Contractor Freedom - Break out of Contractor Prison

Jason Phillips: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Phillips. This show exists to help small business owners like you escape the tyranny of contractor prison and enter the bliss of contractor freedom so you can have the time, money, and freedom to live your life with purpose beyond your business.

As a certified human behavior consultant in DISC personality styles and motivators, I'll be sharing with you skills for life and business. I'll also be connecting you with experts that can help you scale your business and your life. So if you want to build the business and life of your dreams, then you are in the right place.

Let's go! All right, welcome back, everybody. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce a special guest who is truly a beacon of innovation and leadership in the home service industry. Billy Kline, the owner of YourNewDoor. com is here with us. Billy runs a family business. Metro area and Billy and I have been online friends for quite a while now, but we recently got to spend some time talking in [00:01:00] person when he, uh, generally offered to take me to the airport in Austin, rather than me hailing an Uber.

So I really appreciate that, Billy. And Billy made a choice to a few years ago to eject the status quo in his business and to, and to change the game. And since then, he's made some impress impressive strides in his business. And I'm sure that you are going to be inspired by his story. One of the things that I really.

Appreciate about Billy is how humble and hungry he is. And plus he's got a heart to give back and to help others. So Billy, welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. It's fantastic to have you here with us today. 

Billy Cline: Hey Jason, I appreciate you having me on. It's an honor. There's one thing in this world I like to talk about is business, right?

I'm very awkward a lot of times when we get into social events or settings, right? Like, I don't want to talk about much. I don't like talking about baseball or sports much, but I want to talk about business. So if I can corner someone at a party or something like that, it wants to talk business, you know, they can't shut me up.

But otherwise, a lot of times I sit around and don't say much. So I enjoy these,

We 

know 

Jason Phillips: if we revisit that. That little [00:02:00] talk we had on the way to the airport, you know, you told me where the way your business used to be. Can you just give me a, give us a, give the listeners a glimpse of, of how did things used to be with, with your company and you?

Billy Cline: Well, you know, we spoke a little bit and I referenced that, you know, the path that you're on and what you do and what you speak about, contractor prison and breaking out of that. I was the epitome of that, right? Like my, my business owned me. I didn't have a, I didn't have a business. I had a job really.

Right. And my number one goal every week was to sell enough jobs to make payroll. Right? And it was really one of those scenarios where I couldn't afford to take a day off. I couldn't miss a day. If something went wrong on a job where we didn't get paid for that job, we were going to miss payroll. And you know, it was always something, right?

Like it was literally what you hear and what you think when someone talks about being a firefighter in their business. If, you know, you know, Honestly, it's probably was a good exercise for me to go through because now when something's on fire around here, I just sit around and, you know, it doesn't, I don't get excited about it because I've been through way worse.

Right. [00:03:00] So, but it was literally, you know, five alarms every day, just trying to keep the wheels on the bus. Somebody doesn't show up, you know, somebody messed up a project, something was missold or whatever. Right. So it was always something and I just got tired of it one day. Honestly, almost quit. My wife and I went to church.

And we stopped at, I'll never forget it, we stopped at Burger Street on the way back from church and had a conversation that we were going to quit offering a certain aspect of our business just because it was just so burdensome. And I was ready to quit. And I'm glad that I didn't because in three or four instances in my life, I've been right at that edge to where things were, you know, ready to quit.

And it's like, it was literally like, just, that was the edge that we broke over and things started to break open for us and change. Mostly my mindset and my attitude. But it really, after we, after I, uh, got over not quitting and getting over that, it was like the skies opened up and, you know, God was ready for us to do, you know, what, uh, we were supposed to do.

Jason Phillips: Billy, has there been a time [00:04:00] when, can you take us back to a time and maybe that was it, when you felt completely, you know, overwhelmed by your business and it was, it brought you to maybe even a breaking point? How long, uh, are we 

Billy Cline: recording today? Right? Yeah. It was, you know, the interesting thing for me is, I feel like, you know, not to pat myself on the back or anything, I feel like I have come out of that place relatively quickly, right?

Like, it's one of those things, like a reform story, someone's in prison and they get out and totally change their life and become, you know, millionaires or whatever. I was literally felt like I was stuck in prison. You know, I was, a lot of times, I was wearing all the hats still. I was doing all the sales.

I had people for things, but I was too dumb and too stubborn to turn loose and let them do their job, right, without micromanaging. It was just always. You know, buyers and always I had to felt like I needed to be in a part of everything. And then one day I, what really broke it open for me was I realized that I had a broken mind, right?

Like I was raised by people who were raised by people who went through the great [00:05:00] depression, right? And generationally that carries over. And my parents, it wasn't something they did wrong or, you know, were necessarily trying to do to me, but. Growing up, I always heard that cost too much, that won't work, can't do that, right?

There was never enough money for anything, but, but, you know, the thing, you know, cigarettes and things like that, right? Like they always had money for that. Gas is always too expensive. The rent was always too expensive. And what I realized was I had that in me and I went to buy a van, right? Like I had bought one at the beginning of COVID before things went crazy, just before COVID.

It was like 35, 000 bucks, right? Very reasonable. You know, 18 months after that, during COVID, I went and bought two more and they were almost 60, 000. And I was like, there's no way they're worth that. But what I got to thinking about a couple days later was like, I'm an idiot. Because if I don't want to spend 60, 000 for the van, it's not that.

It's a 1, 000 a month payment, right? So by not wanting to pay a 1, 000 a month payment, it's costing me 000 in revenue that I'm not going to be able to get. So right then I realized that I had a broken mindset and I was going to do [00:06:00] anything in my power to fix that. And it started by taking it, becoming curious, right?

Reading books, going to events, seeking out mentors, listening to people smarter than me and podcasts. Really, podcasts really opened my whole mind to, you know, successful people. And it is as simple as that sound. It really does starts to, uh, grease the wheels in your mind and change your mindset. And all these gurus that are out here and all the things that will, number one thing that, that they may disguise or you may not realize they're selling you is a mindset.

They can help you fix your minds that take credit for, they charge you for it, but you really don't need a guru to help you fix your mind. You just have to make your mind up and decide that day is the day that I am changing. I don't know the answers. I don't have the answers. I will seek the answers out and like in the Bible, ask and ye shall read.

Receive, see, and we shall find. When you start looking for the answer, they mysteriously show up. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And that's literally all about mindset. That's the problem, you 

Jason Phillips: know, Billy, with mindsets is they [00:07:00] cloak themselves in logic, broken mindsets. That's too expensive, but we're asking the wrong question.

It's not how much does it cost? It's in that case, it's what am I missing out on by not spending this money with your van question, right? And switching to an investment. Absolutely. And some people will say it's an unlimited mindset. Surplus mindset or whatever it is, but man, that's a key. And what's crazy is we can see limited mindsets in others, but we can't see them in ourselves.

You know, I literally, maybe you've been through the same thing. I've literally went through a time and I still pray this prayer from time to time, but I literally went through a time where I prayed every day, God, I want you to open up my thinking, help me think bigger, help me to see my own limitations.

Man, that's a great, that's a great, that's a great story. So, you know, so before that, back in the day, I guess you were striving to meet payroll, right? And then you recognized you had a limited mindset, which kudos to you, man, for doing that. So along, along this change, what, what personal sacrifices have you, you know, had to make along the way?

Billy Cline: All of them, right? You [00:08:00] know, it didn't. It really kind of got bad there for a while financially. And when you mentioned personal sacrifices, the ultimate personal sacrifice to me would be divorce, right? Or losing my spouse over these types of things. And, you know, in a marriage finances are very important, right?

And I was taking money out of our personal account to make payroll sometimes and all the things, and I wasn't communicating that with my spouse. And. I was ashamed, right, of the fact that number one, I had maybe stuck my head neck out too far or that I was a failure. I wasn't doing enough to, you know, um, to do whatever it would take to make payroll.

So I would write the checks to payroll and I would slowly pull it back in. And my wife was trusting me to do the finances and all things. And that really led to some tough conversations and some tough moments. In my marriage, right? And, you know, shined a light into who I was, who I wanted to be. And that wasn't, you know, if that was who I had to be a successful business person to hide things from my wife, not worth the sacrifice there.

It's not worth [00:09:00] that. And, you know, that probably was a big catalyst. Into, you know, me setting in a quiet place and wondering to myself, you know, what I should do, what's next, how do I overcome this? And a lot of times when you have these realizations, if you haven't already met someone or have a mentor or someone to speak to, kind of on an island by yourself, because you don't know what you don't know, right?

And you don't know that you can be successful in what you're doing. You know, the biggest, one of the biggest reasons we weren't successful for so long is because I didn't know I was a price strike, right? Like it's the age old thing. Why does it for this much? I'll do it for a little bit less. Right. And when you're a solo guy, you know, working out of your truck or out of your own garage or whatever, you can get away with that for a while.

You can, you know, you can make a bit of a living doing that because you don't have any overhead or any other expenses. But at a certain point, you know, when you got, you look up, Oh, now I've got eight people and I'm still doing it the same way. We say you can build a busyness 

Jason Phillips: with low GP, but you're not [00:10:00] going to build an organization and get out of, you know, and get out of contractor prison that way.

You know, the story, one of the things, Billy, that's passionate for me is, you know, I don't want to help people scale their business. Well, I do, but really what I want to do is elevate. Because there's plenty of people that have scaled their business and burned their home life, burned their health. And you're, you know, you're smart enough to that.

You've realized that, you know, at before it was too late or early on or whatever. But you know, my business caused a lot of stress in my marriage and my wife is, thank God, she's a champ and very patient and, but there, it has been the ruin of many relationships and it's sad. And I hate to see that. Ought not to be that way.

Right. 

Billy Cline: So it doesn't have to, it doesn't have to be, and the biggest issue is if you have a spouse that loves you and believes in you, right, like my wife has always had my back, but what happened, especially in that time I was mentioning earlier is it erodes that trust, right? Like that's a good way just to, to lose all the trust, but all these little things, you know, they [00:11:00] believe in you so much, and then it's just negativity.

It's just problems. It's just financial issues. So it erodes that trust and eventually, you know, it gets to a point where you can't ever get it back. Luckily, I never totally lost that. And, you know, we turned things around and, you know, now my wife's my biggest cheerleader and supporter and fan and, you know, blindly follows me, you know, through whatever.

But my wife is also my biggest secret weapon, right? And all this, because her gut feelings have made me and lost me more money than anything else in my life. It made me more money when I listened to it. And it lost me more money when I went against it, right? That's usually when something bad happens.

Words intuition is a very powerful tool if you happen to have that in your life. So 

Jason Phillips: you could have stayed with the status quo of how you had been doing everything and it had been working. Maybe it wasn't like sustainable. It was obviously sustainable for a number of years. But, and you went through this moment of, wow, I've got a limiting mindset and you all of a sudden get real hungry for [00:12:00] learning, right?

Along the way, have there been any significant, you know, setbacks or obstacles that made you feel like, you know, Man, I don't know if I'm good enough. I don't know if I can overcome this. 

Billy Cline: Yeah, for sure. And it was the awakening for me started to happen with my mindset and opening up my eyes to the fact that the culture wasn't where we needed to be.

You know, just all the things that go along with bad days, right? Like someone couldn't cash their check or whatever, right? It was always, you know, something. And it was, you know, along that time when I decided that I couldn't do everything, right? Like, you reach the limit of what you can manage as one person, right?

And at that point in time, I needed to start working and worrying about leadership and how to do this. And I kind of marked time, right? Like, in history, we talk about B. C. and A. D., right? Like, before Christ and Whatever. And in my business, I have a mark in the stand and that's when I hired Dan, right? Like I hired Dan.

Dan [00:13:00] was my, he is my, he's still here. He's my operations manager. And Dan started to take on, he took on a lot more than he needed to, but he started to take on anything in the business that was not a revenue, revenue, revenue. Generating product or project, right? Like whatever it was, there's hundreds of things every day.

And when I was able to get that off my plate and put it on Dan, you know, looking up insurance and just setting things up and all the things, it freed me up to start focusing on the thing. And one of the, I don't know where I came up with the. This revelation in my life, but one of the things that we started doing was working off of a framework, right?

So I knew that I wasn't priced right. And I knew that, you know, I was going to be stuck wherever I was at until we started generating more revenue, but not just necessarily revenue, but profit. And I went to an event Tommy Mello put on. I think it was his second or third big event that he had ever put on.

And I heard this woman speak. Her name was Megan Lyke. She was an accountant and whatever. And also Ellen Rohr. I don't know if the listeners are familiar with Ellen Rohr, but she's the legend in the home service space as [00:14:00] an accountant, right? Like, that's a thing. But they were all talking about gross profit and all things.

Your P& L's all kind of new to me, right? Like all these things that I'm starting to learn about. So I started learning about that. So I wouldn't recommend anybody do this blindly, but I went home and I raised my prices 40%. I just went into my price book, adjust the prices, bulk edit, 40 percent apply to all.

And I closed my eyes and grabbed my tea and suddenly things started to get a little better. And what was interesting, I've always been afraid of raising our, we're all afraid to raise our prices because we think that, you know, the, the customers aren't going to buy, but. Customers don't buy or not buy because of your price.

They buy or not buy because they either see or don't see the value in what you're trying to do for them, right? And when I, it was just all these things, all culmination of learning how to sell better, learning how to price better, learning how to be helpful instead of salesy, right? All these things just all started to come together.

Profit really does cure all, you know, when you start having a little bit of money left over, you know, you can start to pay things. Frameworks I was talking [00:15:00] about were helpful in us kind of coming out of the wilderness, so to speak. I still use that term around here because we would, a framework for me is basically an outline, right?

Like. So the framework for payroll or the framework for sales, right? And at the top of the outline, you have the subject sales, and you have Roman numeral one, two, three, and four. What is the bare minimum thing that I can put in there to work with, right? So we, growing a business on your cashflow is incredibly difficult because there's always something that needs financial attention without, you know, investing, don't want injecting money in your business or a loan or whatever.

Doing it on your cashflow is really hard. But we would do orbits around the business with the leftover cash flow. And we would spend a little bit on everything. It took us a long time. We would spend just a little bit on everything, every orbit around. If we spent too much on marketing, we didn't have enough sales guys to back it up.

If we spent too much on sales, we didn't have enough marketing to keep all the sales guys busy, all the things. So we would just continue to orbit the business with our money and pay a little bit here, pay off a little something that was nagging us or [00:16:00] whatever, and just keep paying things off as we went.

And, you know, making 1 percent improvements a day. And over time, now things are much bigger and much better. We still have that philosophy of trying to make things 1 percent better per day. But today that 1 percent is a much larger piece, uh, at 1 percent than it was then because the whole thing is much larger,...

Jason Phillips: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Phillips. This show exists to help small business owners like you escape the tyranny of Contractor Freedom and enter the bliss of Contractor Freedom so you can have the Time, Money, and Freedom to Live Your Life With Purpose Beyond Your Business.

As a certified human behavior consultant in DISC personality styles and motivators, I'll be sharing with you skills for life, love, leadership, and business. I'll also be connecting you with experts that can help you scale your business and your life. So if you want to build the business and life of your dreams, then you are in the right place.

Let's go.

Jason Phillips: Hello Contractors, we've got a great episode for you today. I have with me today Mr. Joe Covarrubias. He is the, the shy, quiet type. No, for those of you that know Joe, no, he's not the shy, quiet type. Joe's our VP and he has been, training the salespeople at our home improvement company for, I [00:01:00] think, eight years now.

Eight years. And so we're going to learn some insights from Joe so that you can take your sales organization to higher levels. Hey Joe, welcome to the show today. 

Joe Covarrubias: Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. I always love Visiting with you on a different level other than a boss employee relationship.

I love just sharing and chatting. So thank you for having me. 

Jason Phillips: I'm glad you were able to take some time out of VP prison. No. So you've, you know, you've trained quite a few salespeople. And the reason we're doing this episode today is because so many of our business owner friends.

are at the place where they've hired their first salesperson and the new salesperson for whatever reason can't seem to close the deal like the business owner. And I thought we might diagnose for them some possible things of what could be going on. So, you know, what would be the first thing, you know, if a guy comes in, Hey Joe, my new salesperson, he's not closing deals like I was.

Can you help me diagnose it? You know, what's the first thing you would look at? 

Joe Covarrubias: Well, the first thing I would look at [00:02:00] is, you know, I've been real fortunate to kind of go on this journey with you of the behavior profiles. And when I first started as a sales manager here at Phillips, I didn't have, I wasn't as educated as I was, and I was just hiring guys who had the gift of gap, you know, just sales guys, right?

But as I've been along on this journey with you, With regard to behavior profile, that'd be the first question I ask. What is this guy's, is he in a seat that, is he in the right seat? I mean, be great guy. He may be a, his, it is this profile may be a sales profile, but it could be a long sales cycle. There's different sales.

And here at Philips, you know, we work, we try to nurture a one call close environment. And there's a certain profile that. That does that. So if they're not closing OTS on the spot, that's probably the first place up. 

Jason Phillips: Is the personality profile. Interesting. Something near and dear to my heart. Yeah, exactly.

You know, it makes me think about if we look at external things and we look at like sports. Right. You know, there's a typical physique of someone who's winning medals in swimming. 

Joe Covarrubias: Right. 

Jason Phillips: And [00:03:00] you know, from their height, their leg length versus their upper body length. And then their lungs. This is the same thing for like marathon runners.

Sure. And let's say basketball players or sumo wrestlers or boxers. Right. Or it's like in any professional sport for, let's say individual sports for now, there are. Some typical physiques or body makeups that put you at an advantage automatically. The other guys can still outwork you and work harder than you, but there's things that give you the edge.

And it's kind of like that, it's like personalities. And you know, I'll never forget when one of the times that this really hit me. Hit home to me was when we were initially teaching the team how to knock on the door and, you know, and our, one of the things we want to do is we show up with a clipboard with our paper, right?

And it's got, you know, it's got both property owners on it, typically a husband and a wife, and we don't know who's answering the door. But in a scenario, you know, if the husband answers the door and our paperwork says that we're supposed to meet with [00:04:00] John and Jane, then we need to, you know, say, well, Hey, Mr.

Krubitsch, I see I'm supposed to be meeting with a you and Jane, is Jane available? And that question, when I was working with people that had the wrong personality style, that question scared the crap out of them. 

Joe Covarrubias: It can, it, if you don't have the right profile, it can be uncomfortable. 

Jason Phillips: But it's such a simple.

Joe Covarrubias: It's simple, you know, with a with ourselves, there's a series of what we call soft. And every, in our last, at our last boot camp that we had here, that you guys were at the boot camp, you remember us talking about trying to get three yards at a time, and, or three and a half yards at a time.

And throughout the sales, at the end of each, let's just call it a step, there's a soft close, and that's your three yards. And your first soft close is getting both people at the table. That's their full focus of all owners. That's the first soft close and if you start your appointment or you start your set off or whatever you call it, without being able to get that first commitment, the other six commitments are gonna be really tough.

Because at the end, you're [00:05:00] gonna ask them to get on your schedule. And if you can't ask for the for the second party, it's going to be real hard to ask for a 40, 000 interior, you know? Yeah, 

Jason Phillips: exactly. So, you know, you've hit on something else, is if we don't line up a great appointment, if we can't get there, if we can't get their focus, the kids are running around, or they're distracted by taking, you know, their animal, or a phone call.

If we can't have their focus, it's going to be hard to get any commitments to get the project done, to trust us, to want it our way. You know, our value, all of that. 

Joe Covarrubias: It is, and you know, the beautiful thing about, you know, our workflow here at Phillips is, which you quoted it today to the leadership team, it's reinforcement.

You know, we start that process of getting both parties there as soon as the customer calls in. And by the time we knock on the door, whether it's that day, many times it's the same day, which guys prefer because they're ready to buy if it's a same day appointment. We reinforce that importance. The importance of having all parties.

Jason Phillips: So what, Joe, what are some, let's say you hire a sales guy and we're in this plays into the, why your new [00:06:00] guy isn't closing like he should. What are some telltale signs on day one or week one that this guy or gal really, we're not, we say salesmen, but saleswomen do really well in this industry as well.

What are some early warning signs that you shouldn't ignore? Okay. 

Joe Covarrubias: I do things, I probably do things a little bit. It may be, and it may come across as harsh. What I do is when I feel like I have a strong candidate to join the superstars here at Philips, I invite them on Friday to come in. That's our, that's a sales meeting day right now.

And to just join the sales meeting, help the guys. At that Friday meeting, I introduce them to their first script, that doorknock. And I go over the script with them. I actually let them video me. I have them record me, and basically what I tell them is to learn it on Friday, love it on Saturday, and be able to live it on Sunday.

Because I'm not teaching them a task, I'm teaching them a way of life throughout their career here at Phillips. And I tell them they have until 9 o'clock Monday morning. They're welcome to call [00:07:00] me over the weekend. They're welcome to, and I remember they're walking away with a video recording in the actual script.

There have been a number of times where I've let the candidate go at nine o'clock because he did not study the script. It may seem a little harsh, but you know, right, right now, I think the last Facebook live we did, we talked about the cost per lead in those assets. You know, before we start sinking 1, 000 1, 500 a day in these candidates, we have to know they're going to do the homework.

First sign. If they don't get that first script over the weekend. 

Jason Phillips: Will they put in the work? 

Joe Covarrubias: Will they 

Jason Phillips: put in the work. So, Joe, are you giving them like a whole book? Tell everybody, I know what you're giving them but, I mean, are you giving them a whole script book? What, how big is this? I'm 

Joe Covarrubias: giving one, I should count the words, I don't know.

It's like 10 sentences. Yeah, it's just 10 sentences. The purpose of that script is basically to get the prospect's time and attention. Yeah. That's all we're trying to do. 

Jason Phillips: So, so you're saying that if a guy shows up and he hasn't given it the effort over the weekend at 9 o'clock, you're cutting him loose.

Because if he's I pay him for the day. Of course. I pay him for the 

Joe Covarrubias: day, but It's I have our training measured by the hour of [00:08:00] the day. They, there's a certain number. I don't do days and I don't do weeks. I do hours because there is a countdown that first hour and there is no time to waste. 

Jason Phillips: Cause you need to have them running their first appointment.

How soon? 

Joe Covarrubias: In three weeks. I went through writing their first contract in three weeks. In three weeks. Okay. And so the training is real flux. There's some ride alongs, there's scripting, there's homework. There is, when I say, let's just say, I say, we got to get them going. That includes the time they sleep.

That's just, that's the, those are working hours. That's how many hours we have. Right. Because we, you know, I say we, you, you're invested in a marketing team. They are doing their job. Sure. We have the leads for us to issue and they're on a clock too. I mean, we're, it's April 4th. We're in the middle of it.

There's no time to waste. That's right. Yeah. 

Jason Phillips: So on the opposite end, okay. Well, on that end, some telltale signs early on is they didn't put in the work. What if they put in the work and they still can't get it? 

Joe Covarrubias: Can you give me a what, for instance? 

Jason Phillips: Say they're really struggling with learning a script.

Cause you know, you said learn it, [00:09:00] love it, live it. Right? So you've met a few people that no matter how hard they tried, they were just struggling with scripts. And how did that work out? 

Joe Covarrubias: It doesn't work out well. . I mean, in, they might be great guys, they might have experience, they might have all of that, but the, what we call TBW, the Phillips Way is that we're scripted in our sales process.

I can't write along with every one of the guys and our two sales managers can't write along with the guys on every, so we have some resources that help us find out if they're following that script. It's a world class presentation, so it is a script. 

Jason Phillips: So Joe, I mean a script, 

Joe Covarrubias: does 

Jason Phillips: that mean 

Joe Covarrubias: it. They sound like robots?

No, not at all. See, Jason, what you have to understand is that this is a four, this is a 420 billion industry. And a third of that money is spent to go back and redo which previously been done according to the Harvard Joint Center on Housing. Indeed. Jason, I just gave you a script. Did it sound like one?

Jason Phillips: No, it didn't. 

Joe Covarrubias: It was a familiar one. But it's conversational. I teach them how to be conversational. I teach [00:10:00] them how to use voice inflections maybe do A few theatrics with their glasses. There are some things that we teach to give a world class presentation. 

Jason Phillips: Okay. So, we've talked about, you know, couple early warning signs.

What about, this is probably goes for all positions. How about they're showing up for work late on their first week? 

Joe Covarrubias: That has, that, that is, that's a no. It just, it doesn't work. What about 

Jason Phillips: they have drama emergencies and they have to leave work early? The dog, the cat, the mother in law the wife, the whoever.

Joe Covarrubias: You know, some of, you know, we, we have a lot of influences here at Phillips, a lot of, and you've talked to them about them before. Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, Dave Ramsey's one. And in his book, Entree Leadership, there's like almost a whole chapter on drama. We just don't do drama here. 

Jason Phillips: It's not for everybody.

That's right. That's right. That's right. So, you know, if we were to break down some keys to success, you know, we already talked about, you brought up the right personality and maybe we should stick on that for a second. Okay. Is that's the first key today is the right personality. Now, when we're looking for [00:11:00] salespeople we know that our buyers, our prospects are most likely going to make a pretty quick decision.

And we also know that there are, we call them Ravens, the unscrupulous contractors willing to say and do anything to get the contract that are out there trying to steal that or get that and get those customers and not treat them well. We don't have a lot of time to close the sale. So when it comes to, you know, personalities, and we're talking disc personality styles here, what styles are you looking for?

Joe Covarrubias: Okay, for a number of years, I really focused on a D. That takes a lot of coaching because They can sometimes come across abrasive or something. Well, you know, the pros and cons. Are you 

Jason Phillips: saying I'm abrasive? No, 

Joe Covarrubias: I'm not saying that at all, sir. That you heard it right here on the Contractor Freedom.

No you're not, but there's a D there's a DI. We'll call it what we call a dynamo. And then there's an ID, which is an influencer persuader, which is one of my favorites. Those three profiles are really prone to succeed in a one call close [00:12:00] environment. A D? A D I and an I D. Now, there's pros and cons to all of those.

The D, like I said, can come across a little abrasive. The I D can maybe have a little challenge with follow up. There's just, they all have their own little, they all have their own little, but if you know the profile, you studied the profile, you know how to coach them through that. 

Jason Phillips: Yeah. Okay.

Got it. So, you know, 

Joe Covarrubias: I think I should say that every, all three of those have the letter D. D in it, the dominance factor, whether the D's first or the D second, those profiles have the makeup to ask for the order on the first call. 

Jason Phillips: And the D's gotta be above the middle or the energy line. Right? Yeah. So, you know, we've got our contractor friends are contractor, freedom family.

Yeah. Friends, there's a lot of the bus, a lot of the business owners that are currently doing the sales. Are not ID people. . A lot of, some of them are. Some of you guys are. Gals are, some are scs, css. Iss. And what advice would you give to them if they're the [00:13:00] ones currently doing the selling?

Joe Covarrubias: I would definitely, number one, I what I've learned with our contractor Freedom Friends is that some of them really haven't found or adopted a sales process that fits still okay. Or fits their workflow. I would say if you're in a position to, to start looking for your. Salesman saleswoman to, to consider those profiles that we discussed.

But the scs and the, and what was the other one? The SCS and the Z. 

Jason Phillips: The S. The scs and the iss. Okay. 

Joe Covarrubias: Very sweet, talkative, supportive people, right? Yes. And they will, I feel like one could sell with those. It may take a little longer. But the people will fall in love with them.

They'll fall in, you know, their prospects will fall in love with them for sure. But the, and it's not to say that their D isn't like at a 30 or a 40. It just takes a little bit more for them to muster up that, that courage to, to ask for that sale, because, you know, below The midline starts to drain us, and it starts to become uncomfortable, and you get to where you're not appreciating what you're doing.

Yep, yep. And so, but there's a [00:14:00] lot of role play. And that's the beauty of having a sales process, is that You can practice it. You can just practice it. And time after time after time. And so, you don't have to come up with something different every time you knock on the door. You know where you're going.

You know what you're saying. I have a new recruit now. I have two that I'm really excited about. One of them, one of them asked me just last night. We happened to both be at the office after hours, and he said he's really excited. And he says, I'm drowning. I'm having a little trouble with the follow up.

That is 100 percent net. And so what we've done is we've, he and I both have agreed to be at the office. I told him, hey man, I'll roll up my sleeves with you. We'll be here at the office at eight o'clock. And we have a couple of other new recruits. And so they're all coming in at eight o'clock. And I said, okay, this is what we're going to do now.

This is what we're going to do now. So the same thing with the ISs. You've got to get to the office early and practice and reinforce. And you can be an IS. The fact that you're an I, [00:15:00] you can talk to people. But with the right script, it doesn't come across pushy. And just like it's saying, Hi, my name is Joe.

I'm with Philips. When you get down to the closing table, would you like to get on the schedule? It's just a script. It's just a question. And the worst possible thing they can say is no. Is no. 

Jason Phillips: Let's see. I think there was a famous guy who said, you know, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take.

Who said that? Was it Michael Jordan or was it Wayne Gretzky? 

Joe Covarrubias: Maybe Wayne Gretzky. 

Jason Phillips: Maybe both of them. So, you know, I've got a piece of advice for...

Jason Phillips: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Phillips. This show exists to help small business owners like you escape the tyranny of Contractor Freedom and enter the bliss of Contractor Freedom so you can have the Time, Money, and Freedom to Live Your Life With Purpose Beyond Your Business.

As a certified human behavior consultant in DISC personality styles and motivators, I'll be sharing with you skills for life, love, leadership, and business. I'll also be connecting you with experts that can help you scale your business and your life. So if you want to build the business and life of your dreams, then you are in the right place.

Let's go.

Jason Phillips: Hello, contractors. I ignored these resources. For so many years, and I kept hearing about all the amazing resources that the PCA had available for its members. And even though I've been a member for a long time, I had been a member for a long time, I never really took the time to check these things out because I was always busy running my [00:01:00] business.

Well today, I've got great news. We're opening the closet turning on the light in today's episode We're diving in with the PCA's own Janelle Roedl the PCA member advocate I want you to stick around till the end because I guarantee you're gonna discover one or more multiple resources that you can use To solve your business challenges, stand on the shoulders of the giants that have gone before you, save you time, money, and headaches.

Janelle, welcome to the show.

Janell Roedl: Thank you, Jason. I am honored and it's a pleasure to be here.

Jason Phillips: Well, I am so glad that we connected. Janelle, would you, would you take a moment to share with everybody, you know, what's your role? What, what is, what is the member coordinator at the PCA?

Janell Roedl: Absolutely, I'd love to. So my title now is Member Advocate and I kind of gravitate more towards that title because it really shows that my role is on the side of the painting contractor. Not [00:02:00] PCA, but I'm here to create a premier experience for PCA members. , we do that in a variety of ways by providing resources and connecting our contractors with those resources.

We have so many that it's often a challenge. One of the biggest challenges is, Finding those resources. So it's my role to help do that. , to answer questions, troubleshoot just problems, issues, connect with you. Take feedback. I would love any feedback on, the PCA, the resources we offer, the member experience, because I just want to make it better.

My heart is service. I love people. I love connecting with

Jason Phillips: Well, you know, I, I love, I love that. And I appreciate you sharing that. One of the things that's frustrating is when you're working within as a business owner, or let's just say as a consumer at all, you're working with an organization or you're working with, with a, with a company and. You're like, who do I call for this?

Who do I call for that? I mean, just recently my company, we had been working with another company that was going to deliver some [00:03:00] stuff to us and, some digital goods to us. And they had so many departments and people, we didn't really have a single point of contact. And so hearing you just say, look, that's my job. So I think that is, 

Janell Roedl: Yeah. I'm your girl.

Jason Phillips: so before the end of this episode, you guys are going to learn how to get in touch with Janelle so she can answer, any questions, that you have. So let's, you know, the, the, the PCA, the Painting Contractors Association, for those of you that aren't familiar, significant anniversary this year?

Janell Roedl: There is, this year marks our 140th anniversary and that just blows my mind. We have a hard time thinking in generations like that. So, yeah, been around a long time, as you mentioned, standing on the shoulders of the giants that have come before us, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. We just grow over 140 years and that's like one of, the big benefits of aligning with the PCA is aligning painting contractors with an organization that has 140 years of legacy behind

Jason Phillips: that is, that

Janell Roedl: we're excited.

Jason Phillips: So, you know, let's, let's talk about the vision. Like, , if so [00:04:00] many contractors, I still meet contractors who don't even know, painting contractors who don't even know who the PCA is 

Janell Roedl: Right. We still say it's the best kept secret

Jason Phillips: would, I would agree with that. Why does the PCA exist?

Janell Roedl: great question. it exists very similar to what you told me your mission is, to elevate the painting industry, to bring professionalization to the painting industry. In the very early days, it was more designed to advocate for, painting contractors, as we have evolved and grown. And more recently, the PCA is here to discover the challenges and the pain points of our painting contractors.

and meet those needs and we do that through educational resources painter training and i'm sure we're going to get into our resources today, but meeting the needs of our painting contractors in the world today

Jason Phillips: you got me thinking, . you've been doing this for a while with the 

Janell Roedl: A little bit

i'm still learning i'm eight

Jason Phillips: that's, a significant amount of time. In your mind, [00:05:00] what do you think is the, I don't want to say best kept secret, but if there's one thing about the PCA and you're like, I run into so many contractors who don't know about X, Y, Z, and they need to know about X, Y, Z.

What, is there something that sticks out in your mind?

Janell Roedl: I have a handful of like my favorite resources or benefits with the PCA and the first one is one that I've just mentioned. It's aligning with that mission and that legacy. I think that's one of the best kept secrets. With your PCA membership, you gain access to the PCA logo and marketing materials. so Aligning in where you invest your money, your time, and using those resources like the logo package where people recognize you as a PCA member and, associate you with that legacy and that professionalization, craftsmanship and integrity.

So that's one of the best. resources and reasons I think a painting contractor would want to align with the PCA. Some of my other top favorites are, [00:06:00] painter training. Painter training is

Jason Phillips: Can we elaborate on that for a moment what what is entailed there

Janell Roedl: So painter training, was designed to, for the painting contractor to be able to train their crew.

 It's seven courses. They complete the courses on their own time, video courses. They take a quiz and earn a certificate. it's standardized so that you as the painting contractor have confidence that your crew has been trained well. The painters have feel this endearment towards you as a painting contractor because you've invested in their professionalization.

And that helps with employee retention, which everyone is concerned about in these times. And that all comes free with your membership, which is why it's at the top of my list because it's one of those things you get for free just by being

Jason Phillips: So what if you know, what if what if the painters are spanish speakers?

Janell Roedl: Great question. So, four, I believe four of those seven courses have been translated into Spanish because we do have, we want [00:07:00] to get into some of those realms like women and the Spanish speaking community. We have a Spanish initiative that we're launching in the next two years with PPG, to bring more Spanish resources.

So, right now they haven't all been translated into Spanish, but they will be within the next two years, in order to meet that need, because it's definitely a

Jason Phillips: So if i'm a business owner, i'm a member I can train all I can put all of my painters through this training for no additional charge.

Janell Roedl: Right? I know. It's crazy. If you were a non member and purchasing those courses, they would be 99 per course per crew person. so right

Jason Phillips: Yeah, it's just

Janell Roedl: well

Jason Phillips: for sure for sure okay, so I I know that you know, I i'm a fan of hiring for character and training for skill and hiring, let's just say hiring for fit. And, but you've got to have a training program. The reason that so many people, especially when they're newer in business, they're like, I need someone with experience.

I need someone with experience. Well then you get someone with experience, might be bad experience, [00:08:00] but there's a pretty high likelihood they have bad habits or at least habits and ways of ingrained habits that don't, mesh with the way you need to run your business. And so, I love this that you, so now you can focus more on finding the right person, put them through a training program.

How long does it take to go through that training program?

Janell Roedl: that's a great question. It is like, go at your own pace. Seven courses, I don't know what the average, I need to look that up. What's the average time that it takes someone to complete a course? I'm thinking it's like an hour and a half to two hours per course.

Jason Phillips: So something they could do within a week's time or so, or do, do a course a day for a while for a week or so. Okay. Wow. That is.

Janell Roedl: It's a great tool for onboarding, but it really has a lot of depth that even experienced painters can still

Jason Phillips: So, I mean, it's not like you guys just one day said, Hey, let's make a training program. And. mean, you guys, I'm assuming, I'm gonna, I guess I'm asking, created this program with using the depth of knowledge that, that the PCA has for all of these years has developed [00:09:00] about best practices and the way to do things?

Janell Roedl: Yes. So, yeah, we have an education committee. and prior to me coming on board here, they created this, with the education committee. like you said, building off, they used painting contractors to develop this. It's professional, professionally done. yeah. So, high quality, And you can track their progress

Jason Phillips: would this program, Be applicable. Let's just say that someone's hiring a project manager or a salesperson. That's not exactly hands on. Would it be beneficial for someone like that to

Janell Roedl: I do believe it would be. so the seven courses are trade best practices, interiors level one, two, and three, and interior level one, or exterior one, two, and three. so I feel like it could be great for also project managers, sales people, because they'll be involved in all of the aspects of project management.

training the crew, checking the status of the project, they cover, well, some of our other resources cover cost and estimating, but [00:10:00] I think for them having a good insight on what their crew is able to do, what they've been trained on, what they can expect, would only add value to the whole team.

Sure,

Jason Phillips: me everything that overdrive includes. no,

Janell Roedl: first off, I noticed it doesn't include you, Jason. Yeah. Yeah. I did not see your podcast on there. Why is

Jason Phillips: that a while back and we just never reconnected. So he reached out to me

Janell Roedl: Yeah. Well, maybe we should

Jason Phillips: I, I, that sounds like a great plan.

Janell Roedl: So, Overdrive is our, it's like the Netflix of the painting industry is like what we like to call it. It's our education and entertainment platform. We have, I think now we're at like 700 hours, and growing of content, that comes and this is why it's another one of my favorites is because it's also free with your membership.

so you get to on your own time. explore things ranging from, cost and estimating, sales and marketing, [00:11:00] building a team, hiring, as well as, content from previous expos and other events you can watch on there. we bring in our, industry partner podcasts, so some of those are, On the trade itself, and some of those are on business building, so it's just a great place to go and binge worthwhile content,

Jason Phillips: know, podcasts and content. So it's so popular. And to hear you say it's the Netflix for the painting industry. I haven't heard that before. So I know there's a lot of guys.

Janell Roedl: Like, it just clarifies exactly what it is and why you'd want to go there.

Jason Phillips: So, hey, contractors, if you're not, you know, if you're not partaking of these resources and, you know, like Janelle said, there's, things about the trade on, on, on overdrive as well as about business stuff on overdrive as business

Janell Roedl: Mm hmm.

Jason Phillips: So anything, if, you are, growth minded.

And you are a forever student, like you should be, then, this is a great place, a great place. So, you know, one of the other things I, I [00:12:00] think something that I still, you know, appreciate more, I don't want to say more. Okay. I'm going to say that I appreciate, well, maybe it is more because in the past I didn't really partake of 

Janell Roedl: hmm.

Jason Phillips: talk about the networking. What, what are the networking opportunities for the PCA?

Janell Roedl: So, I'm glad you asked that because this year the PCA, the board, they're kind of going into a year of really focusing on events. So events is one of the best places. And I don't know when this podcast will be released, but we're moving into our biggest event of the year, Expo, to be held in Orlando, Florida, at The Dolphin.

We're super excited, so at events is the best place. to do this networking. We're one of the best places. It's like the top one to two percent of the painting contracting, painting contracting world is The cream of the crop is at these [00:13:00] events and opportunities galore.

So evening events hosted by the sponsors, PPG, Bayer, Sherwin Williams, Benjamin Moore. And then throughout the day we're doing mind melds and breakout sessions and having breakfast and lunch together. we really feel that as a community we grow together. So. It's the old mindset that we're competing and we can't be friends and we can't share and we're an island.

I think pretty much across the board, most people see that value in the networking opportunities. yeah.

Jason Phillips: You know, once they've been,

Janell Roedl: go

Jason Phillips: okay, so I invite every painter that I run into to the expo. And, and when you get to the expo and you run into all these people and all of a sudden they're like, their eyes are like huge open and they're like, oh my gosh. I can't believe I've missed out on this all these years and what it is is, you know, it's there, there's this thing called the immersion effect and it's, and it's, it's the, the reason why, learning is [00:14:00] more impactful when you're there in person.

I mean as, as great as overdrive is. you know, it's a different, let's just say the, well, the Super Bowl was recently, there's a different experience watching the Super Bowl on TV than there is being there with the crowd. And it's the same thing with online church or going to church in person, but there's this an immersion effect and it's, there is a

Janell Roedl: a synergy.

Jason Phillips: and.

That whole time you're not thinking about, while you're there, you're not thinking about the leads, you're not thinking about the payroll, or any of that, you are enveloped in how can I Make my business and my life better and you're collaborating with people that are maybe, in so many ways, they've been in, maybe their company's the same size or they've been in business the same amount of time.

But then there's going to be people that are ahead of you, people that are behind you and you're going to, you are going to learn. And I promise if you go to the expo, you will come back changed. And, my. The the bell I'm tolling is there's two events that you ought not to miss every year if you were in the painting, if you're in the painting business, one is the expo and two is our very own contractor freedom summit.

Those [00:15:00] are my two favorite events. And I believe what you can experience at those events can, can change your business and change your life. So

Janell Roedl: Yeah. This will be my first expo, so I'm excited and it'll be a whole new experience for me. So I'm going a lot by what, members, painting, contract, your experience that you just shared. but I, Your sharing reminded me of one of our stories. So Juan Vasquez is, a painting contractor and he lets us share his story.

So back in 2018, he attended his very first own expo. And at that time he was a small painting company with four. People under him, and he thought he was doing good, went to Expo, and like you said, eyes opened, and he was able to take a gold, you really just need one golden nugget, you don't have to consume all of it, like, you're gonna get a lot, but that one golden nugget, if you go home and apply it, can change everything, so he got his gold nugget, which was implementing systems, and in addition [00:16:00] to that, he like, networked the heck out of it and he said in his, conversation that he's, he's got a contact in every state, one in every state.

And that gives him confidence that no matter where he's at and what he's doing, he's

Jason Phillips: he could phone a friend if he needs, if he has a question, right?

Janell Roedl: And from there, he's transformed his business. He's grown. He's got, his own podcast. he's on the board. so yeah, it's amazing. The stories I hear of transformation that happens through the events and particularly

Jason Phillips: is, that is amazing. So, you know, we've got the, the, the training, there's the, there's the overdrive, then there's the events. Now there's, there's also, like benefits that you can offer to your employees, like healthcare. Can't you,

Janell Roedl: Yeah, there is. So, we began offering, health insurance. And what we found is, you know, those pain points with our painting contractors, this was one of them being able to, provide benefits for their employees, which it helps in retention. they just couldn't [00:17:00] afford some of the plans or couldn't qualify for some of them.

So we were able to leverage the, the size and the power of the PCA to be able to possibly get some packages, and prices that the painting contractors couldn't get on their own. It really depends on each person's state...

Jason Phillips: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Phillips. This show exists to help small business owners like you escape the tyranny of Contractor Freedom and enter the bliss of Contractor Freedom so you can have the Time, Money, and Freedom to Live Your Life With Purpose Beyond Your Business.

As a certified human behavior consultant in DISC personality styles and motivators, I'll be sharing with you skills for life, love, leadership, and business. I'll also be connecting you with experts that can help you scale your business and your life. So if you want to build the business and life of your dreams, then you are in the right place.

Let's go. 

Jason Phillips: Hello Contractors! I'm excited to be here with you today. I've got a very special guest with you with us here who you can see on the screen and you're going to, you're going to want to tune in till the end because we've got some, we've got some awesome info that's, that, That impacts you guys, so many of you guys who are using a particular software for running your contracting business.

I don't know if you [00:01:00] guys know who that is if, what it is, if not, yeah, you'll find out, but I've got a feeling most of you guys already know. I already know what I'm talking about here. We got the one and only, got Tanner Mullen with us here today. Tanner's not only, he's I don't know if I could call him a serial entrepreneur.

But he's definitely a visionary. He obviously, you like that? Okay, yeah,

he Not only is the owner of premium, painting, but also Dripjobs automation software for contractors. And not to mention, he's got the painting contractors group on Facebook, which has, more people in it than a population of China.

Tanner, he's a giver and he's an all around great guy if you haven't interacted with him online

And so Tanner, it's my pleasure to have you on today, man. 

Tanner Mullen: How are you doing? I was saying, I'm so glad he started a podcast, man. I think this was, long overdue. I respect you fully and, I'm just excited to see what you do with it. Contractor freedom, all the good stuff, man. I'm happy to be here. I really am an honor 

Jason Phillips: me as well. I feel the same way about you. I'm glad we got to connect. I think we've only met in person, maybe like one time in passing at a PCA event. And we we've been on a couple of podcasts together before. I think [00:02:00] on, I would like that. So I, one of the things, one of my goals, again, this isn't about me today, but.

One of my goals is I just, I want to build bridges. I feel like our industry is too fragmented and that's adding to the contractors, feeling like they're on an island. And I believe that a forward thinking people need to unify, build bridges, work together, and we can make this whole community a better place.

So that's one of the reasons I decided to have you on today. Hey Tanner, tell us, obviously you're the owner of Premium Painting. And am I, did I hear before that, that, you grew up in the paint business? Is that 

true? 

Tanner Mullen: Yeah, I did. Actually, my dad was a painter by trade and you know, just as a kid going on the job site with him.

I remember in eighth grade, everyone else had summer where they'd hang out with their friends and I had get up at six o'clock and. Grab your white Dickies and your painter's shirt that had blue tape on it from the day before. But you know, it was, it was interesting. I didn't resent it, but I was like, I will never do this again.

When I went off to college, got into the professional things like car sales, and I was really heavy into the restaurant industry. At [00:03:00] 19, I was a manager of a restaurant that I couldn't, I wasn't even old enough. To drink the alcohol that they were serving, you know, so that was interesting because people would look at me and be like, you're too young to be doing this.

And I, I just always work seriously, Jason, you know, it was always something to me having a kind of like up upbringing. I just knew that that was my way out and it was something I could just. Put my attention in and focus on. And in retrospect, I look at it as a blessing, like everything to have hit so many different sectors.

Many people know that, you know, I was in the restaurant industry. I got to a point where so many things I learned, ordering, learning how to deal with vendors, hiring, customer service, but what I think is so valuable, and we'll get into this later about software, Jason is, with the restaurant, having to manage the back of the house and the front of the house.

How often in your business? Are you managing the back of the house and the front of the house? Having to relate to the cooks, the busboys, the dishwashers, but then having to be able to switch gears and be able to communicate effectively with the servers, the hostess, the customers. And that skill set alone has just always been so [00:04:00] instrumental in how I handle my.

Developers with drip jobs and the customers, but also my front lines, right, salesperson, customers. It's just interesting just being able to kind of just relate to people. That's what I learned most. So went through the restaurant industry, got into sales. So I packaged so much. Customer service, you know, together with, with the restaurant.

Then I got into sales and I learned the art of negotiation. I learned the art of following up with leads. I learned the art of waking up and having to hunt for your pay with nothing in the pipeline and you're not getting paid unless you sell. That was interesting. Look, there was no cushion to fall back on.

If I don't sell, I don't eat, Jason. And then finally landing in life insurance, having to go knock doors. I learned the art of door knocking. I mean, all of these experiences, last but not least, I learned, you know, business and transactions and financing and all these things. And again, I can't attribute it to anything else, but God getting me ready for the painting business.

I don't know how I, that's how, that's what I landed on. [00:05:00] 

Jason Phillips: You know, it, it, it doesn't sound glorious, right? I don't think any of us, unless maybe most people don't grow up thinking, Oh, I dream of owning a painting business or being a contractor. It's like a fireman, a doctor, a lawyer, an astronaut, and then a contractor.

But it's amazing what you said. It's like, you look back and I'm like, dude, that's incredible. You've had all of these. different experiences that are just added to the opportunity you've got now and that you're making a difference in the industry. I love that. I didn't know a lot of that about you. I'm glad you shared that.

So before you got into the software business, by the way, the whole analogy to me, it's an analogy for you. It's reality of the. Background in the restaurant business. Man, that analogy, I can just see that's on contractors. That's real. And that front of the house and back of the house, that sales and marketing and production, that's real, man.

I love, 

Tanner Mullen: I love that. And this is to bring that even closer to home. I'm sitting in the line restaurant and I think, have you ever worked in a restaurant? No, no, never. Okay. So. [00:06:00] You know, the back Jason is these are the guys that bust their butts and the front of the house gets all the tips, right? You know, they get all the glory, but in some restaurants you have to earn the respect of the kitchen, right?

Whether you're a server or whether you're a manager and my things is is like I wanted to earn that respect. I wanted to be considered a leader in the kitchen. Even though I didn't know how to cook, they saw me as someone that didn't overwhelm them with tickets because I needed things done. To be able to ask for things in a respective way and not be demanding.

To manage their workload without them getting stressed out. To see an area that's weak, whether they needed to be prepped, something needed cleaned. For them to see that I'm willing to jump in with my team to get it done. And I do the same thing in my painting business. It's amazing. It's like, even though I own the business, I honestly try to earn the respect of my team.

And I don't just try to do it once. It's important to me to make sure that they understand that my head hasn't gotten too big. I'm still there with [00:07:00] them. If I go to a job site, I'm looking for trash to pick up. I'm aiding them. What do you need? Do you need something? Good. I'm there. That's kind of how I've, I've transitioned from that.

And I, and it's always served me well, just earning the respect of the teammates, trying to showcase to them that I'm no better than them in any regard. I just happened to have learned different things and took different risks and I need them in order to continue. 

Jason Phillips: Man, that is so inspiring. That is so inspiring.

I look at it this way. I was never a craftsman. I was never a painter. I literally painted one house as my first week in training and I had this experience. I'm like, okay, wow, this is not my thing. I love sales and marketing at the time, but we need each other. We don't need a company full of Jasons.

Everybody needs to play their part. If we're going to build a bigger future for us all, that's the way I look at it. But at the same time, Hey, I'm, we, we call it executive itis and we don't need any executive itis. I get out, I get out in the field occasionally, not as much as I really want to. And every time I do, it's like a reality check.

I'm like, I remember what it was like trying to deliver these promises, trying to make this [00:08:00] sale, knocking on these doors, and I don't want to be too far removed. from the real challenges and pains that my people deal with day in, day out. So congratulations to you on being connected. Sam, you're probably more connected with the front lines than I am.

I think that's a good thing. I 

Tanner Mullen: enjoy it to a certain degree. You know, I also want to give them autonomy and I don't want to have to be. When I do show up to make it clear what your intentions are when you go to the job. I think for me, there's a bunch of different focuses that could happen. You can go there and impart stress.

You can showcase, you know, flex your muscle and do all sorts of things. You know, I don't have those sorts of insecurities. I'm exactly who God made me to be. I'm in the position that I am because of how hard I worked. It wasn't handed to me. Everything's been earned. Nothing anyone can say that that will change that.

So when I go to the job site, I make sure that promises are being kept, but I also, the step further in my focus is to connect with these people that have been placed in my life. I want to connect with them. I want to pull them aside. It's funny, man. We'll go for a walk around the property that [00:09:00] whatever house I'm working at, we'll walk down the street, but we're doing a barn.

We walked up the hill and sat in the stalls. I just find time to pull eyes away and just, Hey, how's it going? How do you like working here? What do you think I could do better? What are you striving toward? These are things that I've done since the very beginning. And if you don't hear about it or talk about it as a leader, other people won't really understand how valuable this has been.

I'm sure you do the same stuff, but that's what the secret had been for me, at least of how I've been able to maintain consistent results. Now I'm not a major huge company, but what I can say is that I don't have to check the time sheets every morning. You know, that's an indicator of what I've been able to harness in my 

Jason Phillips: company.

When you have those types of interactions that you're describing and you leave, your people feel empowered, they feel valued, they feel heard. And rather than, man, I hope that guy never comes back out. I hope that never happens. You know, one of the things that I want, For me is that every interaction, even if I'm having to correct someone in every interaction, I want [00:10:00] my teammates to feel inspired and hope of a better future for us all.

After every everyone, I don't want anybody to ever think, man, Jason's, he's got his critical eye on me. I messed up or what he's critical. I really don't want that to be, I feel like we should be able to have open and honest conversations. But my job is to build people. And my philosophy is that, that when we build people, the people will build the business and the growth will come naturally if we build the people.

One of my favorite, and that's so 

Tanner Mullen: cool. I love hearing you say that. One of my favorite sayings is if I make your business, my business. Please make my business, your business. And I feel like it's a fair exchange and I think the right teammates value that. 

Jason Phillips: Wow. That's really nice. I would have to agree.

Obviously when you started your company, there was no, no drip jobs as a contractor, business owner, what. Like what gaps in technology did you see at the time? 

Tanner Mullen: Well, you know, what I realized was is that when I sold cars, I had a database and that made it easy to contact people [00:11:00] that I wanted to contact. At the time I wanted to contact them.

And when I got into the painting industry, I tried to find something like that, but it didn't seem like anybody really had a. Sales mindset when building their software from what I gathered, it was painters, nothing wrong with that, but not painters from that have been heavy in sales. So they built really cool painting related features and things like that.

But when I use the software, I'm like, this is still missing the critical component of nurturing leads. and Automations that make it easy for me. I'm not going to say this. Well, I guess I have to, I'm lazy, but I'm not lazy. Like I don't want to do work that I don't have to do that. I can get a computer to do for me.

And that's just, I guess the generation I grew up in is that we just understand that there's easier ways to do things and I'm going to find that way. So I kept hitting a roadblock. I'll tell you one of my strategies when I first started my business, Jason was to buy lead. Now, when people hear that, they cringe.

For me, of course I'm gonna buy leads. I came from car sales, life insurance. All I know is leads. I need leads in order to grow a business. Hello? And [00:12:00] you're telling me all I have to do is sign up for this program called HomeAdvisor, and they're gonna send me people that want painting jobs? Do you realize, Jason, that I was handed a stack of 200 potential leads?

That came in through the service department that I had to call and see if they wanted to upgrade their vehicle. And you're telling me that home advisor is going to send me someone that wants painting. And all I got to do is show up and give them a price. Are you kidding me? So for me, it was a no brainer, but what I found was is that when these leads would come in, of course, I would be charged right away and it would be like 70 bucks, a hundred bucks.

And I would be busy. I'd be driving, I'd be doing an estimate. I would be painting early on in my business. So the more time that goes by, of course, the less chance we have to get that customer on the phone. So I would call maybe like an hour or two hours after and thinking that like, they're still interested.

Like they submitted the information and I wouldn't be able to get ahold of them. I'd be like, well, what do I do now? Call again, call again. And maybe by that time they just got through with phone calls. They know, know what's coming and they kind of just [00:13:00] retract. So then I'd send an email thinking that, you know, they would.

Be interested in engaging through email and then even a text message. And I was doing all this manually and we're talking, I was getting leads. So I'd have to do this for every single lead that came through. That was the biggest bottleneck. It was organizing the leads, following up with the leads and advancing that lead through the pipeline, getting them to take the next action.

And then a. And me running around, painting, estimating, picking up paint, managing my crew. Oh, it just was, it was a, it was a hassle. And then on top of that, I had eight different applications. I was juggling, trying to make it all work. I 

Jason Phillips: wish that you had drip jobs when I started. I, man, I'm a pretty techno geek and I wrote my own CRM back in the day.

Microsoft servers and everything. Yeah, I did. It was great, but it wasn't cloud based and that's when I eventually got off of it. And wrote all kinds of code. I had various automations in there, but you got to remember. I started when most companies didn't even have a website. Okay. And the paint stores, most of them didn't even have computers or were just starting to computerize back in the nineties.[00:14:00] 

I'm showing my age here, but I feel like, you know, what you're seeing in the mindset you brought into this and Hey, it's great to have estimating software. It's important to have estimating software, but nothing happens until something is sold. Right. And we know it, it's the speed to lead is vital. It's almost like the game of conception only one.

And so getting that lead out there. 

Tanner Mullen: It's crucial. You got to understand, like, and I teach this, I say, you know, understand it from the customer perspective, right? You know, especially with these lead generators, these aggregators that, you know, they go on this website after seeing an ad, maybe they really wanted it done, or maybe the ad convinced them that it would be worth investigating.

Right. So they go through this. This questionnaire that has probably been psychologically evaluated by the top psychologists in, in the way human behavior works, that got them to step by step, put in little bits of information all the way to the point at the end where it says, okay, great, three contractors are going to be calling you.

Thank you. You know, I didn't, I didn't [00:15:00] know that that was going to happen. I thought it was just going to tell me a price, right? So I'm a student of the game, you know, and what we want to do is lower that trust barrier and capitalize on interest. You have to, because they're going to be as excited as they've ever been within the first, maybe 10 minutes.

And then all those thoughts start creeping in. I didn't take my family on vacation for three years. And I'm thinking about spending 10 grand on a paint job or, Oh, great. I got to invite strangers to my house. I just watched the news last night and X, Y, Z happened. I don't want it to happen to me. I just heard about Joanne next door, who her roofing contractor, you know, left a hole in the middle of a roof, right?

So the longer you wait, the longer these thoughts creep in and these And the excitement just goes down. So we wanted to create something that instantly sent a text message, instantly sent an email to the customer within seconds of them submitting the lead. And what I did was, is I built in a one off system early on.

So before DripJobs, I created a system that did this. By patching together four or

Jason Phillips: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Phillips. This show exists to help small business owners like you escape the tyranny of Contractor Freedom and enter the bliss of Contractor Freedom so you can have the Time, Money, and Freedom to Live Your Life With Purpose Beyond Your Business.

As a certified human behavior consultant in DISC personality styles and motivators, I'll be sharing with you skills for life, love, leadership, and business. I'll also be connecting you with experts that can help you scale your business and your life. So if you want to build the business and life of your dreams, then you are in the right place.

Let's go.

Jason Phillips: Hello, Contractors! I'm excited. You are gonna want to stick around for the entire episode today. We've got a very special guest with us, Mr. Nick Slavik. He is the proprietor of Nick Slavik Painting and Restoration Company, and he's also the host of Ask a Painter Live. He has been a national and [00:01:00] international speaker.

He is a U. S. Army veteran who volunteered for two tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. After he got out of service, he attended college. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in business management. And by the way, Nick is also a family man. He and his wife have four kids. And Nick has traveled the U. S.

hosting masterclasses for business owners and craftspeople. As a matter of fact, Nick is a craftsman himself with more than 30 years of experience. His company has been awarded 15 national awards for craftsmanship. And he's currently the chairman of the board of directors of the PCA. That's the Painting Contractors Association.

And Nick, I just want to thank you so much for joining us today and say welcome to the show!,

Nick Slavick: You are making a Minnesotan blush. We are very self conscious about that sort of thing. And to list our own accomplishments in front of us, you're making me turn red,

Jason Phillips: you've got quite a list. Just read, reading your site and your bio and all of this stuff. Man, you are, almost like, you're almost like a Renaissance man. I'm just, I'm not kidding.

Nick Slavick: aNd so you have no idea how much I appreciate that because one of [00:02:00] my mentors outside of this industry is the prototypical renaissance man where his politics don't align with his hobbies. His hobbies aren't his politics. He's his own person. He builds stone huts. shoots things. He's he's an avid person in politics.

He loves family. He does this. There's nothing in his life that fits any bucket. He's a fine artist. He makes things and it's just Great entrepreneur. And to me, people who don't fit the mold like that and are just they do what they like, they try to do the best and create good opportunities for others is inspiring to me.

Jason Phillips: You are inspiring a lot of people around around the nation and I'm sure beyond, obviously you're an international speaker. I've seen you travel here and there and speak in different countries. You and I were talking before we hit record and about the difference We're both on the same journey and our listeners are on the same journey of entrepreneurship, owning small business. And, my listeners know that I came in completely broke with a sales and marketing mindset, but you came in a different door.

But we all were, we both ended up at the same place. Could you tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got to where you're at today?

Nick Slavick: Yeah. So this was there's [00:03:00] not many origin stories. One of them is I did it in college. One of them is my dad did it and made me do it. And I was, my dad was the, I did it in college. I was the, my dad did it in college and then made me do it. So we encompass a lot of the origin stories.

There's very few people like Jason Phillips who come in here with a certain amount of knowledge and education and things like that, and and have an entrepreneurial mindset. Yeah, I was just forced to do it since I was 10 years old. By the time, by the time I had graduated high school, I was a really dang good painter.

I was fast and good. There was nothing I couldn't do. There was nothing I didn't look forward to and I could train others and I could handle the clients and everything else. So I had a really, I had a, I had an eight or nine year a professional career by the time I was already out of high school.

So it was that thing where dad started the business, made mom and brother and me work and we just gave a heck

Jason Phillips: Wow. That is awesome. One of the things that I see so common, and I want to get your input on this. I see in so many of the contractors I meet, it's something I experienced. I came in with my own strengths, but I also, I quickly got to a spot where I was hitting these ceilings [00:04:00] because I didn't know what I didn't know.

And some of the things that I didn't know were how to make scalable systems. I knew how to make systems that made me a personal powerhouse. But I couldn't I, other people couldn't take those and make something awesome with them and continue them. Another one was gosh, I was not a really good leader.

aNd then the other one was just, higher level business skills. So I could sell, I could market, I could get the leads, but I quickly hit this critical critical velocity. I just couldn't go any faster, any higher without everything blowing up. And what has your experience been with that?

Nick Slavick: Yeah. Same, except that I started out not possessing the knowledge of some obvious things that I feel like you did and some other people did. For the majority of our industry when you go by the stats, 99 percent of all big paint businesses in the United States are single owner operators.

Historically, they start out by somebody being very good and fast at painting and not finding a professional company to work for. So they start their own business, which is an interesting thing because they don't come in. Believing some obvious things about business, which is a separate [00:05:00] checking account and job costing and a marketing thing and a hiring process and legal guide work, like an employee resource guide or a handbook.

And there's things that are obvious to some people in the world that are not obvious to painters. None of those are there. So I've had that same track. The weird data point that I can offer this industry, and I think it's why a lot of the things I do and say are relatable is because I have literally done this the hardest possible way that you could do.

And I, I've been using grit, brute strength, and hours to solve all these problems. Not dissimilar to making yourself a physical powerhouse, which is, I love this. My name's on the business and everything is going to go through me. And soon you realize. That doesn't go as far as

Jason Phillips: like, oh crap, everything has to go through me.

Nick Slavick: Yeah. And you're forced into an 82 hour week. You have created a business that demands 82 hours a week from you and not only 82 hours a week, but all the risk, all the payroll. It costs 55, 000 a week to run my business. And that is risk. No, whether we make that or not, I owe that. And so not only are you putting yourself [00:06:00] in for 82 hours, you're having all the risk and there needs to be a equivalent reward for 

Jason Phillips: Man, that is said so well. You know what, my family in my early years, I worked those type of hours. And my business was getting the best of me. And my family was getting my cold leftovers. And I just, I had this wake up call. And it was a very powerful moment in my life and I made a decision that I was going to do things differently and grow and build a team.

Have you hit these spots where you've had this, even maybe this emotional, a moment even.

Nick Slavick: Jason, you are describing my 2023. This literally what you just described, I have gone through the largest epiphany. lightning bolt, professional, personal revision I've ever done in my life, ever. And literally it's, I'm just coming out of the flux of that right now. And this year has been. Absolutely wild, personally and professionally.

And like that, it comes to a breaking point where everything's fine until the proverbial straw that broke the [00:07:00] camel's back gets laid on top of you. And guys like you and me are super achievers. We have. A high pain tolerance. We're willing to do anything to get anything done to take care of those around us.

The problem is, you and I do have a breaking point. I reached mine in a couple different ways in, in not like crazy dramatic ways, but getting wise enough to take in input from others to say, Nick, this is fine. You say you're fine now, but what happens next year or the year after? If you think you want to keep doing this and growing, I don't feel you can do this forever.

So you need to start thinking about the future and. Last thing I'll say is, the thing you said right before I started talking has so much deep wisdom in it and people are all going to nod their heads and agree and fine. But if you haven't been there, you don't know how deep and impactful what you just said was.

This gas tank, this proverbial gas tank. We have a gas tank and we'll empty it into our community and our friends and our business and our clients and everything else. And business owners have this horrible trait where they save no fuel for their family or their self. And they are the main sufferers.

And we have amazingly resilient families that put up with a lot. They too have their breaking points.

Jason Phillips: Wow, [00:08:00] that's true. And I'm thankful that my wife has tremendous patience. She had tremendous patience and, in the early days, she did, but we worked out, I was going to do X, Y, A, B, C, and she was going to do X, Y, Z, family wise. That doesn't mean it wasn't pressured. There was, man, there was a lot of pressure.

And when I finally got over that and got out of that hole, I just, I started taking vacations with her and my family constantly and just making up for lost time. And I'm so thankful to God that, that I was able to do that. It was man, it was one of my most powerful moments, again, man, there's this emotional connection that comes with being an entrepreneur.

I was, okay, I'm older than most in this industry right now. walked my first daughter down the aisle to get married, from the back of that chapel to the front was, I don't know, 20 steps. Life together, every highlight, every dad daughter moment from learning to ride a bike, learning to walk, learning to swim, even being born, you drive a car, all those things flashed before my eyes [00:09:00] in just a few short moments and tears were streaming down my face. And I was recently meeting with some contract the gathering of in San Antonio.

And I told them, I said, guys, it was exactly 20 years before that, that I slammed my fist on the desk and said, no more. I've got to do things different. My family's getting my leftovers, I can't do this anymore. And I'm so glad that I had that moment of reality check, of anger, of pain. So that, that I really, I experienced all those memories with my daughter and I, my heart goes out to all the other contractors I see.

I see that they are where I was, so many of them, and I want to help them get over that. And I think, I see you doing that same thing.

Nick Slavick: man. And honestly, the worst thing that happens to guys like us is having a high pain tolerance and putting up with this. I, my, my wish to this entire industry is that people would get broken in their first year. Learn from it and move on and never make the mistakes again. Now, it would be great, Jason, if they would never have that thing at all, but honestly, guys like us who have high revving sort of motors and all we see is missed opportunities and we're happy and optimistic and high pain tolerance, [00:10:00] I think we need to hit that control out, delete or have it hit for us every once in a while, just to be like, it, it takes some monumental things to reset us and reorganize our priorities.

Sometimes

Jason Phillips: It's what Mike Tyson say, he said, everybody's got a plan until you get punched in the face. And no, you're right, man, that, that is great. I haven't thought about it that way that would happen within the first year of business.

Nick Slavick: It'd be great. Now, listen, what I'm hardened over is that, you and I have been in this industry a long time. I was raised in trades V1, which is. Old grumpy men screaming at me. And that's how most of us have been here. And I've had to go from being a young grumpy man, screaming at people into a middle aged grumpy man, trying not to scream at people, trying not to be a grumpy man at all.

So I've encompassed two feats in two different stages of the industry. And I'm very heartened now when I travel the country and we're in a room with. 50 to 100 contractors at some industry event and the average age is 31 and a half and they're coming in having job costed their first job.

They have a separate checking account. They're have employment agreements and standards in the company and they know their P and L and things [00:11:00] like that. And they actually talk about a work life balance. And I was like, it's taken a long time for me to not get angry at that because I look back at my life and say, I should have done that sooner.

I'm now a little more sophisticated where that makes me proud now to see these young people doing this. And I feel like that's my maturation

Jason Phillips: So being as A craftsman, did you struggle with making the leap from craftsman to business person? Or did you not struggle with that at all?

Nick Slavick: Oh no, this has been the biggest struggle of my life. Forming a business. So interestingly enough, like founding, growing, scaling is the easiest thing on earth for guys with our personalities. You just rev high. You just dump resources in, lots of hours. Boom. We can collect a lot of people. We can do a lot of stuff.

Not a big deal. Making the transition from grower, founder, scaler, cowboy, firefighter to professional, consistent manager that my company needs literally broke me. It like, it is the hardest thing with our person. Physically, it's easier. It's an office job. It's standard office hours. It's being consistent with tiny little tasks throughout the day.

And I want to rip my face off. So[00:12:00] I've been trying to, I've been trying to make that professional transition with the help of a lot of people. And honestly, I would rather scrape a water tower in the sun than do that most days. But I'm finding love for it now that you realize it's a higher calling.

It is a tougher task and I love a tougher task. So it's been a weird journey.

Jason Phillips: Wow, that's, I love the way you define that. One of the things that I've done to help me, I get bored easily. And I'm my personality style on, on the DISC platform is a high D, high I. And, which is all fast, both of those are fast paced. So I've surrounded myself with some slower paced thinkers and supportive people that they really love to do the things that I'm terrible at. And I get to do what they don't really want to do. And so I, unfortunately I didn't learn this until I was rebuilding my company, which is a whole nother story. But I learned, personality styles and behavioral tendencies really understanding that really changed my life and my leadership.

And, using that to position people on my team has just been absolutely [00:13:00] trans transformational. But I see all these guys that And guys and gals that are trying to wear all of the hats in their company when what they need to do is maybe, outsource their weakness if you could say that.

But I see that a lot. And but I feel your pain. If you're going to be, if you're going to be the leader, there are certain things that you have to be good at. And one of those is inspecting what you expect. And realistically, that's managing and that, that accountability thing. Now, so when I think about Nick Slavik, here's one of the things that I think of you in so many ways as SOP guy, because I've constantly seen you share these your SOPs online with guys that ask.

And they're so clear cut, do this, then that, then this, then that. And just, it makes it so easy to follow a process. Is that something you started your company with? Because unfortunately I didn't. I had to go back and do all that.

Nick Slavick: Oh, Jason Phillips. How funny. How funny. Oh no, I didn't have any of this stuff. Listen, I've been in this industry over 30 years. I've owned my business for 16. I didn't have an SOP or anything written [00:14:00] down until five or six years ago, honestly. So literally I was left like five or six years ago, maybe even seven now with.

No employees having a bunch just left and I reformed the entire company and got serious with the help of other people. So no, this, it, what's really interesting too is that yes, most people have this reference point that I'm the SOP guy. People have no idea how much I hate them and how much I fight against them.

It is a necessary evil, Mr. Jason, because SOPs are standard. I literally came from the military where all we do is SOPs. There's an SOP to make your bed. They give you a stick with colored bands on it, and you lay the stick over the sheets, and the sheets have to be folded back, and I want to rip my face off.

I thought, this is stupid, what are we doing? But there is a point to SOPs, and I've, and again, going from cowboy firefighter, To professional manager, you realize that you have to be genuine in your own way of running a company. I don't like SOPs, so I crafted them in the most simplest, straightforward, intuitive ways I can.

They fit my personality and that of the company and finding your own voice within your company as a [00:15:00] manager and leader has been very important to me because I can't do the Jason Phillips way. It would be very maybe I could, I don't know, but I can't do a lot of what else I see out there.

So you got to find your own voice and be

Jason Phillips: I think you and I are probably more alike than we might realize after hearing some of this. By the way, I knew there was an SOP for how to make your bed. I did not know that there was a stick with colors on it. And it makes me think about, okay if we think about how much does a pound weigh or how far is a foot or a meter, there is actually, somewhere in the world, I don't remember where it is, there's a standard by which, you know and the gas pumps every year, gas pumps are measured to make sure you truly get a gallon of gas.

And that's what, as a as a business owner, we need things to be consistently repeatable. And if we don't have a measuring stick. to tell us if someone followed the process, not just tell us if they followed the process, but they can know whether they followed the process. We're just going to be firefighter cowboy forever.

And

Nick Slavick: aNd it is that thing where we, problem is. I got presented in the last 36 months, lots of things that challenged me and things and knee [00:16:00] jerk reaction. We once held as a point of...

Jason Phillips: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Phillips. This show exists to help small business owners like you escape the tyranny of Contractor Freedom and enter the bliss of Contractor Freedom so you can have the Time, Money, and Freedom to Live Your Life With Purpose Beyond Your Business.

As a certified human behavior consultant in DISC personality styles and motivators, I'll be sharing with you skills for life, love, leadership, and business. I'll also be connecting you with experts that can help you scale your business and your life. So if you want to build the business and life of your dreams, then you are in the right place.

Let's go. 

Jason Phillips: I've got a special treat for you today. I've got with us, Tom Droste, CEO of Estimate Rocket. And Tom coaches company leaders in sales and profit planning. And guess what? Software implementation as well. In case you don't know Estimate Rocket, it's an all in one business management platform. Software for contractors that helps them run their entire business.

They say [00:01:00] from lead to paid all on one platform. So let's jump right into it. Tom, welcome to the show today. How are you doing? 

Tom Droste: I'm doing great, Jason. Thanks for 

Jason Phillips: absolutely. Me as well. Quick question. How long has Estimate Rocket been a thing?

Tom Droste: Sure. Estimate Rockets, been a thing for about, seven years. 

Jason Phillips: So what, you know, did you have a software background or a contracting background? What gave birth?

Tom Droste: Yeah, so I started, in accounting. that was my, that's what I went to school for and did that for Two years and decided this isn't a lot of fun, but I started, , using computers in my accounting career and I said, this is fun and, got spreadsheets, which at the time were brand new phenomenon and, just really got hooked on it.

I went and quit my, great. high paying full benefits job as an accountant and went to work at a computer store, at the time. So that was my, I turned, I found out recently that my father in law thought I was absolutely a lunatic for quitting this great job I had with benefits and everything[00:02:00] going to a computer store. I was at the computer store for about a year and then I started helping people, Do business things with their computers. And I just really got hooked on it. And then that kind of morphed into building applications. and, this is actually my second software company, the first one, did a whole different area of work, but I will say that one of the first things I ever wrote was actually an estimating program for a plumber.

And this was back in the day when, data was stored on these little things called floppy disks. wE're going way, way back. And we complain about now, about how things are slow and, they're Things aren't, you can't, not enough capacity and we're talking days when, it wasn't a meg that you were sending for a photo.

You were lucky if you could send 30k 

Jason Phillips: Yeah, you don't know what slow is until you had to deal with the old floppy disks.

Tom Droste: Exactly. When I started, this company, the company is actually called Logical Engine and we were doing, projects basically for people who needed software. And, we got into doing an estimating application actually for, concrete lifting companies. And [00:03:00] that's how we got it.

That was really the start of it. It was super simple, did very little. And as we grew it, we saw the need for a lot more than what we were doing with that application and expanded it to other trades and really just 

Jason Phillips: You've been, seven years, is quite a long time for software these days. And, what are just being associated the, the painting industry in particular, what are some positive trends you've seen over the last seven years?

Tom Droste: Yeah. I think one of the biggest ones, There's been a real focus on people and on your team members and building, making the trades a place where you can actually have a real career and a lot of opportunities. And that has, and maybe part of that is, has been the need, because obviously, there's a need out there for contractors, but it's been a really positive trend because I see, companies.

In the contracting area now, talking about things like culture, and I don't think they talked much about that ten years ago or five years ago, even. It [00:04:00] really is a new phenomenon. And, it's actually influenced my company too, because I came up old school and, hey, you go to work, you do your job. Okay, if you like it, that's a bonus, but that's how it is.

And that's not how it is anymore. People really do want to have a sense of, belonging, and they want to have a sense of purpose of where they're going and what the possibilities are. And I see that as an absolutely great trend. I hope it's enough to keep, the trades growing the way

Jason Phillips: I think that's a great insight. If you think about this, if you've got someone who loves the company they work for, and the people they work with, and they're using their skills, for something they feel is worthwhile, they're going to be way more productive. Paying attention to 

Tom Droste: Way more 

Jason Phillips: not just to have a, a, a soft, fun, hey, let's have some sleeping pods and, vending, free vending machines or whatever all around, but it's win for everybody.

And I like to say, look, we're not really in the painting business or the contracting business. We're all in the people business. Tom, what, on the flip side of that coin. What are some, some negative trends that you've seen over the last seven [00:05:00] years?

Tom Droste: I think things were really pretty positive, I'll say, until COVID hit and I think COVID, really took a lot of steam out of a lot of people in a lot of different areas. In a lot of respects, I think, contractors got to keep going a little more than other companies did.

We were lucky because we were considered, 

Jason Phillips: Essential.

Tom Droste: required people and could still do our work. Yeah, essential workers. and, the fact is that most of our company is remote. I have Florida, South Carolina, Utah, Arkansas, and St. Louis right now is our, area where our people are located.

And we meet a lot just like we're meeting now, we're video pictures of 

Jason Phillips: that, gosh, that's, that's wonderful. So you don't need a big, huge, office building with, helps keep overhead low, right? 

Tom Droste: Yeah, 

Jason Phillips: we,

Tom Droste: I probably have an office that's about four times bigger because when we started, the, Logical Engine actually started like 12 years ago, and then Estimate Rocket about seven years old, we thought, oh, we're gonna need a big office. We're gonna need all kinds of people and I still got the big office, but it's

Jason Phillips: we were in a similar [00:06:00] position up until last year. Most of the contractors, contractor freedom is about elevating the lives of contractors. so they can live their life with greater freedom and purpose. And we talk about time, money, and freedom quite a bit.

And one of the ways to freedom the money component. And just about, not everybody, but just about. All the contractors I speak with want to grow their business. And, there's this, there is this, there's these plateaus and there's this somewhat elusive, five million mark.

And I know you like to talk about that as well. And so obviously, on, on the back end of things, you have access to all kinds of data. How many, how many. Contractors, do you think or what percentage actually hit that five million mark?

Tom Droste: it's a pretty small percentage. If I looked at the, at our demographics, maybe 10 percent make that, that and above, and it seems like That is actually, that's one of the big magic numbers, I think, because over that, it seems to accelerate, and I think, there's a lot of things that happen at that size where [00:07:00] you have the revenues to have the amount of people that you need to staff properly, and you're not constantly struggling for, who's going to do what, because everybody's already full up with stuff to do.

But between there, there's a whole bunch of hurdles. There's the 500, 000 hurdle, and there's the 1, 000, 000 hurdle. And then there's the 2, 000, 000 hurdle. And it is really fascinating how things happened in between those hurdles. It's you're. You're knocking yourself out, you hit the hurdle.

Everything's cool for a while, but you're not going anywhere. Then all of a sudden you hustle and you get the next hurdle and it's it's quite a ride, which gets back to, you also have to try to keep, you have to love what you do. And I think you brought that up in terms of your own, even as the leader, you have to be enjoying something about what you're doing or you're not going to be productive.

And I've gone through that, those phases where why am I not getting anything done right now? And it's usually because I'm just not having, and again, we all know fun when we say having fun. It doesn't mean that this is a party. It means that you're enjoying the people you're working with and the things that you're [00:08:00] doing and what you're creating.

And yeah, there's hassles and headaches, but as long as there's enough of the good stuff rolled in there, it really does make it worthwhile. Makes You want to get up in the morning and go do your thing.

Jason Phillips: You know, I just spoke with a contractor the other day. He's at the 500, 000 level and he said Jason this is he said this is the company I prayed for But I can't keep up. He was like I'm in contractor prison I just know in my own experience, and then I see what I've done, I see the old me and the struggles that I went through growth and all of these other guys and guys and gals.

And we have to see things different. We have to think different. And, those, at those different levels if you're doing, under, under a million, you're. Or at least, half a million or less, you're thinking about how to deliver the widget, how to make that widget, right?

What have you seen in, in the contractors that you guys work with the differences in mindset or leadership even?

Tom Droste: Yeah, I think there's two big things that, that stick out. One is delegating, and that's hard at every level as [00:09:00] well. Because, when you think you're a good delegator, you're not yet. And that happens over and over again, right? Where there's certain things you get to that comfort level with delegating, and then you got to build up again to get that, delegation.

And I think And I'm not, I'm a late delegator, not an early delegator, which, it's a handicap. It really, it can slow down your growth and learning to do that. Yeah. And we all do, it's almost impossible to avoid But it does help having. Resources like yourself that people can talk to and share, because a lot of it is story sharing and honest story sharing, not the, just the beautiful stuff, but the hard stuff too that gets people to realize, wow, everybody's been through this, we're all suffering these same things, all experiencing these same things.

This is not unique. This is something we all go through and that, 

Jason Phillips: but we, but there's this time when we feel like we're all alone. Now, a lot of, once you get connected. And your eyes are just open. You're like, Oh man, wow. There's other people just like me everywhere. And how that guy or that [00:10:00] gal over there they broke through it. What did they do?

Wow. Something new is possible. It just, it opens, it opens up your mind and to see the way that things structure and, and even, I think no matter what level you're at, there's these glass ceilings. These beliefs I even find in myself, 

Drawn to do certain things and I have to remind myself, no, Jason, you need to be delegating this 

Because you've got someone else on your team that can do this.

And and sometimes I'm like I'm the only one that can do this. Maybe that other person, can learn, but there's all these little. These little default thoughts that we have, or even you could even say lies that we believe that really are the are, we really truly are the lid.

I firmly believe in John Maxwell's law of the lid. We are the limiting factor, on our business. So how about these guys that are there's a lot of guys at that million dollar revenue, annual revenue right there. And to get to that next hump, which is there's at least one more hump between one and five, at least one, if not [00:11:00] two.

Tom Droste: Oh, for sure. At 

Jason Phillips: What things do you think the guys running a successful $1 million operation, what do you think he needs to do to get to that $2.55 million range?

Tom Droste: Needs to make sure, which is the second part of the, comes after delegation or maybe probably before delegation, But it's it's systems. It's standard operating procedures for things. If you don't have them, and that's one of the big barriers to the reason there's no one else that can do it except me is because I haven't told anyone else how to do it.

It's that simple. And those, and I think everybody gets afraid of that, standard operating procedure or systems. Yeah. It's really just outlining a set of steps to accomplish a task. That's all it is. And putting a heading on it so when somebody needs to do something, they go, Oh that's what I'm trying to do.

Jason Phillips: But we overcomplicate it. We think we've gotta write a book and, 

Tom Droste: it's true. And it's like you need 20 percent to get 80 

Jason Phillips: One of the, one of the most powerful things that I learned on that subject is that a checklist is to help you not forget the most obvious things. It's not to teach you how to do the [00:12:00] job. It's to help you not forget the most obvious things. And that was empowering to me that I could take, most of our processes and just boil them down to one page.

And just start there. That may not be your complete training program, but you can take a guy and say, hey, for instance, look, I know you know how to paint or I know you how to do X, Y, Z. These are the steps, specific steps at our company. Here's how we do it. And now at least, and I think there's, I think there's a benefit to that too.

is that one, you can improve that list, but two, which I think is possibly even more powerful is you have a team of people that are accustomed to following a process. And one of the most difficult things is to take People that have had to figure it out and do it because they're hardworking people.

They want to do the right thing, but they end up what we call freelancing because we don't have a way to do it. So they have to just do their best. But to get those people to change their ingrained habits to follow a process is tremendously difficult. And so what I teach contractors is, guys, [00:13:00] start with something.

If it's five bullet points or check boxes, and if it's terrible, At least you're going to have that new person following a process. And if you add that sixth item, seventh item, they're going to be used to consulting the checklist. 

Tom Droste: Yeah, that's 

Jason Phillips: I'm, does Estimate Rocket help with some of that?

Tom Droste: Actually, it helps with a lot of it. It helps with the general project and workflow. From beginning into end. And we do actually, probably in the last year, we introduced a to do feature where you can map out your to do list. Now, it's not necessarily a replacement for a process sheet or something that goes in the work order that is that list of, like you said, bullet points.

It doesn't necessarily have to be something you check off. It needs to be something you reference to say, okay, yep, here's what we're about to close out. What do we need to do? Oh yeah, we gotta go make sure we talked to Mrs. Jones. teLl her what we did and when we'll be back or those kinds of things.

Absolutely

Jason Phillips: to do feature? How does, what is it for for instance Hey, I've got to come back to, I've got to go pick up some touch up paint at the store and deliver it to her on Monday. Is it that,

Tom Droste: yep, and [00:14:00] you can notify a part, you can notify your, if you've got someone who orders the materials or the office manager or someone who does that,

stuff, you can notify them in a message and say, hey, I'm going to need this many more materials. And then in the to do, it'll pop if you, as you set up the to do, it'll also pop up on your dashboard that, hey, 

Jason Phillips: so that, that's a great feature. One of the things that, that I feel like my, my company has struggled with, and again, just about everybody, let's say you, you quote, wrap up a job and you get that final payment, 

Tom Droste: Okay. 

Jason Phillips: there's this little hanging detail, for instance, proverbially just talking about the, that cord of touchup paint or whatever it is, and those tiny details are outta sight, outta mind.

And now you take someone who was a huge promoter of your company and you ignore them and you let them down and now they become a dissatisfied detractor telling a story. And we have a term at our company and we say it's the sale final. And what that means is the sale is final when all promises are delivered in both directions.

That means the customer [00:15:00] has paid us every penny they promised and we have delivered every promise to them. So that way if we've got to go back the sale is not final. Yeah, they don't know a penny They already paid but the sale is not final And so I think that's great that you've got a feature in there to help Even the most well intentioned person if you don't have a system to make sure that those things get done You're going to end up with they're not going to get done.

They're just not. Yeah. 

Tom Droste: Yeah.

That's why we love the follow ups, the automated follow ups, because there's even an automated follow up for when 

Jason Phillips: Yes. Okay. Thinking about the name of the software is estimate rocket. So an outsider is going to think, Oh, this helps me create estimates. But obviously estimate rocket is so much more than that. And again, you're seeing from lead to paid. So definitely, what are the major components of the software?

Tom Droste: sure. So from, incoming lead, inbound lead comes to us. We don't get you the leads, but we've got the facility for tracking it from lead all the way through the project. That'll initiate a campaign to, to get, to schedule an appointment if you haven't [00:16:00] already made an appointment.

It'll track the appointments on the calendar for you, for your sales team, by person,...

Jason Phillips: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Phillips. This show exists to help small business owners like you escape the tyranny of Contractor Freedom and enter the bliss of Contractor Freedom so you can have the Time, Money, and Freedom to Live Your Life With Purpose Beyond Your Business.

As a certified human behavior consultant in DISC personality styles and motivators, I'll be sharing with you skills for life, love, leadership, and business. I'll also be connecting you with experts that can help you scale your business and your life. So if you want to build the business and life of your dreams, then you are in the right place.

Let's go.

Jason Phillips: Hello, Contractors! Welcome to the show today. 

We've got a very special show for you, and right here with me, we have Mr. Daniel Honan of Bookkeeping for Painters, and Daniel spoke at our Contractor Freedom Summit, and just delivered a, I'm just going to say, a pile of knowledge that I think was really eye [00:01:00] opening toward for so 

many of the contractors.

Now, 

daniel, he's, he is, by the way, he is a former business owner and military intelligence officer. I don't know if we might have to get into that or 

not. He has an MBA, a degree in accounting and he used, he, he used to run, do cold calling. appointments, manage crews, run payroll, and with just all of that experience 

he's created this back end for 

painters to help save them time and money by just running an efficient 

business and allowing you to focus, on the on the sales and production side.

Daniel, 

I just want to say thank you so much. Welcome to the show, man and I'm 

Glad you're glad you're here with us today. And so Let's get into it. But man, tell us a couple of things. Where are you right now? And what is, what is bookkeeping for painters and what made you start the company?

Daniel Honan: Yeah thanks Jason. I'm really happy to be here excited to be here. And right now I'm in Nicaragua that's where I'm, I work out of doing some advanced tax strategies we can get into maybe. But no I'm really passionate about helping painting business owners and closely related trades know their numbers and what they mean.

And I've been in [00:02:00] their shoes I've had to run a painting business and it, it was chaos, at least for me trying, that was my first business I ever ran and I did it in college and I definitely didn't have, a good grasp on my numbers and what they meant. So I definitely felt that pain of not knowing, how much money do I have?

Can I afford things? What are my margins? Am I doing good or not? I try to help folks get clarity in their business so they can make decisions to get their business to the next level. And then we also along with that, once they get nice and profitable, We try to help them solve the issue of taxes, because if you hit any level of success in your business, your biggest expense is going to be taxes, so we try to help them protect their profits through proactive tax

Jason Phillips: So when you say, Daniel, when you say, know your numbers, can we talk about what that means? 

Cause there's so many, different types of numbers. 

And, when you say know your numbers, what are you referring to?

Daniel Honan: Yeah, it's a great question, and it's a big one. There are many you could go with. I like to start with gross profit. [00:03:00] That's an important number. Maybe the most important. Because if you don't have your gross profit down, and just to define what that is, gross profit is your revenue, what you've produced in revenue, minus any direct costs, so that would be gross I'm sorry, any direct costs, so that would be direct labor, so painters on the job site, minus any direct materials, like paint or sundries, subtract that out, and what's left over is gross profit.

I also like to say, gross profit percentage, and that means gross profit divided by your revenue. That gives you a percentage. Typically what we see on average, the average painting business does 40 percent gross profit. Now, obviously, folks are probably not shooting to be average, and there's definitely folks that can do a lot better than that.

I definitely recommend doing better than that. But it helps to know that number, out the gate, knowing that number where do you stand on your gross profit, because that's going to tell you, give me an indication of what your overall profitability [00:04:00] is, because if you're hitting 40 percent gross profit, your profitability is probably not doing that great.

You're probably average profitability. And then that tells me about your pricing. Are you pricing? On target, tells me maybe a little bit about how efficient your crews are on the job. so It just gives a 

lot of indications of of how you're doing. And a lot of folks starting out the, probably the biggest problem I see is the pricing.

And so gross profit gives me a good indicator of whether they have their

Jason Phillips: Yeah, so when, when you become a, let's just say you grow in your sophistication or your business skills, 

Then you're going to start raising that pricing and you're going to, you're going to want, you're going to want to earn more ROI on that input, right? So you know, the and 

just for clarity, 

I know you and I know this, but for 

our listeners when you speak, when we speak revenue, we're talking.

We're talking on finished product. We're not saying 

contracted sales or we got the deposit. It's, hey, we finished the job 

and we got paid on it. And that's 

revenue. Just for clarification, and on [00:05:00] our end, of course we track contracted 

sales. We've got all kinds of sales goals, but we call them confetti.

Because it's not real 

until it's, until all promises, what we say is final. We say all promises have been delivered in both directions. And that means we 

have delivered the project, we've also delivered the 

touch up paint, or any other little loose ends, and then the customer has delivered their promise of final payment to us.

So when we say final at our company, it means something 

Very specific. And that's what we track as as 

revenue. So we, we track, we actually have a dual entry system, our CRM and our and our QuickBooks, but it also provides some checks and balances for us as well. And we actually like it that way. So after gross profit, what would, obviously, hey, I 

know my, I know whether good or bad, I know my gross profit day in, day out, per job, per week, per month. What would you say is the next number that we should be aware of?

Daniel Honan: That, that would, I would say your discretionary earnings, or another way to say it is cash flow to owner, [00:06:00] basically how much money are you taking home as the business owner. Now that's obviously important because your business, should be helping you, live a great life and provide for your family and the greater community.

You need to be making money, not only for yourself, but also for the business so you can grow and hire new folks to help you out and all that good stuff. So discretionary earnings, cashflow to owner, basically whatever you're getting out of the business going to you the average penny business owner is making somewhere around 12 to 15%.

Discretionary earnings or cash flow to owner. And a common question I get is how much should I be making? That's the average, but how much should I actually be making? And I usually, ask them back the question of, okay what are you doing in your business? What roles do you perform in your business?

Because what roles you perform should, um, tell you, give me an idea of how much you should be making. tHe first one is you're probably the business owner, right? Right off the bat, you should be getting, you should aim to get 15 percent of revenue going to you as the business owner, um, assuming you're completely passive in the business.

If you have the business running, you have a team [00:07:00] running it, you should be getting 15% passively. Net income, basically. After everything is paid, your team's paid, all overhead and supplies and everything. What's left over is Now, most of us are probably still working in our businesses a lot of folks are still doing sales.

So if you're doing, if you're performing that sales role, you should be tacked on another, 8 to 10 percent going to you if you're selling everything. So that would, that 15 goes up to 25 percent discretionary earnings. And then, some folks might also be doing production management as well, maybe they're selling everything and they're also producing it.

So if that's the case, you tag on another 5 to 7 percent, so that gets us to 30 percent or so. And you can keep doing that, but basically, so if you're, to answer the question of how much money should I be making my business is basically what rules you perform, add up the percentages of revenue to get what your target discretionary earnings.

So that would be the next number that I would, would look at and flesh

Jason Phillips: One of the things that guys could do, guys and gals could do is [00:08:00] just start by breaking up their paycheck according to payroll item. Hey I sold this many projects, so this is my, okay, so I've got my salary line, I've got my sales commission and my project. My project based commission production management commission 

or whatever pay and start breaking those out.

That way, when you hire that first person or that next make, create that new position, you're not having to figure that stuff out later. I think that would be a, a great way. Do you ever help people do that?

Daniel Honan: Yeah, absolutely. That's also the benefit of thinking of it this way because If you're, let's say you're doing 500k in revenue, you're probably doing sales, you're probably doing production management. And you're probably thinking, man, I could really use some help in a little bit. So how much should I pay my production manager I want to bring on?

So that kind of helps you understand is if you're breaking it out already, you know that your production manager should get five to 7 percent of whatever they produce. Then, and you're, like you said, breaking it out on your profit and loss already, you can see it. And your financial report, [00:09:00] so you have an idea of how to, how that's going to impact your pay, your discretionary earnings when you hire a new person.

You have to make room for them, obviously but that will help you, grow the business more, hopefully focused on marketing and sales in this case. So yes, that would definitely be useful and it's just a matter of then from there coming up with a compensation package for that production manager so that they're aligned with you.

The they're incentivized to, to do what you need them to

Jason Phillips: A lot of the contractors are at a place that, that I was at once where I was making really good money, but I was bankrupt on time. 

And matter of fact, I was just speaking to a guy the other day and he was, he's doing right around half a million a year in revenue. And he said, Jason, 

He said, this is the business I, 

I prayed for. He said, but I can't get away from my phone. I'm constantly fielding calls from this guy and that crew. And he said it's driving me nuts, and so at some point, You've got to start buying your time back, right? And we can always make more money, but we can't make more time.

But 

we can free up our time by delegating roles 

and responsibilities to other people. [00:10:00] And, having your financial your books set 

up in a way to 

where it, you, it helps you make solid financial decisions. And, I, if we were to take a poll right now, How many contractors are measuring their cash flow by how much money is in their bank account?

And I'm just going to say far too many. And you 

probably run into it every, all the time, Daniel. 

But okay, so let me ask you this. If let's just say that, we've got some listeners and they're like, wow, I know I need this. I need. I need to know more about, about running books, about how to make sound financial decisions.

Is that something that you just make a phone call, set up a consultation, because you guys can get backend accountant access to QuickBooks. Can you do that?

Daniel Honan: yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's in QuickBooks online. There's a way you can invite an accountant in, and we can take a look at, what we often do is diagnostic reviews, which is basically what's the status of your books right now? Some folks that come in and they're either doing the books themselves or have a family member or friend doing the books.

So want to make sure you're working off of good data. [00:11:00] And so we'll do a complimentary diagnostic to see, make sure you're,

Jason Phillips: Wow, guys, if you are not set up. iF you're using the default chart of accounts or you're not using QuickBooks at all you've got to, you've got to take Daniel up on this and get a complimentary what did you call it? A diagnosis? No. What'd you call it? diagnostic. Yeah.

Daniel Honan: Diagnostic we'll go through and just basically say, okay, this, this needs to be looked at like this, chart of account. It's, we'll often pull the balance sheet. And and go line by line and see, identify any issues and say, okay, here's how you can fix it.

And either yourself or obviously we can fix it for you as well, but just so you have a good idea 

Jason Phillips: One, one thing that you really don't want to play with guys is you don't want to get behind on your payroll taxes. Because the IRS is not very merciful. So there's a lot of businesses that go, that really 

go out of business, but you can't file bankruptcy and get off of the IRS.

Okay. You're going to owe that money. So if you don't have a PAC, 

a payroll service, and I believe you guys do that as well, don't you, Daniel?

Daniel Honan: [00:12:00] We can run payroll for you as well. Yeah, absolutely. And you're completely right. Like the IRS is not someone you want to mess with. Unfortunately we do see a lot of not necessarily our clients, but, folks coming to us with issues and. We're just hearing about it. I think a couple weeks ago, I think a Connecticut painting contractor just got put in jail because he was not reporting, he was basically taking cash from customers and not reporting on his income tax return.

So he's pocketing cash and not reporting that. So that's tax fraud, which is thrown in a cage for that, unfortunately. That, yeah, payroll tax is a big one, for sure. It's, especially if you're running QuickBooks Online, yourself running that payroll yourself and paying those manually.

Yeah, it's easy to get behind on those, and then that's not fun to have the IRS put a lien on your bank account and start pulling money out of it because you owe them money. Definitely [00:13:00] something you don't want to mess with. Get his help as soon as possible when you're

Jason Phillips: So many business owners that I meet are admittedly terrible with details and they hate paperwork. 

And so my, my suggestion is why not hire someone to do it and someone that loves it, someone who's good at it, someone you can depend on, and then you don't have to do that. They just need to give you the data so that you can make the right decisions.

So that's, I'm a huge, I'm a huge 

proponent, and like I told the guys at the summit of Daniel, where were 

where were you when I, 

When I started my company and a lot, and someone chimes out from the audience, he wasn't born yet, 

But it's, it's true that 

in Business, we think we start out and we're 

like, we can do it all, we're going to do it all this, we've got this bravado, 

but we can't do everything all at the same time.

And being an expert at different things is just, you can't be an expert at everything. You can't cover all the bases. 

Whether it's bookkeeping for painters, or someone else, you've gotta have your books be, you've gotta have them [00:14:00] be right. You've got to have things be done timely, and you need to be able to count on those reports if you're going to run your business.

Are you just going to run your business based on the balance in your checking account and decide what you're going to buy, whether it's the new truck, or the new spray rig, or take, throw a party, just based on what is in what's in your checking account? That is a terrible way.

to run your business. And if you're doing that, chances are you will, as long as you're doing that, you're going to be in contractor prison. And so someone like Daniel can help you with a financial plan to get you into contractor freedom and have a confidence. So many guys, they have this, when we start talking about. I say guys, I'm talking guys and gals, that you can just see their face, their countenance when you start talking about these type of things. You can tell it's an uncomfortable conversation. But when you have a trusted advisor and trusted books, then 

you can make sound financial decisions and you can have confidence.

So I want you to think about wherever you're at 

right now. And then what it could be like when you have complete confidence in knowing [00:15:00] and knowing what the 

truth is, because all 

progress starts with knowing the truth. Excuse me there. Daniel, let's talk about, this big nebulous 

thing called overhead.

Tell us what overhead is and a little about it.

Daniel Honan: Yeah. Sure. Absolutely. we Talked about gross profit and direct costs or people often refer to a cost of goods sold or COGS, if you hear someone say COGS, it's direct job site costs. So basically anything that's not directly used on the job site, it's not your painters, it's not your paints or sundries, it's probably an overhead cost.

So this could be things like. Your marketing costs, your insurance, paying someone to do your books or your taxes, all those items that don't apply to a specific job that, but they help run the business overall. So that's your overhead and to continue the example we talked about, if you're doing 500, 000 if you have a 50 percent gross profit margin, maybe you're shooting for 50 percent and you are the sales in.

[00:16:00] In production manager and you're the business owner. So you're taking 30% home. So that leaves 20 percent left to, to pay your overhead costs. Most of those overhead costs are going to be, or I would say a good portion of them will be marketing. So usually folks are spending between five and 15%. of revenue towards getting more customers.

So if you have 20 percent left over, maybe you're spending half of that on marketing. Then the other half will be your accounting. Your accounting costs is usually one to 3% your automobile. You're the cost to to go out and for fuel and maintenance on, on the vehicles, that's going to be a percentage...

Jason Phillips: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Phillips. This show exists to help small business owners like you escape the tyranny of Contractor Freedom and enter the bliss of Contractor Freedom so you can have the Time, Money, and Freedom to Live Your Life With Purpose Beyond Your Business.

As a certified human behavior consultant in DISC personality styles and motivators, I'll be sharing with you skills for life, love, leadership, and business. I'll also be connecting you with experts that can help you scale your business and your life. So if you want to build the business and life of your dreams, then you are in the right place.

Let's go.

Jason Phillips: Hello contractors, welcome to the show. Today I have another special treat for you. This guest is one of my favorite people in the business and I love his no nonsense approach. Brandon Lewis, founder and CEO of Painters Academy. Brandon grew his business [00:01:00] from flat broke, like a lot of us, to over 1 million in revenue repaint sales and 20 employees during like the worst recession since the Great Depression, as he likes to say.

And in less than five years, he went on to sell his business for over 440, 000 when the economy was still struggling. Brandon's an author and speaker. His works appeared in American Painting Contractor Magazine, Paint Contractor Magazine, InPaint Magazine, Professional Painting Contractor Magazine, and PCA Educational Outlets, just to name a few.

You probably already know this guy. But Brandon's worked with over 450 franchised and independent contractors in six different countries, ranging all the way from startups to 50 plus million dollar organizations. And he helps owners realize their dreams. Hey, welcome back to the show.

Brandon Lewis: I am excited to be here. [00:02:00] Thank you for that introduction. It was worth the 20 mailed you. And I'm a big fan of Jason. Jason spoke at our Painting Profits Summit a couple, two or three years ago, I can't recall about the very hot topic and it's getting hotter. Right now if my, if the reports from our members and in general in the industry are to be believed the dual employment W2 slash 1099 conversation is getting hot and heavy with the new administration.

And I believe that there's been a few of our members that got caught with their pants down to the tune of a quarter to half a million dollars, and we're going to see where it goes.

Jason Phillips: That is real and I talk to guys regularly that. Do not have that set up and that, that might could be another episode all on its own. We could probably even get a, a labor law attorney in on it as well.

Someone that could officially speak to it, you and I, we can speak our opinions and what we know, obviously we're not attorneys, but that is [00:03:00] definitely a risk and exposure that business owners have for sure. So Brandon, tell me, but by the way, before we get off this. I want to talk about your upcoming summit, but not yet.

I've got some questions I want to ask you. You were originally a painting contractor, right? So what prompted you to cash out there and start doing what you're doing now with Painters Academy?

Brandon Lewis: I've done a variety of things. Before I ran my painting business, I was in politics and non profits. And so I used to run U. S. Senate, U. S. House, state and local races. I wrote a book called How to Raise Money for Political Office. And ran political campaigns and really enjoyed it. I had great success at it.

I ran I think 13 of them and never lost one, but it was just, it was a meat grinder, and so I started looking for franchising opportunities. Couldn't afford it at the time, and ended up starting my own painting business. And after five years of that, I was also simultaneously getting ready, as I sold my business, I was running [00:04:00] Congressman Desjardins re election campaign.

I put his team together when he beat Lincoln Davis and flipped that seat. And I really am not the world's best manager. That is just the God's honest truth. Everybody will tell you they're great at everything. I'm not the world's best manager of people. But what I really was good at was sales, marketing, and putting operational systems in place.

Meaning if there was a problem that existed in a painting business, I would come up with a solution in a way that was reproducible. And it got to where, because everybody else was struggling so much during their session, and we were doing so well, that a couple of times a month, and I know that you get this all the time, somebody calling and saying, I got trouble with my business.

I got trouble with my business. I got trouble with my business. Can you help me? Can you help me? Can you help me? And after a while, I was like, maybe I'm better suited since there are a lot of contractors and not nearly as many people that really want to help folks, the business into the business.

Maybe I help people do that instead. And so I started out with a mixed [00:05:00] breed approach. And then I quickly just niched down to. Painting contractors, not because I think a man in a van business is much different from one to the next. I don't think it is, fundamentally, but clients do. Clients do. And so rather than have a 20 or 30 minute conversation about how the plumber is different from the painter, from the roofer, from the gutter guy, I decided I just would not have that anymore.

We would be the Academy for Professional Damn Painting Contractors, and I've never since had anybody asked me you would work for painting contractors? Yes, it's in the name.

Jason Phillips: is awesome. Man, where were you when I started back in 1997?

Brandon Lewis: Where was anybody

Jason Phillips: had to learn everything the hard way. I had to, so to say step in the wet paint so many times and trip and fall and waste a lot of time and a lot of money until I finally figured it

Brandon Lewis: lot of money. I wasted a lot of money too. Left a lot of money on the table when I sold my painting business. If I'd done it, if I'd done three or four different things from the beginning I could have sold that thing [00:06:00] for a million something instead of 440 in the same time elapsed, that's.

Wisdom comes from age and experience in most cases, and so that's just life, baby. You don't get to go back in the Wayback Machine. That's for Bill and Ted's excellent adventure and

Jason Phillips: So, you know, Your philosophy, I've been to your summit a number of times. Amazing event. Amazing event. Tremendous value. I hear you constantly talking about the importance of business systems over, making, the craft of painting. I like to call that just making your widget and how did you come to this realization or like you said earlier, maybe you're just a systems thinker.

Brandon Lewis: I suppose so. I can't paint. I've never painted. Two times I think I was 16 Dr. Garrett, I worked for a veterinary and tried to get me to paint a rental house. And three days later, nothing had been done. And what had been done was poorly done. And then again my, I built a wheelchair ramp with, for my grandmother, when she had fallen, I took one of our painters to Alabama.

We loaded up in the van and we built the ramp. I said we own a painting business. I guess we should paint the ramp. [00:07:00] It was terrible. My wife took the brush away from me. She said, you are never to do this again. And because I didn't have any painting responsibilities in running my company, I was like I've got to figure out production rates and job costing.

And I've got to find out how to work these B2B relationships and need to go after commercial repaints. This sales process is not very persuasive. What can I learn about that? And so I really, at the beginning, I had a lot of time on my hands. And I had to spend all that time marketing because in 2008, everybody was holding onto their dollars and you had to put in twice as much marketing to get half as much in the way of leads and revenue.

And so it was put up or shut up time. And I had too much pride to fail even though I probably made a bad decision at the time making my transition, but I wouldn't admit that to anybody then, I'd do it now. And so I was just forced to do it.

Jason Phillips: Man, just talking to you is just making me think back to that time that in 2008, that was, for those that were [00:08:00] in business, that was an interesting time. A lot of contractors went bankrupt during that time. A lot.

Brandon Lewis: Yes I'll tell you a quick story. I founded a thing called the Chattanooga Trades Association, and I'm a big, huge fan of B2B referral relationships. I don't know why people don't invest more time, energy, or effort in them. I think a lot of people just aren't relationship focused, but. I went around this, I've got this idea, we're going to survey our clients we're going to have a bi weekly meeting and we're going to exchange these surveys every time we do an estimate.

It was remarkably successful because, we saw 20 estimates a week or so, they saw, 14, 27, however many they saw. They checked 70 percent of customers would fill it out, they'd check 2. 1 boxes, we got together and swapped these things around. And it amazes me how remarkably receptive in 2008 people were to Anything.

Anything that would make the phone ring. If I went to present that idea, maybe today they'd be a bit similarly interested. But if I had gone to present that idea, two [00:09:00] years ago, everybody turned their nose up at it. But in 2008, everybody's I'll, whatever keeps the

Jason Phillips: You know when you have no when you have no option but to succeed, you start getting creative. And like you, I've never I've never really painted. I've painted I've painted twice in my life. The first week that I was in the business I was a helper on a crew and, or on a crew, on a two man crew.

It was a spray band and me, we painted this big, huge house and I was the helper and gosh, I learned a lot about. Hand painting French doors and divided light windows. Learned a lot. And and the only other time I've painted was we were doing a TV show a few years ago Hey, we want to see you paint Jason.

And I'm like, Oh, hey, Rodrigo, get off that ladder. Give me that spray gun. And now, that was it. He's you're gonna make a mess. No I'm not a painter either. Some guys are, they come in as craftsmen. And my background was sales and marketing. And each of those two gateways or paths tend to, I see, have [00:10:00] entrepreneurs that have different limitations in their business.

And so

Brandon Lewis: you've been pointing out, would you say 85 to 90, maybe even higher percent of people that are painting contractors today are really trades folks turned business owners? That's what I see. Maybe I get a little bit more of a skewed number because of the size, but. It's primarily, that's the pathway.

That's most people that are in that own a painting contracting business. They were a painter and a crew

Jason Phillips: That's what I'm seeing by and large. And what, what do you see, Brandon, is the number one mental hurdle that these guys need to get over?

Brandon Lewis: So it seems to me that every painting contractor is remarkably opinionated and dedicated to painting a project the right way. For example, we're not going to paint it, pressure wash it, scrape it, and prime it in that order. We're just not. And everyone [00:11:00] would say that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

They'd jump up and down. Something you should probably post in a Facebook group just to see what would happen. But when you talk about sales the prevailing opinion is that it can be done any old way. When it comes to estimating, they think you can guess, and you can't. It'd not be accurate without variance.

They think that there is no methodology. or best practice way to stay in touch with or generate repeat and referral business or to manage your cash flow or anything. They're like, no, I just do a good job and it's all word of mouth and whatever. And that is a mindset of poverty. If you are going to do anything for a living, you need to get really good at the component parts and become a serious student of it for some period of your life.

If you do not in the trades business, you will work yourself to death for about 20, 30, 40 years. And then there at the end. Right before you go off to your great reward or leave your widow behind, you will roll your crap out on the side of the road, and you will [00:12:00] run a Craigslist ad for old used paint equipment.

That will be the sum total of your economic legacy. And so if folks don't want that to happen to them, and I see it happen with such regularity, it is disheartening. Because there's money laying everywhere. Everywhere. And you just gotta go pick it up, but there is a way to pick it up and there are things to learn above and beyond.

Putting the paint on the wall or attaching the gutter to the soffit or whatever it is you do

Jason Phillips: I liken it to the Peter Principle. And that's more of a corporate term where, managers, good, good performers get continued continue to get promoted until they're in a place of incompetence. And then you end up with a whole company of people that are really incompetent. And now when you're incompetent, you're insecure and you don't want to hire a superstar underneath you that might make you look bad.

And in a similar way in business whether we came in as a salesperson or as a trades person, we don't know what we don't know. And if we don't understand that we're not in the, [00:13:00] we're really not in the painting business, there's, there's business skills, there's people skills. And if we're going to.

What's our future dream? What's our vision? You know what? I think most people want when they start out when they start out their business is And they're wanting some definition of freedom now They're free their definition may be different than mine and different than yours But what is that?

What does that freedom? You know look like and when it comes to business it I want my business to provide me with time and money Now, that does, that's not total freedom. You still need health and relationships and faith to get total freedom. But from the business, there's that time and money.

 And most guys can't step away from their business without things falling apart within a very short time. I see that, you, Brandon one of the, one of the things I've heard you talk about a lot of times is a system for, We'll say Generating Leads Enduring Uncertain Economies.

What are some best practices, maybe some [00:14:00] tips that our listeners could adopt?

Brandon Lewis: so there are a few things that work and that create predictability and equity in your painting business and I always talk about low hanging fruit and about making sure that your foundations are real strong Even, Jason, when I talk to folks that run in 3 5 million dollar painting businesses that are only clear in 300 grand or 150 thousand dollars or whatever it may be, which they could make painting themselves for 2, 000 labor hours at 60 bucks an hour.

Just them. No helper, no business. You don't need 50 people to make 150. You go make 150 by yourself. It'll be a lot easier. aNd and when they come to me and they've got all these problems, like it's the same basic system omissions or broken systems over and over again. So a few of those in the marketing department, number one is you have this huge client list of people. That most painting contractors do not ever communicate with. They will spend ungodly amounts of [00:15:00] money to talk to strangers that have never behaviorally experienced the hiring of a painting contractor yet. When you ask them how much money or time or effort they put into people that have already funded their kids education, paid for their mortgage and their cars and their lifestyles, I don't spend any money on them.

It's the strangers. But if you ask people, if your kids were kidnapped and held at gunpoint, and you had to generate a hundred grand in three weeks, what would you do? It's never I would swap a credit card and run Facebook ads, it's I would call my customers, I'd email them, I'd go by and see them, I'd run, I'd go reach out to everybody who's ever referred me I'd go after some commercial, maybe some property managers that could give me some work real quick, and I'm like, why the hell aren't you doing it today?

When you describe that desperate scenario, everyone knows what works, but it requires a little effort. It requires a little knowledge. Staying in touch with your clients with an emailed and mailed newsletter every month. Gosh, that is so basic and fundamental. But it's what [00:16:00] every major industry does.

You stay at a hotel, you give to a political candidate. If you go to a retail or a restaurant establishment that has their act together, they try to get you into a loyalty or awards program, so they can market to you until you buy. Again, or until you die, but we don't do it in the painting industry, and the only reason we can get away with it, is because our margins, if...

They should be about 50 percent which means you double your money on every project in about two weeks. It's because the economics in the trades is so forgiving that we can screw up everything in the business and still make money. Whereas if you try that in retail, you try that in the hotel business, you try that in a political campaign, you're gonna be out of business.

The other two points that I would make, and these are low hanging fruit, are B2B referral sources. Realtors, interior decorators roofers, plumbers other people, they are in front of your clients and they have a client list of thousands of people. They are constantly in front of them. I believe that relationship [00:17:00] marketing is so much more powerful than picking off homes one at a time.

When you find a realtor who can send you 150, 000 a year, predictably in revenue, go find some more of those. Have a program for that. And then finally commercial repaints. It's very, it tends to be a lot more recession proof especially during the winter months. You've got year end spending and folks are putting together their fiscal budget for the next year.

And they are also spending their fiscal budget for that year. You have winter shutdown work. People aren't in offices as much. So those are three areas, your past clients and unconverted leads. Your B2B referral sources, and then your commercial repaint or commercial services. If you run a HVAC company, if you run an electrical company, these are the same people in my niche.

They're painting and yours, you may be cleaning the carpets or emptying the trash cans. Who knows what you're doing, but it's all about the same. You got a man in a van going to do something in a big box, and the [00:18:00] marketing and sales 

Jason Phillips: Brandon, why do you think that so many small business owners, contractors, painters don't keep in touch with their existing clientele?

Brandon Lewis: tHere, I think there's an, there's. Probably three reasons. The first, it is the trades person transition, right? You walk out the door a crew...

Jason: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Phillips. This show exists to help small business owners like you escape the tyranny of Contractor Freedom and enter the bliss of Contractor Freedom so you can have the Time, Money, and Freedom to Live Your Life With Purpose Beyond Your Business.

As a certified human behavior consultant in DISC personality styles and motivators, I'll be sharing with you skills for life, love, leadership, and business. I'll also be connecting you with experts that can help you scale your business and your life. So if you want to build the business and life of your dreams, then you are in the right place.

Let's go.

Jason Phillips: Hello, contractors, Jason Phillips here, and I actually have another Jason with us, none other than the one and only Jason Paris from Paris Painting and Aleph Holdings. And, I think you're going to really enjoy what, enjoy Jason today and the, and the chat we're going to have. So [00:01:00] Jason, welcome. And for, for those that, uh, man, for those that don't know who you are, Uh, which would be surprising, you know.

Hey, give us, give us the lowdown. Who's Jason? Paris.

Jason Paris: Yeah, so it's pretty cool. Both of our names are Jason. Both of our last names start with P. So we're both jps. We're both Jason. Uh, so I'm a humble painter from flyover country, man. I'm in Minnesota, as we like to call it. also known as a Silicon Valley of painting. We have quite a few major HQs in the painting world up here.

Titan Graco three M. Uh, a handful of others, but yeah. Humble painter from flyover country. Just, uh, you know, slinging one gallon at a time.

Jason Phillips: So, uh, now, now Jason, a humble painter.

Jason Paris: Yeah. Very humble. Most humble. Number one.

hum. The, the humble part.

one, humble.

Let's talk about the painter part. Um, , have you actually ever actually painted?

I did. I painted for a summer in college

Jason Phillips: No [00:02:00] way. You've, man, you've got one up on me. Oh, I did

know 

Jason Paris: how to hold a brush. You hold a brush like a pencil, not like an ice cream cone. And, uh, yeah, I, I know how to work the viscous visic nature of paint and cut a nice line. And, and, uh, I, I mean, I know enough to be dangerous.

Jason Phillips: You know, if you handed me a paintbrush, uh, it would probably be like watching Forrest Gump when he was a kid run down, run down the dirt road from those kids on the bikes when he had those braces on his legs, I'd probably be watching

Jason Paris: would hurt your, you'd find a way to hurt yourself,

Jason Phillips: yeah, exactly, exactly. Wow. I did not, man, I did not, did not know that you had actually done painting before.

Super cool. 

Jason Paris: Super

sunburns and I mean, a lot of exterior painting and so yeah, scraping houses and did caulking wood, and yeah, did all of it.

Jason Phillips: You know, I, my first week in the business, I actually worked as a helper, uh, And we, and we painted a fairly large exterior, had [00:03:00] all kinds of French doors, uh, stained garage doors, and I, I learned a lot, and it took us a week to do that house. I learned a lot about how much time it takes to do certain things.

Jason Paris: Yeah.

Jason Phillips: And I'm a huge fan of, of sending people, uh, out on the job. To do what I call the, the real work initially, uh, so they'll have an, have an appreciation for it, especially if they're going to be in like a sales role or something like that. But so what, what are things, man, what are things today look like for, know, Paris painting?

Where are you guys at today?

Jason Paris: yeah. So Paris painting is an eight figure. Business and residential repaint. We dabble a little bit here and there in commercial, uh, but it's more stuff that we trip over. So somebody's uncle owns a building and they want us to give a a quote, but for the most part, our bread and butter is working with homeowners, working with clients.

We are in Minnesota, so we kinda have April through October to really hammer out exteriors. . [00:04:00] We are majority subcontractor base for our labor pool. We have a good size team that's in-house, so that's about 12 employees that does in-house painting, but the vast majority is subcontractor base. Um, the amount of exterior to interior spread has gotten more and more, uh, even over the last five years.

So that's been a continual push to try and, uh, not decrease our exterior volume, but to increase the interior volume. Uh, but, but still by and large it's probably a 60 40 split at this point of exterior to interior,

Jason Phillips: So, uh, do you guys do anything else other than painting?

Jason Paris: we have a little division called Paris Roofing, where we'll do the roofing of houses. Uh, we kind of dabbled in whole on remodels through a branch called Haven Builders for a while. Uh, we started that with an operating partner. And ended up selling that to him, uh, earlier this year in January. So we no longer do remodels.

We do remodels, we do new construction [00:05:00] builds through our all of capital arm, but that is to build multi-family housing that we own. And so we're the clients and the builders and the investors and that endeavor.

Jason Phillips: Wow, that's pretty awesome. You know, we should, uh, circle back on that here in a few minutes. You know, you said, you said eight figure for, for Paris painting. That's, uh, quite rare in the painting world,

Jason Paris: It is rare, 

Jason Phillips: especially. 

Jason Paris: Yeah, I was gonna say in residential especially, um, you know, it's the wild west of an industry. Uh, it's going through, its maturation. It also is just fundamentally different than a lot of other trades industries. So it's not like HVAC and plumbing, which we call the license or, or electrical.

Right. The licensed trades, um, . And I think it will professionalize over time, but it's always gonna be just fundamentally different from those two things. Uh, from those three trades. it's a, it's a trade that the gap between a chuck and a truck and a professionalized company is large, but it's much larger in other industries.[00:06:00] 

And I think that's gonna continue to drive, um, you know, what the aggregate average is in, in painting.

Jason Phillips: and the barrier to entry is so small

barrier 

Jason Paris: entry is small. The um, emergency levels are low. There's no pain emergencies, there are plumbing emergencies, there are electrical emergencies, there are HVAC emergencies, and then the consequences for improper installations. Are pretty low as well, right? The consequence for an improper installation for a plumbing company is very high.

prop, the consequence for an improper installation for a painting company is relatively low, especially compared to those other licensed trades. So those are some of the fundamental underlying, uh, elements of our trade that will always keep us a little bit different, a little bit separate, but um, for sure right now it is the Wild West and you don't have, uh, you have a lot of self-employment out there, but not many entrepreneurs, not many business owners.

Jason Phillips: So what do you, what do you think Jason is the, uh, and of, and of course. I know you're speaking more than just for your company, [00:07:00] because you've, you know, been a part of the PCA for, uh, in a leadership role there for several years. Um, I'm sure you had, you were privy to a lot of other insider information, right?

What do you, what's, you know, the key to you guys becoming eight figure? And, uh, kind of the part two of that is, what do you think is limiting, what do you see as limiting most painting companies from, from really taking off and growing?

Jason Paris: Yeah, the number one limiter for painting companies is who's the owner? , who's the founder? And that is often their output that's gonna determine how, how high that that company flies, what's even more rare. So that, that's the, the number one limiter, the governor, you would say. Beyond that, it, it's pretty rare to architect a system that scales beyond yourself.

Right. So for most founders it's how well can they execute their business model. So what is their execution ability? That's a combination of bandwidth and skill. So what is their bandwidth? What is their skill? The second element [00:08:00] would be what is the model that they're trying to execute? Is it a model that is very easy to execute, it's very complex to execute?

How well does it leverage their talents of both bandwidth and skill? Then you start to architect a organization or a company that inherently requires quite a bit of humility, which is pretty counter, um, Counter to anyone who starts a painting company. A lot of egos involved. So scaling yourself beyond yourself.

That's been the key to us achieving eight figures. It's not like I work harder. I, I don't, there's nothing that I do day to day, week to week or month to month in Paris painting what you would call an active board member. Uh, so it's not my bandwidth and it's definitely not my skill. Right. That was probably one of my, um, saving graces in building a team is it was very easy for me to find people that were better than me at pretty much everything.

'cause I'm not very good at anything. So I think that's . That's what helped us grow. That's what's challenging PE for people to grow, is architecting a system that can grow beyond themselves, which requires humility. Uh, and it also requires, you know, a system that is executable by other people, which is taking [00:09:00] everything that's in intuition, turning it into a process, everything that's in recall, and transforming it into reference.

Jason Phillips: You know, so much, so much of what tends to get many companies started, uh, is also the same thing, kind of what you're saying, that, that becomes their limiting factor. I can do it myself, I don't need anybody to teach me, I'm, I'm smart, I'm strong.

Jason Paris: mm-hmm.

Jason Phillips: I can do it. And then you end up in this place where, yeah, you're doing it and you have to do it and you're the linchpin in your business.

You're the smartest guy there. And you have been in, you know, it does take humility to hire people that are smarter than you. And honestly, you know, it can be, it can be, uh, scary. To, you think as the business owner, the tendency. Is to think as the business owner, wow, I've got to be the smartest guy on this team.

They're all looking to me, man, I better, better know what I'm talking about. Right? And what you're saying is, [00:10:00] honestly, just the opposite of that, right? So how do how do you, you how do you lead people that are, quote, you know, smarter than you and that doesn't mean they're smarter than you in everything, but in what you've hired them to do, you're hiring someone that has a skill level above yours.

How do you lead those people?

Jason Paris: Yeah, I don't wanna lose that. So we'll come back to what is leadership. You hit on something that was really impactful, which is you talked about the origin of why people are getting into painting in the first place. And it's almost a chicken and egg scenario. It's a cyclical problem, which is we have a lot of people that are starting paint painting companies.

Why? Why are they starting painting companies? They're starting painting companies because they are proficient at painting and they have abilities that are not being realized, right? So oftentimes those abilities are, I have the ability to paint and I have some sales skill, or I have some project management skill, or maybe I could be a VP of sales, or maybe I could be, uh, uh, an operations director.

What does that person do? How many Phillips painting companies are there in the us? How many pairs of paintings are there in the [00:11:00] us? There are not many places for people who have painting competencies and mid-level management potential for that potential to be realized. They're almost forced to start their own painting company.

To get a taste of realizing their potential of any kind of leadership, uh, above and beyond the baseline of hard work, uh, leveraging some of their, their management abilities. So they're forced to start with their own companies. They're really good mid-level managers for a painting company, but they're aren't not entrepreneurs, and they're certainly not business owners.

And then you have this counter, then they create companies that aren't able to provide roles because that's where they originate from, and then those people leave. And so it's a cyclical issue. What makes you a good leader is not, uh, being highly skilled. It, it had certainly helps to have enough domain expertise to call somebody out on their, their BSS to help them problem solve, uh, and to know when to push back, right?

So if you are, you know, a leader of operations and you have a subcontracting crew and they're telling you, I can't solve this problem. It's too hard to do, it's good If you know how to solve problems in that [00:12:00] domain of expertise and you can help them and you're gonna, you're teach them what to do.

Otherwise you'd say, oh, I guess we don't know what to do. Let's just . Close the company. I don't know. Right. Let's just give 'em more money. It's, it's irrational leadership. I think a lot of who, what makes you a good leader is who you are. And so this is something I've come to realize over the last couple years is anytime I hire a high level leader in our organization, the number one thing we're hiring is the person who is that person.

And then secondarily, what can they do? What is their domain expertise, what's their background? Because leadership, first and foremost, it's contagious. Right? And I would, I would, I would guess that the company that you've built, . It, it, it is, it is a, a little bit of your d n a, right? So who Jason Phillips is is almost ossified by those around him, right?

Because your leadership is contagious. If you have high energy positivity, uh, can do attitude, shoot for the stars. That is contagious amongst the people that report to you. Similar if you're anxious, uh, self-conscious, concerned, fearful. Uh, aggressive. That is also contagious. So [00:13:00] leadership is about who you are first and foremost.

That's contagious amongst your team, and that's can help drive the culture and the success of your company.

Jason Phillips: Love it. Wow. Could not, could not agree more. So, you know, if you've got these guys that, most everybody that starts their painting company, like you said, came in through one of those doors. They were a tradesperson, a salesperson, or a project manager, something like that, right? And, and they get to this point, and, and to me, I liken it to the, to the Peter Principle, where, you know, in organizations, you get promoted, uh, to the point of, of your, uh, Inability, your incompetence

Mm-hmm. . 

Jason Paris: Yep.

Jason Phillips: and therefore you, you know, the idea there is you end up with a company of people that have been promoted to their level of incompetence and they're no longer competent to do their job. But the correlation I see is that, you know, we build our companies with what we had and we [00:14:00] get to this level of incompetence and we can't take it to the next level.

Because we don't know how. We don't know what that looks like.

Jason Paris: Mm-hmm.

Jason Phillips: And so we don't know how to do it. Maybe we want to, but we, we, we haven't, we didn't go get an MBA. We, you know, we don't know what, what it takes to do that. And so I think that's, I think there's an answer to that. And I think that, you know, I think the answer is, uh, well, I, we'll talk about my answers later.

I want, you know, I want to hear what are, what are your answers? How's, how's the guy that's been in business for a few years and he's stuck. At this, at this ceiling, this plateau, where he can't, uh, he can't either take his company to the next level. And not in, in, you don't always want to take your company to the next level.

Sometimes you just want your time back. You want freedom. Sometimes you want more money. Sometimes you want time. And, and really the combination of those, uh, you know, is, is part of what it takes to get freedom. But what, what would you say to the guy who's, who's stuck at, say, I don't know, a [00:15:00] million dollars in revenue? What does he need to do? He's already in business. He may be doubting himself. Am I even cut out to be a business owner? You know, what would you say to those guys?

Jason Paris: So we kinda get to the issue of what is the, starting with the end in mind, why did you get into business? A lot of times they got into business to be their own boss, to realize their potential beyond what they could find in any other painting organization, and they quickly achieved that, right? That's quickly achieved through being an owner operator, a lifestyle business.

And there's nothing wrong with that, and you just have to decide if that's the path you want. Or if you want something different, it's not a right or wrong, they're just different paths in life. I would also say that when you hit a, a dead zone or you, you hit your ceiling against the wall, against your head, against the ceiling, what got you to that point may be what is actually limiting you from getting to the next point.

So oftentimes a founder is extremely gritty. They have a very, very high tolerance for pain. They have to be good at everything. 'cause if they have a blind spot, it's gonna drag them down and and crush them, which means [00:16:00] that they're not quite a specialist in anything. Um, and they also typically have like a decent level of charisma and leadership.

Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to build the foundations of a team. But the individual that's gonna scale your company, you either have to transform into, or you have to recruit in place because that person probably needs a very low tolerance for pain, right? So when you started, you need a high tolerance for pain.

Now you need someone with a low tolerance for pain, right? They're gonna say, Ooh, I don't like this. I gotta just fix that until it's perfect. When you start, you have to be able to deal with everything. You're not no longer hiring generalists who are good enough at everything that the ship isn't gonna sink.

They're highly specialized in one thing, and they can take that one thing to the next level. So those are some of the things that oftentimes that you can find that you are just not the right person. You may be able to transform 'em to that person. , but oftentimes you have to recruit and change your org chart overall.

And that can be traumatic to the ego, that can be traumatic, uh, to your brain and to the architecture of what the company looks like. Uh, but there,...

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Phillips. This show exists to help small business owners like you escape the tyranny of Contractor Freedom and enter the bliss of Contractor Freedom so you can have the Time, Money, and Freedom to Live Your Life With Purpose Beyond Your Business.

As a certified human behavior consultant in DISC personality styles and motivators, I'll be sharing with you skills for life, love, leadership, and business. I'll also be connecting you with experts that can help you scale your business and your life. So if you want to build the business and life of your dreams, then you are in the right place.

Let's go. 

Jason Phillips: Hello Contractors, Jason Phillips here, and I have a special guest with us today, Mr. Will Reyes from Battle Born Painting in Reno, Nevada, and welcome Will. 

Will Reyes: Hey buddy, it's good to be here. 

Jason Phillips: I'm glad you're here. So I guess you're not currently in Reno, right? Looks [00:01:00] like you're remote. 

Will Reyes: I am. I'm actually in Guadalajara, Mexico, hanging out with some friends and having a good time and just taking a little R & R, if you will.

Jason Phillips: Oh, so I see you're, you're, you're hanging out for a living these days, huh? 

Will Reyes: Well, I mean, I'm trying to be like Jason Phillips. You might know the guy. 

Jason Phillips: Oh, no, no, no. Well, well, hey, man, I'm, I'm so glad we're getting, we're getting to connect. This is a, this is long overdue, you and I, and, uh, I'm, I'm super excited to have you on today.

And, and hey, by the way, you're going to be speaking at the upcoming Contractor Freedom Summit. And we can touch on that. Yeah. Excited for that. Hey Will, for those that don't know you, tell just a little bit about your company and give us, give us the high level, you know, the 30, 000 foot overview.

Will Reyes: Yeah, my name is Will Reyes. Like Jason said, I am more in painting, but we don't just paint, you know, we do a narrative things, you know, a lot of things we learn the hard way, but we do interior, exterior painting, which a lot of you probably do. We do, we have a concrete coatings division where we coat concrete with things like rough floors, [00:02:00] polishes, epoxies, polyureas, things of that nature.

We have a cabinet division that's separated from the painting division, so they just do cabinets all day long. And we have a gutter division that's going into year two that we really like, that's been doing well for us. And then we started, a nano coatings business last year that we had to put on hold, but this year we're actually taking off with it, and it's actually yielding some pretty good results.

We're really happy with it. 

Jason Phillips: Wow, man. Congratulations. It sounds like you've got a lot of irons in the fire. 

Will Reyes: Three years ago, that would have been a mess. Fast forward to today, it's not as hard as, not as hard as I was making it to be, if you will. 

Jason Phillips: Not yet. I get it. You know, sometimes we've got to just jump in and figure it out.

Take a leap of faith, right? 

Will Reyes: I am the absolute epitome of learning the hard way.

Jason Phillips: I get it. Yeah, me too. You know, for so if you guys haven't met Will in person, I, gosh, I met Will a number of years ago and we've just really developed a, uh, a great friendship. And, uh, you know, at first glance, Will's this huge, ominous, bearded, tattooed, rough, curly [00:03:00] guy.

But, you know, one of the things I've learned about Will, and I really appreciate about you, Will, is, man, you, you have a huge heart. You absolutely have a huge heart, and, you're a good friend, and you're running a good business out there. You know, interesting, interesting story, for our viewers and listeners here.

You know, Wills and Reno. I'm from Dallas. Well, I was, I was, out in Northern California bringing my son home from a Bible school out there and so we've got his Jeep and we picked up some, you know, some mountain bikes and we've got those strapped to the back of the Jeep. And we're going to head back through Colorado and Utah and Colorado and hit a bunch of famous mountain biking trails.

Well, the time of year we got to checking the snow hadn't melted on certain ones. So we went our, our, our secondary route. We had two routes. We were going to go, depending on what the snow was like. So we make a decision. We start going the secondary route. And all of a sudden I'm like, you know, I'm down here. Not too far from Will. Then my phone rings while I'm out in the middle of nowhere in California. And Will's like, Hey, buddy. What's [00:04:00] up? And I'm like, not, not too much, man. We're just headed up on such and such. He's like, dude, that's like 20 miles from my house or my business. So, so we popped on into Reno there and got to see your shop, which, you know, honestly, yours, uh, your shop is the first shop that I've ever visited.

Will Reyes: Oh, well, I didn't know that. I'm honored. I'm honored and a little embarrassed because it was messy. It's a lot better now. 

Jason Phillips: No, I tell you, I was, you know, I was, I was, uh, I was super impressed because, I mean, you guys have all these different stages. You have, you have a place for the craftsmen to work there, uh, and, and prep the cabinets, do the cabinets offside and all that.

And I was, I was just really impressed with, with the operation that you've got going there. 

Will Reyes: Thanks. Thanks. It's a work in progress. When you got it, it was really rough. But since then, we've cleaned it up a bunch. We've decorated, made it look a little more hospitable.

You know, it's like a little piece at a time, you know. Fast forward to today, it looks great compared to what it was then. But thank you for not judging too harshly [00:05:00] because it was a really rough... 

Jason Phillips: Well, you've been to our old place too, you know, one of the, right as I walked in the front door, I'm greeted with a right in the floor coating, the Battle Born logo.

And I'm like, I was so jealous at that moment. That was super cool. 

Will Reyes: Yeah. That was the guy that worked for us that put that down there. It says Battle Born painting and it's a huge American flag on the ground. That's done in, uh, A mixture of polyurea, epoxies, and, um, you know, a little acid to disperse. And it was just like this whole wash.

It looks pretty cool. That took 48 hours. A guy named Chris Knott did that for us. He was a great kid. You know how long he works with right now. He lives in Vegas. But, it was a fun project, man. It really was. And it, it, it gets so many head turns. You know, we're really proud to be, you know, part of the area.

And, you know, born and raised in Nevada. And obviously we're proud Patriots as well to have the American flag sitting on the ground.

Jason Phillips: Nice. Nice. Well, you know, one of the things that a lot of, a lot of, I say a lot of, pretty much [00:06:00] every contractor deals with when, when they start growing, they've, they've got a team of people and it's hard to boil things down to simplicity.

And, I think a while back, didn't you implement the, the EOS system?

Will Reyes: Right. So unbeknownst to me, we were kind of doing it in a very rudimentary style. But then we went to the PCA, which if you're not a member, I highly suggest you go. Now, you could be like me in the beginning, where it was like, nah, what am I going to learn?

Who are these people? You know, I'm going to go for a trip, that sounds fun, and maybe I'll meet somebody cool. You know, or I want to go for the free drinks, or whatever, like I was in the beginning. And then you meet some people, and you develop some relationships, and you're like, wow, these people really care.

So we went to the PCA, this last February. Chris Elliott with Onnit Painting. Shout out to him. He's a good dude. He put on a class. That explain traction at EOS and, you know, we, Kristen and I were there and we looked at each other. We're like, well, we're doing a [00:07:00] lot of that. We should probably get into that.

And so, since then, we've implemented it. It's only taking things a lot faster, to where we want to be in our end goal. So, it really put things in perspective for us. So, highly recommended, you know, if you, haven't done it, look into traction at EOS. You know, reach out, you can reach out to me. You know, Chris Elliott's class is on the PCA website.

You should definitely check it out. If you're interested about a highly and anybody else that, you know, say like our host here, you is a good person to reach out and say, Hey, do you think this would be a good fit for me and mines? You know, along with that, you know, we got a really great recommendation to be doing, personally personality profiles, which I think is key in a running a business because this isn't.

The 70s. This isn't the 80s. It's not the 90s anymore. You just can't have one rule for everybody, you know. Rule with an iron fist and be like, this is it. This is how it's gonna run. The days are gone. So it's really key to understand how each person works and how to talk to that person and communicate to that person.

It doesn't make you less of a boss. It actually makes you a better boss. [00:08:00] That way you can understand like, oh, this is how this person receives information. So it was really good for us to, to take that advice and 

Jason Phillips: Yeah, that's good stuff. Definitely, definitely transformational in my business and my, actually my entire life.

Of course, you guys hear me say that, you guys hear me say that all the time, but you know, to hear it from you as well is, valuable. And, you know, one of the things is, you know, most, most, contractors, business owners, entrepreneurs, however you want to refer to yourself, you know, are smart people.

You don't know what you don't know. And then when you know, somehow you meet someone or you turn over and you rock and you learn new information, you're like, Oh, wow, how did I go all this time without this new information? 

Will Reyes: Uh, yeah. And if you're hard headed, me like that likes to learn the hard lesson.

I mean, I've heard about EOS and traction for the last five years. I was like, yeah, okay, that sounds great. And then it took one class with Chris Elliott for me to understand like, Oh, that's really is for us. [00:09:00] Well, I should really look into that. 

Jason Phillips: And it's, it's the, the thing about the e o s is none of it's rocket science.

It's, it's all, it's everything you already know. 

Will Reyes: But yeah, everything you already know 

Jason Phillips: is helping get every member of your team on the same page. That's when the, the. That's when the magic happens and that's wonderful. So, um, hey, weren't you reading that book, called Four Disciplines of Execution? 

Will Reyes: Yeah.

Yeah. It's, so we did, we went through the EOS, the traction books, which I highly recommend. And then, um, we got turned on to the Four Disciplines. Which at first is a really rough read, but after you hit chapter three, it really takes off and it does a good job of dovetailing into traction in EOS. You see a lot of similarities, a lot of same speak, you know, one thing they call this, one thing they call that, virtually the same.

But I think what the four disciplines does, and a really good job, if it narrows in on the things that EOS just kind of touch [00:10:00] upon. They really get into it. They really dig deep into it and really make you think like, Is this how I want to run my business? Is this how I want to treat my team? Do I really want to be, you know, acting this way?

You know, a lot of times I think as entrepreneurs and as business owners, people look to us to have all the answers and we get swept up into that really fast and really quick of like, Yeah, do this or no, don't do that, but really you shouldn't be doing a lot of that because it takes up too much time and you dedicate these jobs or delegate out these jobs to your, you know, leadership team and they really need to be doing that, but if you create the crutch for them to lean on every time, they're going to lean on you every time, so I think that four disciplines does a real good job of like teaching you as, you know, As at the top, you know, the, the leader or the boss or the owner or whatever you want to call yourself, it really does a good job of like, Hey, you need to delegate these things out and trust your team because you put them there for a reason.

And, um, also as you, as a leader, when you're reading that and [00:11:00] you're reading it with your team, your team is reading it going, Hey. I really need to take responsibility of this role and wow, you know, my, my, my boss, my leader, you know, the owner really trusted me with this. So it really is upon me to take this and own this, this task and move along with it.

You know, we did the training and we went through it. And as we were reading, the four disciplines, I could see the people in the room every week, their mindsets start to change of like. I would get a call every day to now it's not even once a week and now it's a report in like, Hey, I got this. I'm on task.

Here's what we can do. Like, I, I'm going good. And then I'll be like, so anybody need help? Now we got it. Like, are you sure? Cause now I'm at the point, like, are you sure? Are you sure? Cause you know, when you've done it one way so long and I don't want to say as a dictator, but you're in that position of doing all the decision making and, um, you know, saying the yes thing, the no, I'm not giving out the responsibility or the authority.

Now I'm like, well, shit, are you guys sure you don't need me for nothing? And then, you know, [00:12:00] when they go, no, we're, we're good. We're good. We got this. And then they come in with a report and I'm like, oh, wow. Yeah. Everything's that's exactly, yeah, no, this, this looks great. And then you almost feel like a sense of like, well, gosh, they don't need me anymore.

But then you're like, well, I'm glad they don't need me more. Now I can dedicate my time into doing something else. And as an owner, as a boss, as a leader, as a, you know, The dictator, however you want to the overlord, however you want to call yourself and your business, you know, whatever comical name you want to give yourself.

Now you can focus on things that you didn't think were possible, which is like adding another trade to your business or adding another service. So now those things become. A lot easier for you. And, these are some of the things that we'll talk about in the summit in October. I don't want to get too deep into it, but you know, these are just some of the gems that I think those two books, three books really do a good job in helping you become a better leader.

And a better employee as well, too. You know, I don't like to refer to myself as people's bosses. You know, I got one guy that works for me. I don't, you probably don't like that term either. [00:13:00] And, you know, because I'll end at the end of the day, we all work for the company. That's right. You know everybody's replaceable, you know, and we all collect the paycheck.

So, you know, I'm just a co worker So my position is a little different from a lot of people but you know Like my guys when they need help, they'll call me up and be like, hey boss, you want to come paint today? I'm like, okay, cool. Let's go paint and when I get to the site, I don't even ask All right. I don't come over.

I don't take over. I what's going on I just get on site and go where do you want me and they go? Okay, go tape off the the concrete. Okay What do you want me at? You want me on the highest ladder on the sunny side? Okay. And, you know, and a lot of times they'll do it just to mess with me. And they, and they know I'll just get up there and go.

And when I get it done, I come back down and they go, all right, all right, let's go to the shady side. But, you know, we're at the point where they all appreciate me just getting in there and working with them and not, you know, trying to be the guy that wants to have all the answers and to tell everyone what to do with every little step because it gets taxing.

[00:14:00] And there's just no, there's just no way somebody can do that. There's just not enough hours in the day. 

Jason Phillips: You know, back to the, back to the book, just for, for a question, a quick moment, you know, people that have gone through EOS want to create their scorecard and, and their, their, their measures or their KPIs, well, a lot of people struggle with what exactly to measure.

And so. They might be measuring things that really don't matter or, and not measuring the most important things. And that's one of the things that, that helped me train my, my managers on was measuring things that are predictive. So, you know, again, to use just a simple illustration that we all know, well, if, You know, if you want to, let's say lose weight, well, let's say I want to lose five pounds, then we need to somehow have a net calorie loss.

So we need to measure our calories out and our calories in. And so measuring like for instance, calories in [00:15:00] like literally logging every meal and coming in within your calorie goal is predictive of what's eventually going to happen. When you step on the scale and then so taking that same concept and applying it to your business whether it's sales profits leads production , you know culture all of those things and I feel like that I feel like that book can help can help people really grasp an understanding of hey, here's how I make quality Measures for the key numbers in my business.

Will Reyes: Yeah, I agree with you a hundred percent. And just to touch on what you were just saying there, I was one of the people that was like keeping track of stuff that didn't matter because I thought, well, I need to know this. And then, you know, you start to look at it and go, well, why the hell do I need to know that?

You know, that's where it's good to reach out to a community of painters like yourself, because you're the one that showed us the, the roadmap. And we took it and go, okay, we see what Jason's doing, but here's what's going to work best for us. So we just took that as a rough, you know, outline for us, and then adjusted it to the point where we're like, okay, this is the [00:16:00] best for us.

This is what's going to work for us. And since we did that, we're like, okay. And then we still work on it to this day. We're like, okay, we want a little of this, we want a little of that. Okay, we got all this information right here. Now we want a little more information right there. You're absolutely right.

You gotta, it's like, like you said, it's fitness. You don't know where you're going unless you know where you've been. So writing it down is always the best way. You know, I mean, you're...