Also some of my coworkers...odd ducks. What place doesn't have that though, right? Apparently we're quite busy though and so the usual banter isn't happening right now, but really hours go by without any conversation between anybody. I guess that is a good thing because people actually work and perform here. I do need to get used to that seeing as how the last place was quite different.
I really hope I don't have a psuedo panic attack though when it comes to being a peon for another company that isn't one that I'm not the owner of.
With that said I wanted to do a recap of what happened last year with the painting business I got involved with.
My father in law, Scott Wray, has been painting for 40 years. Busting his hump for that paper. It hasn't resulted in true financial security for the guy...yet :). Last summer I'd listened to a podcast of a painter who turned his company around and is now a millionaire all in the span of a few years. After some dull thinking a lightbulb went off shortly thereafter and I thought, "hey i'm not loving my job the most, its definitely not setting me up like crazy that i need and want, and i happen to know a guy who runs a painting company that i'm pretty sure needs a crap ton of help/work and maybe I can adopt what i've learned in my life to help it grow."
So I approached Scott and said I wanted to do more in my life to get paid what i'm worth and work towards something that is more fulfilling and that I think/thought his company would be a good way to do just that.
So we're in it.
For now what we're doing is splitting profit after all expenses/wages 80/20. Essentially I'm getting little just so I can get my foot in the door.
A lot has transpired though I think in the past six months.
We signed up for lead gen services, built him a website (www.rockymountainpainters.com), started the licensing process, got a LEGIT company book to showcase to potential clients at estimates, bought/paid for two separate courses on how to grow a painting business, hired a production manager (my dear old mom), got yard signs, cards, shirts, car magnets made, got a bunch of reviews on google, home advisor, and video testimonials, before and after pictures.
Right now we're working on more licensing stuff, getting a business bank account set up, hiring door to door marketers, looking at adwords and social media advertising/exposure, digitizing the estimate process, etc.
So for me some of what i'm excited about are the process things we've implemented, including the big one for me and ashlee of hiring my mom to handle scheduling/production manager stuff. Last month we had our first meeting where she'd taken over all of the scheduling issues and responding to new leads that came in. To my surprise they had finished 2 or 3 jobs from start to finish and we got paid on them. True passive income. It wasn't world changing, but it was around 300+ bucks. Yes we're doing edits to the website and having weekly meetings to recap and run over numbers, but it seemed amazing.
Tonight I did apply for the bank account for the business so we can more easily track all expenses/revenue.
I also tallied total revenue numbers for year over year progress and I must say I'm pretty happy about it.
In 2015 he did...
| Win Rate | Revenue | YOY Growth |
| 70.45% | $56,812.50 | 15.67% |
| Average Job Size | ||
| $1,832.66 |
In 2016 he did with our help...
| Win Rate | Revenue | YOY Growth | ||
| 44.44% | $107,242.00 | 88.76% | ||
| 35870 | $71,372.00 | 25.63% | 63.14% | |
| Average Job Size | Average of last 5 years | |||
| $2,437.32 | $1,547.46 |
We contributed an additional $35,870 in revenue to the company, or 63.14% of the 88.76% year over year growth. And we're not even that good at doing estimates yet as far as professionalism goes and being licensed.
The drop off in win rate isn't actually too crazy because a good win rate is 40-50% of estimates.
We're hoping that with getting licensed we can land some HUGE wins with some of our connections too. My brother in law is a vp for pc laptops and has hinted that we could bid his stores for painting once we're licensed, which could potentially be as much revenue as all of last year in just one shot.
Our goal for this year is triple the revenue of the company from last year and he wants to make 100k and we want to make 50k from it. We'll see what we can do. Long term the plan is to continue to grow, but completely stop painting all together. We'll then focus on running the day to day of following up on leads, getting more leads via our marketing channels, working with subcontractors and what not. Once we have legit subcontractors doing the actual painting for us I've already broached bringing the profit sharing to 50/50 with Scott.
So that is basically it. I want to track my time spent on the business this year to see how much I put in vs get paid, a la the monthly reports that are done on affordanything.com. It isn't top priority however and so maybe it'll happen next year. And do you count writing a blog post as time put into the company lol?
Let me know your thoughts and if you need a good painting company that has a 5 year warranty on materials and labor...get in touch!
www.rockymountainpainters.com
(385) 243-1990
