Q1 2018 recap of Painting Business

So it's been an interesting year so far.  I started the year with no intention of quitting my full time job as a web developer at all.  A couple days into the new year I received word that the production manager that we had hired in the painting business was going to retire.  We didn't have much of a game plan for that type of development, but we did have my mom who had done that role in its entirety before and so we likely figured we'd just have her juggle that while we found another person to take our retiree's place.

A few days after this happened I had the thought come into my head as I was driving in to work at my full time job that perhaps I could take over the job, pay, and duties, and then that would allow me to still bring in money for my family, I could quit my full time job, and then also help the business grow.  As soon as I got into work I messaged my wife my thoughts and she loved it.  To her everlasting credit she has been behind having me quit and work full time on the business for years now.

I then talked to my mom about this potential idea and she really liked it.  She discussed it with Scott and he was also on board.  We had a few more conversations about transition, timeline, upcoming jobs and when I'd take over managing them from start to finish.  Then there was also the discussion of an upcoming painting conference we'd booked a flight for my mom to go to in late January that we had to work through.

After figuring out when would be best for me to go and take over in the production manager role it then came down to figuring out how do I go about quitting my job.  This was interesting to noodle over in my opinion since secretly my dream had always been to have enough savings, a business already up and running, and somehow get laid off from my job so that I could collect unemployment.  After a bit of conversations and thinking it came down to me just quitting my job.  As nice as it would've been to collect unemployment I have no idea how long it would've taken for me to actually get fired or laid off and so the most logical thing would be to just quit.

So I put in my notice.  A couple weeks later I was out of the full time employment game and into you eat what you kill game, i.e. self-employment where I was and am in charge of my results and not someone else telling me what I need to do.

The transition didn't go as planned to be honest.  There was too much already wrapped up in the jobs we'd already had going and ones upcoming that that just didn't really happen like we planned.  I did end up going to the painting conference though in late January, which I'm really glad that I did.  I learned a lot, made great contacts, and it changed the course of how to proceed in the painting business.

While I was there they had "hot seats" where each painting business owner would get up and talk about one or two good things they did in the past year and would ask for help/input on one or two things they needed help on.  In my session I said our online presence really helped us and doing cabinets.  Our problem, which was being over on budget, had been discussed a lot through keynote speakers so I wasn't entirely sure what to ask about to be honest.  The moderator asked our partnership split and duties and who was doing what and it made his head spin.  He asked me to stop talking mid sentence and just blurted out, "You need to do your own thing".  As soon as he said that about a half dozen heads in the room nodded in agreement and a few people vocalized their agreement with his assessment.

TBH that was not the thing I wanted to hear.  Going through my head was...

I don't know how to paint.
I don't know how to estimate.
Where would I get leads?
How would I pay for stuff?
How would I get licensed?
I just freaking quit my job so wth???

Those were just a few of the things that went through my head.  I then went on to explain that though convoluted and not ideal it was a thing that if I started new activities in the business and if I took full charge of them that the partners and I had agreed that I, or any of the partners for that matter, could take profits from said jobs.  So while somewhat defeated I was actually resolved to go home and make it work in the current layout of the existing painting business.

I flew home on Delta, which has upped their game by the way in terms of what they serve and the in-flight entertainment just fyi.

I called my mom to discuss things about the conference and how things were going in the business that past week.  Things with customers and employees were fine, but she and Scott were having issues resolving how to do certain things in the painting business and apparently it wasn't the prettiest how it was playing out.  But we had always worked through things in the past so I continued to hear her out.  After further explanation it was like that seed in the back of my mind of starting my own thing was blooming into a real thought that maybe now was really the time to make it happen.

So I paused my mom, like the moderator had done to me, and explained to her what I'd experienced while sitting on the hot seat.  She listened and then I explained why this might be the ideal thing at this juncture.  Instead of slogging through a business that would face occasional push back from our other partner maybe it would be best to start anew either with him out of the existing business or if that wasn't agreeable to him then we'd start our own.  We talked a bit more about that idea and how we should approach him about it.  Have him retire and keep his percentage, buy him out completely, or some variation of the two or just start our own.  One thing we did say for certain was that based on the impasse of the previous week that we were going to say that we'd decided to do this thing and that it was final and that we wanted to work through what he thought about it.

We went to dinner, ate our meal, and talked about Ashlee's pregnancy.  After I finished dessert I explained that the painting conference was good, but what it made me realize is that there is a lot of stuff still yet to do and that before we started doing those things we needed to resolve who was going to be involved or not and how to move forward with that in the future.  Scott was certifiably pissed, which we, or I should say I pretty much expected, although that possibility wasn't lost on my mom or Ashlee in the least.  We knew we kind of sprung it on him and we tried our best to talk through as much of it as we could.  He didn't want to be bought out.  He said he couldn't retire.  With that said we knew splitting was our only other option.

We tried talking through that for about 20-30 minutes, and eventually it just all became too overwhelming for Scott and he just left.  The good thing that did come out of it was that we were splitting, he'd keep the existing name, license, insurance, payroll, employees for the most part, customer list, logo, but the biggest thing to me was that I got to take to our new business the thing I valued the most, which was our lead generation and website company.

With that alone we had a business and the rest I knew we could work hard through.

Scott came and picked up some stuff the very next morning and he actually was quite calm and feeling good about the split.  Being able to capture a 100% of the profit from jobs and not have to do things that he didn't want to do that perhaps the other partners did was likely another big win for him.

From here was a mad dash of activity though it seemed to go on forever at the same time.  Rebranding, starting all new everything, getting licensed all takes a lot longer when you do it all in one chunk versus doing it over a year and a half like we'd done with the previous company.

At the painting conference one keynote speaker talked about levels of a business, which there are 4.  Start up, build up, build out, and enterprise.  I decided that one of those levels would be a good name to use for my new painting business.  Can you guess which one?

If you guessed Startup Painters you're wrong.  We went with Enterprise Painters.  I liked that name for a few reasons.  I liked the revenue size, the professionalism and vision/dream and team behind it and margins, and it would translate well regardless of location if we were to have multiple locations around the state and country.

After picking the name we worked through a logo, talked to our web company about the transition, and started working on getting licensed, which involved scheduling of classes, getting our llc setup, ein number, bank account, and what not.

I also spent a bit of time getting Scott ready with his new web guy who was also a painter of his and getting content and hosting moved over to a new account.  I spent days working on rebranding all of our estimating and marketing materials.  Spent a day gathering stuff from the shop that we could use in the new business for our employees.  Spent time interviewing and talking to a few guys about doing door to door activities.  Only one of them panned out and actually went and did door to door the other has fizzled out due to the fact that he already had another full time gig that was paying him well to go and do window estimates.

I ended up being the one to go to the contractor class after learning the amazingly good news that the state changed the requirements last May that the requirement of needing 4,000 hours of experience as a painter to get licensed had been done away with.  We got workers comp waivers done and a million dollar liability insurance policy setup.  We setup new streamlined and integrated payroll, bookkeeping, time sheets, and estimating software that I learned all about at the painting conference and those will make all the difference in the world I think since we'll be much more streamlined and efficient with everything involved there.

We started getting leads from our web guys early to mid February.  To date we've booked $64,849.75 in revenue.  The numbers may be just a tad off, but that is on the back of 39 leads, 32 estimates, and 21 jobs won.  That is a lead to estimate conversion percentage of 82% where industry standard is that you're doing good if you're converting those at 40%.  Our estimate into a job conversion percentage is 66%.  Industry standard is that at a minimum you should be converting at least 25% of your jobs with the high end being 50%.  If you're above that something is off, i.e. your prices are too low or perhaps some other factor isn't being accounted for, but the biggest one being your prices are too low hence why you're winning so many and so if you are winning that many then you're labor and material costs are likely getting decimated and you're not making the margin you should on each job.

Renee and I will be going over our job numbers in the next day or two and so we'll have a better idea on whats going on there here soon.  I do know that I'm learning stuff everyday with estimating and that our conversion percentage should come down since I'll be better at accounting for all of our costs going forward, which then affects those customers that are of course price sensitive and will go with another contractor at that point.

Next month's report that I'll post on the blog maybe I'll post/share what our job numbers came out to be and other noteworthy stuff.  This first post I wanted to be a general recap of what is going on and went on for the first part of the year so that I could get us caught up on that.

We've hired some great people, fixed a lot of stuff, and hope to have a lot more stuff formalized and streamlined to get us to that ultimate goal of being the real Enterprise Painters I hoped for from the beginning.

Other noteworthy things were landing a big commercial ceiling that I talked to a lot of people about and through that and persistent follow up and tenacity we landed that.  That was like $20,000 and my very first huge job to have won and bid like that, which seems like a miracle.

Another thing was that Renee did awesome by talking to her dad about borrowing his truck to help us fulfill our first couple jobs.  He gladly let us borrow it, but then when we went to return it because we'd bought a work van to transfer everything over to he cut us a check for the full amount of the van, which was amazing.

We've learned some great things on how to do liens to protect our paint and job costs, test runs of new paint lines to get big discounts here and there too, which has been cool.  Lots of moving parts, but it is coming together.

If you're local to Salt Lake City and read this and refer anyone that works with us we pay $50 in the form of a visa gift card or as a donation to your favorite charity.

Until next time.

Brock
EP

2018 goals

The book on millionaires I mentioned in the last post talks about the transformative power of talking about your goals/dreams in the present tense and how they feel in the moment.  There is more to it then I can or want to quickly explain here beyond what I just did, but I just wanted to share what my goals are for the coming year and years using this technique. 

As an aside I got an email from one of the business development programs we've been paying for and he mentions how they followed a class of Harvard graduates.  3% wrote their goals down.  They followed up with everyone 20 years later.  The 3% who had written their goals down had accumulated more assets than the other 97% combined.  Harvard grads!  Moral of the story, if you have any ambition and goals in general, screw the in the general and write those things down.  You're entire life is intertwined and things shape up differently if you do different things and apparently writing goals down is one of those things.  And yes I've asked our painting employees to do this same exact activity.

Goals:

• business/job role goals - I work in a business that provides for my family and meets all my spending and savings goals.  I am fulfilled, excited to work each day, have a great team around me that enjoys being around me and me around them.  In 2018 businesses grow to the point where I quit my full time job so that I can make more money there and have more time freedom.
• At 20% net profit margin the businesses bring in $600,000 in top line revenue.  After 35% taxes and 10% tithing I’ll make $54,000 net on the year.
• That equates to $15,000 in painting jobs done each week for 40 weeks or March 1st through November 30th 2018.  That is 6.5 jobs per week at our average job size of $2,300 that we did in 2017.  At current conversion rates that means 941 leads need to be brought into the business, 621 estimates need to given out and 261 jobs won.
• Health - I jump and dunk the basketball.  I can bench press 200 lbs one time and it is easy to do.  I have abs that show naturally.  I eat healthy planned out meals and sometimes have a cook prepare the food and snacks for me and my family.  We eat organic and have done away with a microwave opting for more natural methods of heating our food.  My wife and I enjoy our bodies and the activities we can do with them ourselves and with our kids and friends.  Going on hikes isn’t a burden.
• Personal life - Ashlee and I regularly attend therapy and our relationship is thriving.  I get to serve whenever the ward has random time of day requests for help.  I’m able to help those in the ward with things they need or want.
• friends/family - I take friends and family out to lunch or dinner and movie on their birthdays and just because randomly throughout the year to catch up with them and I pay for them every time.  I give them special gifts that they’ve never received before.  I take each of my kids out on ‘dates’ to be in touch with them and help them with whatever it is they’re facing at the time and it really enriches our relationships and we’re really close and can and do talk about everything.
• Finances - I live in a really nice house that is completely remodeled and stylish and comfortable and warm and totally insulated.  My utility bills are super cheap because of the insulation and windows we have put in.  The house is also all the way paid for.  I’ve got several rental properties that provide all the cash flow Ashlee and I will ever need.  Our businesses do the same, but are always on a tear with the best margins in their respective industry, most giving in their industry in terms of charity, and growing year over year.  All of this is because it frees up my mind to focus on more important things and take away the stress of worrying about anything that could happen financially has already been solved  Each business is mentored by an amazing mentor who has been there before us and is totally invested in what we can do to give back to others.  Our cars are new models because we want super safe cars that are also really reliable and of course they’re paid for and we have uninsured motorist coverage on our insurance policy.  Burial plans and estate are paid for and set up and tax efficient.  I pay for all my kids weddings, missions, and beginner investments whether that is a rental property or invest in their business.  I do the same for my family and coach them on how to grow their business.
• Personal growth and development - I read several books each month.  Leisure books and non-fiction.  I read biographies of people who i’m interested in.  I now know how to cook really well and we have great cooking tools and equipment.  I serve a “senior mission” even though I’m still super young and everything back home is taken care of in terms of finances and family life.
• Fun (travel, recreation, leisure) - Ashlee and I go ourselves to places we’d love to go and often fly first class because the businesses sky miles pay for it.  We go ourselves and pay family really well to take care of the kids while we go.  When the kids are older we take them with us often so they get to experience new things and we grow closer together as a family.

As an extra nugget of goal setting I did this activity of doing a "Painted Picture" earlier this year or maybe it was even last year after listening to the podcast interviewing the guy who created 1-800-got-junk and he does this with his company and companies and so I did it too and thought it'd be good/cool to share here as well.

Enjoy!

2020 Painted Picture

The best way to ensure the future happens is to create it – first with a vivid image in our minds – and then commitment to this picture as though it’s already happened. Our Painted Picture paints a clear and compelling future for Rocky Mountain Painters – it’s how we will look, feel and act on January 1st, 2020.

Our Purpose

We want to build a high quality high value service for each of our clients.  We treat our customers like friends, we do what we say we will do, and we work together to make every day better. And it’s together that we have created a painting company that has proudly grown from start-up to well-respected industry leader in just five short years.  

Our family has grown from serving Salt Lake City, to all cities in the greater salt lake area.  Revenues are 2 million per year and our fun brand helps other companies put their best foot forward for all their customers.  

We show up on the first page of google organically.

Our People

Our people are everything.  They not only do a great job and keep our customer’s businesses looking great, but they stay with us.  They move up the ranks and are trying to help grow the business as well.

Our Customers

Our customers are our main lead source, i.e. more than 50%.  We love to stay in touch with them and help them anyway we can and in return by helping them and staying top of mind we are receiving more and more work from similar people that are their friends.

Our Brand

Not only have we started to reinvent an industry, but also, we’re reinventing how the industry markets. On a mission to create a top-of-mind name, our marketing never lets up. And it works – people tell us, “I love your brand!” Our remarkable marketing style and happy attitude have generated an unprecedented buzz in the painting industry, completely changing the picture in people’s minds of the stereotypical painting company.

Painting companies don’t get press, but we do, and lots of it.  Because of our backlinks and press releases people reach out to us consistently to have us help them with their painting needs.

We partner strategically with commercial sales, leasing, and management companies to ensure we stay top of mind as the preferred service provider for all their painting needs for their occupied, and more importantly unoccupied spaces.

Our Profits

We are happy to have the highest profit margin in our industry to due to innovative marketing and system processes.

Our Shared Success

More than money we love to give back to the community.  We enjoy regular outings together to celebrate milestones within the company.

2017 Recap

Its been a busy year.  I haven't been on my blog since March lols.  Whoops.  I do journal personally several times a week so updates do happen on paper, they're just not always public.

I'm still at the same job I started earlier this year, but we'll see how long it lasts.  The painting business hasn't provided the fat cash I hoped for at the beginning of the year, but we're definitely on our way.  In this post  we said we wanted to 100k for Scott and 50k for Ashlee and I with a tripling of the revenue from the year prior.  Live and learn. 

2016 the business did about $113,000 after some updating.  This year we're already book through the end of the year and into January 2018 and so we should complete the year's revenue at $435,000 barring something weird happening.  So we way more than tripled the business for sure.  I believe more realistic/healthy net profit margins are more in the 20-30% range though.  We are sending Renee to a painting conference in January to learn from other successful painting contractors and that will be one of the many things we get more concrete info on, net profit margin.

A business recap though of things we did in the past year.

We got licensed.  That took a bit of work.  We had to get Scott’s criminal history all compiled, credit history printed/submitted.  We had to get payroll back taxes figured out, filed, and paid, which ended up being a bunch of money that we hadn’t deducted like we do from our employees paychecks and so we had to catch up and that was a hefty bill of like 8 grand or so if I remember right.

Then we set up a payroll company to take the burden off of Scott of doing that all day on Sunday every two weeks. 

Renee became the production manager and then has hired and trained a friend of hers to take over for her so she can focus on higher value work tasks like writing out processes in the businesses, going on estimates, going to conferences locally and abroad, and meeting with and setting up our quickbooks stuff.  She also became a partner in the business, which was and is a big reason why we were able to grow so much in this past year and we’re excited about what we can all get done in the coming year.

We set up liability insurance and workers comp and had everyone fill out their “I’m not a terrorist form” that you have to fill out now.

We set up a new website that is managed by a company that we farmed that out to as well as google ads, which was a big portion of the company growth this year. 

We successfully ran a customer reactivation campaign. 

We’ve started and done just one or two monthly newsletters, but we’ll be better about that going forward. 

We learned and implemented better estimating procedures.

The big thing we’re going to really push company wide in the next month and just always going forward is getting into commercial work.  I think that alone for me personally will be the ticket to me quitting my job full time and focusing on growing this thing to really give myself the time freedom I deserve and crave.

We’ve spent a bit of time on a production rate guide so we know how to estimate any job.

We’ve also spent a lot of time considering and talking about a bonus structure program for our employees so that we can pay out more money to our team and maintain healthy margins across each job.

We’re hoping to roll out charitable giving back this year.

I really want to push into door to door marketing and lead generation because we haven’t done any of that.  This last summer I talked to a guy in the Midwest, want to say Minnesota, and before he did door to door his painting business did like $130,000 in a year.  He said this year he should finish at like 1.4 million in revenue if I remember the conversation correctly.  On a poor 20% net profit margin that guy is making more than most doctors, lawyers, professionals, etc.  The guy he learned from will finish the year with like a 6.5 million dollar a year revenue company so this is definitely something I want to get into.

This coming year I also want to be mentored heavily by painters who are millionaires and can get me where I want to go.

I’m reading a book right now about millionaires and it is pretty interesting.  Definitely makes me think I should consider taking out the safety net of having a job to really push me forward.  And when I think about how we did 435k in revenue and I haven’t pushed a bunch of the stuff I would push if I had the time I think I could definitely get the money to come in when the time comes if I quit my job.  I do still have responsibilities though financially to not try and totally mess up and so I’m going to continue working the commercial campaign we’re rolling out this week to see how that goes and if it gets really good traction I just may quit my job. 

Last year we bid a job for $123,000 that we didn’t win, but that just shows the power of commercial and how it could totally change the landscape of a painting business and so I focused more of my effort there that might be an option to fall back on.

Ashlee is also working on a new business helping people with physical and mental wellness that she is excited about and we’re going to learn more about so we’ll see what kind of trouble we can get into there too.