Building Wealth Through Business Systems: A Painting Entrepreneur's Journey

Welcome to the Profitable Painter Podcast. The mission of this podcast is simple: to help you navigate the financial and tax aspects of starting, running, and scaling a professional painting business. From the brushes and ladders to the spreadsheets and balance sheets, we've got you covered. But before we dive in, a quick word of caution. While we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date financial and tax information, nothing you hear on this podcast should be considered as financial advice specifically for you or your business. We're here to share general knowledge and experiences, not to replace the tailored advice you get from a professional financial advisor or tax consultant. We strongly recommend you seeking individualized advice before making any significant financial decision.

Welcome to the Profitable Painter Podcast. My name is Daniel Honan. I'm the founder of Bookkeeping for Painters, and I'm also a CPA that works exclusively with painting businesses. And today I'm super excited to talk to Gene Harris. We're going to get into a lot of really interesting stuff. He's had an amazing journey in the painting industry. Welcome to the podcast, Gene. How's it going?

Great, Daniel. How about yourself?

I'm doing well.

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I'm glad to have you. And I really want to dig into your journey. I know you've had a pretty unique journey, and I think a lot of folks are going to get a lot of value out of it. Can you kind of just give us the highlights? What is your journey in the painting industry been? How did you get started? What are some of the key highlights as you've, you know, made your way through the years?

Thanks. Yeah. So just a really high level. I didn't start out in the painting business. I actually started— I was in the Navy out of high school, and then after that started working for several different companies operations-wise. My final kind of prior to getting in the painting business, I used to run apartment communities, the institutional quality stuff for 20 years all across the country. I was vice president of a couple of property management companies. And then just one day, just looking at 401(k), looking at retirement, I have two boys. One is 21 who's at IU currently right now, and another one who's about to be 19. He's special needs with Pitt Hopkins syndrome. And dawned on me, this is probably about 8 years ago now, maybe 9, but that there's not going to be two of us in retirement, there's going to be three of us. And then what does that number look like? And then thirdly, what happens to him when we're gone? And so how do you, how do you, how do How do you support a human, uh, 20 years after you're dead? And that's a pretty big number to, to figure out. And realizing that, you know, the only really true path to true wealth is owning assets, starting with maybe companies or investments. And, uh, had been running— like I said, had experience been running companies for a long time, never really for myself. And I looked at franchising, I looked at several different brands, and finally settled on a painting franchise, which is Painter One. Back in October of 2019, opened my first Painter One business with the idea at the time was to just build it up and sell it. So at the time it was a $50,000 franchise fee. You buy it, you run it for a couple of years, you make a profit, you put on the market, you sell it. Maybe you sell it for 3, 4, 500 grand, take that equity, you go into another franchise that requires a larger equity investment. You just continue to level up. And there are actually guys that do this. For a living. That's just kind of their, their model. Got into it, um, it was about 90 days I was into it and I realized like, well, this is fairly— I would say usually fairly easy or fairly simple comparatively what I come from, right? It's not a complex business, uh, you know, you get some painting leads, you do some painting estimates, and you paint the house. And, and it's still painting, right? And also, and the reason why I chose a painting company was at the time I was looking for something that was quasi-recession-proof. I don't think there's anything truly recession-proof, but definitely I remember when I was running apartments in '08, '09, and '10 during the last, the real estate bubble, the real estate crash, uh, there's still painting that still occurred. It still happened, uh, whether it be exteriors or commercially or whatever, but eventually someone's going to need something painted and a lot of people are going to get on a 20-foot ladder, uh, to paint the high stuff for sure. And it's paint. And if you mess it up, I'm not, I know I'm oversimplifying it, but you know, you can always repaint it, right? You know, I'm not demoing someone's kitchen or, or doing something like that. So thought it was very simple. Alexei got into it, 90 days into it realized, you know, um, why would I sell this just to start over in another brand, a whole new system, no guarantee of success, no guarantee I'll love it, um, and really expanding on my apartment businesses that I used to run. I had deals in Denver and Houston and Atlanta and Oklahoma City and all across the country. So I'm used to— I'm familiar with running teams far away. And so that's why I was like, well, why don't you open up a second, uh, a second location? And, um, in 2022, I opened, uh, Pain Noire Cincinnati. And, uh, at the time, my plan was to, well, do Cincinnati, which is about 2 hours from Indianapolis, then maybe Louisville, which is about 2 and a half hours from Minneapolis, you know, and then kind of go around. And then once I've had 3 or 4, maybe just start opening locations all across the country. So if I had a dozen painting one location, that'd be pretty good for long-term, uh, you know, wealth. And, uh, well, when I opened the second location, that's when I realized, um, at the time my wife was my admin, um, and, uh, and I was like, well, I don't need to hire a second person to open up Cincinnati, to answer the phones for Cincinnati. My wife can still do that. And that's when I came with the idea of starting a business where we answer the phones for other painting companies and sharing the admin costs. And so I went to the franchisor, said I had this idea. They let us try it with a couple of owners. And then that eventually turned into what is now, uh, uh, Who's Your Admin? Nice.

That's awesome. Yeah, that's quite a journey. And, uh, I definitely want to get into— there's a lot there that I want to get into. Uh, I'm going to start with, you know, one of the things that we have in common is, uh, a special needs child. And, um, I thought it was really cool that you kind of realized early on, like, hey, we're going to have to, it's always important to save for retirement for, for anybody, but adding that extra layer, uh, of not only like when I pass, but like what happens to my kids or specifically my special needs child, you know, after I pass, like having that additional, uh, care requirement and it sounds like you. Kind of thought about retirement early on, but also in a different way. What kind of come to, like, what did you realize? And if you don't mind sharing, like, what kind of calculations did you do? Or like, how did you, um, what numbers did you come up with? Like, hey, I need to hit this level of wealth. Like, anything that you would be willing to share in that regard, I think that would be super interesting.

Yeah, I don't know if I have any specific numbers that I recall per se, like written down, like as far as like a goal number. I think if I had really— if I had to really sit down and come up with a number, I'd probably be really depressed. So it's more or less, I just gotta blow— I just gotta blow it up and get as big a number as I can. I don't even know what that looks like. But no, it was much more so, like I said, our son is, uh, socially verbal. He's very— so people love him. He's very glass half full kind of person most of the time. Uh, people enjoy being around him. Um, but he doesn't have any kind of, like, I don't know the word, maybe safety awareness. Um, you know, he still might walk out in traffic without looking, you know, kind of thing. So he always needs someone around. Um, he can do a lot of things on his own, but he's, you know, he'll never be able to cook for himself, use hot objects, things like that. Uh, you know, so there's a lot of things he'll never can do. Um, but when you have a special needs child in the beginning, you're just kind of fighting the fight, right? You're just figuring out their health. It's more focused on their health and their learning and them. You don't really think about— because you don't know either. A lot of kids are one way very young, and then, you know, we all change as we know. Um, as we get older. But when he was 19, he was about 11 or 12, and I was like, oh, you know, just kind of dawned on me, wait, he's not leaving, like, he's going to be with us. And then so, um, you know, if I'm thinking about sailing off into the sunset anytime soon, you know, how, how, how do you support that? And then, um, and then more so, like I said, you know, let's say we live into our 80s, he'll be in his 60s, you know. And he had, you know, he has a brother, but Again, A, you know, we don't always know how our kids are going to turn out, whether they're going to be successful. But even if they are, do you want to put that burden on them and their family? So it's something I always talk to my kids about, especially my older one. When he was going through high school and taking very advanced classes or doing a lot of work and things were getting hard, he just wanted to quit, you know. And I just told him, I said, so you may not see it today, but putting in the time and the effort today will pay its benefits, its dividends in the future. And wouldn't you rather have 10 doors to choose from one day versus one, right? So, you know, he can look around the room and a lot of his friends and family or his friends who he went to school with didn't apply themselves or whatever. And now they graduate high school and they've basically got one door to walk through, right? Well, you know, they got to go get a job and figure it out. Where, um, because of putting the work now, you know, he'll have more opportunities. Well, kind of, I'm kind of doing the same thing where creating more opportunities where we don't just have one horse, we have several. And that's an investment world. They tell you, you know, to diversify, right? So all of our bags, all of our eggs aren't in one basket. Like I said, I painted one in Indianapolis, painted one in Cincinnati, obviously two different cities. They're fairly close, so the economies are very similar, but still. And then in addition to that, like I said, with Hoosier Admin, and then we also started a Christmas light company last winter. So it's our 4th company that we have now and one of them's got to work, right?

Yeah. Nice.

So, yeah, I don't have any like specific numbers. It's more or less a strategy of, you know, maybe I sell the painting companies one day, maybe I keep the holiday lighting company. The Hoosier Admin, we can do anywhere in the world. It doesn't necessarily need to be in the city where a painting company, someone has to physically go out and do the estimate. Someone has to physically go paint the projects. Um, and so, uh, you know, but maybe I get them to a point where they're just running themselves and they're just, you know, someone else is running it and it's just paying dividends on into the future, you know, um, after we're gone. But again, the goal is really just more to set it up so they're all successful and then we have choices and we have options and we can make those decisions, you know, at that time in the future. Yeah. Yeah.

It sounds like you've kind of building equity in your business. To kind of build your wealth, which, yeah, I think a lot of folks, a lot of painting business owners, they don't, I mean, a lot of them do, but some of them don't think of their business as something they can build for enduring wealth. They think it's more like, this is a job that I've created for myself kind of thing.

Yeah.

But you're kind of like setting up the businesses to run, to, to run on their own. And you're the business owner, you're not involved a lot in the day-to-day. At least you're building it that way. Probably.

That's true. Yeah, yeah. And it's— I guess I would, you know, my, my advice would everyone start from day one, but I know a lot of people don't, don't, don't come from the professional world. They just started painting and then all of a sudden they have a business. They woke up one day and they have a business kind of thing, and they have to figure out the business side of it. But yeah, it's, it's about setting up systems and processes, uh, you know, roles, responsibilities, having all that stuff in writing, written down. So Um, if, if you ever needed someone to step in, someone could absolutely step into where you are and just continue to run. And you're not, you're not the, you're not the business in itself, right? Everything's not in a notebook and people just know your name and have your number. Um, you have to professionalize it. And so, um, we've set it up since day one to be able to, um, you know, I have a GM in Cincinnati. She runs everything there. Um, haven't been back there. Literally since, uh, 2022, physically since 2022, um, in Indianapolis, kind of, kind of went both around the world. I've had estimators, I've had project managers, I've had general managers, um, come and go kind of, uh, um, over the years. Um, but you're getting it where they're running it, their baby, and I'm just helping behind the scenes, supporting and providing resources, remove obstacles so they can be successful.

Okay, so it sounds like your two painting businesses pretty much right now run on their own. You have a general manager that operates them, and you have estimators and crews and everything. They're operating without your much input from you, it sounds like.

Yeah, I mean, so we do a weekly meeting, so that's about as much input. And then day-to-day, just as things come up, you know, I'm obviously on call, phone or whatever, but for the most part, the majority of my time is 1 hour a week Um, just, just meeting with the entire team, just going through everything soup to nuts from just the, the overall business and, uh, just, just continuously providing input, leadership guidance to what our goals are and keeping everybody on track. Nice.

That's awesome. And it sounds like kind of the key to this is obviously delegation, you know, get— you mentioned building processes and getting the right people. To do those processes so that you can get out of that. I guess, what are some of the things that you found doing this a couple times now, at least, um, especially for a painting business? What were the hardest ones to make processes for, hardest roles to fill that you kind of figured out? Like maybe little tricks, like to get the right person in a certain role or right process. What are kind of the pitfalls that you ran into while trying to grow in your painting business and getting it to run without you that you able to figure out and solve.

Yeah, but my number one, in my opinion, the number one most critical role in your business is the project manager or the person who is the communicator between your customer and your painters or your customer and your business. Um, that in my opinion is one that is the hardest to, to, to staff for. Um, and it is the most critical component. The sales, the estimating piece, That's easy. I mean, anybody can do it. Um, it's not difficult. It's not rocket surgery. It's all about their— really, it's just about creating a relationship with the customer. And do you trust me to come and produce this project for you? Really, at the end of the day, you should be competing on price. I know I see a lot of guys on Facebook complaining about they got underbid or whatever, and that's going to happen. But if you, um, you just realize that that's just not your customer with the person who wants to go with the cheapest provider. You know, we try to be in the middle. I've heard times that we were the most expensive and they still hired us. So really the estimator portion is just, did you show up on time? Do you look decent? Can you speak correctly? Does the customer just feel good about you being in their home, essentially, right? So that's what we're doing. You know, we're a lot of businesses. You don't actually go in your customer's house. You're in their home with their children, with their pets, with their family, with their life. And do they trust that you're going to come and do a good job? It's really where it breaks is when you're producing the project, right? So are the painters showing up on time? Are we covering, we're prepping everything, doing everything properly? We're communicating with the customer properly. And then at the end, you know, are we, we do what we say we're going to do. And if it breaks, then that's where the rubber meets the road. And is the person who is the liaison between the customer, are they capable of dealing with it when it breaks, right? And A lot of people get stressed out and they get all nervous. Customer's upset and you can't get upset too. That doesn't help anything. Right. And so I kind of coach my team in the sense of we actually, this is going to, I don't know how else to say this, but we kind of like it when it breaks. And I don't know, that kind of seems like evil. Like, what do you mean you like pain? Like, no, but the point is, is when it does break, it's your opportunity to prove to your customer. That's why they hired you. They didn't hire you. Because everything's going to go right. You know, I think if everything goes right, it's easy. We would all agree if we took the customer out of the equation and we just went and did the job and they just paid us money, wow, this would be a really easy career. But it's more or less what happens when it breaks. How do you handle it? It's really, if you look at it as an opportunity to prove to the customer, you to go above and beyond to make it right, to do whatever it needs to do. I've literally gotten 5-star reviews from the most horrible situation you could possibly imagine. To turn it around and the customer's leaving us a glowing 5-star review going, you know, you guys proved to us your character. You stood behind it. You continued. You didn't run away. You stayed here until we were 100% satisfied. Or you'll have that customer like, I know I'm super picky, right? You know, we've all got that one. It was like they know that they're tough to deal with. And the fact that you're unlike anyone else and you kept showing up with a smile and continue to, you know, work with them and through the issue, versus getting contentious with the customer, they recognize that and they appreciate that. And then they start referring you. And then those referrals are the best because all their friends know that they're a royal you-know-what to deal with. They're like, if Susan hired you, whoa, please come to my house. If she paid you and she likes you, then we know you've been vetted, so to speak. So that's, in my opinion, that's where I've struggled the most, where I've had hire project managers and they do it for a while and they do okay, but they just get tired of if something were to happen dealing with that. Also, our crews have gotten way better too over the years. Now we've got some crews that have been with me almost 4 and a half years and it's the same people and they're amazing. So they're, you know, our quality has gotten better. So obviously that makes things easier to deal with. But yeah, just, just having that person that just has thick skin and can kind of let it roll off their shoulder and not take it personally. You know, you didn't paint it. You know, you're not the one painting. You're just there to solve it. And I always say, if my customer is smiling, my painters are smiling, then that's all that matters.

So yeah, project management, tough. What sort of things have you found? Like, what are you looking for when you're looking for that project manager? Is there a certain personality type or— yeah, what are you kind of looking for?

It is. It's best to really— it's hospitality experience, it's customer service experience, you know, necessarily You don't need a painter, you know, you need someone who knows how to paint. That's, that's the job. You know, they're, they're the one with the technical experience and you can learn from that person as far as why this is a way or not a way we can, you know, we can educate the customer through that. But really it's that person that, um, you know, I, I go all the way back to, I kind of glossed over it, but I used to run Hollywood Videos and I had 13 retail stores with them back in the late '90s. And I took over the, it was the least profitable, it was the top 10 least profitable districts in the company. And in 9 months we were the number 1 most profitable district in the company. You have no control over price, no control over advertising, no control over the product. In our business, we have total control over all 3 of those, right? So when no control of these things, but yet somehow you're, you're still to take care of your customer. And not only that, but your competitor has the exact same product you do. Braveheart is Braveheart. Doesn't matter whether you go, where you go. And, and so it was there where it was getting, um, and I'm dealing with store managers now, not just the employee and everyone, but I'm starting with the store manager part. And it's, you know, we've all heard the customer's always right. I was talking to my boss one day and she's like, well, Gene, it's not, it's, it's the customer's always right. So when you're taught, when you're 2 years old, you're taught there's a right and there's a wrong. And so therefore the customer's always right. And then intuitively you're wrong and no one wants to be wrong. And so there's a bit of an internal conflict there. And so I had to change the idea of like how they thought about it. And it finally came down on me. I was like, it's not about the customer being right. It's do whatever it takes to make the customer happy. Right? So if the customer's happy, then Everything's good. And so do whatever it takes. And, and that's a broad statement, but it's intentionally broad. And so you have to empower them to do whatever it takes. But not only that, it's not just the store manager. It's all the way down to the part-time— I used to say $5 an hour. That's how old I am. Part-time hourly employee that's still in high school who just comes in, works 3 or 4 hours a week. That person has to be empowered to do whatever it takes to do whatever it takes to make the customer happy. And most people Most companies I talk to aren't willing to do, oh well, you know, they come up with the whole list of reasons why, you know, they can't do that. And, you know, and we're going to lose our shirts and whatever. And I proved it was the opposite. We made more money. The business made more, more, more by doing that. And so finding that, that mentality, someone who can really understand that, that it's about you're wrong, it's not about the painter messed up, that's not— and I talk to my painters about that too. I'm like, You know, I've had guys literally argue with me. We're closing out a $10,000 project and there's one little thing the customer's pointing to that they want taken care of. And the painters argue with me about, well, that's not my job, or that wasn't part of the scope, or blah, whatever the reason is. And literally we're talking something that's going to take 5 minutes to just go over, paint it, or whatever we need to do to it. And I tell them, you know, I draw an imaginary line on the ground like a finish line. I'm like, We're on this side of the finish line. Don't plant your flag on the wrong side of the finish line. Step across. They're about to write us a check for $10 grand. Like, do the thing and get the check. Get the money. Let's keep this machine going. Everyone's happy. Let's keep on going. Why do you want to battle on this one little thing right here? End up with a bad review. They probably— you end up getting paid, but they're not happy about paying you. They're never going to tell anybody. You know, we've all heard, right? If you upset customer will tell 10 people, um, you know, how, how much they hated you. It's hard to get people to brag about you, so to speak. So, um, let's, let's, let's eliminate that, you know, from the equation. Now my pe— my painters with me long enough, they, they— and that's the thing, they all understand it. And that's probably the number one compliment we get. If you go through our reviews, you'll read everyone's so nice, the painters are so nice, everyone's so, you know, they're just— they're no way about— by the just the, the bedside manner, I guess, right? This, you know, everyone takes— taking their shoes off, and we're complimentary, and we're quiet, and we understand when you're home, and we're respectful, and You know, and, uh, we're just, we're saying, yes, we can do that. And it's just, it's win-win goal here, right?

Yeah. So it sounds like you're, you've built culture of hospitality from not just the project manager, but the crews as well, where their, their whole focus is making the customer happy.

Yep.

Awesome. Um, one of the kind of the key things that I see a lot of folks make mistakes on is they try to hold onto their phone too long when they're in their business. You know, they're, they're doing hundreds of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, and they're still answering their phone. Uh, from my perspective, and you probably didn't have to deal with this, um, well, you had your wife to help you with this, but like, uh, this seems like this should be the first thing that you get, get off your plate when you're delegating, when you're growing your business, trying to get out of the business, out of the day to day. Because it's just like, why are you still answering the phone? You're probably not going to be able to answer it all the time. And just getting it to someone who can reliably answer that phone can save a huge amount of money. Can you talk about what you've— because I know you deal with this on a daily basis with your new company, or I guess you've been around for a little while, but could you go into the importance of getting rid of your phone?

Yes. So it's, you're exactly right. I mean, we were talking to a client yesterday. They're a $1.2 million painting company and they have nobody answering the phone. Yeah.

Holy.

He doesn't even have a CRM. I'm like, my eyes are like this big, like, oh my God. All right, let's start here. Let's go. All right. You're right. It's, and it's not saving money. It's about producing. Um, and it, it, it, it, that's kind of where it was born from when I, you know, again, I came up with a franchise brand. And even the brand, the other brands have an answering, like a call center, right? And so a lot of the other franchisors will have some sort of central call center, but it's— and that is, and I'm talking to the franchisor for Painter One, even he started Five Star Painting and they had a call center and he hated it. He said it was the— the franchisees hated it. The customers hated it. Like everyone, it, it's okay. It's, it serves a purpose. It lets that, that first call in. At least there's a warm body answering the phone, but it, that's it though. Very transactional. It's very, um, not, not intimate at all. You don't get to, you're not related. It's, it's just, hey, I need an appointment at 2 o'clock Tuesday. Cool. Bye. See ya. You know, and it still don't know anything and you sound just like any other phone call that happens. And so. So we were, I realized I was like, I didn't want that and the franchisor didn't want that. And so there's no, there was no call center for Painter One. It was the franchisee just had to figure it out. And just like other painting guys who start getting busy and start busy enough where the phone's ringing and you're doing the estimating and you're doing the project managing, you know, when you're standing in like what you and I are doing now, let's say we're just doing an estimate, my phone starts ringing, I can't take the call. And so by the time you get back to calling them back, they've probably called other, your other competitors. Just talk to your friends and family. It's not just me making this up. I had a conversation the other day with a guy. He was looking for a plumber and he said they called 15 plumbers 15 times. No one answered the phone. No one. And he said by the time the 16th guy answered the phone, he's like, just, I don't want a quote, just come fix it. Like, he's like, I don't have— I don't make another 15 phone calls to— or 30 phone calls to get 2 more quotes. It's like he was so worn down at that point. He's like, please, just— so all those other guys, um, and maybe they're busy, they're too busy to do it, but they could grow if they had someone to, like us, take the phones for them. Then, then you're just adding that. So we look at it as a value add. So we get to that point. You're right. But the problem is, is when you, you can need someone, you're really still, you know, I say about the $30,000 a month level, $25,000, $30,000 a month, you're just start getting busy enough, um, you can't afford a full-time person, but you need someone full-time because that call could come in at 9:05 or 5:35, right? And you literally just get 2 calls that day, but during the rest of the day, what's this person doing? And, and so that's how our company was born out of, was you don't— you can't pay someone full-time to answer phones for you yet at that point, but you need someone available full-time. And so By us providing the admin and what, that's what we thought was we can, we'll hire them, we'll train them, we'll staff them, we'll do all those things. And then you're, we're sharing that with you specifically. So if Daniel, if we assign you an admin, then she's your admin and she might answer the, she's yours, but she might be mine too and another guy's, but she's just our admin. We're sharing her. And so because of that, then we all can afford her now because now we're all paying, we're all cost sharing essentially is sharing. Per labor cost for the value of the— of, of now, now all of a sudden we do have someone available and now we can start to kind of grow that curve up and, and no, you know, no, uh, going— go missed, right?

One of the things I'm starting to hear a lot about is, you know, to get somebody to answer your phone, but, you know, get somebody that's from Mexico or from somewhere else. to, to answer your phone. What are some of the, cause I know you've probably seen this, what are some of the downsides of doing that?

Yeah. So, and again, this is not me saying this, it's just us talking to our clients who come to us and they say, you know, I tried a virtual, you know, they're called VA. VA is all the rage right now. Let's get an offshore VA. Right. And again, that's fine. And it works to a point, right? It's, it's very fractional. Um, it's very transactional. It's, uh, uh, there Sometimes the language barrier. Sometimes we found even when I talked to the franchisor, Painter One, when he had the call center at Five Star, his call center was in Canada and someone would call in for an estimate and they'd say, what's your postal code? And they say, postal code? Where are you? And like, oh, I'm in British Columbia. And click. Literally no other conversation. They would just hang up or they would say something like, oh, I thought I was calling Painter One of Indianapolis. Well, no, you are. So you get into this. Trying to explain who you are and what you are. And some customers don't want to deal with it. They don't want to talk to someone. They don't want to talk to someone offshore. They feel like, oh, you're taking my information and are you even real? You know, so there's a trust issue now, right? Well, I'm giving you— I had— we were in here a couple of weeks ago where I saw you in Orlando and we went to— again, my special needs son likes to play video games. And so we went to Dready Speed Lab and for 2 hours for $25, play all the video games you want. I'm like, I wish we had one of these next to us. Super inexpensive. But you had to fill out this form and it was a release form because they have go-karts and other things you can do in there. And my wife and I do it. We go through whatever. Well, her father and her mother-in-law were there and they saw me come around the corner. So I go back to them and they're like, we're having to redo it. I was like, why? Like, cause I tried to use a fake email. I'm like, why? Like, cause I don't want any of their advertising. They just go on this huge rant about that. Anyone just give them their simple email? Can you imagine they called for a painting, they got someone offshore? They're, they're, they're exactly that customer who's hanging the phone up because they just don't trust anyone anymore. And so having someone stateside is huge. The other thing we do in addition, you know, again, I'll expand on a little bit the whole point of we're not there just to set the appointment, right? So the goal is when you call in, hey, you know, like, I'd like to get my house painted, and was to, well, tell me a little about your painting project. And so we're there to, to, to create a relationship, a memorable review on the phone. Some people don't want it, that's fine. But a large majority found, or, uh, you know, a lot of our setup calls are probably 15-20 minute calls where we're talking about, you know, have you ever had a contractor before? What experience do you have? What are you looking for? What do you like? Like, and next thing you know, we're hearing like, oh, my kids in college, you know, now they're talking about their kids. And, and, and it literally showed— I've looked at estimates, and our clients do too, where they'll say They'll show up and all the customer wants to talk about is the admin who they first talked to. Oh, I love your— who's that person that answers your phone? And you know, whatever. And oh, I really love them so much. And y'all are so much better than everybody. And you've already, you've already set yourself from the pack from that first call. You haven't even shown up yet to do the estimate. So you're— we're so far ahead. And then what we found is a lot of times because of that, when we give the on-site, then I'd say a large probably almost 50% of the time we walk out with a check. Like literally the customer, yep, let's go ahead and do it. I'm ready to go. I trust you. Everything so far looks good to me. And, uh, obviously it's a race to the door. If we can get there first, a lot of times we can cut out a lot of our competition who have appointments maybe set up. They're, yeah, I'm gonna call and cancel all, you know, all my future estimates. This sounds reasonable. We hit the price we're looking for. I trust you're gonna do the job and go. And then, so then we produce the job or If we don't get it, then, then part of what, what, what else we do is then we do all your follow-up on top of that. So again, in addition to that offshore person, you know, we, we understand what you're doing, the city you're in, et cetera. And so, hey Daniel, Gene was at your house yesterday, gave you quotes. A, wanna make sure you got it. B, did you have any questions? You know, we just continue that, that conversation and, and continue that. And, and sometimes, you know, we'll, we'll call and text and we don't hear from people for a while and. But we'll continue to do it. And we've, we've won jobs because you're the only one who continued to call me. You're the only one continuing to do this. And so, um, we're finding that definitely the onshore admin is, is, is, is a plus. A lot of our admins we found are all college educated. That's the other thing was just blown our minds. It's just going through this is there's a lot of folks out there who have real jobs, real careers, and then, you know, they need to go back at home. Most like you, most of the stories, because they have kids now and they want to be home with the kids and kind of work around their hours, or like us, or like yourself, they have a special needs child, someone has to be there all the time, and they're looking for something to do, not necessarily to pay the bills. Usually there's someone else in the home that's, that's a primary breadwinner, so to speak, but they, they still want to do something during the day. Maybe the kids at school, so now I've got 6 or 7 hours that I need to fill my time with. And really, the— there's a lot of real work-from-home jobs out there. And then, and we, again, we're just hearing this from them. They're like, yeah, when they go on these interviews, these these guys are scam artists or they're multi-level marketing or cold calling or whatever. And, um, so again, we're able to win and our clients are able to win from that too, because, you know, you have, we have phlebotomists and nurses and just all kinds of really highly educated degreed folks answering the phones. So you get a really high quality on the other end to your customer. You sound very professional, et cetera. And so, um, a lot of those things have, uh, and for the price point, the price point isn't much more than you probably could get an offshore person for on your own. But the quality is, is, is far, and it's what we do. And again, we're the ones hiring the person. We're the ones training them for you in your business, where if you go hire your own VA, you have to interview the VA, you have to hire the VA, you have to train the VA, you have to keep up with, are they doing things, listening to the calls, et cetera? Are they doing things right? Doing things wrong, et cetera. You have to continue to coach, re-coach, retrain, you know, and that takes a while. And then even then. If it, you know, maybe it doesn't work out after a couple of months. So then you have turnover and then you got to start all over, all over again. So now you're back doing all the phones again, trying to find that person again. And so that takes you away from your business where with us it's, you know, almost set it and forget it. And we turn it around where we're having calls with you. We're forcing you into a weekly meeting with us so we can review everything with you and make sure that you were— we're keeping you on track and hitting, hitting, hitting the— and then lastly, with us too, because we're doing it for everybody else, then you're benefiting from that group knowledge where we'll have clients go, yeah, we, um, we're looking to do Facebook ads or we're looking to do this. And do you have any other clients finding success and what are they doing? And it's, oh, we have a client, you know, we started this campaign for them and we do this follow-up and whatever. And so you're benefiting from that group knowledge, um, what about what others are succeeding at.

So yeah, that's, that sounds like a no-brainer. I mean, you're basically that first impression, super important. You want to have someone on the other end answering that phone call that sounds professional, that knows your area, like, and can speak to it. And then also is able to follow up and set rates are super important, especially if you're doing outbound marketing like Facebook ads, like you mentioned, being able to follow up with folks, provide that great experience to set the salesperson up for success to close the deal. I mean, this is, sounds like an amazing service. Where can folks learn more about Who's Your Admin?

Just go to whoosyouradmin.com. It's Hoosier, like the Indiana Hoosiers, H-O-O-S-I-E-R admin, A-D-M-I-N.com. It's a play on words, who's your admin, but we're based out of Indiana. So if you know anything about the Hoosiers or seen the movie Hoosiers, That's good. That's kind of where it came from. It's been a while.

I think I saw that when I was a kid, but I had to go rewatch it the other day just to see it again.

So it was interesting.

Was it Gene Hackman?

Is he the— yeah. That's right. Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. Rest in peace, Gene Hackman.

Good stuff. All right. Well, any last thoughts that you'd like to give the audience before we let you go, Gene? You've been super gracious with your time.

Uh, no, just if you, uh, if you reach out to me directly, like, so you can just go through Who's Your Admin and you can find me there. You also go to ParentingOne.com of Indianapolis or Cincinnati. You can find me there as well. I'm happy to chat if people have further questions or want to learn more. Happy to help you help out. Awesome.

Thanks so much, Gene. And for the listeners, that's all we have for this week, but we will see you next week.