Beyond $1,000,000 Podcast

Scott: [00:00:00] My name is Scott Lollar and I'm a 35 year veteran of the painting industry where I've been part of growing several multi-million dollar painting companies. I have worn all the hats and have experienced everything you have experienced our experiencing or will experience. There is lots of chatter about getting to a million dollars.

But what very few focus on is what it takes to blast through Death Valley and create the multi-million dollar company of your dreams. We don't focus on fads, tricks or shortcuts. We focus on solid foundational business principles and data that deliver results. This is the Consulting4Contractors Beyond $1,000,000 Dollar Podcast.

Today I'm very excited to have Rick Holtz, owner of HJ Holtz & Son in Richmond, Virginia as my guest. I've admired Rick as we've gotten to know each other as we serve together in PCA, and I can't wait for you to hear his story. Rick is the third generation owner of H.J. Holtz & Son, and what we're going to learn today is how Rick took a business with revenues of [00:01:00] $300,000 to where it is today, in employ of over 60 people with annual revenue in excess of $5 million.

In addition, we will talk about how Rick's desire to mentor others, has led him to join C4C as a business coach, and how you can coach with Rick one-on-one. Rick, welcome to the podcast.

Rick: Thank you, Scott. I appreciate you inviting me on.

Scott: So let's start at the beginning. Tell me a little bit about how you got involved with this business.

And that might even go back to your childhood as your grandfather and your father ran this business together. But tell me a little bit about the early years and how you got involved as a job.

Rick: Well, I mean, the early years was me hearing about the paint industry all my life, at the dinner table. It was dinner table talk.

And of course I always heard the more negative stuff about our industry with employees and clients and all that sort of thing. And I always saw that side of my dad at the end of the day and I was steered to do something different, [00:02:00] not to get into the industry. And then fast forward I went to Virginia Tech, graduated in 93, 1993, and went to work for the State of Virginia.

I was gonna be a bureaucrat, stability, all that stuff. Good retirement. And hated it. Hated it. So my grandfather, who was still alive at the time, Talked me into going in business with my dad. So spoke to my dad first and he was all about it at the time. He had, six employees in the field and my mother helped him do all the office work, and I think he was ready to hand the reins over or share the burden with someone else.

And he was all about it. But we knew we were gonna have a tough conversation with my mother cuz she was not gonna be about it, and the first thing she said is, why did we send you to college if you were going to end up being a painter? And I said grandpa said, I'm not gonna be a painter.

I'm gonna be a business owner, and we can make this business whatever we want it to be. [00:03:00] So that's, that's sort of how we got started.

Scott: So the stereotype. Painting's a tough industry. You don't wanna be a painter, go do something better. That was the message you got and what you heard around the dinner table was really all the yuck and the negative part of owning this business.

But I guess you had a little entrepreneur in you.

Rick: Well, it was that, and it was also the uncertainty. You know, I came from a family of five, I have four older sisters, and when winter would come, We prayed for work all the time. We'd prayed for the phone to ring. That was my dad's marketing plan, so to speak.

And so it was just that uncertainty and we always grew up feeling uncertain. Is this gonna be a good year? Is this gonna be a bad year? That sort of thing. So I went into the direction of public administration and that sort of thing, cuz it was stable. I could go to work somewhere. I could retire, I could have a retirement.

But then I learned quickly there's a lot more to life than stability. I mean, life is, if it's exciting, it's constantly [00:04:00] changing and it can be what you want it to be.

Scott: So you joined the company after the discussions and I'm sure against maybe your mom's . Wishes, but yeah. So you joined the company and initially what does that look like and how does that process go?

Rick: Oh my gosh. I first got into the business and all I wanted to do was take up for my dad. So I didn't want to take any stuff from any of the employees and that sort of thing. And I wanted to figure out a way to make this unstable business more stable, more predictable. And I did that by saying yes to everything.

I didn't say no, I didn't know what no meant. And I just kept saying yes. And my dad would just say, okay. And he'd just shake his head and my mother would say, what are you letting him do, Dick? What is going on? That's really how we started. It was just crazy. I was just saying yes to anything I could and trying to get us in front of more people so that we would, have stability, have consistency.

Scott: So one of the things, some of the [00:05:00] things you said yes to that he would've said no to, or that were new to the company?

Rick: General contractors for one. We were working in affluent houses in our area, and I would see a client get an addition and a contractor would build it, but we wouldn't paint it.

And then five years later, they were unhappy with the way things were finished. And so then they would call us to repaint it. I said, this is silly. Why don't we make some relationships or try to build relationships with some of these contractors? And dad was like, you don't want to do that.

You don't wanna do that. They don't have respect for us. They don't have respect for, not us as in Holtz, but us as in painting the paint industry in general, we're last. They don't have money to pay us to do it right. On and on. Takes a long time to get paid. And he was right. He was right.

But what it did is I said let's look at this differently. Let's work for these general contractors and get them to introduce us to new clients that are gonna use us year after year. And when you kinda look at it that way, dealing with a job that doesn't go well here or one [00:06:00] there, it makes it a lot easier cuz you're building a clientele rapidly and they're helping you find them.

Same way with designers. And my dad loved working for interior designers and that was his thing. And so that's what I wanted to do is let's keep doing it, but let's see if we can do more. So Sure. It's just a matter of getting the word out shaking hands, meeting people, saying, yeah, we can do that.

And then figuring it out.

Scott: What was your title or what would you say you felt like your position was back then?

Rick: My title on my business card that my dad got me was Vice President. That's what I was Vice President. But I was also the one that kind of told the guys where to go every day, what jobs we were doing, and he would do the estimating and I would figure out the schedule. Got it. And that's it. What we were doing. I wasn't working in the field. I was also the fetch-it guy.

I would go to the paint store if they needed a gallon of paint, if Mrs. Smith didn't like the color and we had to change, I'd go talk to Mrs. Smith and [00:07:00] try to get her to a, decide on a new color and then I'd have to go get the stuff. So it was a lot of just all out running around and craziness. Really.

Scott: Yeah. And so back in, in those days, what was your product mix what did you guys do mostly I know you've seemed to have had a lot of wallpaper in your service mix, but what were your primary deliverables?

Rick: Mainly just interior and exterior residential repaints. When I came into work with my dad, we didn't have an employee who hung wallpaper on staff. We would sub it out to a guy who used to work with my dad.

Scott: All right. So roll forward, until, let's say, somewhere between then and the time where you actually bought the business.

Tell me a little bit about how it progressed. What were some of the milestones? What were some of the battles, if you will. Tell me a little bit about the next, I don't know how many years. I guess that would be the next, what, 10, 15 years, 20 years?

Rick: [00:08:00] Something like that. It's, it's just a blur. You know, when I came into work into business with dad, he was a $360,000 a year company. And by 2007, and I think it was seven, we were a $3 million company. Wow. In a matter of 12 years or whatever, it had just exploded. And, I was a lot younger than I am now and I was aggressive and I loved it.

I loved the growth. I loved, building what we built. I went through so many employees, it's not even funny. I mean, People can that work for me now that have worked for, for a while can mention names that I don't even remember. That's just how it was. Worked for a lot of different contractors.

Worked for a lot of interior designers. One of the critical things that we did is the gentleman who we subbed wallpaper to was getting older and had shoulder issues and he really wanted to mentor somebody. So we took what ended up [00:09:00] being three employees that worked for us and taught them how to hang wallpaper, residential wallpaper, and that's been a huge part of our business and it is a huge part of our business now.

So that's great. At the same time, my wife and I, we got married in 99, so we were having children. We have two sons and a daughter and God bless her, she raised them cuz I was busy on the business and I really thought that was my role, to be the provider that stereotypical I'm the provider, she'll take care of that.

She stopped working to stay home with the kids and it was just, a rat race. Mm-hmm. I mean, it really was. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Scott: Was your dad comfortable with that growth? So over, we'll call it 12 years, you're talking about growth of 2.7 million, 2.6, whatever, but how comfortable was he and, what was some of the conversations that you had around that?

Rick: Him and my mom kept me in check, but I could tell they were like a deer in headlights sometimes too, because it was fast. We grew fast. We bought a bunch of trucks. [00:10:00] We bought a building for our shop. When I came to work for my dad, our shop was in a garage behind my grandfather's house.

Then we rented a place and that was a big deal because, then we had rent. And then in 2002 we bought the shop that we're currently in now and um, we thought that was crazy. You know, It was just a lot. And I could tell that my parents were they were stressed too because this is, this was their retirement, I was their retirement and they were my livelihood.

So it was kind of a partnership and, it just got to the point where in 2008, that's when we decided that I was gonna buy the business from my dad and he had just turned 70 and the plan was for me to take ownership in January of oh eight, and I had 10 years to pay him. So I would have him paid off by the time he was 80 years old.

And then everybody knows what happened in 2008? Yeah. We lost a third of our revenue, so we went from a [00:11:00] $3 million company to a $2 million company. And, that period of time was one of the most self-reflective and educational times of my life in my career, really more my career, not my life, but more my career.

That was a hard pill. Yeah.

Scott: So in, I think you said '08, you guys execute a purchase agreement and make a plan, and now you're no longer vice president, I guess now you're the president.

Rick: Now I'm the president. We had our accounting firm value the company, and my dad was very gracious and very generous and, and gave me a discount on it because he's like, you know, I can't charge you full value of something that you helped build.

It's just not right. Sure. And I appreciated that immensely. So it meant a lot to me. Mm-hmm.

Scott: So over the next, I don't know, say from that time to now, what, tell me a little bit about how you've, now say with the recession in [00:12:00] '08, you're talking about down to 2 million.

So now you've grown the company back up to 3 million on top of that plus, so you're at 5 million now. Tell me a little bit about, from when you became the owner to now, what has been the way you put your footprint on the company? What are the things you've done and how have you grown it to where it is now?

Rick: After I bought the business, work steadily slowed down. I wouldn't say that it was the worst in '08, but I didn't make money probably for a couple years in a row, and I realized that this is beyond me. I'm gonna need help if I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna be successful, my dad helped me the best he could and I wasn't willing to go through the school of hard knocks, cuz I'd probably still be there. So I listened to a podcast and Bill Silverman with AdviCoach, who's a job coach, gave a presentation and my [00:13:00] parents had gone to Florida for a couple months for the winter and we just didn't have a lot of work and it was kind of bleak.

And this podcast came on and I said, you know, I'm gonna listen to it. And I listened to him and it just resonated with me. And I said, you know what I need to do? I need to, talk to this person cuz I need help. Fast forward I've, worked with him, with Bill for, what, 12 years now.

I'm a slow learner. A slow, he's grateful. Yeah, he's grateful. I'm a slow learner and I've just realized that, sometimes an individual such as myself, an entrepreneur can get a business to a certain point. But then there's a kind of an inflection point or something where you can go down, you can stay the same or you can grow.

And if you really want to grow, I feel like you really need to get outta your own way. You do. You need to learn to rely on other people. You need to be clear about. You know what they need to do, what their role [00:14:00] is in your business, and that's how you grow. Because as long as you're, the cat chasing its tail, worried about day-to-day issues and projects and who has paint and who needs paint, you're never gonna get out of that.

You're never gonna get out of that. It's like being on a treadmill. It really is. You just don't get anywhere. Sure. And I feel like that was a real key to me. And one of the biggest things, people will say, oh, you're a third generation business. Having your dad build a business and you come in is easy.

That's not easy. Building a business from scratch is not easy, and I have the utmost respect for people like that. But coming into a business that has someone else's personality and someone else's name on it that has its own challenges as well. And so one of the biggest things for me that I had to work out was how do I make this business mine?

And stop running my dad's business cuz my dad's business was a much smaller business than what I was that day when I took it over from him. And I [00:15:00] had to align my values and what I wanted out of it with what I had and then take it to the next level. And I think that was key.

My parents passed away in 2020 and I did things and I've done things for their approval till the day they died. But the business, I had to let go of some of the things that they wanted me to do and do things that I needed to do, that I wanted to do within the foundation that they built.

It was a challenge and it's been good since, I continue to do things to honor them and to honor my family.

Scott: That was one of the things where it, not everything in the world is numbers, but I know people are gonna think of a third generation owner as, oh, you got handed a silver spoon.

And that's why I wanted to highlight when Rick came into the business. Absolutely. It was a much smaller business. He really has built on the foundation. Yes. His grandfather and father had a good name and had some components that he could build on, but he truly has built the business [00:16:00] from a very small, modest revenue amount and and made it his own.

Rick: You know, so many paint business are multi-generational and I think it's so critical and so important to honor the generations before us, but to also use the things that made it successful and catapult from those into things that we can make, how we can make our business successful today.

Because time's change. Time's change. My dad built something that gave me a great opportunity and a wonderful life, gave him a great retirement, and a legacy I, I suppose. Sure, sure.

Scott: Yeah, I would say so.

So let's fast forward to today.

Tell us a little bit about what your company looks like today. What is your service mix? What's your employee model? What's your organizational chart look like? Maybe your revenue projections and where you're headed.

Rick: Today we are mainly still a residential, interior and exterior repaint business. [00:17:00] We have a good size carpentry division.

We have four carpenters, no, five, five carpenters on staff. We're doing rot replacement. We're doing exterior trim work. We're doing interior trim work. We're building some cabinets, not like kitchen cabinets, but built-ins. So we have a workshop. We also have a wallpaper team of three installers and an apprentice, and they're, they have a very strong presence in our area.

They're very much in demand. We have a shop where we do quite a bit of painting in our shop to, to support the field. Like shutters and kitchen cabinets and furniture and stuff like that. We do a wide variety of stuff. I'd say about half of our business is interior painting.

You're gonna have to help me with the numbers, Scott. You're better with the numbers. I think it's 10% of our revenue is carpentry. Maybe 12% is wallpaper, and then the rest would be exterior painting. [00:18:00] Sure some something in that neighborhood. And our goal this year is to surpass or hit five and a half million dollars worth of business, is what we'd like to do.

Scott: Awesome. So what's your org chart look like? Who helps you get all this done from you to the painter level?

Rick: From me to the painter level, so you have me, and then underneath me, I have a production manager, Kelly Kutchey, and then Kelly has two project managers underneath him. Roxy Reyes and Patrick Picchi, and then he divides up the paint crews between them and they work with foremans and clients to get the projects completed.

Then we have another project manager Jeff Nanamaker, and he heads up our carpentry division. And then Holly Nilson is a project coordinator for wallpaper and she does all the communications with designers and clients and working together to, to coordinate the wallpaper installs. And okay. My sister, Sharon Carroll does the [00:19:00] office, works the office, does all the payables, receivables, payroll.

Karen Cheatham is our customer care person. She's constantly talking to clients about scheduling, getting info for jobs, color information, all that to make sure that we're on track and our schedule's on track. We have roughly about 12 paint jobs going 12 to 14 paint jobs going every day. So she's constantly trying to get details for the next round of jobs that are starting. And we're, cuz we're starting jobs every day, new jobs, somebody's always finishing it seems sure.

Scott: So take me back a little bit to what, when you met Bill Silverman.

I love Bill. He's a good guy. One of the good guys in our industry. If you can remember, tell me some of the first things that were key components of what you worked on with Bill, or what are some of the early things that you felt like you had to either start doing, stop doing, or continue doing, or whatever the languages, what are the things [00:20:00] that you first did with Bill to help you get started on your journey, on this journey?

Rick: The first thing we did, like I said, was How do we make this business yours, Rick? What are all the things that is present in your parents' company that you like? What are all the things in your parents' company presently that you don't like? What do you want in your company?

What do you not want in your company? So it was a lot of that psychological stuff for the first year. And we worked through that and continually worked through that. But I think the first major thing we really did is, taught me what it meant to be an owner. Bill at first was like, do you go to the paint store?

And I was like, yeah, I go to the paint store, I'm a painter. Come on. He's you can't go to the paint store anymore. Yeah. And I'm like, really? But I like those people there. They're nice people. Yep. No. An owner of a paint company does not go to the paint store. And that's such an elementary thing and it's very basic, but that is the, that was a pinnacle kind of statement [00:21:00] for me. It's cuz something I did for, how many years, what, maybe almost 20 years or something like that. Or 16 years? Yeah. 16 years and all of a sudden not to do it anymore. Sure. So I had to understand what it meant to be an owner and to get things done through other people.

Because that's really hard. Yes. There's a part of the entrepreneur in me that I like being the hero. I like being the guy that gets all the credit. Mm-hmm. I like the guy being the guy that knows all the answers, but as long as I'm that guy, nobody else is gonna get any better. Nobody else is gonna show me how capable they are.

So it's amazing. It's amazing how many people were in my business that are, were so capable, but they never showed me because I didn't allow 'em to.

Scott: Yeah. So how hard was it to stop going to the paint store or stop doing operational or management things and elevate to more of the leader and, the visionary of your company.

Rick: Stop going to the paint store was easy [00:22:00] because that was something I could stop myself from doing. But getting sucked into situations, that's not easy. And I've been working on that now for what 12 years? Yeah. 12 years since I started. I'm still working on that. A perfect example was I used to be the first one, I'd be at the shop early in the morning and I realized that, I'm the owner.

I need to be there, I need to be visible. I need my employees to see that I'm working, right. And what I was doing was undermining Kelly and Patrick and Roxy because they couldn't get people going to jobs because they were constantly looking at me. And, it was really important for me to back away so that they could grow.

And they could shine. Yeah. Because that's what it's about. And that's what success at our company at this level is all about.

Justin: We are about halfway through this special episode with Rick Holtz, the newest coach for the Consulting4Contractors team. We are thrilled to have Rick join us, and if you think having Rick's experience, his perspective, [00:23:00] his decades of industry leadership is something that you think could help you and help your journey to a more successful contracting business then, please, head over to the show notes after this episode. There you can schedule a discovery call with Consulting4Contractors. And after you pick the date and time of your choice, mention in the details portion that you'd like to connect with Rick.

We'll get you connected with him as soon as we're able. Also, in the show notes, you'll find links to our website, our social media channels, transcripts of the show, and other helpful resources, all for free. Thank you again for listening. And here's the rest of our episode with Rick Holtz.

Scott: Yeah, and I think. That is something we talk about a lot and I think Rick just said it beautifully is he had lots of people in his company that were more than capable, but not, but maybe without quite the opportunity because Rick was holding onto it with both hands and whatev, whether it was, he thought he was.

The [00:24:00] most important person, or if he just didn't trust or he just didn't know either way, the result was the same. So the, so you learned how to start becoming more of an owner delegating allowing your team to flourish. What other things would you say were helpful or part of that journey?

Rick: Alignment, I think with the team was good. It was great that I started backing away and then people started doing things, but it wasn't orchestrated, maybe the best way that it could because I had not mapped out, mm-hmm, you know, this is your role and this is your role and this is how the roles are gonna work together.

So alignment was really important cuz when we grew prior to 2008, we did over 3 million worth of work, but I felt like I was really running 10 different companies. 10 individual companies, so nobody was on the same page. Everybody did things differently. So it's once you become an owner and you start looking at your business at a different altitude, and you can see how all the parts [00:25:00] work together, how operations and sales and human resources and marketing, and how are they all gonna work together?

It's great that they all know how to do what they need to do, but they need to be able to do it together, right? The marketing, the sales has to have the marketing, the production needs sales, but sales needs production. So alignment was really important and really continually going through it with the team of this is how we work together successfully.

Because I think that's really important. Cuz if you don't, you just have four or five different companies at a different level. Not at the crew level, but now at the management level, right? Sure.

Scott: So that leads me into something that I want you to talk about a little bit which is culture. So tell me a little bit about, coming from what you were saying, a little bit fractured, little bit not aligned.

I know there was a point where you got this idea of your culture, who are you as a company?[00:26:00] What do we stand for? How do we provide a cohesive platform that we all, act the same way and we all have the same vision and all that. Tell me a little bit about that journey and how you guys settled on that and how you utilize that in your company today.

Rick: Everybody would always say, oh, it's different in Holtz. Or Holtz is a different company than others and you're different. And that's different. And we're like, what exactly does that mean? We had a meeting one year, we do an annual kickoff meeting with the whole company, and talk about our goals and look at our goals for this coming year and then talk about how we're gonna get there and what are some of our things that are in the way? What are some of the challenges? And so I wanted to try to figure out what makes this place different, what makes it different?

And we call it the Holtz Way, it's really simple. It's very simplistic, and I didn't come up with this. This was feedback from the employees. The difference at our company is we care about each other and to care about each other [00:27:00] means teamwork. We're gonna help each other, we're gonna help the company, and if we do this, employees are gonna be happier and they're gonna stay and they're gonna be more skilled because they're staying with us and they're growing.

We're gonna care about our customers because they're gonna get great service cuz we have the better employees than anybody else. And our employees care about each other and they care about their results. So the work we do is usually better than most. And because we care about our customers and we're giving 'em this, we're gonna get repeat business, which goes back to the uncertainty that I grew up with, the repeat business and the referrals and having a great reputation.

If you do all that and you kind of have this pipeline that's constantly doing that, you're gonna make good money. We're gonna have more sales, we're gonna have higher profits, and then we're gonna share some of that with our employees.

Yeah. And then it comes right back around, because we're all in it together. We're all getting a benefit from this company [00:28:00] together, and we're all working together. You know, It was interesting, one of the little pet peeves I had with my dad when he was in the industry and looking back, it's silly, but he would go around town when I'd ride with him.

He goes, I painted that house. I did that house. I worked for that lady. I work with that designer and I'm like, dad, you do. Or the company did. And he was like you know what I mean? And so I always tried to make a very concerted effort that this is Holtz.

Holtz is not Rick Holtz, that's not me. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's us as a group and some of the things we do are not what's best for Rick Holtz and they're not what's best with Joe Smith, the employee. There gotta be what's best for the Holtz, what for Holtz, the Greater Holtz. And it's really important and it means a lot to me.

And I think it means a lot to everybody that works there. Yeah. And it's all built on trust, we've gotta trust each other. Yeah.

Scott: And so I don't have all of your values in front of me, but at our retreat in November, in Florida, we ask you to do a little bit of a leadership talk. And you talked about your culture [00:29:00] and one of the "aha" moments for everybody in that room was the circular nature of your values.

In fact, my recollection is you put 'em on your wall in your warehouse wall. Yeah. And that, that, it was a small thing. But as we think about values, which has been popular for quite a while now typically linear. Right?

They're statements mm-hmm. and yours. Actually tracked one another and it's a circle, so it never stops. It's like congruent or something that was just right. Very interesting. And this is only audio, but maybe we can even post a snapshot in our show notes. But the idea that you actually have a circular group of values because they all tie to each other and they'd never stop.

Rick: And I think the other thing that I point out is that if you falter in one of them, it's gonna have an effect on the next one. If we don't care about each other, how can we show a client good service. How? You can't.

And if you don't take care of the customer, you're not gonna get referrals.

You're not gonna get repeat [00:30:00] business. So how are you gonna make money? Yeah. You're gonna struggle. You're gonna struggle. And it's so funny because. Looking back and reflecting on this, this is really how my dad ran his company.

But my dad was very cautious. He had five children at home, but he valued this more than anything, his employees, his clients, and he wanted that repeat business, and he really started this process and we've just named it.

Yeah. Named it.

Scott: Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about your kickoff meeting. So two things I'd like to highlight here is how do you portray this vision? How do you keep it going year round. So what's the rhythm? How do you do it?

Rick: The rhythm is really, we'd start back in November and our management team, will get together with Bill and we review the year that we're in to see how we're gonna finish and talk about how we feel the year's been and how we've done on some of our areas of [00:31:00] improvement that we wanted to tackle.

And then we come up with goals for the next year and we kind of outline how are we gonna get there. Now, when I say goals, these are not my goals. This is goals that we vote on as a team. My estimators, my production managers, my operations, my operations manager, my sister, all of us. We vote on it as a team.

And then in January we present it to the whole company, and, this is where we're going. Everybody that works at Holtz knows that, we want to hit five and a half million dollars this year. That's what we're looking for. They know what our profit goal is, they know what our gross profit percentage is, they know what we want it to be.

And then every month, I have a company meeting that usually I'd say at least 80% of our employees are at. Some of our employees that work out of town don't come to those company meetings if they're working out of town. Like we just had one last week and everyone was there.

We give [00:32:00] updates on where we are, how we did that, last month, how we've done this first quarter, that sort of thing.

So we're constantly doing that. We're recognizing employee of the month. We do our safety talks, we're recognizing work anniversaries, all that sort of stuff. We do that on a monthly basis. I meet with my management team on a weekly basis, and that's the rhythm of how we go about managing the company.

So what is your personal work rhythm? I know that recently you said you don't go in first thing, you work from home. So tell me a little bit about why you're doing that. How'd that start? And how do you engage with the different levels and even the field, or do you at all?

One of the things, and I'm still not there yet. I wish I had a set calendar that I could say, here's what I do, Scott, on a daily basis and blah, blah, blah. But I do not go to the office first thing in the morning unless I have a company meeting. We have foreman's meetings on Thursdays, and I [00:33:00] do go to those. I like to go to those still. And so that's some contact I have with the field. I don't like to go in, in the morning.

I, I want them to do that. They make their own schedules, they being the production team makes their schedules and knows where people go. I don't, so it's just better that I, I stay away from there. And I think it's easier for me to think about what are some of the projects that I'm working on at an owner level that I need to work on, and I'm better doing that away from the office. People don't bother me at the office, but I'm just a curious person by nature and I'm always listening to what people are and I butt in and I need to not do that. And I wish I had better self-control, but I guess I don't, so I try to, I like to try to get some of those things done first thing in the morning, and I like to go by job sites.

I think it's really important for me to know the employees that work at this company and I want to talk to 'em and I wanna see 'em, and I want them to know that I care about what they're doing, because that's [00:34:00] important to me. And if I see a client, I think that's great. But I want to be more of, the, what do we say, kind of like the PR person really. The PR person in the company. And then, I'm having a management meeting on Tuesdays. I meet with my. My sister is Sharon on Tuesdays as well. I meet with Kelly on a different day. I meet the estimators every other week. So I'm, I, oh, one of the other things I do, which is real critical I should have mentioned before, marketing.

I, I use an outside consultant to do my marketing. And I have, his name is Andy McClure, and I've used Andy for probably 10 years now, maybe eight. Eight to 10 years. Marketing was something that I would only think about when I thought I needed to get some work, and by then it's too late.

I have a monthly marketing call with Andy as well.

So try to hit those big important parts of your company on a regular basis. Yeah.

Scott: So if I were to ask you, what a journey and what a story and you're such a humble person, but if I were to ask you. What do you think your [00:35:00] superpower is? What is it about you? Is there one or two things that, I know you hate me asking this question, but I'm gonna ask it anyhow.

If, what are the couple things that make you and have made your company what it is? What are your superpowers?

Rick: The first thing I have to say is they've changed. Okay. I think they've changed. My superpower when I was younger was, I didn't know how to say no. I wanted to constantly prove to people that we could do this or do that, or do this project or do that project or hang this wallpaper or whatever, and I was very ambitious for sure.

Fast forward, two or three years ago going through Covid, I lost my parents in the one month. I lost my sister tragically, like three months later. And it made me look at life very differently. And I think part of that has to do with age, but a lot of it had to do with those losses in my life.

And I think the key to me now is [00:36:00] empathy is what my superpower is. Empathy. And it's, not about how I feel about a situation, but why does this employee feel this way? Why does this client feel this way? What can I do to help that employee? What can I do to help that client? That means more to me now in the relationships with my employees and my clients means more to me now than the dollar.

My dad had a lot of friends in the paint industry and he was one of the smaller companies. And I think that's what drove me in my early years is I wanted to be bigger. I wanted to have this bigger company wanted him to get his due, so to speak. Sure. And the older me realizes that's not what's really important.

Scott: That's ego and interestingly enough, you've matured through that sounds like, and look at what you've got. And I find that to be a common thread that, people that aren't pursuing the spotlight somehow end up getting a great result [00:37:00] by just being humble. And I love the empathy card.

That's a good one.

Rick: Well, I think people wanna follow people that care, that care. It's hard cuz I feel like to a certain extent business owners have to be a little narcissistic. You gotta love yourself because you're pushing you're pushing your product, but you get to a point where, like I said, one of the most important things that Bill taught me is that you have to be an owner and you have to get things done through a team if you want to grow and you want to free your time up.

Because so many people I think are like, if you grow your business, that's just more headaches. More headaches. It is if it's always going through you. Yeah. If everything goes through you. But I think it's important to grow people. That's what keeps people in companies is giving them opportunities for growth.

Doesn't mean everybody wants to grow, but a lot of people that work for companies today want to know that they're moving somewhere and they want to be a part of something. [00:38:00] Yes. They don't want to just be a guy that works for Rick Holtz. That doesn't mean anything.

Scott: Yeah. So let's shift a little bit.

What council would you give to a growing, emerging, younger contractor that is just getting through the $700k-$800k into the million zone? That's typically what we're really talking about here and beyond. What are some of the things you'd tell a younger Rick or a younger whomever, you know what are some of the things that you would say as people are going through this journey that you went through some 20 years ago?

Rick: Find somebody to talk to. Oh yeah. Find a mentor. Find somebody that can do something in your business that you need better than you. If you're not a great marketer, go get a marketing person. Yeah. I think the biggest issue with us as business owners is those voices in our heads, and we need an outlet to get those voices [00:39:00] out to somebody else.

A sounding board, if you will. You know, what I feel like the relationship with Bill, my job coach, and I think why it's so important to have somebody else to talk to is, I look at it this way. You get a quarter outta your pocket, you look at that quarter and you're like, In your head. Yep. I have a quarter.

It's on heads. That's a quarter. But that other person gets you to flip it over and say, Hey, look at the tail side of this quarter too. And I don't have the ability, and I don't know many people that have the ability that can do that on their own without having someone else to work with. To bounce ideas off with, to do that.

Just like what you do with your clients, Scott. I think it's imperative to have somebody that is objective that really just wants to see you succeed and see all the facets of the issues you're dealing with. Because it's hard for us. We have blinders on as owners. We really do. And sometimes we don't know what our abilities are.

We have a lot of negative self-talk. Wow. We can't do [00:40:00] this. Yeah, you can. You've been doing it. Look at it. Mm-hmm. And I think the other thing is I would tell somebody to pause for a minute, and reflect and look at all the things you're accomplishing and you have accomplished.

Don't worry about what you still have yet to do. Yeah. But look at that, relish in that a little bit to give you that energy and that confidence you need to continue to grow the business to a point where it works for you. Yeah, because I know that feeling, there's so many people out there that are building businesses in that range that you said that feel like they're exhausted every day.

And they're not getting anywhere. Yeah, it's, I think it's important.

Scott: And that's exactly it, that's, It's because they're not in control of their business. The business running them. They're not running the business. Yeah. And that's the whole part. And one of the things I want really people to hear is that, Rick can't act the same way today that he did in 1998 or whatever, he's had to evolve and he's had to delegate and he's had to renege his control [00:41:00] and he's let, he's had to let people be great and appreciate 'em and encourage them and honor them and all this stuff that's kept them going. And without it, he would never get here.

Never get here at all. No.

Rick: No, the other things that, that I need to be real about is have there been employees that you've trusted that have burned you? Yes. Have there been employees that you invested a lot of time and energy with that left you? Yes. That's part of what we do. You're gonna have pain.

It's not without pain. Growth is not without pain. That's all there is to it. But I will tell you one of the things when you grow people, sometimes they're gonna leave you. And when they leave you, all of a sudden, it's amazing how somebody else in your organization will grow. And you'll be like wow.

That almost worked out. Like it should, yes. So it's hard when you're growing a business, 800 to a million, whatever, to to put faith in other people [00:42:00] because you feel like you have to do it all yourself. But when you do, it might not work every time. But it's gonna work most of the time.

Yeah. You just gotta have faith, and the only thing I can say is I have experience now to look back and say it worked out for a reason, but when you're in the middle of it, it's scary. It is. Yeah. But it's okay. Yeah.

Scott: You're, you feel like you're learning a lesson, but you really don't wanna learn any lessons right now no.

Yeah. No, you don't. Yeah. So as we wrap up here, tell me, do you have vision for the future? What does your company look like in five, 10 years? Are you.

Rick: It's funny, we bought a new shop and we're moving our business after 21 years at the same location. So it's gonna enable us to do more.

We're gonna have more space to build things and to paint things. It'll give us more space for a bigger team and that sort of thing. That's exciting. I have my children, I've two of them in college, and my daughter is a [00:43:00] junior in high school maybe within the next five to eight years I'll find out if any of them are interested in joining me in this business.

And if not we'll figure something else out. But for now, you know, I'm enjoying growing, but doing it in a consistent manner. I don't want to grow just to grow. I'm not trying to grow to make more money. I'm just growing to give people more opportunities and to see if we can continue to grow and be consistent.

Give a good quality job, a fair price, be a great place for people to work. That's all I really want.

Scott: Yeah. Awesome. This has been awesome. I really enjoy your story. I enjoy talking to you Always. Rick came to me, it's been maybe a year ago or so, and said, Hey have had some loss recently and I really want to do more mentoring.

People reach out to me often as he told you that his father's been part of the industry for a long time very well-known [00:44:00] entity on the east coast especially. And so he's like, you know, I'd really like to spend some of my time mentoring and helping others. And we started talking about working together and him having a seat here at Consulting4Contractors.

And so that's what we've done. So, we both believe in the power of coaching. He has a coach and it's not me. And I have a coach that I meet with every week. It's about finding someone that can help you process, get better. Everybody in our organization has run multi-million dollar businesses, so we come from the side that we know what we're talking about, but if it's not us, it should be someone.

So go find someone. But if something Rick has said resonated with you, or if you are at that size where you're really growing, and you really need some help and would like possibly to talk to Rick or one of the other coaches on our team. There's a link that you can schedule a call with me.

We'll talk through a little bit what we offer and if you'd like to specifically work with Rick one-on-one, we [00:45:00] can make that happen. So reach out and give us a call.

Rick, I appreciate your time. I appreciate your story and looking forward to continuing our relationship. And I'm grateful for the wisdom that you just imparted to people that listen to this.

So I just wanna say thank you.

Rick: Thank you, Scott. I appreciate you and I appreciate all you do for contractors all across the country. Cuz I think it's important. It is. We all have different paths, we all have different strengths and To, to help people find theirs and achieve success as a gift.

So thank you and thank you for your friendship. It means a lot. Yeah.

Scott: Great. Alright. Take care. Thank you.

Justin: Thanks again for joining us on the Beyond a Million Dollar Podcast. If anything you heard. On the show today, intrigued you, or if you're just interested in getting in touch with Scott, please visit the show notes.

You can click on the discovery call link to get started. We'd love to find out more about you, your company, and how Consulting4Contractors can help you grow your business to a million dollars [00:46:00] and beyond.