From 110K To $1.7M: How Ryan Pettis Scaled Fast

Welcome to the Profitable Painter Podcast, the show where painting contractors learn how to boost profits, cut taxes, and build a business that works for them. I'm your host, Daniel Honan, CPA, former painting business owner, and your guide to mastering the numbers that drive success. So let's dive in and make your business more profitable one episode at a time. I'm super excited today to be speaking with Ryan Pettis. He's built a great business. Welcome to the podcast, Ryan. How's it going?

Going great, Daniel. Thank you so much for having me out here today. I've seen a lot of what you guys are doing and helping a ton of people out there. It's awesome. Saving a lot of people money too. So that's great.

I appreciate you saying that. And I know you're killing it over there as well. Could you just give folks an understanding of who you are and what you've accomplished? How did you get started in the painting industry and what have been some major milestones along the way?

So yeah, so I started, um, when I was 15, I started just painting with my great uncle, and he was a painter for a while, about 40 years. Started to learn from him and kind of realized that there's a big lack in the industry of professionalism. So really just sought out to giving that personalized experience, giving the personalized professional, um, you're taking care of experience. I'm not not necessarily always like the, you know, absolute 100%, we have the best products, best quality, but just giving that experience has been something that we have really valued going through that. And so starting with my great uncle, we would, for the first couple of years, he would get a project, I'd work with him, I'd get a project, I'd go work with him. And like, it was kind of just this family thing that we did for a bit. And then he retired. So it was kind of like I kind of had to make a decision once, once we kind of parted ways and he retired. I was actually in college. I went to college for about a semester and a half, and we got to that spring semester and we were about halfway through, and he was kind of slowing down. And I was like, man, I either need to decide, do I— am I going to do college or am I going to go full into this painting company? And I remember being on a call with Sam Carini from Forward Media And he was like, "Dude, just go into it, push it, go for it." So I was like, "All right, we're going to go full on." Dropped out of college, went full on into the painting industry, got hooked up with Joel Marcato pretty early. And I think those are some of like the bigger milestones of like Sam— well, Spencer Hayward kind of brought me into this group of painting companies and professionalism. And then Sam from Forward Media helped me with like kind of get Facebook set up. And then meeting with Joel Marcato, he was just— he changed my life, not only the business, but he changed my life. And then from there it was just kind of figuring out like, what, what's the next step? And then hiring an office admin and then hiring a production manager and then growing the company and hiring sales. And it's just kind of that, that as you go hiring the people and then realizing like, oh no, we're not making any money, what's going on? And then, okay, now we need to make one. Now we have to pay this bill. And like figuring out all that, um, has been pretty interesting as we grow.

No, that's awesome. Um, So how long have you been running your painting business at this point?

So when I, when I turned 15, when I was 15 in the summer, so I was— my birthday's in the winter, so I was about halfway through— worked with my great uncle for that half of the year till I turned 16. Once I turned 16, I started my own company. So, and I'm 20, just turned 21 about a week ago, so it's been about 5 years, um, that we've been running the painting company. But the first couple years, it was kind of more so working with my uncle, and he just had— I had kind of had a company, but it was kind of working for him.

Gotcha. So 5 years, you know, you started, uh, with your, um, your great uncle. And where, where were you in terms of revenue from when you started to now?

Oh man, um, when we started, I mean, we were probably doing maybe $40,000 a year. I mean, it was very small. I was going to school. I still wanted to hang out with friends, you know, 16, so I was still kind of living that life. Um, 17, I think we kind of brought it up to like $70,000. Um, when I was 18, I think we kind of brought it up closer to like $100,000. And then, um, turned 19, we were at $110,000. Um, turned 20, we went to $1.1 million. And then turned 21, and this year we'll finish just shy about $2 million.

All right, that, that's amazing. So Just make sure I got that right. '19, you're at $110,000 and then '20 you're at $1 million. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah. It went from $110,000 to $1.1 million.

All right. So you, you 10x'd in one year.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

That, that sounds like a pretty crazy ride. Uh, what happened? It was.

Um, what happened? Yeah, a lot of things happened. Um, I realized that you can make a business out of a painting company instead of just going to paint every day. I took myself off the tools. I hired marketers, Facebook. I hired Forward Media, and I hired Joel Marcato. And just being around those people just kind of pushed growth. It was a lot of work, a lot of late nights, a lot of really early mornings, 4:30 AM, 5 AM, waking up and in the office till 11 o'clock. But It all of that. Yeah, it was just a grind, but a lot of support, which I feel like if you can, if you can find a mentor, you can find a group that you can be around. I think that's where it can really help you get to that next spot because some people look at $1 million and they're like, man, I want to hit 7 figures. That's crazy. And some people look at $1 million like that's like 10% of our revenue. Like you got nothing. Yeah, right. So it's all in like how you put the perspective. And I think when you hang around people that look at $1 million of like you're just starting, like, that's not that much. I think it forces you to go to the next level versus people that are at stuck at that $500,000, $700,000. They're not driving you to hit that million mark. I think if that makes sense.

No, that makes a lot of sense. So it sounds like you got linked up with Joel Mercado, Joel Mercado, Ford Media Marketing. You got linked in with Spencer Hayward and kind of in a group of people who were— had big goals, were doing a lot of revenue or had done it before. And just from kind of— it's that saying, it's like you're the average of the 5 people you hang out with the most. Yeah. And that's what it kind of sounds like. So you basically kind of immersed yourself with successful folks and probably, I'd imagine, started learning a lot quicker and you were able to take that and implement it very quickly. Apparently, if you 10x the business, um, what was— were there any big unlocks, you know, from 19 years old to 20 years old? Like, what, what do you think really moved the needle in that time frame?

It's a great question. Um, Real quick to go back to that, like you are the people, like the 5 people you surround yourself with and execution. I think it's a great saying and I think it's 100% true. I think another thing that a lot of people don't realize is that all the answers they need to grow are all right in front of them. You know, you look at podcasts like yourself, you look at podcasts like Painter Growth, Paint Your Path Podcast, like all these podcasts, you listen to them, you will find the answers that you need to grow. But there's maybe 30, 20% of people that will listen to the podcast. And out of those 20%, there's 1% of people that are actually gonna execute. And I think listening to these podcasts, hearing other stories, and then realizing how can I take that information, put it into my business and execute it. And I'm not talking like someone comes, listens to this podcast and they hear something that they want to do and 3 months later they're doing it. I'm talking they hear something tomorrow, they're implementing it, and then by the next day it's already full-on company-wide. This is what we're doing, let's try it. And I think where a lot of people might slow down their growth or maybe fail a little bit on that is the sense where they don't execute as fast or they get scared, they get nervous. And I'm not saying that like executing super quick is always good, right? Because we've done that and we've been like, oh crap, like we screwed up. And You just kind of have to figure it out and go from there. I think the biggest things that we've unlocked is just coachability, you know, like not being above yourself. So like I hear some people around us where it's like, I don't, I don't need a coach, you know, I don't need someone to tell me how to do this. I just, I'm going to grow, I'm going to keep doing it. And if you, it depends on your goals, right? Because it depends on what your intentionality is of the business. If you want to grow the business and not be involved in the day to day, I think you need a coach. You need— maybe not a coach, but you need people surrounded by yourself to do that. Um, but I think if, if you enjoy being on the tools, you enjoy doing everything, um, then do that. Like, if you love your craft, go for that. But I think for me it was really identifying, like, what is my goal? And for me, my goal is to not be involved in the day-to-day. I want a $5 million company at least that we can have an ops manager, we can have someone that's managing the company, and I can be out of the day-to-day. So I can live my life, I can enjoy my life, um, and I've grinded really hard to be able to get there. And I think when you understand like what your goal is, I think everything else gets clear. And for me, it was really deciding like, what is my end goal? What do I need to get there? And what do I need to accomplish? Who do I need in the organization? You know, how many leads do I need? What do I need here? So it's just really breaking everything down. Um, that was probably like my biggest unlock, realizing what I wanted. So your biggest unlock was getting really clear on what your, your goal is and how to get there and how to get there and who I need to be surrounded with and what, what things are needed to be there for sure.

Yeah. And then just from there, just implementing, cuz I think you're, you're right where you said. A lot of folks, they might be doing the first part, which is they're listening to the right podcast, they're going to events, maybe, maybe, um, maybe they're even, they, they have a coach even, but they're not implementing either fast enough or enough to, to take advantage of the learning that, that's. Supposedly is happening, right? Yeah. I think Alex Hormozi talks about this a little bit where he's like, you didn't really learn anything if you didn't change your behavior. So if you're going to a conference and you supposedly learned a bunch of stuff, but if you didn't change anything you do in your day-to-day life or in your business, you probably didn't really learn anything. You just kind of were entertained with information and then moved on. Uh, so it sounds like from, from what you're saying is you did a lot of implementing to, to see what worked. You took, you know, learned from your coach or from whoever and implemented quickly, like the next day even, or, or that week to, to see what worked and what didn't, or how you could tweak it to make it work. Is that— am I reading that right?

Yeah, no, you're exactly right. That's exactly what we did. We took We took little nuggets from painting companies across the country that were super successful, and we— I took my favorite things and I put it into the company, and I said, these are things that we need to have, and then did them right away. Um, and yeah, you're, you're exactly right on what you're saying, for sure. Cool.

Um, so you, you 10xed in one year by getting clarity on what you wanted to accomplish and then how to do it, and then just hanging around with those, with that group of folks that helped you get there. What was the biggest challenge during that year?

Biggest challenge? Oh man, I think time is always one of them. Like, I don't have enough time to do these things. I was trying to do the sales while still running a million-dollar company when I think I think was fine for that year. I think like when we did $1 million, I think that was fine. You know, I think it was great. The biggest challenge was just like really understanding the processes of like you go from $100,000, you're painting yourself, you maybe have a few helpers, possibly, maybe. And then you go to, what do you have, 10, 12 painters. You go to a production manager, you go to an office admin, Now, what do these people do? Like, what is their role? What are the responsibilities? Like, we didn't even have a description of job titles and like what you're responsible for until January of this past year, which was after we hit a million. And it was like no one really knew what they were supposed to be doing. So I feel like— but, and I didn't have the time to build it out, right? I didn't have the time to tell you like, this is what you're responsible for, here's your SOPs, this is your processes. I still don't even have them all built out, but I have them built out so we can operate. So we're close. But I think the year from $100,000 to $1 million was, dare I say, not that bad. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was tough. Yeah. But I think the hardest year that we had was this past year of that $1 million to $1.7 because I did all the sales. We were hiring for a sales rep the whole year, but I couldn't focus on the business. I couldn't focus on the growth. I couldn't focus on structure because my days were so set on growth or so set on sales, uh, selling. And I mean, I had a 50— I have a 50% close rate. We have a $5,300 average job size. We're— NSLI is about $2,600. We're, we're— I'm hitting those good metrics to be able to keep the business growing. But I'm a great salesperson, but that's not where I should be. I'm even better on the backend because I, I can understand numbers. I understand the business processes. I'm great with marketing. I can figure that stuff out. So I think the biggest roadblock would be really myself on just being able to step away, put someone in there. But yeah, people always talk about like that, that zero to a million. I feel like that was easier than the one to 1.7. I don't know if you hear that from anyone else, but for me, that was my case.

I think, well, most folks don't get to a million, so it's like, that's what you hear most about. Uh, but you're probably right in that it's, it's always harder as you, as you grow in your business, you know, as your business grows, you're, you're getting to the next level. The boss to beat is always harder. Um, but, uh, it's just less people have beat that boss, so you hear less about it.

But, uh, I think, yeah, I think maybe real quick, I think one thing that really helped me is I've never been a painter. Like, yes, I painted houses with my great uncle. I helped. I, I, I kind of knew what I was doing. The only kitchen cabinets that I've ever sprayed is my house. And I screwed them up. But we specialize in cabinets. We do a crap ton of cabinets. Like, we do knockdown ceilings. I could not even do a knockdown ceiling. I don't even know, like, I don't know. Like, I don't know how, I don't even know where I'd start. So like, for me, I love the trade. The trade's great, but I don't know how to do it. So for me to be able to tell people like, yeah, you go do this, you know how to do that, focus on it, do it. I'm going to focus over here. I think I see people where they, they try to go back to the tools, where they try to go back like, I'm the only one that can do it this good, I'm the only one who can have it this done this way. It's not true. If you, if you could add, like, find people that know what they're doing or coach people on your process, they can do that and allows you to focus somewhere else. So for me, not knowing how to do things actually increased me to be able to focus on what I am good at, if that makes sense.

Yeah, no, it makes Last podcast, I can't remember, or a couple podcasts ago, I was talking with somebody about this, where is it actually helpful to not know how to do the thing? Cause you feel like you're not tempted to take it over because you know you're not going to be a good person to do it. So it kind of helps you to grow more, more quickly. Whereas like, if you're a, if you're a crafts person and you have super high standards and you're just amazing at painting, that's going to be harder to give up and, you know, to, to give that to someone else when it's easy for you to just jump in and say, hey, you need to do it this way, or let me, let me just do it for you real quick, which is easy in like the short term, but it's harder in the long term because then you're, you're basically robbing that person the opportunity to, to grow their skill set when you step in for them. So that does make complete sense. Well, let's— so doing the, the 10x when you're, when you were 20, from $110,000 to $1.1 million, the thing that was difficult was the lack of processes and clear duties and responsibilities because you were just basically super small. You went to $1.1 really quickly and that was the biggest challenge, but you got through it. And you're, you know, correcting that, that issue. What was the— then you said from $1 million to $1.7, which, you know, 70% growth, still really fast growth. You were saying that you were still doing the sales and this is residential repaint, all of this.

Yeah, every— maybe $30,000 from commercial. 99%, 99.8% residential repaint.

Okay, so that's a lot of, a lot of sales calls, and you're doing all of them while also trying to make sure that the business was running. So, uh, so it sounds like the biggest, um, bottleneck was you in that case, where you were just kind of spread thin because you were you're the salesperson, but you were also— you had a production manager, right?

Yeah, yep, we hired one when we went from zero to a million. That was a big help there.

But you were still kind of overall responsible for marketing, even though you did have a marketing company, still like overseeing it. And you're, you're still overseeing your production manager, like I'm sure mentoring or, you know, giving feedback.

And did you have an office admin or Yeah, yep, we've had an office admin the whole time. Okay. Yeah.

And so you're also their boss too. So, uh, you're doing a lot of things. So could you— yeah, how did— I guess, um, how did you get through that period? And what— what— why did you wait so long to, uh, to hire a salesperson?

I think to answer your last question first is I didn't want to settle. Um, we had a ton of applicants. We had a ton of applicants, but we have a very unique culture at our company. I think we do. We get along really well. It's not like it's a— like, we joke around with each other, we laugh, we have fun. It's not like this, oh, I gotta go to work and I gotta do this, gotta do that. Like, we enjoy what we do, and I wanted someone that could fit that culture. So I wasn't going to put someone in the position that wouldn't mesh with the rest of our company. Um, you're exactly right though. We did— I did a— I did so much this past year, and I think one of the, one of the biggest things that, that helped this year was my wife and I being on the same page of, this is the goal, I know we have to sacrifice right now, but we're sacrificing to get here. And her and I understanding that, so when I would get up at 4:30 and I didn't end my day till 8 o'clock at night, she was okay with it because she knew that, hey, we're sacrificing this because we're going to get to here. And she would help with the business and do stuff like that. But I think I hear a lot of people were like, their spouse isn't happy with them because they're working so much, or their family life isn't working. Um, but I think setting clear expectations of Where do we want to go? And then once you identify where do you want to go, how are you going to get there? Well, if we want to make X amount of dollars and I'm still going to sell because we don't have a salesperson, that means I'm going to have to work those hours. And I think for me is putting a lot of trust in our team of like, I didn't have time to manage them and coach them. I hate the word manage. I think the word manage should really be coach because you're managing, you're telling people what to do. So I think coaching them is something that I kind of lacked on this year, especially our production manager. And just this past month and a half ago, we— or 2 months ago, 2 and a half months ago, we hired a sales rep, um, a consultant to go out, meet with homeowners, discuss the project, give them a proposal, uh, and get the job closed. And it takes a lot of work to coach someone, to develop them, to teach them your process, and also ensure that they follow through on it. And for this past year, block scheduling really helped me of like, this time I'm doing this, this time I'm doing that. Um, sales are between this and this time and just kind of cramming everything in. Not every sales appointment went the exact way I wanted where I was able to present everything. I was able to go through everything. Not every project had the same outcome, even if it was the same type of project, because we didn't have processes in place because I wasn't able to sit there and build them and work with our production manager. So This year was kind of a crapshoot in some ways, but yet our goal was 1.5 and we'll probably end at like 1.7, 1.8, somewhere in there. So we still did better revenue-wise, but there was a point in the summer we had a, we had a really high callback rate. Our quality wasn't there. We had the wrong crews in the wrong places. We had the wrong crews on the wrong jobs. It was just a lot of things went wrong. And I think learning that and then identifying like, how can we fix this moving forward is really good, but it was a lot of work and I don't think that anyone should do that, what I did of like that 1.1 to 1.7, like in doing all of the sales, I think it's just too much. Um, it's too much to do successfully and each other role that you have to fill because there was a lot of lack of leadership, there's a lack of development. Um, one thing that I think helped though is that we do, I do meet one-on-one with our team weekly. So our production manager, our salesperson, our office admin. We have a team meeting as well, and it's the same time every week, all the time. And just reconnecting with them, discussing challenges, discussing how we're gonna change it, going into the next year, next week, and then recapping it. How do we do? What's the next challenge? Fix that, recap it. It was a bunch of that. Literally every week for almost 4 months, we were changing things. It's like nonstop. But our team's great. Like, we have a rockstar office admin, a rockstar project production manager, and a salesperson who's just starting, and he's starting to kill it as well. So really having the right people in the right seats help.

Yeah, absolutely. I, I think, uh, just the fact that you're able to 10x in one year is a testament to your team because if you didn't have a rockstar team, you probably, probably wouldn't be able to produce that much revenue that quickly. So that makes a lot of sense. And you mentioned also before that you kind of waited a little bit longer for the salesperson because you're looking for the right person. So I guess what are you doing on the hiring side to make sure you're getting those A-players?

So we actually signed up with HireBus. And they are going through, they're interviewing, they're kind of seeing, getting the people in. And then from there, I'm interviewing them and just kind of doing my final, like, hey, are you going to be a good fit, good culture fit? I mean, right? Everyone should have an avatar for each position that you're looking for. What is the type of person that you want? Get this person. And then do you match these core values? If you don't match, you're gone. If you do match, yep, let's hire you. Let's see how it goes. And we just couldn't find someone that matched our values and matched what we had until about a couple months ago.

So you mentioned core values. I'm assuming skill would be one of those things that you're looking for. Is there any other things that you're looking to make sure that it's the right person?

Funny enough, the sales rep that we hired, he has never done in-home sales before and he knows nothing about paint. He's never painted a wall in his life, nothing. So we're really not looking for that, right? We're looking— we want someone who's coachable, who's willing to develop and willing to learn our process. We want someone who is professional, who automatically— they're professional, they dress nice, they present themselves nice, their texts, their calls, everything's professional. Um, and someone who's willing to go after it. Someone who's willing to go above and beyond, who's willing to compete, someone who's willing to just try hard, go for it. If something doesn't work, the next deal's gonna close, the next door is gonna open. And those are really the few things that we're looking for. And they seem so basic, but there's not a lot of people out there like that. And business owners are usually that way of like compete to the next thing. If this doesn't work, let's try this. We have to succeed. But it's, it's, I think finding in what we would call an intrapreneur, you know, your entrepreneur is the owner of the company, they're building the company or whatever, but your intrapreneur is the people that you hire, that they feel the same way that you feel about the company of let's grow it, let's get it better. Like I just, I just had to sit down with our project manager of like, what is your goal for next year? Like, what do you think the company can do? And the same answer he gave me was what I, I already put down on paper and already kind of projected. So being aligned and knowing like your team knows where your company's at, they know your numbers, they know where the company's at, production, job costing, gross profit, they know those numbers and they now become the entrepreneur of I want to protect this company. I want this company to grow because I see the growth and I see what's coming versus someone who's not. If that kind of answers your question, I don't know if it does.

No, no, for sure. And I, I know you're, some of this might be cuz you're using HireBus, but how are you screening for coachability, professionalism, core values, and, and being competitive?

I think, yeah, a lot of it comes down to HireBus, like what their scores and stuff like that. But the other thing is just having a conversation about 'em, you know, like what, what's your goal and. You know, 1 in 5 years, both personally and professionally. And if they're like, hey, I, I want to kind of do similar to what I did last year, um, want to kind of comfortable with this or whatever, if you can hear complacency, they're not going to be a good salesperson. You want somebody who's going to drive, who's— we do at our company, anyone else they can do whatever they want, but at our company we want someone who's going to drive for the next sale. Um, coachability I think is, is a really hard thing to know before you interview them, or like as you're interviewing them until they actually get started. So I think finding ways to ask those questions of, hey, do you have a sales process? Yes. And are you really comfortable with that? Are you open to learning a different one or do you kind of, you wanna stick with what you have? Well, I like what I have. I'm, you know, when I have something, I kind of like to stick with that. Okay, sounds good. Immediately, hey, we have a process, we want them to follow it. We've invested tens of thousands of dollars into it. If you are telling me right now you want me to, you want to stick to your process, how is this going to work out? You know, and then you also have someone, you know, we had someone who wanted to change our sales process, who wanted to change our, um, our compensation structure, who didn't agree with our, um, they said our average job size wasn't accurate. And it's like, I track the numbers, I know what's going on. And if you don't trust me here, How can you trust me there?

Yeah.

So really just identifying, asking questions where you're not giving them the answer, but you know the answer that you want. And if they don't answer the right way, it's not going to work. So I think that's something that we look at as well.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And, and once you can get those A-players in, it makes your life so much easier. I'm sure you've experienced, it's just the comparison of getting an A player in versus getting a C player in. It's, it's pretty painful. Um, drastic difference there. And, and I think it goes back to what you were saying is that you're able to really, because you have those A players in those seats, you're able to really trust your team and you know that it's getting taken care of. They're doing their best to make sure things are working and And if they can't figure it out, they're, they're working through those and problem solving and, and trying to make it happen.

Yeah.

Um, are there any, because you, you know, you're doing those, those weekly meetings, um, when you're giving somebody, how do you task somebody like to, to ensure that you're communicating what you want to happen and giving them, but giving them the leeway to figure it out as well, like, so that it gets accomplished. Like, how do you, how do you work with your team to, to get things done? Is there a certain format of how you ask them to do things, or how do you approach that?

Yeah, that's a great, that's a really good question. I'm going to go maybe even a little bit deeper on that. I think that comes down to coaching. I think personally of when you need your team to do something, it's a lot of people. You're familiar with John C. Maxwell? Yes, possibly. Yeah. So he has that book, Five Levels of Leadership, and I don't know if you're familiar with that or any of the listeners are, but he talks about a positional leader where you're the boss, you're in charge, listen to me, go do it versus the person who can have that influence, you know, the 5th level, the top level of that influence where, hey, like, let's try this, like, let's go here, you know, maybe it works to do that. And I never try to tell our team, do this, this, and this. What I try to say is, hey, what's working well? What's not working well? What do you think we should do differently? How do you think we should accomplish that? When do you think we can have that completed? And from— go from there. Um, so I'm basically creating a SMART goal, but they are giving me what's realistic for them. And then their answers— now, if they tell me it's going to take us 2 years to do that, I'm going to say, hey, come on, man, like, what's realistic of when we can do it? Is it actually going to be like a month, or is it a week? Like, when can we actually complete this? Oh, well, I guess if I did this, this, and this, we could get it done in a month. Yeah, that's more reasonable. Let's, let's do XYZ, you know, whatever it is. And I think really understanding your people, because for a project manager, I could be a 2, but our sales rep, I'm a 5 on the levels of leadership. And I'm way more influenced with our sales rep than I do with our project manager. And how can I influence him to make decisions and be that entrepreneur and follow kind of what I'm asking him to do? And I think the first part starts off as like, you need to be very clear on your expectations of this is what I expect, this is what I want done, this is what I need you to do. How do you feel you can do that? What do you foresee being a challenge? How do you overcome those challenges? When can it be able— like asking all those questions. And then once they kind of figure that out, this is where a lot of people that I've seen fail as managers and as leaders. They never reconnect with them. So they say, hey, go do this. Okay, it's done. I delegated it. I don't ever have to touch it again. We're good. But 3 months later, you go back to that person and you're like, dude, what's going on? Why didn't you do this? Like, why aren't you doing this anymore? Well, you as the leader have to take that responsibility to follow up with them each week, you know, or whatever, how quick you want it done. For us, we just implemented a new process in production for initial walkthroughs. Well, I go do an initial walkthrough and then our project manager does an initial walkthrough and I review it and then I do one and he does one and then I leave him be for a week. I come back and I watch him do the walkthrough. Well, I watch him do the walkthrough. I'm like, dude, you forgot these 3 things. I have the SOP. Let's read it. Let's figure it out. Okay. I need you to hit on these 3 things. I do another walkthrough. I let him be. Come back 2 weeks later. Hey, you're still forgetting this one thing. I need you to make sure you follow through on this. Okay, sounds good. I come back a month later. Is this good? Yep, you're doing good. Great. I come back a month later. Oh, remember, you're falling off the trail. Get back on here. And I think a lot of people don't want to take the time to do that because they want to be able to delegate and say, I never have to worry about this again. And a strong leader will follow up with them, ensure it's getting done, and be able to help them and coach them to accomplish it. And for me, that's something that I've really tried to do this year of understanding our team, what makes them tick, you know, what does their DiSC assessment say? How should I coach them? How should I mentor them? And then really figuring out, once I know how to coach you, let me change a process that will help the company and guide you to that. And I think for me, that's been something really big about asking our team to do things, about coaching them. Stuff like that. Um, if that, that's a little bit deeper, but hopefully that makes sense.

No, no, that, that's really good. I, I love it. And you mentioned the DISC assessment and, uh, so when they come through HireBus, that's where they're getting that DISC, filling out that DISC.

They don't get a DISC through HireBus.

Oh, is it not through HireBus? You do it a different—

No, so that's separate. Yep. So there's a HireBus score where HireBus has their own assessment, and then once they complete that assessment, we call them, we review them. If everything kind of sounds good, then they're completing Jason Phillips' DISC assessment. And at that point we're understanding how do you tick, what, what do you like, what do you not like, that sort of thing.

Yeah. And for those listening, DISC is basically like a personality assessment, um, on 4 different vectors: dominance, influence, supporting, and conscientiousness, right?

Yeah. Steadiness, support.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that you use that DISC assessment to understand how they're motivated and how you can avoid, you know, I guess, speaking to them in a manner that might not connect with them as well. So speaking to them in a way that will connect with them and motivate them better. Is that, is that right?

Yeah, you're exactly right. And in a way that maybe someone can understand that a little bit more is, someone who likes processes and systems, the way that you approach a system change is going to be different than the way that you approach someone who just is always trying to get more done. Um, someone who's always like, go super dominant, like go, go, go, go, go. You could throw in a system, they're going to learn it quick, they're going to execute. But someone who's a little slower paced, who likes the system, who likes the processes, if you change that, you have to input that slowly, and you have to get them to realize that they like it because it's helping them. Versus the faster-paced person, you can implement it and they're ready to go. So it's just— and that's different for each one on your team. So you have to understand them and understand how to coach them on it.

Yeah. And with the C, you're going to probably have to answer a bunch of why questions as well.

Yeah.

You can ask my wife, uh, how, how, uh, she knows that. So cool. No, I think this is a really awesome conversation. I feel like we could keep going for like another couple hours, um, but I want to be respectful of your time. Do you have any last thoughts or asks of the audience before we let you go?

Um, not so much. I think the, the thing that I'd want to probably leave people with is, is we've, we've said a lot of things, and take the things that we've said and look at them on a deeper level of leadership, of coaching, of development, of the people that you have. Like those are all things that when you look at them on a deeper level, you'll be able to succeed. You'll be able to do more and really identifying those. Take action. Don't just listen to this podcast and be like, well, I'm going to go back to my day to day. Like, and I'm not saying what works for me is going to work for everyone because that's not true. Like everyone does things differently, but go grab that book. John C. Maxwell, Five Levels of Leadership. Understand people, make your team take the DiSC assessment, show them why you are going to take it, show them how it's going to help them. Understand people, understand your team, support them, let them grow. And once you get there, watch your whole company grow. Everyone's going to grow together. So I want to leave, leave with that.

That's great. Great last thought. So I really appreciate your time, Ryan. And for the listeners, with that, we will see you next week.