Transcript:
Well, happy Friday and welcome back to another episode of the Service Legend podcast. We have an amazing treat for you guys today. Talking big stuff, high level stuff with Jason Paris. Welcome back to for your second time now on the on the on the show.
That’s right. Great to be here Ryan.
Yes. Returning guests this is this is awesome. Uh, most of you probably know Jason Paris or know of Jason Paris. And, um, you know, some of the things that he’s done for the industry and things like that. But he’s an entrepreneurial force hailing from Minnesota, which there’s so many like painter entrepreneurs from Minnesota. I’m not sure what’s up.
Silicon Valley of painting right now.
Yeah, but it seems like, um, he started with a student painting franchise in college and then growing a successful paint business after graduation. Jason’s passion for growth led him to co-found a holding company with four friends. What the coolest thing ever? Uh, his job title reads, um, or the job title that reads Synergy and Memes. He serves as an active board member for various businesses focusing on apartments, which saw that it’s really cool. Maybe we can get into that too, and how building an asset allows you to do fun stuff like that.
Yep.
Um, Jason’s unique contributions include Paris painting, a painting business and Olive Holdings, a platform for building stable passive assets actively with others in the in the industry. Beyond business, he is driven by realizing human potential through endurance, endurance races, founding a family legacy through starting templates for family meetings which I use, which has been awesome. Nice man. Yeah. And conquering the fear of. Is it Maman?
Maman?
Okay. I thought Marco got this wrong. Okay.
Yeah. Whoever did their research. This is pretty solid. Like. Yeah, send this to me so I can. When people ask for intros, I can just our CMO.
Marco So shout out to you, Marco, and our marketing assistant, Sam. Marco is.
A beast. He’s he’s a cool guy.
And by building assets and trades and volunteering with the PCA, Jason Paris embodies innovation, leadership and commitment to making a positive impact. And I will I will send this over to you for $7.99. No. Sounds good.
Yeah. Marco.
Come back, man.
Yeah. Happy to be here anytime. Yeah.
For those that are listening live, we have a couple live. I’ll get that. Everyone tagged. I know everyone hates it, but it does get some people notification. I don’t do it often, just once a week for the podcast. But, um, those of you that are live, if you guys could put in comments, hashtag live, let us know if you’re a painting contractor or the industry you’re in, maybe where you’re kind of tuning in from the city or state. Let us know where you guys are and who you guys are. Would love that in the comments there. And Jason, if you could just give us a little bit more about yourself. I know that was a lot there, but we just kind of like maybe from Paris painting kind of how that got started real short because we you know, we talked about that in the last podcast, but how that led up to Olive, maybe we can start there. Sure.
Yeah. So kind of the classic painted through college story went to corporate America, spent a little over a year there and started a Paris painting, just a paintbrush in a dream back in the day and and kind of lucked out, to be honest. Right. Started the company in 2012, started doing it full time in 2014 and just had a very unique moment in time where it was by far the best time to ever start a painting company. Right? And that probably won’t get replicated again. We’re in a different environment now. It’s still a great industry to be in, but that certainly helped us scale, helped us grow quickly, attract great talent, as you mentioned, ended up bringing a bunch of my college buddies in and and trying to build something greater than just Paris painting to together. But that’s really how we got started was just right place right time.
Who I’m just curious before you keep going, uh, who was the one of the four that was like, Hey, I think we have this, this, this, this thing on our hands.
That was me. Yeah. No, I mean, no one’s that excited about painting until we form a base and start actually doing stuff, right? Yeah. Um, but I’d say one of my, my best friends, you know, brought him on and, and he shared the same vision and, and, you know, I think he was actually my third attempt at bringing somebody into the business, right? So I tried twice before I’d gotten my best friend from high school, and. And that just wasn’t the right time. I’d gotten my best friend from college and we just had different visions for the business was going to be. And then I’d say one of my other best friends from college, Chet and I, aligned perfectly and that that hit it off.
That’s cool. That’s cool. Um, yeah. I love your perspective on partnerships too. I think that brings a lot of wisdom into a lot of these conversations. Um, you know, in the power of that. And, you know, obviously I’ve got partners too, and both businesses that I that I own and um, brings the challenges, but also, you know, like what you mentioned, those, those, those, those skill sets.
That can be like a, a fullness in doing life with other people. Right. Or reaping the rewards with other people. Um. There’s things that are fun to do on your own, too, but to share, whether it’s an experience, whether it’s the ups, whether it’s the downs with others, that’s there’s an element of life where that’s pretty meaningful, too.
Yeah, 100%. And then so, so you guys had the idea and started the painting company, right, together?
No. Well, I started the painting company and then brought in some people as. As we continue to grow.
Yeah. Okay. And then we.
Got together and we formed Olive Holdings. Yeah. With the dream of building assets in the trades and real estate and enjoying that synergy together.
Yeah, that’s cool. And we’ll get into the apartment. You know, I follow the socials that you have, and so I’ve been seeing the progress, which is pretty been pretty cool and all.
Olive is just the first. It’s the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But the pictogram is an ox and it’s the strength of the ox. And and the metaphor that we like to run with around here is particularly in our ventures program, where we purchase equity in painting companies and help scale the business actively with them is we prefer to yoke up with these business owners, get muddy, get in the field and plow it. And it’s just a different paradigm than, you know, sitting in your ivory tower and telling people what to do. We prefer to yoke up and get dirty. And and there’s this this interesting fact where, you know, let’s say an ox can can pull two stones. You get two oxen together and they’re not pulling four stones, they’re pulling eight stones together. And just the power of synergies that happen there and.
That compound effort, man. Yeah, love that. And so you guys started Olive and um, um, if you could talk to us about like the first maybe couple acquisitions, like how that look like what type of companies maybe, and kind of how you guys kind of just that momentum going into actually making it a reality for the.
Yeah So first things first. We we kind of built a home base with Paris painting. And so, you know, when I brought on my first partner and we just started, you know, all holdings is more of a concept at that point. Paris painting was a $2 million painting company, right? And like I said, right place, right time. We’re able to grow quite quickly into an eight figure business doing north of $10 million a year in sales.
And and that was.
Paris in just in Paris.
Painting and all. So the main focus was Paris. And so Olive was in existence while Paris went from 2 to 8, which is. Yeah.
So that was Paris was the ecosystem, the economic engine for us all to basically quit our jobs. You know, people that weren’t already working in Paris painting and begin forming this concept evolved together, but forming a base where we could all be together day after day after day. Eventually Paris painting what’s called a profit interest to Olive Holdings to incentivize them to to basically be in charge of the day to day management of the company ongoing. But back then when we first started, I think we you know, we took a swing at a window cleaning company, maybe a spray foam company, uh, trying to think what else, maybe a blacktop company. Eventually we all kind of said, Well, this is not where the burden is or the yoke is light. Let’s just let’s stick. Let’s niche down two painting companies. And that’s what we’ve been doing really since 20, late 2021 is buying equities in these painting companies and then leaning in to scale them.
Yeah. And the average ticket and painting’s a lot better than window washing, you know, so.
The multiples not better but yeah, they could be.
Better. Yeah. Okay. That’s cool. Yeah, it’s interesting. You know, I didn’t know that that, that you guys had some trial and error on that side. Um. Yeah, that’s really cool. And then what type of painting companies? Um, you know, like, you know, what’s the avatar that, you know, Olive is looking for right now?
I mean, right now. So this is live actually. So air today. Right now we’re at 13 partners that all has equities in with with painting companies and it’s kind of all over the map. There’s like three generic avatars. Uh, first of all, 90% of any deal is is personal. And so they have to share our values, have a professionalized mindset, have a desire of where they want to go that aligns with our vision for the company as well. So right off the bat, everybody shares those those core elements. But there’s someone who’s, let’s say early on in their business, they’ve had a little bit of success, but they’re pretty aware of the gap between where they are now and where they want to go. And they’d much rather do that with competent partners than on their own right? They want a higher chance of success. They want to achieve that number faster, that that situation faster. So so collapse time and they want to have a better quality of life. So that’d be kind of avatar number one. Avatar number two, let’s say they’ve been doing this for 20 years, kind of static, like getting stagnant. Right? So they’re not on the upswing. They’re more static and looking to make that next level of investment in infrastructure, overhead competencies and want to partner to those same three reasons do that with them. Right. And the third would be someone that sees the writing on the wall of like, Hey, I’ve probably got five years left. Typical exit story for a painting company is on a good day. You’re selling your equipment and your leads for maybe a season and they’re just wondering if there’s more than that, right? So those would be kind of the three generic avatars, again, sharing those core elements that I mentioned earlier.
Yeah, that’s cool. Um, yeah. And I think the majority and you and you probably know more market research than I do, but it feels like the majority. There’s a lot of companies, you know, let’s say they’re doing you know, between, you know, a, you know, 1 million to 3 million and that’s that break point of scalability a lot of times three and up and, you know, things like that with people all these things as you know and and there’s a lot of you know in our industry you know the painting industry, you know, at large, there’s a lot of companies that are in that in that in that space. And a lot of those owners are probably like aware that like, okay, I need to fix these things, but like they don’t know how or whatever. And what’s interesting about that story is I think most people think that’s like the traditional guy that, you know, owner operator or smaller business that the guy doesn’t know what to do. He’s a painter. He doesn’t know the marketing, the sales, the culture, the leadership systems, all these things. But what’s interesting is Tommy Mellow, who owns A-1, he just sold, um, half of A-1 They were valued at almost 700 million, and they just did like almost 200 million last year. And even a guy, a company like that, he still still took on a private equity company, um, and sold half the business because he knew that they were at a stage, that it was just it was just way bigger, almost 700 employees and they wanted to become $1 billion company, you know, you know, like, you know just valued that that and he he even knew that he couldn’t get there alone, you know. And so that was very cool for me to see kind of hear you talk about that also. I mean.
Most businesses are not built off of a solopreneur, right? Just in America. I mean, any any company in any industry, it’s everyone’s using partnerships, whether it’s, you know, stock options for key executives or strategic partnerships or whatever it may be. And a lot of times it’s not just knowledge, right? That’s kind of where I feel like we’re at in the painting industry of, you know, if somebody wants to know how to do something. That we have this thing called the Internet. This is not 30 years ago, but back then it’s like, hey, if you know how to do something that’s pretty valuable. Everybody knows what to do. If you don’t, you can get a coach to, like, spell it out for you. But oftentimes that’s not that’s not the difference maker, right? Human nature is proven out with the Internet that a lack of information is not what’s holding people back.
Yeah, they say that there was a report. I’m not sure if you saw it, Jason, like two days ago. It says that there’s more coaches now than there are people to coach. Yeah, I believe it. Right.
Somebody has to do the work, right? You can’t. They always say if you can’t do teach and if you can’t teach, consult. And that’s not a dig at anybody in that sphere. But maybe it is. But it’s kind of like, you know, the rub is not someone needs to tell you what to do. A lot of people that we’re finding they need someone to do it with them. And that’s really the niche that all holds is we have a world class executive team. We have excess capacity that we’ve built. And what we found is when we’re going to make an investment into these companies, the one way we can make sure it’s a good investment is if we lean in into the operations and help scale the business with them. That’s how you make good investments in painting.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s incredible. Um, okay, uh, last question on Olive, and then I want to get into some other things, but, um, what type of, uh, or what type of volume of acquisitions are you guys trying to do, you know, maybe this year or like, what?
It’s really going to be dependent on our bandwidth. I’ll tell you that right now. So it’s kind of like, uh, at some point, you know, we’re only going to make investments where we can ensure that those investments go well. And the way that investments go well is by leaning in with our capacity and helping solve problems with that founder. So when we run out of capacity, there’s not an appetite to make investments that are like, roll the dice. Yeah, I don’t know if it’s 25, I don’t know if it’s 50. Uh, it’s a limited number and then you just hold on to that portfolio and mature it. I think that’s the game. You know, if this was a, if it was a coaching platform, right, it’d be an infinite number because you can scale that up. Infinite is franchising. I’d say I’ll take anybody’s money that is green. And you know, I really hope you’re successful, but if you’re not, I’ll take my royalty fee either way. And yeah, good luck.
Call me next year, right? Yeah.
My worst day is I get to resell your territory, Right? This is, uh. This is not that. So it’s a much more tempered growth and it’s much more of what is our bandwidth and our capacity. So I think it’s a great deal. If I had this option back five years ago, I would have jumped on it immediately. Uh, but we’ll see. I don’t know what that number is going to be.
Yeah, yeah, 100%. There’s been some approaches on, on, on service legend and then like, you know, all the home service companies we were talking about earlier know there’s been four that have sold this year and and you know, it’s just there’s such an amazing opportunity in home service. Uh, you know guys you know, don’t care what you, what you hear out there and, you know, all those things, you know, it’s, you know, it’s all about what is right between these two ears, right? Like what? What can we do with our 24 hours? And, um, and so there’s a lot of noise out there. But, you know, obviously Jason’s talking about really, you know, we’re talking about winning here. You know, we’re talking about serving here. We’re we’re talking about growing here. You know, we’re not talking about, uh, um, complaining, blaming, worrying. You know, we’re, we’re, you know, we’re getting things done here. And I love that about what you guys are all about. It’s just about getting in there, rolling up the sleeves, and we’re getting things done with great people, with a great product serving great customers. So that’s awesome. Um, I want to talk a little bit more. We were talking right before we jumped on Jason, uh, my buddy Jeff Gear, uh, and we did something similar with him and they’re, they’re buying concrete coating companies. And he was talking about, um, you know, I think, I think I asked him a question was, um, what should someone be thinking about right now if, uh, or what should somebody be doing right now if they’re thinking about selling? And he goes, Oh, well, that happens, you know, a year before, you know, or two years before, right? Or whatever. Can you speak to that a little bit? Like, how can a painting business get prepared for an acquisition? Because, um, and also talk to us about why it’s not good to start maybe shopping, acquisitions, all these things, right, When you think about it. Sure, sure, sure.
So I’d start kind of with maybe a qualifier. I would never recommend selling your company outright and painting. This is not like the media marketing landscape where you’re getting these great multiples. If you’re going to sell a painting company and you have like $1 million of or less of profit, you know, maybe you’re getting like A3X multiple of that of that profit, say, EBITDA. But these are not very complex businesses. So let’s just call it profit. And so the hard part in that situation is why on earth would you ever sell that? Because what are you going to do with that cash? All right. Where can you get that rate of return? Cash on cash dollar wise with that IRR when you’re only getting A3X multiple of profit. So I would never recommend selling a painting business unless you’re selling a portion of it to take on a partner. That’s going to increase either the scale, the stability or ideally both, because that’s the real golden prize of these businesses are not great vehicles to sell. If you’re building a business to sell, you pick the worst industry. Like literally like I can send you a big chart that we got from a broker and it’s like, you know, manufacturing, engineering, media, like all these. Worst. You are in the worst one if you’re building to sell. But there’s also not many better industries where you get cash on cash spinning out. So building it for civilian scale, that’s that’s kind of the golden prize here. Starting with the end in mind. You know, I would start trying to make yourself enticing on either how do I get to a place where a larger holdings company would want to partner with me? What are some of the foundations that you want to get in place if you’re going to play that 0 to 1 role and then bring on partner or partners to take it from 1 to 10.
Right. What does that look like? Or if you’re that unicorn in the rough that’s going to go all on your own. You know, what are the foundation pieces that you’re building, right? Don’t funnel yourself into the company. Empower talented people. All those those basics of building an organization. But being very clear from day one, what do you want? Right. And this is not what 99% of the industry wants. 99% of the industry. Their best day in life is the dentist model, right? They own their own business. Somebody’s setting the appointments. They walk into the office. Hey, Jenny, how’s that cleaning look? Oh, you missed that cavity there. Let me just hit that spot right there. Kind of doing. Maybe they’re doing the sales. Maybe they’re doing some sales. They’re playing like active president. They have like, a really well paid job where they don’t work that hard. Right. That’s that’s very different than an owning an asset in life. Yeah. That is stable and passive. Right? Jobs are stable. Right? If you work 40 hours a week, you will get 40 hours of pay that is as stable as you can get. Not passive, right. There are some businesses that are relatively passive until 1 or 2 of the key employees in a pretty flat org chart decides they don’t want to come to work anymore. But having stable passive income, that is like the price if you want to be in that investor seat.
Yeah. And you know, I heard Grant Cardone says and I’m not a fan of everything that he puts out, but he uh says, uh, um, uh, uh, because he has like these, like these nice cars. And so he’s making a video about like, celebrity, like rappers and all these like, uh, basketball players or football players or whatever that blow all their money on these, like, lambos and all this stuff. And he goes, Hey, what you want to do? He goes, If you want these types of cars, you don’t use your earned income to to buy these things. You only award yourself with these types of things, whether it’s trips or whatever, when when you can pay for it with your passive income. Sure. Um, you know, or and cover your basic necessities with your passive income and things like that.
And really it’s just there is like this very great opportunity that we have in painting right now where the industry isn’t fully professionalized, where if you want to build a business, you can really change the destiny of your family, right? Another way to say it like this is kind of a big opportunity and a big deal for people in this space. You know, here in 2023. Uh, we also live in an economic model called capitalism, right? It’s not it’s not called hard work ism. Uh, it’s not called laborism. It’s not called, like, uh, consistent ism. It is capitalism. And if you can be someone that can accumulate a pile of capital and then allocate that, well, that is what the system is built to benefit, Right? And just acknowledging this is a system that we operate in, the economic model that we’re in is literally called capitalism. And so acquiring capital, getting savvy at building equity, being a good investor, that’s what this system is built for.
Yeah. I love the way you put things. Did it just. It just can listen to it forever here. It’s like Nick Slavic. He put a painter live much better. I was. I was listening to it. I’m just like, Dude, he just keeps going. I’m like, Dude, he’s just so it’s just like dripping wisdom. And I know you don’t feel that way, and I know you don’t accept that, you know?
No, I’m pretty. This is like a that’s a midwestern thing that I’ve overcome. And so I’ll just say thank you for that compliment. You know, I work really hard at developing myself, and I appreciate what you said.
Yeah. Yeah, it’s awesome. Um, just. It’s awesome how you simplify the complex. You know, I think it’s a real indicator of a really good leader is they’re able to just really simplify complex things. And so I appreciate that you, you, you breaking down these things for us. Um, so when we’re preparing to sell our business, right, which is essentially what we just what we just got taught is when we’re preparing to sell our business, if that’s what we’re looking to do, it happens a long time before you’re like talking to somebody to sell it, right? Because you have to build the business. Um, and then I also heard Lance Bachman, he owns one, so he just sold that for multiple eight figures and then he owns like ten home service companies. Um, and he’s, he’s a really solid dude. And he was on a podcast two days ago talking about laying out everything that he’s looking for when he’s buying a company. And it was systems, culture, scalability, technology, just organized like CRM, pipeline, things like this. And he had other things in there. Um, and is there certain specific things that are like, hey, if this, you know, if this is not done or if this is done, like is there certain check marks where it’s like somebody that’s listening that’s interested, that might have a business that you’re interested in buying or, you know, now or later? Is there certain like maybe 3 to 5 key KPIs that they should check off before they even think about?
Yeah, like the fundamental philosophical part of why anyone would buy a company is you’re trying to purchase future profits. And so as an investor, the things you’re looking at is how stable are those profits? And so things you’re checking off is like, hey, if there’s a if there’s an org chart of a team with key people and key roles, it is likely that that team will continue to deliver a profit, much more so than if it’s run by two people. Right. And or it’s run by three people and two of them are brothers. Right? That’s like I don’t know what profits I’m buying when I buy that. Right. Typically, you’re not going to buy a business for profits if you’re in the painting industry either. But I would just say that’s that’s the philosophical. So then you can start to break that down of like, hey, how you know, do they have any long term contracts? How organized is their CRM? Is there any like technology that leverages their team or is that an upside? And again, you know, in a gap of efficiency that you could gain on it? I would say, again, if you’re in painting and you’re looking for a full exit, you pick the worst industry and you know you’re going to get a multiple on your cash.
But what are you going to do with that? Cash If you’re an investor, you’re going to find a much worse investment to put it in, right? The best place you can have your cash is in your painting company operating and spinning you off a profit. So I’ve personally I’ve sold pairs painting, I’ve sold tranches of pairs, painting three times in my life. And every time I did, I honestly could care less. I never negotiated on the price. All I cared about was who was I bringing on to the team. Does it can help me build stable passive income and print checks for the rest of my life. Right? So if you’re going to sell a portion of your painting company, the thing you should be concerned about is what is the likelihood that this team is going to increase the profit? And that’s going to become more stable over time. Those be the factors I look at? If you’re looking to do a full exit, start another company. You literally put the worst pick the worst one. I would not advise selling your painting company unless you’re ready to, like, exit and die.
You heard it here first. The podcast is over. No, I’m just kidding. Um. Uh. Okay. So, um, there was one point you touched on. Um, it was about, Oh, so if there’s somebody out there that, um, because I think this is common, if there’s a painting company that’s, uh, growing top line, so, so there’s consistent top line growth maybe, maybe over the next, you know, over the previous 12 to 24 months. But the profit is probably, you know, is, you know, let’s just say, uh, 8 to 12%. But they’re growing top line, but there’s operational inefficiencies, etcetera. What does that look like and what should that person do?
Again, put your your put your mind in the the seat of the of the investor. Right. So investors are people that if you boil it down like to the ground level allocate capital well what is capital It’s resources. It’s human resources but also resource resources. So you know a good investor is going to allocate resources to an area that that society benefits. Right. And that’s why that’s why we are in this system that promotes capitalism, because the alignment of properly aligning resources seems to be the most productive model, especially when you have all the guns. Right? Then then none of the other models have a chance. But your question was sorry that I was really excited about that joke. It’s kind of meta, but.
No, I.
Was asking somebody be doing if they’ve got top line growth. The profit. I think that’s investor. You’re either looking for buying future profits. So you want that stability or the potential of future profits, right? So you’re buying like this potential of growth, right? As an investor, you could come in and say, Yeah, like if I were to buy, if it had been spinning off those numbers for the last 20 years, I’d probably be valued at this. But there’s been a clear upswing over the last three years. So I’m more that’s more of a momentum purchase, right? There’s value there, right? That’s why like companies buy these tech businesses that make $0 profits, lots of money because there’s this potential future profit that they’re buying. They’re not buying stable profits today. They’re buying potential future profits. So you bought like farmland that’s already leased, you know, a pretty high multiple of the current profits because that’s going to continue to spit out cash for a long time. Right. Or if you own land that has a lease on, there’s nothing more stable in life than that. Right? So you have a pretty high multiple, multiple on that. But again, the tech start up that makes no money but has been getting all these clients and it could potentially change its pricing structure or something. And this is the Amazon story, right? When you invest in that, you are buying the potential for future profits. So that’s what the investors are looking for. If you put yourself in that mindset, then now you’re on the other side of the table. You’re saying, how do I make my company either stable or make a real promising story of future profits? Right. And again, if you’re in painting, which is my industry, might be different. It certainly is different in other industries. But if you’re in painting, I would not be looking for a big payday of selling your business, but it is probably the best place you could have invested your sweat equity in if you’re looking for an annual return. So good job in that sense.
Yeah.
Yeah. I love that. For those that are live putting comments, um, uh, you know, are you, are you interested in a partner? I’m just curious to get a pulse on that, you know? You know, are you guys good? If you guys feel so inclined, put it in comments. Let us know.
And get you on react. This is like the hard part about selling your company is what do you do with those dollars, right? Yeah. Unless you have like a grandma who needs money for cancer researchers or something or, or you want to buy a liability in life like a cabin, that is another scenario. But if you’re like, trying to build wealth and you sell your equity in your painting company, you know, unless your local sports team is offering up shares, I don’t know where you put your cash to get a better return.
You got to start something and depend on your age to like you said, in the Avatars, come on your age too, you know?
I mean, even if you’re young, I mean, you’re not going to get that in real estate. You’re not even when you’re active, right? So it’s like, where do you put that cash? Unless you start a new home service company again and leverage partners, you know, more intensively now, collapse time a little more aggressively. I’ve seen that story play out. Someone sells their home service business. They get a taste of that and say, Well, let me take a new swing on a larger on a larger scale. Yeah. Um. Yeah. I like. I do want to compliment people if if they’ve built a painting company specifically residential, it’s like, yeah, it’s it’s not a great asset to sell, but for the value of your sweat equity, cash on cash IRR, you did make a great decision.
Yeah, that’s interesting. Um, and we’ve talked a lot about, you know, this word asset. Um, and, you know, as, as, as you, as you’ve been leading the charge the past couple of years of the renaissance of professionalizing this industry, I think you’ve really been spearheading it along with many others. Um, that word has come up a lot, you know, Um, could you chat with us about what does it mean to have a true asset, you know, as an entrepreneur, as a business person, etcetera?
Yeah. Assets produce income. Liabilities produce expenses. All right. Now, there’s also like on your face or like a house is technically an asset, although it produces liabilities, not income. Right? A rental property produces income along with their liabilities, but the income should exceed the liabilities unless you’re doing a long term kind of land play. Yeah, but yeah, there’s this very simple equation in life of if you can get the assets in your life to be outweighing the liabilities of your life, including lifestyle, you’re no longer serving like mammon, right? You are not like you’re no longer trying to earn income by selling your time to not be homeless. Right. Which is the invisible hand of the.
First goal when you turn 18, right, is like, okay, if.
You live in America, that’s a real fear, right? We do not have a great social net. That is like what makes this system tick, I think a little bit. But if you if you’re more motivated by how do I pursue my passion, how do I realize my potential, how do I have this biggest impact on the world? That’s just a different paradigm that you get to operate from, and it often will produce outsized results. I don’t know if you’ve read the there’s like a short novel called Mana The Tale of Two Tales of Humanity touches on this a little bit more like a late order right now.
Yeah.
So it’s more of like a it’s on online for free and it’s like five chapters on it’s called mana. Let me check. It’s like Mana two Views of Humanity’s Future. Marshall Brian Marshall Brain I think it wrote it. Um, but it’s this great, it’s this great short story that talks about really late stage capitalism. It’s really timely right now with the with AI taking off because it’s based around the takeoff of AI and what happens in, you know, basically two different two different economic structures. One is capitalism as one is like a like a socialism, but without the opportunity to have human nature. Um, but just it just plays out of, of these different incentive systems of, you know, are you, are you driving too based off of the fear of I don’t want to be homeless or are you driving based off of how do I realize my individual potential and be what I was created to be? So anyways, if you live in the Western sphere, if you live in capitalism, I would highly recommend getting assets that outweigh your liabilities in life. That is like the foundation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And it can be it can be a generational thing too. I don’t think people have the perspective of this unique place that we’re in geography time wise of if my ancestors could see the opportunities, if all of our ancestors could see the opportunities we have, like, wait, you can affect your lineage lot in life based off of how hard you work, your ingenuity and this entrepreneurial opportunity. That’s right. They would have been like, That’s crazy.
Like, typically it’s like you’re a peasant and I don’t care what you do, you’re going to be a peasant because you’re not a king. You’re not a king. Now it’s like instead of like those stratospheres, we have more of an economic stratosphere. And some people are definitely born with advantages, right? So they have a pretty more of an escalator up the stairs. But you can still climb the stairs if you want to work hard, Right? And that’s yeah, there’s this picture that that I saw online. Sorry for this rant, but there’s this great line they had like someone with a lot of money. No, the money was it was basically like forming a ramp up. This set of stairs was like, Oh, look, there’s one person walking up money very easy. And there’s this other person, like grinding, like sweating, like trying to climb up these stairs themselves because they didn’t have this money ramp. And to a lot of people, that’s like a big critique on capitalism. I saw that and I got really excited. I was like, Wow, even if you’re not born into privilege with all this money stacking, you get this easy ramp. You can still grit and grind and climb these stairs yourself and still arrive at the top. That that is something that’s beautiful, right? It’s not fair, it’s not equitable. But there is upward mobility. And that’s something I don’t think people fully appreciate it in this moment in time of the opportunity they have, not just for themselves, but for their for their family to begin a legacy of asset mindedness.
Yeah. It’s so. God, it’s so true because we’re so conditioned by society. You know, you’re getting taught by teachers in high school and sometimes, you know, in college, I mean, where they haven’t really, you know, done the things that the, you know, the kids need to be taught. Right. Um, so, I mean, you got teachers that might be teaching something about money or economics and they’ve got seven grand in their bank account, right? And they have a six, six, 20 credit score. It’s like and they’re teaching us how to, to do the right things, you know. Uh.
So that’s like, it’s not, uh. Yeah, there’s the secret of contentment is real, too. Right. So it’s not just about always chasing the dollar and having income, but there is a real thing when you are under the gun and you can’t control your destiny because of the debts in your life. And you know, we saw a great example of this over the last three years, right? There were people that were showing up to jobs. They were told that they had to do things that maybe they didn’t agree with if they wanted to keep their job. And the consequence of that is, what else are you going to do? Right. And so I’ll just put this very plainly. If you if you have a lot of student debt and you’re showing up to your corporate job that you need and you’ve a pretty niche role in an area that you like to live and they tell you that they want you, that you need to take a vaccine to continue to work there. And maybe you have concerns over that vaccine. You are going to take that vaccine whether you want to or not. They’ve got you by the balls of mammon, right? That is very different than, hey, I have assets that produce income that meet or exceed the liabilities in my life and I get to choose the path that I want to choose based off of my own value set. Uh. That can that can pop up in many different value ways. It can pop up in like, hey, you’re going to miss your kid’s baseball game. It’s like, well, yeah, not if you want to keep employing me, I’m not. So those are decisions that you can make. There’s there’s a novelty in that, but there’s also something around the secret of contentment. It’s not about chasing the dollars. Maybe it’s reducing your liabilities. I don’t know. There’s something special to being an entrepreneur. And if you run a painting business, you have the option to run a business, not just have it be a lifestyle job.
Yeah, it’s.
I like how you broke that down to where the asset, the assets or asset that we’re that we’re building, that we’re creating, we’re pouring our lives into. It’s so much bigger and it and it and there’s a lot of philosophy in it. And I like how you broke that down because when we think about this concept of having an owning an asset, the yeah, the money is kind of the first thing because money has the freedom and things like that. It’s, it’s not the love of money, but it’s kind of what it can provide us in this economic country, this capitalism country. But the cool thing is, is the bigger thing to focus on is everything else, you know, like why we’re doing it, why like that philosophy, that that, that philosophy that you would probably prefer.
I think I would prefer to live in socialism if human nature wasn’t such a such a bitch.
I know, right?
My language, if human nature wasn’t such a such a B, Yeah, socialism sounds great. I do We do live in a capitalistic system and it’s kind of like if you want to do good, you know, there’s a couple of ways to do it. That’s my that’s the take that I’m taking at age 36. Who knows if I change it in the next ten years. But.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. It’s pretty incredible. Okay, man, we talked about a lot of stuff here. Um, hopefully those of you that are still live with us put in comments I’ve said, putting things in, comments I’ve gotten Bergus So bergus you get a free car because you’re the only one that gave us a comment. No, I’m just kidding. Bergus. I can’t. I can’t do it. Okay. But bergus is the only one that left us a comment. So those of you that are live just put in comments, um, just hashtag value. If you’re enjoying all of this amazing content that Jason probably read, a thousand books went through, I don’t know how many professors to get this level and experience to get this level of information, to bring it, you know, like to break it down to us. So, uh, you know, in such a simple fashion. So put in comments, hashtag value if you’ve gotten any value from this, and we would appreciate that, guys. And if you guys have any questions as well here live, you guys can get those prepared for us live. Thank you, Jeremy. I see that. And then if you’re on replay, putting, uh, putting comments, hashtag replay, let us know that you’re on the replay. And those of you that are listening still on Apple and Spotify, give us some feedback. We’d love to hear the feedback from of, uh, from Apple and Spotify listeners. That’s the bulk of our listeners is on audio there. So thank you guys for that. Um, Jason, we can kind of get towards, uh, you know, the end here, but I wanted to turn it over to you just real quick. Uh, is there anything that you feel like you want to share that that I might not have asked or any topics that I didn’t bring up around kind of building assets and things like this?
You know, some of the things we did touch on was the unique moment in time and place that we have right now. I don’t think people fully appreciate you never appreciate something until you look in the rear view mirror and you say, Well, that was weird. It’s kind of like the fish never realized. It doesn’t realize that it’s in water, right? So we’ve kind of a lack of appreciation for the moment time that we’re in. The painting industry, as you mentioned, I hope is going through its renaissance of professionalism. It should. There’s an excess of learning that’s happening right now. We make way more money than we should. I’ve met a lot of people who own painting businesses that make more than cardiac surgeons, and they’re not very competent. I’ll just call it as it is. And so typically when there’s an excess of profits that drives in competition and there’s nothing more competitive than private equity, when that starts to get involved, that’s what drove really the change in, you know, all the licensed trades like Hvac, plumbing, electrical. You’re seeing it in garage door, right? That’s what’s changed in breweries. So I’ve talked about this in other podcasts, but okay, uh, you know, typically people who started a brewery, people who like to drink now, you know, who starts breweries, MBA students start breweries, right? Not because they like to drink, right? Because they like to build assets. And there’s a way to actually harvest that value now because there’s a marketplace, right? That the larger the Budweiser’s, the Coors, you know, all of them have started to grow that marketplace starting by down these niche, these niche breweries that are built.
Wow.
Really, the ability to harvest equity, that is what really trades changes in industry in a small way. We’re trying to be a part of that at Olive, right? Yeah. Help build assets that where people are actually harvesting the value of their equity. It’s not not there’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s not just a lifestyle business for them. It can outlive themselves, can pass down to their kids, to their family, not as a job, but as an asset. When those things start to happen, that’s when the big talent gets into the industry, right? Because A-level talent is not driven by income, right? A level talent is driven by equities and assets.
Yeah. Love that, man. And then, you know, if anybody was interested in this, um, what is the best way for them to reach out? I mean, we have the website here, but is there a better way or social media?
Just just reach out to me on social media is definitely the best way. Uh, you can also shoot me an email. Jason at olive hyphen mgmt for management.com. Jason at Paris hyphen painting.com. But social media people message me all the time. It’s probably the best way to get a hold of me.
Cool.
So you have olive holdings.com reach out to Jason on socials and things like that and I want to just quickly in with this. Um, how big of an influence if any does like the PCA and just like the industry at large have with with with olive and kind of like you know what you guys are up to and the impact that you guys are making in in the space.
Yeah.
So it was a question how big of an influence does have with like, you know, like.
You know, because, you know, we’re talking about like, you know, what you guys are doing is really coming in and professionalizing and, you know. Yeah. And, you know, I feel like that’s really a shared vision with the PCA.
Yeah. So I don’t.
Know. You may not have known this. That was the previous chair of the PCA. And you know, during my time that was, that’s what I think this industry needs is I think it needs professionalism and man could get into this deep if we want to kill another 20 minutes. But there’s this big question of is there no labor out there? And I’m like, There are no problem solvers. There’s no business owners, there are no business owners in this industry. There are a lot of people who are painters who want to be self-employed, but there aren’t many business owners because you know what? Business owners do they solve problems, Right? Do you know what bureaucracies do? They start initiatives, right? So when large organizations, large paint companies, start these initiatives to pull painters into the industry, I kind of shake my head. I don’t think that’s the way to go because what happens, what happens tomorrow when there’s a glut of painting of painters, people that want to paint. Suddenly you get the complainers out there that say it’s impossible to train estimators. It’s impossible, like all these things that entrepreneurs figure out. Our stumbling blocks in this industry because the people driving this industry are not entrepreneurs. They’re not business owners. They are painters. They are employees who are, in a lot of ways forced to start their own company because there are no companies to work for.
Go. So if you’re.
If you’re started your own painting company, this is like 99% of the industry, not you if you’re listening to this podcast, obviously, but 99% of the industry, they would probably love it if they could work at Paris painting, running a couple of crews, right. Doing sales, overseeing a sales team, VP of production. Right. Those jobs just there’s like two of them. I mean, if you’re if you’re someone that knows how to paint and you have the competency to be a little more than a painter, what do you do? You start your own painting company, you have to. There are no options, right? But then you quickly find out that you’re not a business owner because that’s like 2% of the population and it’s not you. And that’s okay, right? But now you’ve got these business owners that have no business running a business, hiring people, and then they have a bad experience and the cycle starts all over again. Yeah. And so that’s, that’s like the challenge that we’re in. And, and uh, you know, you can, you can be the change that you want to see in the world tend to the part of the garden that you can reach, right? Have the impact you can have. But yeah, my passion is driving professionalism into this industry is what’s going to change a lot of the problems that we’re all trying to figure out. Uh, just just doing it in a different way.
Yeah. Love that, man. Um, okay, guys, we are all wrapped up here. Um, probably spend a couple minutes with questions. If you guys have questions that are live. I saw one come in here. Let me see who it is. Okay. It’s Jeremy Gilliland. Yes. Yep. Uh, what is your. Let me pop this one up here. What is your first bit of advice for a newer or up and coming business owner?
Uh. Embrace pain and.
Sadness. Some of the some of the advice I’ve been giving this for 5 or 6 years, which is it’s okay if it’s hard. And that’s something that’s a piece of advice I wish I would’ve had had when I was first starting out is I felt like I was the only one. It was hard for, you know, I was driving around in my little Hyundai Elantra, you know, had a little small $1 million painting company and in the mid 20 teens and saw these guys with giant trucks. And I thought, gosh dang it, These guys must they must they must all be $5 million painting companies. Am I the only one this is hard for? The reality is what I was doing was actually very challenging. It was actually very difficult and just acknowledging that if it feels like it’s really tough to do, it’s because you’re doing something that’s probably really tough to do. So that’s my one number one piece of advice is it’s okay if it feels hard and then get around other people. Kids these days, you know, they’ve got the Internet, they’ve got the the association, all those events. You know, you guys are spoiled in what you have. Back when I back when I started out, you know, I was going to the paint stores trying to be happy go lucky Jason and network and just met with a lot of weirdos right And now you’ve got these local gathering groups and everything. So. Yeah, get connected. That’d be another, another big piece.
Yeah, I was, I was I say it all the time because, you know, I look up to all these guys like that they’re not old, right. I mean 36 years old. But you know, when you were starting your thing, you know, these things weren’t around like the coaching, the consultants, the drip jobs, the all these things, you know? Yeah.
So Facebook groups, Yeah.
Whenever we if I need something or I feel like I need to know something. I like. I can get it like this. I can call somebody that knows it already. I can, you know, hire a coach for X, Y, Z. I can hire a CFO coach to go look at this. I can do it. And so there’s really no excuses at all. It’s just that effort, like you were talking about originally with the capitalism, you know, it just takes that effort to get out of bed and to understand where things are at, where you want to go and just get after it. Ron DeSantis did a speech, his first speech, I think it was yesterday. He goes, look. Here in Florida, we get shit done, like that’s what we do. He goes and in my entire team we get things done. That’s what we do, you know? And I just love that, that, that energy.
You know, there’s something.
About America, too, right? It’s kind of like if you want to take, you know, a couple of. Yeah. If you want to sit around drinking coffee half the day, go live in Europe. They love that stuff there, right? If you want participate in like an awesome economy in the a global superpower. Right. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of negatives to this whole concept, too. But capitalism is yeah, if you live right, if you live in a capitalistic country, that’d be like they call it like running like a gazelle to acquire capital. That’s that’s like and one of the best ways you can generate wealth is through a business and turning it into an asset and. Yeah, all these concepts of like, yeah, building the value of your company, right? Increasing the profits, increasing the revenue, increasing the stability, uh, you can increase your equity by hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is essentially pre-tax, right? As opposed to saying like, how much money am I making per year in income? How much money are you making per year when you add up your income and your equity gain?
Yes.
That’s really a new kind of a new paradigm of of how people look at, you know, what are they getting for their sweat each and every year. It’s not just the dollars you’re pulling out. It’s dollars plus equity growth.
Yeah. God is so good. Man, this is so good. For those of you that are still alive, thank you guys so much for being live. We appreciate you guys. And those of you that are still listening on the replay. Thank you guys, as well. Apple, Spotify. Thank you guys for listening over there as well. Uh, next week we got an amazing podcast as well. We even have week four of the five week Sales Masterclass series with Chuck Toki. Next week as well. So more content coming out next week, guys. Outside of that, you guys have an amazing weekend and we’ll talk to you guys soon. Thank you, Jared. Jason, appreciate it.
