From Side Hustle to $4M: Building Leaders, Systems, and Margin in a Painting Company

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, 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. Today, I'm super excited to have Michael Chaney on the podcast. Welcome to the podcast, Michael.

Hey, Daniel, thanks for having me. This is going to be fun. We get to talk about finances, though. That makes me nervous sometimes.

No, I know you're killing it. I doubt that, but we'll see. No, but no, I'm super excited to have you on because A lot of people are already familiar with you because you're pretty visible in the industry. You have a great paint painting business out of Ohio. So I'm excited to dive into things today.

Let's do it.

Let's do it. So just, just in case someone hasn't or isn't familiar with you, could you give folks like, how did you get started in the painting industry and what's been your journey along the way?

Yeah, for sure. So like most, I didn't choose painting. I think it somehow chose me. It's not a family business. I chose this. But I like to say that my mom got me into painting. And the reason I say that is because I grew up with a single mom and we took good care of our house even though we didn't have much at times. So we were always painting and putting up wallpaper. So I started painting at a young age. And then as I got older and I started learning about finances, I was like, you know what, I need a, I need a second stream of income. I was in a completely different industry. I was actually a personal finance blogger. So I did write about finances all the time. But I was like, I need a, I need a second stream of income, and I kind of reverted back to this painting I did as a child. And, and so I chose painting as kind of a side hustle, and one thing led to another. I found out quickly I really didn't know how to paint, um, you know, in, in scale, you know, the way that you need to paint when you're really working for someone. But I started with the brush in my hand. I learned how to paint, I learned how to spray, I did all the things, all the staining, all the clear coats. I literally just started this thing from the ground up, and It's been a heck of a journey and I love it. What I love about it now is that we're— my business is at a point where we've got some stability and some processes and structure, right? We're in the scaling arena at this point. And I have an amazing team and my new second level to all this is I'm now learning how to lead leaders. And so that's a challenge for me. You know, obviously I've got to be in tune with the finances and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, we're at a point now where we're growing. We do really cool things for people. You know, we have a tagline and it's changing lives through paint. And we have an amazing Paint It Forward program that we really invest in. And we just do cool things for people, whether it's our team, whether we're teaching them English lessons. I have a Spanish teacher and the business helps support me and my journey of learning Spanish. So we just do cool things under the name of paint. And yeah, I love it. I think I've found my little place in this world and it has to do with the painting industry.

Yeah, that's amazing story. And just to give folks a kind of perspective of where you're, where you're coming from, what's, what's the revenue look like over the years and like year 1 to, to now?

Yeah, gosh, year 1, I mean, it was probably a couple hundred thousand bucks. I can't even say that I tracked the way that I should have been tracking. Um, once I realized, you know, that this was going to be a business, um, You know, I remember when we first hit $1 million and it, you know, I always heard that, you know, millions like this milestone. Then I got there and I'm like, I'm happy we did it, but man, this was exhausting, right? I've run all over Columbus, Ohio, delivering ladders, paint, all out of a Honda Civic. So it wasn't the celebration I thought, although I'm like, okay, I've got something here. Today I'll tell you we're gonna hit $3.75, maybe $4 million this year. We did 2.5 last year. And where we're kind of at in this business and where, what I'm shooting for is we're going for the gold. We're trying to be the premier painting company in Columbus, Ohio. We're not trying to show up to the tournament, we're trying to win the whole damn thing. And so I'm creating a team around that. Once I honed in on that's what I want to do, like we're going for it. I've got a team and I'm learning how to hire, I'm learning how to put people in place. Because the truth of the matter is, is that where we're going, I'm probably not going to be the one at the top of this thing. There's other things in life I want to do. I know where my place is in this business. And so my job now is to build a team to get us to where we want to go. And part of where we want to go is we want to do 50 Paint It Forward projects a year. Right now we do about 20. And so, you know, we need to double, triple this business to support that.

Okay, that's, that's awesome. So you You're one, a couple hundred thousand dollars. Now you're up to $4 million and you're really— sounds like you're really focused on leading leaders, as you said, building a team because, you know, at that level, it's— you need to have strong leaders because you're not anywhere near the, the, the ground floor. Like, you're not interacting with customers, I'm sure, like as much as you in the beginning when you're $1 million or lower. So, so it's really about building a team. And how long have you had this business?

So I really, I registered with the state of Ohio in 2017. So, you know, it's, you know, 8 years or so. And the structure that we have today, I like to talk about this because my goal, what I say is I'm leading my way out of the business. I'm really a visionary and I have all these ideas with the business and I want to be able to really explore that and lean into that. So the structure that I have now is I have a director of sales. He's a great guy. You'll see him at the PCA events. His name's Dan Street and he's come in and he's really built out our sales process. He runs our sales team. And then I have director of production who's Katie. She started kind of in at the PM level and has moved up over the last couple years. So I've got sales and production covered. They're the experts. I'm not the experts in those fields. Fields, and I am sliding into the marketing role. I'll also say I'm not a marketing expert, but what I'm doing is I'm building out some of our reporting and structure. It turns out that's kind of what I'm good at is, is building out the structure and things like that. And then my next big hire, hopefully within the next 6 months, will be an in-house marketing person that can kind of get us to the next level. And we'll probably still partner with an outside marketing company like we do now, but, but we'll have a better footing on what's going on because as you know, marketing isn't just Facebook ads, you know, we've got a street team, we've got a lot of things on the ground here in Columbus that we do. But that's kind of what's happening. And I like to mention that because if I was just planning on staying at this level, I might not have all those positions, you know, but because I know we're going to, you know, another level that, that we are just not, we're not there yet. I'm strategically putting these positions in place so that the foundation is there. And then, you know, once I get that marketing person in place, now I'm at another level in the business. But that's kind of how we're doing this. And from a financial perspective, because I, I've really thought this through, this year is like an investment year for us. And I know that we're gonna talk some numbers here, but, I'm willing to give up some profit this year so that I can get the Dan Street, the sales guru in place, that I can have my director of production in place. I'm giving up profit now. So that we can build the stability. So then in a year or two, we've got a real solid, solid system.

Makes sense. So the, you have a director of sales that you already have in place, a director that's overseeing production. So for the, the sales director, are they basically, um, like a sales manager, I guess? What does that look like? Do they have like the, all the sales people report to them and they kind of coach the salespeople or what, what does that role look like?

That's exactly it. And we just, we chose our own titles for certain reasons. But, so it's a sales manager. And so we've got, we've actually got 5 estimators right now, or sales reps. I used to call them estimators, but we've transitioned to sales reps. It's more professional. But I'll tell you, we've experimented with something this year that's been kind of interesting. We have 2 sales reps that are full commission. And so we are playing with that and it's been working. It's an interesting way to kind of run it. You know, we want to attract killers. We want to attract people that want to get to the next level. But to your point, my sales manager, Dan, He runs the sales team, he hires new sales reps, he's in charge of all the sales, the training, and he holds them to their KPIs. So he does things like, we have a system where he needs to physically monitor, meaning go out on sales calls with reps so many times a month. He will pull them in and do call blitzes. We have 7:00 AM Monday mornings that he runs. So we've got some structure in there. And then, you know, the second layer to all of that, now that we're so quickly approaching the fourth quarter. In the fourth quarter, we're going to review our entire, entire sales process because we know that there are some things within that that we need to elevate. But yeah, to your point, he's running the show on sales. I'm completely hands-off. And now my job is to coach him, coach and lead him, right? I said I'm leading leaders. And now, you know, his job is to report his numbers to me and, and they should be hitting the KPIs.

Yeah. Okay. That's, that's awesome. So, um, so I'm really interested in the, like the sales manager, sales director role because I know a lot of folks have trouble filling this role where sometimes they'll try to get their best salesperson in that role and it often doesn't work. Did you, do you have any secret sauce on how to find a, a sales manager, a good one?

Yeah. So I've made all those mistakes. I've taken my best painter and made them the crew leader, then made them the PM. I did all of it and I know it doesn't work, right? So part of my learning curve is getting better at hiring and I will say I'm still getting better. But when I hired Dan, he was my biggest hire to date. Okay. And it was nerve-wracking. I, I, I, you know, brought him on on a salary higher than I've ever paid. He has a nice commission structure, you know, all of these things that were, were new for me. So, you know, I was nervous. What I'll say is I'll tell you how I found him. So I was on the board of NARI. NARI is a remodeling organization, by the way. If you're not part of NARI, especially if you do residential and you want to meet remodelers and stuff like that, NARI is a great networking group. But I was on the board of NARI and so, so was Dan. And I say I was on the board because once I hired him, I had to remove myself from the board because they have restrictions on how many people from each company can be on the board. But I met him through networking. He was in sales leadership at Pella. So a big, you know, well-known company. And I'll tell you what, over the years I've connected with him. He kind of heard about our mission and he was interested in it. And so when it was time for me to hire, and I do this all the time, when I start to hire, I reach out to my network first, you know, while I'm tightening up that job posting, while I'm putting it on Indeed or Hire Bus. We use Hire Bus now. But I reached out to my network and Dan was one that I reached out to and I said, hey, listen, I'm hiring the sales manager level. You know, it's new frontier for us. You're well connected. If you know anyone, consider sending them my way. And he said, I know someone, and he was talking about himself. So we met and it worked out. But the cool thing that I just love is that we're starting to attract like some real talent. And, you know, Dan has 20 years of experience in the remodeling industry, in sales. His book of business is unbelievable, right? Part of our initiative for growth is to get new remodelers in there. And well, guess what? He's already got that book of business built. So it's a really cool, like, collaboration that I've been able to develop with him. But I would say is that from a hiring standpoint now, I now know, like, hiring is ongoing, right? Even when we've got a super solid sales team, Dan and I's conversation is, okay, who's on the bench? Where, you know, at some point we're gonna need someone. So we are, I'm really invested in building this bench, but, you know, Dan, I would say, is a testament to my team showing up at NARI meetings, being professional, speaking about, you know, who we are, what we do, and, you know, it was a whole team effort. But then when it was time to actually make that hire, I got to connect with Dan, and it's so far it's been great. He's, you know, he's killing it. And, you know, I can't emphasize enough how like my job really is to find people to do the job way better than I can do it, right? Like I, I scratched and clawed and cried a lot to get us to where we got to, which was 2.5. And now it's time to get people in there that really know what they're doing. So that's a long way to talk about my hiring process, Daniel. But, um, that's kind of where we're at. We're able to kind of, you know, start to attract some, some talent and it's really fun, exciting.

Yeah, no, that's, that's awesome. I really appreciate you sharing. And I, it sounds like the sales director, sales manager, I mean, he's really a coach to the salespeople. And he's tracking those KPIs, making sure they're hitting their goals. Do you know, refining the sales process, also helping identify who the next hires will be. And then And then it sounds like you're really focused on, uh, building the team. And it reminds me of the book by Walter Isaacson. He wrote a Steve Jobs biography, and that's what like Steve Jobs was so focused on was just not necessarily running the business, but just hiring the right people to run it for him. And like that's what he thought his role was, was really to find the best people to work in Apple or whatever he was, Pixar or whatever he was working on at the time. And so that's kind of what I'm hearing you kind of say.

Yeah.

You feel like your role is to find the best people to work in no drip painting. Is that accurate?

I mean, that is it. Because I mean, here's the thing, like, yeah, like I know I've— what this business has taught me is it's taught me what my skill sets are and what I really like to do. Okay. And the older I get and the more I move through this business, You know what? I wanna do those things. I wanna do the things that I really like. And I know that that's gonna require me to pull back because we've all heard this, but I have been the bottleneck. I have been the one, you know, where things are getting stuck. You know, I'm, I, I have choked the business out many times being that bottleneck. And so what I'm really exploring is the things I love, what I'm good at, What contributions I can give to this business. And that also means I gotta recognize what I'm not the best at. Look, I did sales for years, right? I started this whole thing. I was great with our customers. You know, look, I would have a 55, 60% close rate. I was good at it, but I can't sustain that. Nor, if truth be told, I don't really wanna be a sales rep. I did it. I did a good job. I got us to where we are now. Let me get someone in there that actually knows what they're doing and is excited about it, right? So, you know, if sales is your jam and you're excited and passionate about that position, man, let me get you in here, because that's not where my passion lies.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Uh, you know, I, I feel like we hear a lot that the owner— or I'm the bottleneck in my business, or the owner is the bottleneck in the business— but it seems like you've really taken that to heart to basically grow through hiring like really great people that can replace you at your level or higher. And I feel like a lot of people don't think of it like that, like finding someone better than they are doing it. They, they, they think that they are the best at whatever it is and that they'll just have to find someone that's, you know, can, can get by in the role. But I feel like you're— Yeah, you find someone that's better than me to to take my place.

Yeah, that's it, because we're going to do big things and I need— I can't do it all. Yeah.

So you mentioned trying, because I, I'd like to dive into compensation plans.

Yeah, yeah.

You mentioned trying to do a full commission for your sales reps. Uh, so what, what have you tried for compensation for salespeople? What's worked, what hasn't?

Yeah, so I'll tell you what we're doing now, and it seems to be working, but we've only been doing this for about 6 months, so I'm sure we'll tweak it. Um, It's— we pay— they pay— get paid 6%. Okay, 6% commission. But there is a threshold in place. The project has to hit our GP goal. Okay, so our gross profit goal per project is 50%. Now, as we grow, that will increase. We're actually trending around 53% per project. This is not, you know, our gross profit for the business, but we're trending around 53%. So there is that caveat in there. And I've heard other companies and folks say they don't really like that. That's kind of our— we have— I, I felt like we had to have a threshold in there, especially since that's new. I'd be interested to see what you thought about that, Daniel. But we pay 6% on that. I have some other, um, sales reps— when I, truth be told, when I brought them in as sales reps, I paid them too high of a salary. I know that now. It's a lesson learned. Eventually we'll kind of be phasing that out, but that's a delicate piece. We aren't just going to come in and cut people's pay. But my folks that are on salary, again, it's too high, but they get paid $60,000 plus 2% on any job that hits the 50% gross profit. My goal over the next year is to shrink that salary. And the truth is, if they go full commission, they'll earn more. But, you know, I've— I'm still figuring some things out right now. That 6% is working for us. Um, I don't know, any thoughts? You're, you're the numbers guy, and, and what do you think about that setup?

Yeah, no, I like the 6% because, uh, with payroll and workers' compensation, that should be at 8% or below for, um, what they close, because that's kind of the number that I use is 8% of what a salesperson, uh, closes. And so that, that seems right. And then I just ask, uh, if they hit 50% gross profit, but what if they don't? What is— what does it go down?

So right now they don't, they don't, if they don't hit the 50%, they don't get the bonus. What we're trying to do is eliminate people just lowballing bids. Like you gotta follow our system and our pricing metric. We don't like do discounts. If someone says, oh, you're too high, we don't say, okay, I'm gonna lower the price. What we do is we train on how to handle objections and how to really show our value. So Again, you know, we're, we're kind of still exploring this. That's the setup we have. But our, our approach at, at NoDrip is like we win together and we lose together. So we try to create this strong bond between sales and production where it's like if, let's just say we, we've kind of screwed up the pricing up front, our PMs aren't gonna get bonuses either if they can't produce that and hit the 50% target, right? So what it creates is this quick feedback loop, right? So if our PM gets a project and, and we're going through this project, we're like, you know what, we missed a few things here, we missed some additional prep work. I'm going to give that feedback to my sales rep immediately so they can correct it right away. So we, we've, you know, our environment and our culture is let's support each other. We win together, we lose together, but let's figure out how to win as much as we possibly can.

Yeah, no, I, I like the, the fact that you're you know, you're holding them to that gross profit, 50%, because that's something that's missed a lot with commission only is that folks don't have that gross profit target built in there. So I like that. And the other thing I'd ask is for the current— the folks that have been on there for a while, like they've got a salary that was a little bit too high, $60,000, and then they get a 2% gross profit. One thing that I've— because a lot of times when folks come to work with us, they often have packages that are set too high for their team. And we've, we've tried different things. One of the things that seems to work is that if you go to your current team and say, hey, 3 months from now or some, you know, future date that's relatively out there, you know, 3 months or so, 3, 3 months from now, this position is going to be compensated this way moving forward. And the reason why this is going to give you an opportunity to actually make more money. And so when you, when you make it far enough in the future where they can react to it and it's not like tomorrow or something like that, and it kind of, especially for the salesperson, most salespeople will like the idea of the opportunity to make more money if they're the right person, especially in residential repair. And that kind of gives them time to absorb it. Understand it, and then if they need to move out, you have time to react. You know, because if they might stay on until that, that change happens 3 months from now or something like that. That's something like that. We've seen that works is kind of give a long lead time. So like, hey, this is going to change several months from now.

And then yeah, yeah, that's good. You know what else we did is we ended up putting a threshold in. This is our first with, with those salary folks that are a bit too high, our first threshold was, um, you'll get bonus, but you have your commission— technically for them it's commission— you'll get commission, uh, but you have to $80,000. Your, your base sale is $80,000 a month. You get commission on everything above that because we're paying you $60,000 just to hit, just to hit that threshold. So it, it actually evens out the playing field with our commission folks, their commission's still making a little bit more. So commission sells $80,000, they're still going to make a little bit more than our folks that have this $60,000 safety net. But the first step towards kind of controlling this was putting a threshold in there and it was received well. And, but I think you're right. I like the idea of communicating ahead of time. We're in it like this weird position right now because we've got our fourth quarter coming up. Where we plan to be strong, but it's the first, it's January and February that tend to be, you know, some people call it like the dark quarter, like there's that, that area between the 4th and the 1st. So we want to make sure we're doing right by the team, but I, but I like your suggestion there.

Yeah. Awesome. So shifting gears into the production director, what does that role look like and, and what are they, what are they doing there?

Yeah. So think of it as a, a production manager and the PMs report to them. Okay. Now what this, what this person does, what Katie does is she has a dashboard or scorecard for production and her job is to hit our KPIs. So we have KPIs for revenue produced, gross profit, number of reviews. We're big on collecting reviews. Callbacks. We track callbacks. We want callbacks less than 2%. And then I'm missing one. We track Payments collected on time. So her job is to ensure that those KPIs are met. And I'll tell you some like unique things that we do, or I wouldn't even say unique, but now that I have that position in order to take care of our customers and make sure that we're providing great customer experience, I kind of talked about on the sales side where Dan will go out and monitor our sales reps, right? Well, Katie will, her, one of her jobs is each week she has to call 5 customers for each PM and check in, hey, Mrs. Smith, you know, our project manager started your project today and I just wanna see how the experience is so far. You know, did they use the checklist? Did, you know, so we're doing a quick check-in with our customers because if there's any indication that something's off, we wanna fix it quickly. And that feedback also rolls into coaching our PMs, right? So the production manager, from my standpoint, their job is to make sure we're hitting our KPIs and that we're hitting our gross profit. And by the way, our gross profit is 50%, but 75% of our projects have to hit that. That is like the threshold for our business right now.

75% of the projects have to hit 50% or higher. Yeah, that's— yeah, that's awesome. Um, so, so basically they're managing the, the project managers, and then they have those different KPIs: revenues produced, gross profit, callbacks, payments collected. And then they're doing check-ins with the customers to make sure that the project managers are doing what they're supposed to be doing.

So they're doing that, they're doing all the hiring, they're hiring our subcontractors. We also have employee painters, and over the years our goal is to have more employee painters and less subcontractors. And so, you know, there's training. We also have a crew leader position. So it's— the hiring is big, and the truth is we've, we've not done a great job at hiring this year, and we're kind of understanding and feeling what it looks like when we kind of really don't follow our hiring process and onboarding process to the full extent. So, we're refocusing on that. But I'll tell you what we've done. We've, by the way, if you come to the Women in Paint event, which all the ladies out there need to come to, I will be going over our production process and we've got some really cool things in there. But what we've been able to do is we've been able to expand the capacity of our PMs. Okay. So there was a time when I thought if a PM can produce $1 million a year, uh, remember this is residential. I was like, oh, that's great. Well, we've blown past that. We've made some tweaks. We've added a coordinator position. We've got our, um, our goal right now is we're pretty— we want to produce $475,000 a month. So we've got 2 PMs that are able to do that. We have expanded their capacity by shifting some things around, you know. So I'm— I expect my PMs, you know, we should even a new PM, we should be producing 1.5 up to 2 million. That, that is, it is kind of where we see that our PMs can do. But I've got that production manager in place there to just run production. So imagine I was doing that at one point. I was running production, I was running sales, and now I've taken myself out of it, put someone in there that really is passionate about it. And, you know, Katie's gonna You know, she, her job is to build, build this system so that we can do $10-15 million. That's the goal.

Yeah, no, that's, that's great. So you've expanded the, the capacity of the project manager from $1 million and basically doubled it. So they're potentially producing $2 million instead. So is it, is it, uh, are you shifting some duties to like crew leaders or to the office person or something, somebody like that to, to, to free up some of that capacity?

It sounds like you know what you're talking about, Daniel. That's exactly what we did. So we implemented the crew leader. So we remember we've got employee painters and subs. The crew leader, when you have more crew leaders, your PMs can do less, really. If you train your crew leaders right, they can start jobs, they can give a great experience, they can close it out, they can do all the quality checks. So we really invested in our crew leaders this year, and then we implemented a coordinator role. We did this about 9 months ago, and that coordinator role takes all of, I'm gonna call the admin stuff off the PM. They're collecting colors, they're scheduling color consultations, they're doing all of the scheduling, they're scheduling the customer, they're scheduling the team to paint, right? So they understand the skillset of all of the painters. They're, you know, there was a time when the PM was doing all that and the PM's making phone calls, returning phone calls, missing phone calls, right? They're, they were trying to do too much. It got, as we grew, they just couldn't keep up with it. So now we've, it's essentially an admin position and they handle all of that. And that's really the big thing that has allowed us to expand the capacity of a PM as well as just some systems thing. There's some tech stuff in there and then there's just some processes that we have to follow. There's updates that you need to give, there's communication, there's, you know, the way we start, there's a system on how we start a job and close it out. And, and, you know, how we preposition the customer to give us a review at the end. So we're getting, you know, pretty detailed in there. And, and the goal is that all of this runs like a, a well-oiled machine. But that's exactly what we did was we implemented the crew leader position, really tightened up them. And then that coordinator position is really like, it's, it's essential if you want to remove some of the admin stuff off your PMs.

Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Okay, so we talked about the, the, the director of sales, the director of production, and, and now you're, you're diving into the marketing side of things and you're— I'm just structuring it so that I'm assuming so you can hand it off at a, at a later point.

Um, yep.

And so I'm, I'm assuming you're doing like, you mentioned Facebook ads, you mentioned like a street team, like doing canvassing. What, what is, what does that look like? What does that director of marketing role look like?

Yeah, so here's my job now. So in sales and in production, we've got some similarities, right? So we've of course got KPIs for sales, KPIs for production, and our— my, my managers of those two departments have a scorecard. Okay. And then the folks below them have a dashboard, right? So I'm taking that same system that we've been using in sales and in production, and now I'm bringing it to marketing. So I'm in the process of developing our scorecard, right? Which has our metrics. How many leads do we need a week? How many of those leads, you know, what's our, our, um, our set rate from lead to appointment, right? I'm really restructuring the, uh, the, the reporting piece of it and making sure we've got our solid KPIs in place. Um, and so I'm working on that. And then, um, I'm also really taking a deep dive into, you know, we do a lot of reporting manually right now. So You know, if, if a Facebook lead comes in, um, and we get the appointment, what's the close rate on Facebook leads versus repeat customers, right? So I'm really getting in there and getting in-depth information on our reporting so we can strategically make decisions. In addition to that, um, you know, we do newsletters. So under the marketing umbrella includes these newsletters, any sort of graphics or copy that we need. Um, you know, if we want an image for our door hangers, what is that going to be? Who does that? Um, right now I, I have have an outside party do that, but eventually those type of things will be rolled in inside the business. Our street team right now, this is the first year we've done it, it actually is, is reporting to— they're reporting to my sales manager, my director of sales. It's— that's kind of been the best fit for it. But, you know, there, there is a thought that they will probably end up reporting to marketing at some point. We just haven't had the, the structure to do it. But my job now is to kind of build out this marketing platform so that we're really in tune with our numbers and we can strategic decisions. So for example, if we know we're gonna be slower in December, okay, what are we gonna do about it? We need to start figuring that out now. Do we have a special campaign for repeat customers? Are we calling everyone from 2025 that didn't, that did not accept a project? That's the kind of stuff that we're doing. But the marketing, me, the marketing team gets to kind of create that plan and then we, we, you know, use our team members to get that done. And, you know, we'll have— I'll tell you, like, other things we're doing. We work with a lot of designers. So in October, we're going to host this little designer event that kind of falls under marketing. Marketing and sales are going to kind of partner on that. We're going to get some vendors to come in and do some cool things. So it's, it's kind of a new frontier for me. I'm by no means an expert at it, but I can create the structure so that when I find that marketing expert, they come in and they've got something to work with.

Hmm. No, that sounds awesome. And are there any other directors that you've identified that you'll need to, because I'm assuming the end, the end state, or you're, because you said you, you're, you want to lead leaders and maybe even eventually not exit, but maybe be like on the board, I'm assuming where you're advising and you, you have leaders that are leading the company, but you're kind of like an advisor to, to your, to No Drip Painting. Is that kind of the Potentially.

I mean, my next— after we get marketing, we have to do in-house finance. We have to have a finance team in-house. You know, we have a bookkeeper CPA that I work with, love the relationship. But at some point, I, you know, we're getting big enough to where we're going to want to bring that in-house. I foresee that happening. And then at some point, there's probably going to need to be some sort of HR thing that takes place. You know, this is kind of my long-term thinking. And then who knows what, what's going to happen from there. I mean, I can tell you that I've got a talented team, so I've got people who will joke around and say, okay, Baker's our sales coordinator, but he's really good at IT stuff. So actually he's, he also does all of our IT stuff. You know, as you grow, you find these little gaps that you got to fill. And so, yeah, I mean, I'm hoping in the next year or two, you know, I've got a sales manager, a production manager, a marketing manager, a finance manager, and that's me leading leaders. Now I've got to learn how to to, you know, hold them accountable to their KPIs but also still keep them interested and have them love this business and want to do amazing work.

Yeah, what I know, you're, you're 2 into several more, so, uh, what have you learned about leading leaders that maybe you didn't realize beforehand? And, uh, you know, something that you could give to folks that are maybe at the same level as you or trying to get there?

Yeah. Um, one thing is that when you have leaders who are good at their job, they want to know more about the business and the health of the business, right? They have a higher business acumen than like others. And so I've really never had many people in the business that want me to share financial information. Now, I don't mean finance. Not everybody should be privy to all financial information, right? But when you've got leaders, they want to understand where we're going in a year, 2 years, and they want, they want me to be able to lay that out for them. And it's, it's really cool for me because, um, you know, I'm sure people can relate to this, but there's been times in this business— well, let me say this, all entrepreneurs know it's a lonely road, right? We hear it all the time, and geez, it is, it can be lonely. And there's been times when I, when I have thought to myself, like, man, I wish I had a business partner to, like, just bounce this off of, like, to just guide me. Am I doing— is this the right thing? Like, you know, and, and then there's other times that I'm like, I'm really glad that I'm doing this by myself, right? It's good. I don't have business owner, another business owner with me. But as you get more developed team members, I now feel the support because if I have something tricky, I can actually go to them, right? They, they are more forward thinking. They don't have their eyes down in the day to day. They, they have the ability to lift their eyes up and plan. So that is stretching me because now it's forcing me to be able to have those conversations. Here's where we're going to be in 6 months. Here's where we're going to be in a year. When all of that is— I've been having this conversation with myself. No one else has just really tried to pull it out of me. And so for me, that's like fun, but it's also a learning curve because now I need to make sure that I'm keeping them up to date because I need them to stay engaged. I need them to really understand where we are and and what we're doing here.

That makes a lot of sense. So it's going to be a little— sounds like it's getting to be a little less lonely.

You have—

you actually have a team that can, uh, yeah, empathize with you and like help you plan. And like, so that sounds, sounds like something good to look forward to if you're maybe you're not at that level yet.

Uh, yeah, totally.

But I think what it requires is what we talked about in the beginning, is that you actually have to look for people that are better than you at the whatever thing that you're looking for, which can be kind of a mindset shift for— I know it was for me, like, because, you know, I know, and before I was like, oh, I'm the best at this, I'm best at that. And so that kind of mentality kind of prevented me from getting people who are better than me, you know, into the business. So I think at least for me, it was definitely a mindset shift to, to actually know there's actually a lot of people who can do a lot of more, a lot of things better than I can.

Yeah, right.

And so, but once you kind of open up your mind to that, then now obviously there's like the having them, you need to have the margins which you've got, you apparently do with the 50% plus gross profit margins, you know, hitting 53% on average. So that has to come first, obviously, to have the margins to support hiring key people because they're going to want more money, which from my— and you might be able to see this, but from my experience, the more expensive folks, like the people that are more expensive, that are like really A-players, they're more expensive, but the return on investment is way more as well. Like it's just by an order of magnitude. So you might spend a little bit more, but you get a lot more back. Has that been your experience?

Yeah, it's true. And remember, I'm just kind of getting there with this, but it's scary to make the commitment to a higher salary and a higher bonus option. But I still always— and maybe this is why I'm the business owner, but I'll take the risk, right? Because I really, really believe in what we're doing. And when my team really believes it and these folks that I'm interviewing or, you know, I end up hiring, they believe it. Right. And so you're absolutely right. Like, what you get back is worth it. It, it, it requires the risk. It requires you to get uncomfortable with, with the salary to get to the next level. Now, I will also say, if it doesn't work out, you got to be prepared to switch directions quickly. Like, like you've got to be on the ball. You've gotta have metrics. You've gotta be able to hold people accountable. If it's not working, let it not work and, and, and get outta that situation. I haven't had to do that at this level yet, but I have had to do it at, at other levels. So, you know, yes, it's taken the structure. I've had to have the structure. I've had to have the KPIs and the goals. I mean, you know, some of these things, I will say, you know, there are some things where we're still building the plane while we're flying it, right? We're, we're putting the plane together, but I've had to have enough structure for someone to come in and sing for to sink their teeth into. The other thing is when you hire people who are super capable, the onboarding process isn't as strenuous as, as people that don't have the skill set because in some way they onboard themselves. Now you gotta have the direction, right? Now I'm the leader of a leader, so I've gotta be on point, but like they know what they're doing. I don't need to tell a sales expert how to build a sales team. Yeah, I don't need to even really tell them how to build a sales process. Now, I might need to tweak some things because maybe they're not from the painting industry, but like, they've already done it, and so they're actually getting to teach me, right? Um, and so it's, it's this nice collaboration because I've got these ideas and I can say, here's what I want to do, and they're like, okay, I know how to do that. Um, so it's really cool and it's a completely different experience.

Yes, that's a good point. Like, And this really goes for any hire. If the new hire, from what I've seen, like if they're not making your job easier within the first, I don't know, couple of weeks or maybe a month depending on the position, then they might not be the right person because when you hire, because there is some like onboarding and stuff that happens, they get to get context, they got to get on the systems, whatever. But like a real, like an A-player, like they should be making your job easier very quickly. And if they're not, then you probably need to do something sooner rather than later.

So I fully agree with you. Fully agree.

Yeah. Cool. Well, Michael, you've been super, super gracious with your time and I— we've covered so much. I feel like I could talk to you for like another 4 hours and not get to everything. But I do want to be conscientious of the time. Do you have any asks of the audience? Or any last thoughts that you'd like to throw out there before we let you go today?

Well, I thought you were going to like really press me on numbers and stuff, so I was all ready. No, you know what? What I'll say is that I still believe there's just so much opportunity in this, in this industry. Obviously, you see it. It's why you work with painters. And there really is. And it's hard. It's, it's, it's hard work. But, you know, I think it's possible. You know, I really believe that we're gonna accomplish amazing things, and we already have, and we're gonna do many more amazing things. And there's lots of opportunities for women in this industry. And so I'll just leave you with that. There's so much opportunity. And if you can figure out your systems and processes, and, you know, I'll say like, you gotta have systems and processes, right? You've gotta start developing the foundation to get to the next level. But man, you know, So much, so much opportunity. And we've got so many young folks coming into this industry that, that are hungry and it's just elevating the industry for all of us. So it's super exciting. And yeah, I love what I'm doing. Yeah.

Thank you so much, Michael. And if you'd like to hear Michael go into her production process, you can go to the Women in Paint PCA event that's coming up here in— is that November?

That one's going to be end of October, 28th through the 30th. In Nashville. And I know you're going to be there, Daniel, because you're a big supporter of Women in Paint. It's going to be awesome. And look, if you're even thinking about it, just pull the trigger, take the bet on yourself. I know, you know, there's expense to it, but you're not going to believe the connections you make. And hop on the Women in Paint Facebook page if you want a nice supportive environment to ask questions. So yeah, I hope to see everyone at Women in Paint.

All right. And with that, we will see you next week.