Effective Strategies for Hiring & Team Building in Painting Business with Amer from Contracting.com

This is Daniel, the founder of Bookkeeping for Painters, and today I'm here with Amer from Contracting.com. How's it going today, Amer?

Another day in paradise, man. How are you?

Doing well. I'm excited to jump into the podcast today and we're talking about hiring, but before we dive into that topic, can you kind of give me a sense of what your journey has been starting your painting business and now working at Contracting.com?

Yeah, absolutely. I actually was hired as a quote unquote sales manager by my first ever mentor. His name's Michael Holly. I used to work at like a bank just making barely any money and I wanted to learn more about the world of business. So Michael essentially saw something in me and you know, I saw his job application looking for a sales manager. You know, I'm like a young guy at that point. I'm like, oh, I would love to have the word manager in my name. Like, that sounds cool. I can flex on my friends. All it was was door-to-door. So that's all it was. But he wanted me to progress to like sales manager and learn that. So he ran a fantastic painting business. I mean, he's one of the most systemized individuals I've ever met and a really great leader. I think some of the greatest leaders are ones that are able to hold their frame in front of different people and under different circumstances, the values that they create, they can really hold. They're not just like a plastic bag in the wind. Michael was like that. So I wanted to make as much money as possible and I wanted to learn under his mentorship on how to build like a great business. And so that's exactly what I did for that summer and picked up on a lot of skills. Probably one of the most important lessons I took away from Michael was the importance of integrity and doing what you say you're going to do and then also doing what is expected of you. And the reason that hit well is all business is, is a bunch of promises, expectations, and agreements that you have with employees, customers, and, and the paint store. And so your ability, or I'll say more specifically, my ability to identify these quote unquote contracts and agreements and then execute on them was in direct relation to how successful I could be. So I took that away, but I learned how to go door to door. I learned how to do estimates. I learned how to train other people to go door to door. I trained how to manage other people that did estimates. And then I learned how to paint. And then I learned how to manage a paint, a painting site and how to manage multiple crews. And so he had me doing everything. I kind of climbed through the ranks, asked a lot of questions, listened to a lot of books, listened to a lot of great podcasts like yourself. And that's really what I focused on. So the end of the year came around and he, he lived in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He hated the traffic in Toronto, hated it like out of 10, out of 10. He's like, I can't stand being in the car this long. So he decided to relocate his entire business to White Rock, BC. And so he moved and before he left, I had this conversation with him. I'm like, hey Michael, because I looked up to the guy, what do you think I should do? And he looked me square in the eye and he said, I think you should run a business, but you should do it with a franchise. I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like, why do you say that specifically? And he says, well, you're still new at this. And even, and despite, you know, whatever talents you have, there's more structure, more systems, more coaching and support that's out there for you that is available. Take advantage of that before going out on your own. And what he really was talking about was the danger of like ego. And different people define it differently. But one of my favorite authors, Ryan Holiday, he defines it as like, an inflated sense of self. And so, you know, he got me really into self-development, Michael Hawley, and, you know, this concept of ego was important. I know it's kind of a side tangent, but I think till this day I have to be very wary of ego because it kind of just sneaks up on you. I know Warren Buffett talks a lot about like your circle of competence, doing what you're good at. And always marking down your skills to what they really are. The problem with ego is it makes it seem like you can do, you're great at some things that you're not, which causes a lot of problems. And the bigger the business, the more people you're responsible for, the more dangerous it can be. Yeah.

Ego's the Enemy.

Ego's the Enemy. That's the, yeah, a great book, man. I come, I come to that, come back to that book like almost on a yearly basis. And so with ego in check, lessons in hand, and a good identification of my circle of competence, I decided to join a franchise and powered with the mentorship I had, the mentorship that was available there for me in my first year, did around like— this was back in 2017, '18, something like that. Did around $225,000. I had a foreman, 7 employees, and I sold everything through door-to-door. And what was really powerful about that model was because again, my name is Amr Abou-Chakra. I'm like this Middle Eastern kid. I mean, I grew up in the Middle East, came here when I was 12 years old. I have no connections. I'm the oldest of 2 brothers. I had this ambition to build something, but I had no connections, no word of mouth. I looked like a baby, you know, so why would people trust me? So I had to rely on a marketing method that Also didn't cost much money because I had no money. So I had no money, had no prospects, had no reputation. Door-to-door saved me. And getting good at door-to-door continues to give me and my business partner immense power and advantage over any of our competitions. So powered with all these things, we did really well. I did really well there. The company record at the time for the franchise has been around for 40 years. On average, they've over seen around like 70 locations per year. So they've probably, we're talking about 2,800 to 3,000 locations they oversaw. So the record for like a first-time painting business owner was like $157,000. So I was able to break that record by a bit, which was cool. And then when I came back, I wanted to do another year with the franchise, but with a goal. Goal number 1, never touch a painting brush. Goal number 2, make over $150,000. Goal number 3, train and manage a competent project manager and sales rep. That's why I wanted to come back. And at the time in the franchise, the all-time record, the greatest company that was built within it, was $310,000. That's how much it did in a year. And just for clarification, it's not like sales, I'm talking about like produced work. Okay. Yep. So the year chugs along, I create my goals, I start building these systems and we were able to do it. I did $500,000 in my second year in the franchise, I had a sales rep that sold for me. He wasn't with me the entire year, but he was with me for a little bit. He was able to sell around, I think it was $150,000 for me. And I had a project manager that managed all of the paint, all the material, and all 6 of my job sites. Yes, it was amazing.

Yeah, that's awesome.

And, and there was a moment I remember where there was a lead that my door knocking team got, that my estimator closed, that my production manager produced, and I've never met the customer and I got that paycheck. And I think I did that with like 30 different jobs in, in my business, which was like It was incredible. It was like an incredible feeling that I feel like every person should take advantage of. And I'm a big proponent of always sharing and talking about not just revenue, but also profit. You know, this is a business podcast. And so I think a lot of us know revenue is vanity. It's a vanity number. Profit is sanity. But really, cash flow is reality. You know, which is why I actually like what you're doing with the Bookkeeping for Painters. You keep people humble. You know, you have these guys celebrating they're doing $1 million $500,000 and then you look at their cash flow and it's like, hey Bob, you made $50,000, brother. You know, it's like that doesn't work. So on my $500,000, I took home just around $180,000 net. So for myself personally, not like money in the business or anything like that, which was very proud of.

Yeah, that's a really strong, that's 36% cash flow to owner.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's, that's really strong. Cause you know, since you were the, you were doing most of the sales, it sounds like, but you still had a salesperson that was doing the other part of the sales.

Correct.

And then you were leading the team. So we would typically, for someone in your position, we would, we would be like recommending, you know, try to hit 25% or higher. And, and so you blew that out of the the water, 36%.

Yeah.

Is it amazing?

Yeah, thank you. No, I, yeah, I really appreciate that. And I, you know, I gotta thank like, you know, the coaches I have, but specifically like my dad because he actually ran like a little perfume and makeup business back in Jordan where he would go like to Versace, buy some per, like, like perfume for women and then kind of like sell that from his office. It was pretty, he had like an assistant and a driver. It was kind of like a cool business. But he always kind of reminded me, it's like, hey man, like, it's all good. You landed this $14,000 full exterior, but like, we'll celebrate once you actually deliver on that promise and once you make some good profit. And, you know, that really kind of stuck with me.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's, that's, that's great. Were you with like College Pro or the—

so the, the franchise I was a part of is in Canada. They primarily target people between the ages of 18 to 22, primarily students, and the company is called StudentWorks Painting East.

Ah, okay. Yeah. All right. That makes sense.

Correct. So here's what happened, Daniel. I ran this business and my, the most dominating emotion that I felt was guilt. Specifically for a couple of reasons. One, I made a whole bunch of money. I made almost triple what my mom made. And I made more than some of my professors at university. I was still a full-time student, by the way, the entire time I'm running this business. But there was one incident. There was this painting company in this area in Toronto that was around for 20 years. And it was this guy who had like 40 years of experience as a painter, way better of a painter than I think all Ivory. We drove him out of town, way more talented at painting, way better of a painter. We, I wanna make this clear, we had no customer complaints, 5-star reviews. We accomplished what we needed to accomplish. But the fact that he had to leave his neighborhood where he was known was primarily because we outperformed him as business operators. That's it. And so I was doing some reflection, some, some reflecting of July on that last year, that year. And when I was doing that $500K and I was really asking myself like, how many contractors out there are exceptionally amazing, gifted, and caring about the trade that they're in, but simply lacked that Michael Hawley, simply lacked those systems and insights that I was so fortunate and really feel blessed to be able to land. You know, I always think about like luck and, you know, the role God played in my life and all that. And I think I'm a very hardworking person and You know, if my dad decided that me and my brothers were better off in Jordan or for whatever circumstances, you know, I think I would be running like a little makeup and perfume business and I wouldn't even know what the hell my potential was. So I feel very blessed and grateful and I was like, okay, well, how can we maybe create a space to kind of pass on these blessings, these lessons? So I got permission from the executives of the franchise and even got it again, like the blessings of the top guy from there to be like, okay, hey, you know, you can, you can even, you can go and help these people, you can go take some of the systems you've learned, and you can go share them with the world. And one of the executives in StudentWorks, his name is Patrick, He, he basically took the franchise from $5 million to this year, 2024, they're gonna finish at $35 million system sales. We're talking about 20 different locations, some painting businesses, some window cleaning. I think just painting locations, we were talking about 100 and like 100+ across Eastern Canada. So him and I partnered together. In 2020 to start Contracting.com. I'm majority owner and his role really, I wanted to use his clout, his experience in the industry. I needed a partner who was walking the walk on a daily basis, actually practicing what we preach. And then I would go run the consulting firm. And so him and I developed and started Contracting.com. Really from that, from that vision. And really, if you ask me what's our mission, I think it's summarized here perfectly. Our mission is to help contracting business owners combat chaos, complacency, and ignorance through learning, coaching, and systems, developing them into integris leaders, for their clients, team, and family. So our ICP, our avatar, are moms and dads with kids under the age of 10, and they've built this business purely from word of mouth, and they're starting to realize, holy smokes, I can do much more. And they usually get stuck with, hiring competent crews and then hiring a project manager, hiring a sales rep, or hiring an office assistant. And they come to us and we help them find, hire, place, train, manage, and systemize these people for success while making sure that there's enough work coming in to feed everybody in the company. So that's a little bit of kind of like some overview.

So yeah, that's awesome. So you started, were you born in Amman, Jordan, or?

Yeah. Amman, Jordan. How do you know Amman?

I've been there a few times. It's awesome. I love it.

I love it there. Are you serious? What are you doing in Amman? What are you doing in Amman, Jordan, Daniel? Yeah.

I used to, I was a military intelligence officer, so I was, I went there on a couple deployments. Oh, so we were working with, with the Jordanian Defense Force.

Yeah.

So yeah, I love to hit up some hookah and Yeah, the food there is awesome, man.

The Jordanian Defense Force, they, I think at one point got pissed off at ISIS and they bombed them back to whatever cave they came from, man. It was like, we were, we were on the news for that back in the day.

So yeah, that was like 20, uh, was it 2015?

Something like that. Yeah.

That's when I was there. 2015.

That's amazing.

Yeah, it was 2015, but, um, no, that's good, good stuff. The, uh, it's a great place. But, um, so you, you started there, you, you, when did you, you moved over when you're just a kid?

Yeah, I came here when I was 12.

Okay. And then started doing the, uh, working with your, the painting business that you start out with and you were just in college or maybe in high school?

College.

And then StudentWorks Painting, started that franchise, scaled it, uh, to $500K, beating out all these other franchisees that had done it in the past, uh, with an amazing profit margin. And then partnering with, uh, um, Patrick to start Contracting.com in 2020, helping, uh, contractors learn and grow their business. No, that's an amazing story.

So, yeah, thank you. Yeah, there's, there's definitely a lot of hardship in there. I've definitely made a lot of mistakes, a lot of failures. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For just as a disclaimer, you know, there, there was a lot of tumbles and mistakes. I'm definitely, yeah, I just wanna make sure I say that.

Yeah, no, completely understand. Yeah. So Leading into our kind of topic of today, you know, to be able to scale your business, you really have to be able to hire and train good people, A-players, in your business to get it to the next level. So could you walk me through what is— what should the mindset be of when you're looking for those key hires? Maybe you're a painting business owner and you've been doing all the sales and production management, maybe you have a couple crews, but Yeah, you need to bring in that first salesperson, that first production manager. What should we be looking for?

Yeah, man, I'll actually— so there's a couple of elements to that. And I think the first and most important thing before you hire an A-player is actually having a real conversation with yourself for a moment and asking yourself, but are you an A player? So I'll read you one of my favorite poems, and then I will dive into more of the tactics and the strategy and the how-tos. But here's like a self-assessment whether or not you feel like you're an A player. I read this poem, and then depending on how I feel after reading the poem, I'm like, oh, shit. Or okay, cool. It's called The Man in the Glass. You may have heard this before, Daniel. Uh, when you get what you want in your struggle for wealth and the world makes you king for a day, just go to the mirror and look at yourself and see what that man has to say. It isn't your father or mother or wife whose judgment upon you must pass. The one whose verdict counts most in your life is the one staring back from the glass. He's the one you must satisfy beyond all the rest, for he's with you right up to the end. And you've passed your most difficult test if the man in the glass is your friend. You may be one who got a good break, then think you're a wonderful guy, but the man in the glass says you're only a fake if you can't look him straight in the eye. You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years and get pats on the back as you pass, But your final reward will be heartache and tears if you've cheated the man in the glass.

It's awesome. I haven't heard that one.

Yeah, man. That's a Contracting.com exclusive here. You heard it here first. No, I actually got it from university. One of my friends, it was a fraternity, Sigma Chi. And they had a bunch of rituals. This was one of them. There's some gold in some fraternities, but, um, yeah, no, uh, so I say that, Daniel, because every time I struggle to retain or hire somebody, it's really because like, I just wasn't worth it, man. I just wasn't like worthy, like the best. I, I truly believe the, the best way to get anything you want in life is to deserve it. And like, I just didn't deserve to have a good team at certain points. And so I think that level is what made me kind of really understand how important it is to not only have a business that has the cash that deserves to pay people well. Like if you want a top employee, like a sales rep or a foreman, you gotta have the cash flow for it, right? So that's why working with you would make sense. But once you have the cash foundations, it's like, are you actually worthy as a leader? As a leader. And there were many times in my life where that wasn't the answer. You know, I would show up late. In my spare time, I'd watch a bunch of YouTube. I'd care about, you know, how I looked on Instagram. I would delegate things not out of a place of efficiency. I would delegate out of a place of laziness. Some of my personal habits, you know, wouldn't eat healthy food, fast food here, fast food there. I mean, it's just like all there. Once I've actually cleaned up my shit, then all of a sudden it's like the right people show up. It's like, oh, this is interesting. Okay, when I actually have integrity, when I work hard, when I lead by example, people want to show up. That's cool. So these were some of the things I learned with Michael, and I was very lucky because in my first year of business, I had no one churn. Every person I hired returned for that second year with me. And in my second year with 16 employees, only one person actually ended up quitting, and it was all on amicable terms. So I was able to really create and foster this culture of performance, of care, of service for the customer. And here's how I did it. So number 1, I cleaned up my act. And then number 2, I think most people think of hiring as kind of like an admin task. But really, it's more like marketing. So what you put in is what you get out. And so I think that's kind of the best analogy is, is you go to Angie's Leads, for example, and if you're going to Angie's Leads, God help you. I hope you find a better way to get your leads. It's a fine, it's a great company, but I don't know if I would bet the bank on their leads. So let's say you pay for leads, you get the leads, you convert the lead in an estimate, and then you then need to service that customer. The framework is similar when it comes to building your, like, the team. At least that's how I think about it. I need to generate a bunch of leads, ZipRecruiter, Indeed, direct outreach on LinkedIn. A more complicated, sophisticated way is actually like scripting, writing out, filming, and launching Facebook ads that leads into a hiring funnel. And please, at any point you want me to expand it to anything, just let me know. I'm gonna give you the overview of how I think about this. Once you generate the lead, which is in the form of an applicant, you then need to qualify that lead. Is this, is this the right person? Sometimes I would get like a school bus driver who's applying for a job as a project manager on Indeed. And I'm like, how the heck did you get in here, man? Which is okay. That's normal. What we actually found for like a project manager, you need around like 300 applicants before you hire one person. That's kind of like the ratio we found. But once you have that, you gotta find a way to swift through it. So you need like a, an individual who can look through the resumes, know what to look for, what's a green flag, what's a red flag, and then move them into a quick 10 to 15 minute phone interview. Hey, do you have a driver's license? Hey, are you afraid of heights? Hey, can you carry more than £5 or whatever. This is a quick competency check. And if they are competent, because some guys might have like a DUI or something. But part of what allowed me to get the profits that I wanted to get is I found a lot of painting business owners get bogged down with needing to purchase vehicles for the company. And so if you can actually just find and hire people with vehicles, you can already just remove like a giant $20,000 to $30,000 expense. So there's like a level and standard that I set for the type of person I, I would hire. And so all my guys had their own vehicles. That was, that was key. That was key. Now, of course, what I typically hear, by the way, from contractors we work with is nobody wants to work in my town. The economy is tough. Anybody who's worthwhile is already hired. You know, the common, the common things.

Yeah.

So I'm just gonna break that down quickly because if you believe these things, then you're not even gonna try to hire. And if you're gonna try to hire, the first thing you wanna do is generate leads. So here's this analogy, Daniel, you ready for it? I'm gonna ask you this question. What city are you in again? Remind me.

Orlando.

Orlando. How many people live in Orlando in the city? Roughly?

No idea.

Give a quick Google.

Yeah. Orlando population is 300,000.

Okay, great. So some contractors I talk to don't have 300,000. Maybe they live in a town of like 4,000 people, 5,000 people. I think the toughest person that we have worked with lived on Manitoulin Island, which is like a couple of thousand people you're hiring from. And, and we were able to get success with him. But here's the analogy. Let's say I like rented out a football stadium and I got everybody in your city to show up in that stadium where you sat in front of them and you presented what the job is look like. Do you think it's possible that we can find 1 or 2 competent individuals to hire for a specific role?

Yes.

Dude, the answer is, is absolutely yes. Now sometimes I get somebody saying to me, well, no, not really, Amer, cuz remember everybody that's worth hiring already has a job. What that line of thinking discounts, Daniel, is that there's guys out there who used to run a contracting business who are retired, guys who are just moving into the city, guys who are working at a company that are leaving because their pay was, was capped, guys that are working at a company where their boss is shutting down the business, guys who are subcontractors that are now realizing, I don't wanna be a subcontractor anymore. I just wanna work for a company. So like, and then guys entering the workforce, guys that are like, just like by graduating university. So that's just, now that we've broken that belief down, we need leads. So we need a, like a metric ton of applicants coming in. And so you bring the applicants in and then you have to go swift through them. So if you have a good filtering system, which I can go more in depth than like, again, because we've probably done like Like with Patrick's business, my business, the customers we've worked with, like our clients, contractors. I mean, we've probably done over, um, 10,000, like way more than that. Really like just kind of like 15-minute interviews and easily multiple thousand in-person interviews. So that's what the funnel looks like. You have Direct outreach, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter. You can use recruiters or placements or agencies. Okay, great. You bring those in, you interview them, you do the sales process. Now, if they're good, you first do like a phone interview, an in-person interview, and then you bring it out to audition for the day because you gotta test their hard skill. So you measure their hard, their soft skills over the phone. During the in-person interview, like over Zoom is what I mean by in-person. And then you bring them out to the job site and here's what's key. It's super simple. Anybody can do this. Create a list of like the top 5 skills that are required for the role. So for a painter, like you gotta know how to put up a ladder. You gotta know how to sand, prep, putty, and you gotta know how to roll and you gotta know how to like cut or edge. Okay, great. Bring him out to the job site and ask him or her to do those 5 things and then just observe. And then, you know, you see them pick up the ladder and they're like nearly breaking the windshield of the car next to them. They don't know the 2-to-1 ratio or 3-to-1 ratio. They go up on the ladder and looks like they've never climbed a ladder in their life. Okay, now you see them like sanding and You know, they're kind of like sanding way too aggressively and like way too tight. You see them put putty, they have no idea how to like, you know, navigate, you know, the tool. And you see them paint and they literally open up a paint can and then dip their entire paintbrush in there. You know, I'm sure everybody just cringed at that idea right now, but that's how you measure hard skills. You gotta, you gotta bring them out if they have the soft skills. So that's what that process looks like. If you like them, you have a contract sit-down meeting, you get clear on the expectations, you make them an offer, he says yes. Now, you gotta treat that employee as if he's your own customer. That's how you retain them. So if, if, if you have a customer, what would you need to do? Set expectations, and make sure they're taken care of, daily communication, you know, all these key things. So you got to do the same with the employee. There's got to be a good solid onboarding program. Hey, here's these YouTube videos you got to watch. Here's these 5 skills you need to work on. Here's like my garage at home, or this charity job that we have that you can practice these skills on. So it's not an actual client's house, which is a little tip. If you have a door-to-door team, just ask them, to look for a door where the people need painting, but they can't afford it and offer to paint that house throughout the entire year. And you're going to use that house to basically bring people that you're training on that house. So you can work on the back of the house that nobody could see. I had a customer like that. She had MS, she couldn't afford to like paint the house. We worked on her garage for the entire year. End of year came around, she just paid for the paint. We cleaned it up for her at the very end. We use that as a job site to just kind of test stuff out. So you can find people like that.

That's a great idea.

Or if you have an office or a warehouse, you can do that. But like, you know, a good solid onboarding training, good solid videos, an employee handbook. These are all things that we already have that we give people when they work with us that's already kind of built out for them. And then all of a sudden you zoom out and you realize, holy smokes. I have a hiring, onboarding, and training funnel. And the quality of that hiring, onboarding, and training funnel is determined on you and your quality of leadership, which comes back to the man in the mirror. So that's the 30,000-foot view.

Yeah, I think a lot of folks that are in the painting business or the painting industry, they don't realize that the core of their business, their service business, and they have to have this dialed in if they really want to grow their business past $300,000. You have to have a recruiting, hiring, training machine that can help you, Daniel, get to each level.

I'm going to try to like flip the script a little bit. Like everybody out here saying they're running a painting business. But like, how often are we interacting with the paint itself? And how often, how much money are we actually spending on the paint? It's minimal. It's like barely anything. What we're actually running, we're not in the painting business. We're in the people business. We are talking to people, selling to people, hiring people, training people, firing people.

Yeah.

Paint is just like the excuse you're knocking on their door with. Like, that's just like, it's just the vehicle. And it just happens to be that. And I get it. I get it. The vehicle for some people is roofing and painting. But like, if you had to draw it out as a percentage of like what percentage of the business is, is actually related to managing the paint and taking it from the can to the wall, it's, it's not the majority of it. It's definitely a very important piece, but the majority of it is exactly what we're talking about here. It's managing humans. Including yourself. Before you lead others, you must learn to lead yourself. Before you manage others, you must learn to manage yourself.

Yes, exactly. Yeah, it makes complete sense. So I love it. I love the idea of looking at your recruiting hiring system as just like you're looking at with marketing. You should have your marketing calendar and your recruiting calendar. You're just doing very similar things on making sure you can— your production can keep up with your, your marketing. You gotta continually run that machine, and if that machine is falling apart, you're not going to be able to hit your, your goals because it's— your, your production won't be able to keep up with your, uh, your, your marketing. So I love, I love how you're looking at it like that, that, that hiring is just Your hiring process is just like your marketing process. You get the leads, or in this case, candidates, you qualify them, and then you interview them, take them through that process, and treat them like a customer when you onboard them to give them that great experience so you can retain them.

Amen, man.

Awesome. Well, you've been super generous with your time. How can folks learn more about yourself? Contracting.com and how to get a hold of you.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this was a lot of fun. You know, if people like this episode and they want to go more in-depth or they want to hear me go more in-depth, where can they like reach out or comment? Is there a place that they can leave some comments and get some feedback?

Yes. So there is Grow Your Painting Business is the Facebook group that you can comment on this episode when we release it. if you have any questions, yeah, you can post them there and grow your painting business on Facebook.

Yeah, I say that because I'm happy to come back and go more in depth if your audience finds this useful. I can share about KPIs, what applicants look like, what to look for in resumes, what to look for in in-person interviews. I can bring some call recordings that you and I can review together live of a painting contractor doing an interview and the red flags he missed and why that happened. What a good onboarding training is, why most leaders or painting business owners just can't retain people and what character traits they should look out for, how to hold people accountable, what a good culture looks like, when you should create mission, vision, values. I mean, I can go in depth here because again, we were able to kind of grow this to like $35 million. So there's just like a bunch of little pieces and puzzles. But if you're listening to this, And you're recognizing that, like, you're stuck on the tools, you're working evenings and weekends, you have the work in place, you're booked out like a month or two in advance, but you just can't seem to find a good painter, can't seem to build a solid crew, can't seem to find that pesky foreman or project manager to help replace you from being that driver driving materials around and driving for like 30 hours a week from job site to job site to Sherwin-Williams and back and all the other places, then open up your phone, go to go.contracting.com, go.contracting.com, fill in your information. I will, we will send you a video. There should be a video there that explains our methodology, what we do. And our guarantee is that we can get you off that job specifically, off the day-to-day task in 60 days, or you don't pay. So if you're stuck on the tools, we can get you off the tools. And if you're stuck, uh, as a foreman, we can get you a foreman. If you're stuck in the office, we can get you an office assistant. Now, obviously for that guarantee to work, you have to carry your own weight. And we're very selective in the people we like, we work with, um, because it does take work and effort. But that's where you can find me. That's what we are world-class at. And if you're curious about— pardon me— if you're curious about our client results, just go to contracting.com/reviews, or you can just Google contracting.com. I believe we are the most reviewed consulting company for contractors right now. In Canada. And I believe the United States, I want to say the United States, we literally have like 10 hours plus of client testimonials and some really incredible, incredible stuff. So our expertise is in painting. We run a painting business, but we work with contractors alike because again, we run people businesses, whether you're doing roofing or painting is that, but the nuanced parts of painting we understand wholly. So if you're listening to this, and you want to at least jump on a call with my team, see if we can help you out, send you some free resources, by all means, go to go.contracting.com. Awesome.

And we'll include the link in the show notes as well. And really appreciate your time, Amer. It's been amazing. I love your story. It's great stuff. And we'll definitely have you on for a part 2 as well and dive into some of the details on hiring. But with that, any last thoughts before I let you go?

Yeah, honestly, like, the only reason I'm able to get to where I am today is due to the quality of the people I surround myself with. You know, there's this old saying in programmers, like, for programmers that build softwares, they say garbage in, garbage out. And so continue listening to these podcasts, but I would say the biggest lever would be to surround yourself with like-minded people. So if you're in that, if you're in that Facebook group that Daniel's talking about, like, I encourage you to like message a person today that's in the community, say hello, jump on a call with them, build a relationship, find, find out how they're smarter than you in different things. People are generous. People who have achieved certain things want to help. So come at it with that frame and don't be afraid to ask questions. So Daniel's obviously built a great community, so use it. So please do so.

Awesome. All right, with that, we'll see you next week.