This last month was an interesting one for us in the business. I may do a brief update now and then when our books are reconciled on the 10th maybe I'll do a snapshot of how we did and then from there on out I'll try and do the monthly update mid month so that I have the numbers to review as well. Maybe I'll YouTube updates on what we're doing new in the business. I'm not sure, but its something I've thought about because then I get more out faster.
Thinking about it right now too I think I want to structure these monthly updates so there is a structure and people can read what they want and skip the rest or bits and pieces.
Good
The biggest thing we worked through was finally coming to a consensus on needing to hire another person to take over Production Management and Estimating in the business.
I think I already mentioned this, but I was already feeling a little bit of burnout on doing the residential estimates for our clients. I really like meeting our clients and the challenge of needing to figure out new things as they come along because getting out of your comfort zone is what it is all about. But its starting to not be a challenge and it really is just listening to what they want, make some recommendations, take some measurements and pictures, walk them through our process, then follow up with them. Pretty easy and people really like our process. It takes a little bit to learn the software, but really not that much and you're up and running after a handful of estimates. After that it is just nailing down creating forms for all the estimates that you just do over and over again.
The amount of driving around just feels tedious to me when I could be paying someone else good money who wants to do it while I work on more systems based things that need to get done to really get this thing to scale to make a lasting impact in our customer interactions and just growth. So we met with a guy who actually applied as a painter of ours to take over estimating for me on top of doing actual painting.
Then on to the production management role, or pm as it'll be referred to from here on out. This is what Renee has excelled at and managed on her side of the business. She's always been a do it your selfer and just making things happen all my growing up, but for us to go to the next level I basically plead with her to make some changes and then lots of discussion led to us both saying we really just need to offload her job to somebody new who can give it the full attention it needs. This includes follow up each day, sometimes twice a day, with customers, ordering paint, finding, vetting, and hiring painters, running the schedule, and probably a bunch of other stuff I can't think of right now.
We reached out to some people we knew from applications for the job when we were still Rocky Mountain Painters, but that wasn't ideal as the role had been advertised differently than what we need currently, which essentially is a full time person. The guy that we hired to paint and do estimating for us also had management experience prior to coming on and so we said to him that we wanted to promote him and have him now only do estimating and production for us. So we're going to run with that for now and see where it leads us.
I think it'll take a load off of both of us and once we're able to flush out more business system's things and hire more quality painters that we'll actually be able to turn on more leads and hire a marketing coordinator who will then setup appointments for our estimators to go out and proactively sell to pre-set appointments. After those things are done then it is just rinse and repeat in my opinion for growing the business.
Another thing we decided to do is switch from an LLC to an S Corp. Now instead of being overtaxed for any profits we take out of the business we'll instead be employees and the company will pay a portion of our taxes and then anything after that we'll then face the full force of all the taxes so that should help the sting of getting paid, but having to deal with taxes.
With that change it required an upgrade in our bookkeeping service too. We feel like we need more hands on attention at the beginning right now to get a better handle on our reports and goal setting and tax planning and then once that is squared away we may back it off to the level we were at previously.
We won a big apartment complex job in south jordan and we originally thought it'd only be for phase 1 of the project and then we'd go from there. When the contract showed up however it was for the full project¸ which took us both by surprise. So while winning the original phase at 80k was cool, winning 400k+ is even cooler. Cool though = tons of prep work we've got to do in terms of getting crews ready for it. With our new PM we hope to be able to tackle that thing with ease while still maintaining growth and getting into the commercial repaint segment.
Bad
We're still learning how to be better at estimating. A lot of jobs are over on their costs and so one thing we said we're going to do going forward is to just add two hours of prep to each job. One hour for painters discussing the project with the customer and getting paint and what not. The second hour is for travel time that we're going to start paying out to painters when they have to travel beyond a certain point for any kind of job.
We've been having clients upset about our communication and workmanship at times too. So the big thing we did was decide to hire another PM to help systematize the communication with everyone. Then the second thing we've done is started having weekly calls with all the painters to discuss things that we need to improve on. I think those training meetings will be beneficial to helping us improve and get better and more profitable of course.
I made the "mistake" of reaching out to people I'd met at the painting conference I went to in January and the guy who put it on threatened legal action if i didn't stop talking to those people. The main culprit I believe for his angst and anger was that I'd reached out to my contacts asking if they wanted to do a mastermind group for painting business owners to discuss the things they were wanting to do first, second, and third in their businesses, but for free amongst ourselves. That was pretty deflating to get that from the conference organizer, but one thing i want to do is find a group of business owners that want to improve and then meet to discuss what to do first, second, and third. Doing that, and hopefully having some big dawgs in there, will help inspire and lift people to do better.
We're coming up on a big transition period where we're going to guide our new guy on how to do our jobs and give up control there, but once we do I think it'll be for the better because then we can focus on higher value things in the business. Interesting times indeed!
