our promises to the client, our value proposition, answering questions. And so it’s kind of both. To me, sales is going out and making stuff, creating relationships. But in my company, you could argue we’re just using the words. Everybody uses the words differently, but my people do go out there and do that. There is an insanely rigorous follow up process. We actually have a piece of software that helps us visually track where people are in the pipeline, like most professional businesses. And yeah, we have we have a process in the decision tree. It’s sold or it’s cold. And when it goes cold, we have a process we’re trying to reengage and things like that. So I think we probably do a combination. The biggest thing I felt early on this may tie into this conversation, which is I heard of people basically going to the door and not leaving until they got an answer from the client.
And that never really sat well with me, not because of bad, because some of the biggest home service businesses in the country operate under a very high pressure, intense sales system. There’s not a value judgment. It doesn’t mesh with my personality. So it’s one of those things where we created a sales process. We have two estimators in the company and we found people with personalities that mesh well with a very low intensity thing where we trade on trust and the process and the high velocity communication and constantly staying in contact and we sort of think of ourselves as not the hero in the process, but sort of like the guide. You know, if you think about like Luke Skywalker versus Yoda, we found a lot of success with us being the Yoda. We want the client to sort of be the champion like, and we’re just a friendly guide, the expert, the wise person standing there to help them through it. And that’s sort of the relationship we have. We don’t tell them what to do. We don’t demand anything. When they ask us for something, we give it to them and then we sure as hell have to deliver on that promise.
I love that. Yeah, because hard selling is like over guys. Like if you are out there and you’re hard selling in the home, like you’re probably not very successful. Like, that’s not how the world works anymore. And quite frankly, I was never a fan of it either. I think I think if you can develop an amazing company, but you can sell on value and experience, I think a lot of companies sell on product, you know, so like, Oh, I use this product and so we’re so cool or whatever. But if you can sell on the value, the experience that you can provide to your customers and how you can differentiate yourself in the market, people are going to love you for that. What we did like a little thing that we did with our stuff, is I developed this thing called Seven Steps to a 100% satisfied customer. And there’s literally it’s like, so when we land the plane on the sales, we’re like, Hey, here’s how we’re going. Here’s how we’re going to get you from this ugly stain, smelly, concrete floor to a beautiful showroom floor in just one day. It takes seven steps. Here’s the exact framework. Here’s the here’s the the communication rhythm. Here’s here’s the the emails, the text, here’s the documentation, here’s the preparation. And when we did this, people were like, oh, my gosh, They’re like, oh, my gosh, who are you guys? You guys are like astronauts or something like that versus the guy that comes behind us or before us. That’s like, Yeah, I do epoxy or Yeah, I use Sherman Williams or I use Benjamin Moore. I don’t think people necessarily care about that as much as working with Nick and his amazing management team. Man.
So the data set has been proven over and over. We do between 1602 thousand estimates in my company a year, and the data set is massive where our clients don’t care about paint like Sherwin Benjamin Moore do one of these. Obviously we’re going to use the best products we can, but our clients are not. They’re asking what shine, what type, what applicator. Honestly, they’re worried about the things that clients worry about, which is what about color? That’s the most important thing that doesn’t have anything to do with that can of paint. You know, the color is completely separate. What about all this furniture? You know, electricians come in and leave a mess everywhere. What about the mess? And what about communication? My my last painter ghosted me. So you have to you know this. It’s the paint job is the bare minimum you can do at a world class level. What we lack is the experience like from start to finish. And it’s not. Again, we as craftspeople, we sometimes think about when I’m in that house, I’m quiet, I’m clean. It’s like that is 10% of it. How about when they interacted with any of your marketing and ask for an estimate? How quick was that? How professional was the communication? Did somebody show up on time? Did they give you an estimate on the site? Was there follow up? Did the project management do okay? It’s it’s it’s like the entire experience.
And think about Amazon. There is not a human that people associate with Amazon, but you can click one button and buy something and it shows up at your house. You are guaranteed. I mean, Ryan, think about it. Ten years ago, nobody wanted to put their credit card into the Internet because you thought some guy was going to exploit it and you would have bought a Bentley in Dubai or something. And now there’s so much trust in the process that people will put eight credit cards in. They hit a button and something shows up at their house and it’s like, yeah, it works perfect every time. No human involvement. So if you think you’re this special unicorn that’s going to do something, that’ll get you around a little ways, but it is literally a consistent professional process over and over again.
Yeah, it’s so true. It’s so true. And I think anyone can do it. If you’re doing 500 grand a year, you have four people like you were talking about earlier. Nick Even if you have four people in your company, you can still operate as if you have 400 people. Yeah, you know, in terms of leadership, meeting rhythms, you name it. Are you a fan of like iOS, like, like, like Gina Wickman and things like that?
Yeah, absolutely. I have. I have all those books sitting right? Yeah. This is this is been this is this well-worn copy. I’m not a business book guy, so where my credibility comes in is like, I read three of these and I used all of them in my business. So I mean, there is this well-worn yellow copy here with all my notes in it that has guided my business over the last five years. This is this is I hate to recommend business books because I sound like some greasy guy who’s in our business call, But literally, this is like, useful stuff.
Yeah. Yeah, I love that. So let’s talk about some operational stuff. I feel like you’re like you’re so dialed in with the operations, with the training and things like this. Could you speak to some SOPs for a minute? I mean, I know that you speak about this all the time on your show and and just all over the place. And you have master classes all all over. By the way, I’d love to hear when the next one is. So if anyone wants to go and see Nick speak, we can we can we can talk about that. We have the PCA coming up next month as well. Yeah, but just like standard operation, like operational procedures, like how do you develop those? How important are those and how impactful are those in your business?
So now that I’m deep into business, I understand that, you know, people will sometimes pick out SOPs and be like, That’s exactly what I need. This is going to fix everything. And it’s like SOPs are only effective if you have a way to train them to implement them, hold people accountable to them, tie them to compensation plans and have an employee manual and kind of like an employee guidebook that all ties that in to employment law. So it’s not just one thing. They’re all holistic. Sops don’t work if you don’t time to compensation. Compensation doesn’t work if you don’t tie it to a review process. A review process doesn’t work if you don’t do job costing because what are you going to review the person on, if not job performance? So sop.
Are your feelings, right? That’d be your feeling at that point.
What’s horrifying to me is that most of most businesses on Earth operate under a feelings based compensation plan, and that is horrifying. Imagine if once a year you get a review with your boss and there’s no way to tell if you did good or bad. And it’s up to them to tell you if you got a bonus or not. You want to talk about building resentment. That’s how our entire industry operates, right? So SOPs are a standard operating procedure. They are basically a recipe or an algorithm to get something right. You have inputs, you have an algorithm, the SOP, and then you have outputs. You take the things, you have the paint and the humans. You apply an algorithm to it to try to get a predicted outcome. And they are the basis of everything. And we always think about painting. Yes, we have them for all the painting, but we also have them for coordinator production, estimating and even visionary and things like that to to follow these things. These are the proven steps that you take to get a proven outcome at the end.
Yeah, I love that. So I feel like this is one of the biggest things that’s missing and that’s why I learned to in the. So I got it right here. I got all types of books here. I got the hard one here, but.
Ooh, big shot. Got the hard cover, Ryan.
So. But I feel like it’s. It’s. I mean, it’s so missing. So all of January, we’re doing all of our Q four reviews with all of our service legend employees. We have 25 employees at the marketing company. It’s a lot of reviews. I mean, like my like my, my month, including the event has been crazy, right, with all the reviews. But the responses are incredible. And they and that’s the fulfillment for me. Like, if you’re in business at all, in your entrepreneur at all, you probably know this, but it’s not about making money anymore. I mean, like maybe early on, it’s about making money and providing for yourself. But once you get past that point of like, you know, taking care of yourself, it’s it’s about developing people and developing leaders and providing opportunity for others. Or you’re just really selfish, I guess. But but, but it’s this concept of developing an actual company. But what I realized through these reviews is that the employees, they thrive and they seek the the ability to understand how well they’re doing, how well they need to improve the areas for improvement.
And it develops this amazing culture. So we talk a lot about culture in home service now. You know, it’s popular, right? There’s leadership is popular, SOPs are popular. You know, all these things are like trendy kind of like concepts now. But what I realized is, you know, when you actually listen to your employees, you actually care about them, you know, because our employees might not be able to afford their their car payment next month. You know, they might not be able to afford their rent next month. And as as as the home service entrepreneurs, the the business owners, it’s our duty. Like, you know, in my opinion, it’s our duty to know them, to learn about them. They’re humans, you know, They’re like us. I mean, I wasn’t always a business owner, you know, I work for others, and I wish people would have treated me like how you’re treating your employees. Are you guys doing reviews one on one’s weekly? If you could speak to that, like the rhythm around culture, the rhythm around communication with the team.
We’re a performance based culture that thrives on accountability, and it’s pretty clear in our process who doesn’t do that? And they find themselves on the way out. We do a weekly accountability meeting with the entire leadership team where they have to present their numbers on track, off track. So that’s our weekly rhythm. Definitely not Daily Quarterly. I’ll do all of our apprentices and crafts people and then I’ll give them a mid corner update. So we’ll compile all the data, the job performance, the attendance, the updates that they’re required to do, and we’ll give them a mid-quarter update so that they can pivot and make changes if they need to. Every single human in my company at least gets a formal either performance evaluation, performance review for my leadership team or a goal setting and review meeting for my painters. And we go through all the three big metrics, see how they’re tracking in the apprenticeship program, and then give them a goal for the next quarter or so.
That’s perfect because so so I believe that there’s a lot of small companies that are in our group that are in the PCA, that are coming to the PCA next month, that go to your master classes, that attend your show weekly, that they’re pulling their hair out. Right? They’re like, you know, they’re not showing up on time. They’re not doing jobs. Right. The quality’s not here, etc.. And I believe it can be solved with everything we talk about today, or at least the big vision, like, you know, like the side of it. But so I think it’s so important. Where do you think that small painting business owners can find what you’ve done? Is it the PCA? Is it the show you have? Is it the master classes? Like that’s where do they start?
I try to flood people with resources, so the easiest thing to do is, is sort of like the entry step. I give away a sheet called Steps to Professionalization through the Ask a Painter live show and this is nothing. Again, I have nothing to sell. I’m not a consultant or any of that stuff. I charted my progress over the last five or six years and I put it into steps. Step one do this and here’s actual hyperlinks to the Ask a Painter live show is where I show you exactly how to do it. And at the end of each one of those is a free resource. If you if you’re on step one and it’s proven process and it’s SOPs, I’ll actually send you my SOPs. They’re probably not perfect. But you know what? It’s a place to start. It’s free, it’s readily accessible. The next step is to is to go to the PCA, the Painting Contractors Association. They have a thing called Business Accelerator, which is the steps to professionalization. Jason and I pioneered this thing. We got this thing off the ground. It’s exactly how Jason and I professionalize our businesses.
But now Learning Management System quizzes. You have a cohort of 10 to 12 people that do it with you like a class. There’s virtual meetings. I jump in in those meetings and answer questions Jason does to subject matter experts from all over the country do it. And that business accelerator is like an 8 to 10 week course where you actually take the principles of traction steps of professionalization and actually get them done like that. And you have a group to. Hold you accountable. After that, I would always seek out internal and external coaching. You want to eventually find a mentor, but that’s usually based on a long relationship. So I would find a coach within the industry, outside of the industry somewhere else once you go through those processes. But right now the information is all free. Who has enough grit to actually do something with it? And some people need more accountability than others. I self implemented traction. I probably would not do that again. I would urge people to seek outside assistance in it, if nothing else, to hold you accountable.
I love that man. I’m a I’m just a huge fan of mentorship coaching. I mean, I’ve been I mean, gosh, I’ve been mentored so strongly by some amazing people. And I feel like that’s that’s that’s why where I’m at, where I’m at, you know, whether it’s financially leadership, just with the team, it’s always been from others. It’s never been, you know, for myself or I know everything. It’s always been somebody else telling me one sentence and I’m like, Got it. Thank you for that. You know? Or they they pour into me and say, Hey, maybe you should do this with your family. Maybe you should do this with your finances, your personal finances. Maybe you should actually lead like this. Maybe you should stop saying this word sometimes. Maybe you should slow down, you know, So, like, there’s all these things, and that’s why I love the PR and I wanted to share here real quick. So I’m not sure if you guys are coming to the PCA Expo next next month, but literally just go to PCA painting dot org, go to events right here. Go to Expo. And you can get registered right now. There’s going to be some amazing speakers. I’m going to be on a panel there that Maggie let me know about, which I’m super, super excited about. And I’m going to be hosting a a brain meld session, which is going to be amazing. There’s some amazing speakers. There’s you’ve got you’ve got the painter, the painter, marketing pros. You’ve got Eric is going to be there for Pathfinder. You have some amazing marketing companies. You’ve got company CAM software companies, you’ve got equipment companies, you have product companies. I mean, it’s literally if you’re in the painting industry and you’re not here next month or there next month, rather, you’re missing out. I mean, you’re missing out.
All that’s fear of missing out. You are. Listen, this is this is the cool kids club, as far as I can tell. You will feel once you start seeing some pictures on our social media feeds, you’re going to feel pretty bad that you’re not there. Honestly, Like, I go here to get reinvigorated. And now we know after COVID, there’s some very special things that get lost when we do verticals, when we do podcasts and we do this, they’re great, they’re awesome. There’s something you can only get there, man.
Yeah, we have like 2 minutes left and and I know you have a schedule. If you could just speak real quick about the PGA and about the importance of coming. I know. I know, I know, I know. I share the page here, but if you could just share to anybody that’s on the fence of coming to the PGA, why should they come? Why should they take out their credit card pay for the event, the hotel, the flights and that.
Yeah. So we will buy Ford super duty trucks right to the tune of 83,000. We will buy 6200 sprayers. And we’re like, and then we brag about them. Oh, look at my new toy. Look at my new baby. The expo is like 800 bucks, and you’re never going to be more inspired about anything you ever do. You and I have been through coaching, right? We spend tens of thousands of dollars every year, personal, professional coaching like this. This is like $1,000. And you’re going to be around all the thought leaders in the industry and it’s very intangible I’ve created. So you like if you could just say you’re going to get there is apps, there’s software, there’s tech, there’s all of our manufacturers equipment and coding and there’s that. But I have made lifelong friends here at this expo. They are people now that I look up to in the industry as what it is to be ten times bigger than me. And these are servant leaders that will readily I can call up an industrial painting contractor in New Jersey who has no business talking to a little small guy like me, and I can ask him a very specific question about business. He answers his phone, he gives me that information and I thank him. That’s what you get from this sort of thing. You build that basis of trust, that knowledge for lifelong relationships. Here, literally, I’ve gone from 0 to 40 people because of the humans at the PCA Expo.
Yeah, I agree. The networking is is is amazing. I mean, we had our event on Tuesday, literally on Tuesday. And, you know, there was amazing things shared. I mean, we have Jeff Gear who sold Tzr for 75 million earlier this year, valued at almost $200 million a residential coding company. You could hear all of that knowledge. But the biggest thing was the people that you can connect with. You can text and call and ask for advice. So look, if you’re on the fence, I’ve come to the PCA, you’ve got to come reach out to me and on Facebook or Nick on Facebook. I believe Brandon with Brandon Pierpont did a a session. Was it yesterday?
Maybe yesterday we did, yeah.
Yep, yep. So go back and watch that. I’m talking all about the PCA as well. We’d love to see you guys there. We’re going to have a booth there and we’d love to see you there. Nick Is there anything else that you’d love to share? Like any final thoughts at all?
No. It means the world to me that you would help promote the PCA. I’m a board member. It’s my duty to go out there and make sure that people know about the PCA. But I wouldn’t do it. This is a volunteer position. I’m not making anything off this. The PCA is so meaningful to me and the humans at the PCA, not only the Expo and the in-person events, but just the organization and the other contractors there. The PCA dog whistles to the top half of 1% in the entire country of decent human beings, servant leaders, thought leaders, and that you would promote it through your channel literally. Thank you for me personally and from the rest of the board of directors, this is a meaningful thing that will drive change in the entire industry. So thank you.
Yeah, any time. I think I think that developing people, whether it’s leadership, operations and skills, is the number one thing that it’s our duty. I mean, we do with our children, right? I mean we develop them into being amazing people. I mean, we do our best, right? But I think life is all about pouring into others, serving others. And so if you’re not serving others, you are missing out, I’m telling you right now. But Nick Mann, thank you so much for being here on. Show. We’d love to have you back some time. And yeah, guys, we’ll be here next week, so tune in. And if you guys, guys have any questions at all, post it in the comments. I’m sure Nick will come in and comments and we’ll see. We’ll see you guys soon. It’s awesome.
Thank you.
