Beyond $1,000,000 Podcast

Scott: Today I have Mike Katounas with me from Chantilly, Virginia. Mike's a 17 year veteran of the painting industry. He's got an excellent story.

Scott: And one of the things that I really appreciate about Mike, is that I think he's got a very different approach to business. Sometimes we tease him about his coldness, which is not fair to him, but just the perspective he brings to business, which I find very refreshing. And so hopefully we get to chat about that today a little bit with him.

Scott: So, Mike, thanks for being here.

Mike: Thanks for having me.

Scott: Yeah. Great. So why don't you just start us off with a little bit about your history. How did you get started in painting in your, growing up years through college and how did you get here?

Mike: Sure. my father was a painter, a residential painter.

Mike: He immigrated here from Greece in the late sixties and bounced around from different jobs, different things he did before I was born. And then once we got settled in Northern Virginia he went back to a skill that he had gained as a merchant Marine while in Greece and painted. And from there, he just kind of.

Mike: Grew his business a little bit ran it out of the home for many years. And it was funny because it was something I never, ever imagined myself doing. And he even pushed the, not to do it as well. He wanted me to go to college and become an engineer. so I went to Virginia tech after I graduated high school in 96 and realized engineering was not for me.

Mike: Pretty quickly then got into like more of a health field thought. I'd be a physical therapist, changed my mind again and thought I'd get into health education, got a masters degree in health education from university of South Carolina. And I'm still realized I was not in the right place. And so after I got my master's degree, he asked me to think about moving back home and coming to work with him.

Mike: And I said, well, why not? I like the idea of eventually maybe taking over the family business. This was 2001 around the fall of 2001. And worked with them for a little bit and realized he and I are very much alike. And we were both very stubborn and hardheaded and did not work well together.

Mike: And so that ended pretty quickly. In fact, he fired me. And then I started using my degree and worked in the health fields and government contracting for a while. And thankfully I did that because that's how I met my wife. But then once we got engaged my dad and I started talking again about possibly giving it a second go.

Mike: And we did right as I got married and did that for about little less than a year. And again, it did not end well. And by the end of '04, around Christmas time of '04, I had a pretty heated argument and then he fired me again. And this time I was married, I had a hard time going home and telling my wife that I just lost my job.

Mike: And so he and I talked a little bit. we made peace with each other, but we're still, we were not happy with each other. And I went into work in new construction for the winter because my dad never really worked many winters and realized how bad I hated that. And so My father-in-law came to me after just one day of working in new construction and said, Hey, why don't you do your own thing. And from that point on a new course was set for me. And I spent the next two months while still working in new construction, the motivation that got me through. It was just constantly brainstorming every step I needed to take from getting my license, to getting insurance, to finding painters and how to get leads everything like that.

Mike: And so by March of oh five, I had gotten my license and had a talk with my dad and said, I'm not going to come back to work for him, but I am going to do my own thing. And surprisingly, he was very happy. And things that calmed down between he and I, we were on good terms by that point, but he was actually more thrilled about it than I really anticipated.

Mike: I thought he would not be happy because in a sense we were kind of competitors, but in reality, we were, we really weren't because this area has so much work in so many painters that it just was, we were never really competing against each other, but from that point on, I got started.

Mike: So as in growing up then did he provide a pretty steady income and him, is it a good business as far as you remember growing up?

Mike: Yeah, he always did well for himself. I never felt like we were in any financial trouble I mean, he had his ups and downs in business. Like everybody else did. There was never a time where there was concern about, are we going to pay the mortgage or, are we going to eat or anything like that?

Mike: I always had a good sense that he was doing well. And plus I always knew when I was coming home from school in the winter, he was always home. So I was like, he must've made enough money during the summer and spring, summer and fall that, you know, he could sit home for about three months and not really work.

Mike: So it did pretty well for himself.

Scott: So, would that lead me to believe he would primarily working in exteriors? Or why didn't he work during the cold weather months?

Mike: Well, we have pretty cold winters here in the DC area. And so you could work outside, so he did do a lot of exterior work, but he did, he did a good bunch of interior work, but I just don't think he was hungry to keep it going, you know, all year round. And I think he got to figured what was a comfortable niche for him. And he charged a lot. He was always considered high priced and he made enough money and I think he, he wanted to kind of take it easy, I think, during the winters.

Scott: Interesting. So got 12 months of income in eight or nine months, and that's just the way he ran his business,

Mike: that's the way it looked to me. And yeah, he ran a pretty well.

Scott: Interesting. So how did you get connected from that to the new construction market? You said that it was just to fill the winter when he wasn't working.

Scott: So you did this, how did you get connected with that? and how long did you stay in.

Mike: you know, like, we said, right, he didn't work during the winter. So he had four guys that were working for him at the time and then myself as well. So I was the fifth guy and the leader of the crew.

Mike: His name was Alfredo. He knew my dad was not going to work much during the winter. So he had connections with people in new construction. And so my dad went to Alfredo and asked him if I could come along and work with him in new construction for the time being, because my dad didn't really want to pay me and not have anything to do.

Mike: And he wanted me to just get more experience. So that's how we got connected with new construction, but from day one, I knew. This is awful. At least it was awful to me. And it was in the middle of the housing. Boom. It was 2004, 2005. I remember it was January and we were painting outside, you know, really cold, windy.

Mike: They didn't care. They just needed to get these houses up because they were sold already and they had to move on to the next project. So I knew, I knew early that new construction was not an avenue I wanted to, to get

Scott: into. Yeah. Okay. So it's March of oh five. you've got your license. you're a business owner now.

Scott: So what did you do? how did you evolve through your first few?

Mike: Thankfully I've had a lot of connections with real estate. My best friend growing up, his mother-in-law was a big wig property manager with long and foster. They're pretty big up and down the east coast. And so she connected me with several property managers in the Northern Virginia area.

Mike: And just gave me an introduction and then I had to take care of the rest. So that helped me tremendously and, and I try to leverage internet leads, you know what's today is called home advisor used to be called service magic, and you could put in a budget of how many dollars you want to spend per month.

Mike: Here's the cost per lead. And I was just extremely aggressive. I can remember, I remember Telling them to give me the leads, every which communication avenue, possible, email, phone texts. I wanted all of them. And so I would pull over on the side of the road. The moment I leave with. And call that person right away.

Mike: I, I made it my job to be the first person that called. And a lot of times they would say, I literally just click the submit button a minute ago. And I said, yeah, I don't waste any time. So I think that really helped me get through the door. And eventually I got a little tired of it because a lot of bad leads were coming through and they weren't in refunding me and that kind of thing.

Mike: But by that point that was probably a year or two into it. I had moved on from them, but I had at least built up enough of a lead flow. and I was fortunate that it was during that construction boom, so people, and this is a very transient. Keeping in mind, you know, so we got a lot of military, a lot of government.

Mike: So people are moving all the time. In fact, I feel like I'm one of the few like native, Northern Virginia. It's like, most people you meet here are really not from Northern Virginia, they're from other parts of the country. And it's because of, you know, a job or, or military or government that, that brought them here.

Scott: So during those early days where you hiring employees, you know, tell me a little bit about your business knowledge. How did that work as you started out? Yeah,

Mike: so I kind of took a different path than maybe most painters do most guys, when they start a business, it's them kind of doing the work by themselves.

Mike: Maybe they have a helper. One of the things I learned early on while working with my dad. I was not a great painter. I was not good with my hands. I could do the work. I was slower than everybody else, but I could do it. And I, I understood what needed to be done, but I just wasn't the best at it.

Mike: So I immediately hired two guys right off the bat which was a little scary because I gotta make sure I'm giving them at least 40 hours of work every week and I'm just starting. So and I gotta pay, I gotta make enough money to pay myself as well, but again, it was a busy time. It was a booming time.

Mike: So things got off the ground pretty quickly. And I was aggressive with my marketing and hunting down leads as much as I could. And I was fortunate to keep guys working right from the get-go.

Scott: Interesting. You said when you started out, you use the internet, which almost kind of almost shocked me cause.

Scott: Quite a bit older than you. so that was probably relatively the early days of that kind of a tool being used for business, I would imagine.

Mike: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it certainly, wasn't nearly what it is today with I mean there seems like countless amount of lead sources you can use on the internet But my dad was very big in the yellow pages back in the day. And that's what he relied on. And I did do a little bit of that too. And I actually remember also advertising in the local newspapers. Like we get this Fairfax times is what it's called. And so I put a little ad in there and if it gets dispersed around the county and around Northern Virginia, so that helped me get a few leads as well as it's fairly cheap.

Mike: But you know, print ads these days don't seem to go as very far as it used to, but It felt like it was that transition time where. Print was still alive and well, but it was slowly dying and the internet was kind of coming up.

Scott: So would you say is your next pivot or your next plateau?

Scott: how did your business grow through the next say 10 years?

Mike: the first three years were just grow, grow, grow. And I went from starting with two guys and myself to I got up to about six guys, I think within three or four years, but then by 2008, especially towards the latter half of that year.

Mike: That's when the market started changing and that was right as the recession hit. So we kind of hit a wall and, and the leads were not coming in. as well as they had been. And I wasn't winning jobs as well as I, had been so we hit kind of a wall and then 2009 was probably one of the most difficult years of my life.

Mike: It was, it was tough on business. we were struggling to get work and then I got hit with cancer and I had to spend a good chunk of time, probably an equivalent of about two months out of the spring and summertime. Not all at one time, but kind of broken up here and there out of town in about 10 hours away while I was getting medical treatment and still trying to run my business.

Mike: So I look back and think, I don't know how I got through it, but thankfully it was slow because I don't know if I could have handled a large influx of work trying to manage my business from 10 hours.

Scott: Awesome. So, you did make it through that period and you beat cancer, obviously you're here with us or they were grateful.

Scott: So then what happened? You came back from that, the recession kind of a little bit in our rear view mirror, we're emerging out of that, then what happens? And

Mike: you know, the thing I'll say about. That year of 2009 with that recession was, again, this area, Northern Virginia, the DC Metro area. we were definitely hit by the recession, but I don't think to the degree that many other areas of the country were hit as hard because we have so much government work, things are still moving and flowing.

Mike: It just was slower, but I know some places really got hit hard. so we had work and we did just enough to get by. But by 2010, I've been cleared. I got into remission and all of a sudden the, the recession seemed to come to an end and things, boom, again, and our call volume started picking up again.

Mike: And I just remember thinking, I don't know how I would've handled the call volume that came in in 2010 compare, you know, while I was sick in 2009 the next year of 2011 was when. I think the biggest jump happened? I guess I was probably around half a million around 2010, somewhere in that ballpark.

Mike: And then 2011, I made my first non painter hire. I hired my sister-in-law, my wife's sister I hired her originally to be helping me with marketing and also to do color consultation for me. I wanted to offer that for free. And I knew she had a great creative background. My whole wife's family is just completely creative people.

Mike: And so that was a weakness I always had. I was never good with helping people with color. So I hired her on and within about three months I had actually in 2010 signed a contract to be in this publication called the best picks. And that was new to our area. And it had been in some other cities prior to the DC area.

Mike: And so I got a little bit of history on it and, and really felt like this was going to be good for us. I had no idea of the explosion that would happen. I nearly doubled business, I think I did, yeah. Around just under a million, so almost doubled that year from the year before.

Mike: But when the best picks came out in, in spring of 11 I remember thinking at one point like 15 calls in a week was a good week. It started becoming 15 calls in a day and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't keep up. And so I remember talking to my sister-in-law Karen at the time and I said, I'm sorry, but your job description has completely changed.

Mike: I need you to help me on the office side of things. I don't need any more marketing. I need, I need to manage this lead flow and schedule these appointments. And I had to give up a lot of control too, because I was used to scheduling my own appointments, talking to these people on the phone myself, and I just didn't have enough time.

Mike: So, and I had to hire people as well. And so I started hiring some subs because I couldn't, I didn't find enough painters fast enough to handle the lead flow. And that was my first dabbling with with subs and sub crews. And there was definitely some highs and lows with that. It certainly was easier to bring on three or four guys at one time as a sub crew.

Mike: But there was the concern about the quality control. And I, I went through a few guys before kind of hidden on settling on, on a couple. But I would say within a couple of years, we went from 500, a thousand to like 1.7, 1.8 million within a couple years. And so it just changed everything I needed management.

Mike: I needed a staff to help me either with sales or lead flow scheduling scheduling projects, things like that. So slowly we did that.

Scott: Yeah. Awesome. That's great. So at C4C, we focus on most of our contractors are north of a million. So what I know is what you just said is a big jump and a lot of money to do a lot of revenue to do with very little management support.

Scott: So what got you through that section? Are you just incredibly efficient? Did you start developing systems? I mean, 1.7 with you. You know, essentially your, your sister-in-law man, that sounds crazy. So how did you get through that section and what did you start doing or implementing that helped you get through it?

Mike: It was rough. It was, you know, once, once we hit that million dollar mark and was going above that, I felt like I had no control over anything. And plus that was the same time my son was born. And so I had an, I had an older daughter at the time, so I'm trying to be dad and trying to be a good dad, trying to be an involved dad, but, and still be a good businessman too.

Mike: And, and dealing with the, the huge growth and not enough people in place. And it's scary decision because you've got to now hire people who are not directly related to labor. And so there's a little bit of Even though you're having revenue growth, the profits don't seem to match the revenue growth, but at that point was a big transition for me psychologically and realizing that I didn't, as much as I wanted to make money.

Mike: I also needed to get my time back in time, became the most important currency more than money because I had made good money and I was still making good money, but I had zero time. And so I re I actually hired a coach just for like a three month span and I wanted them to help me hire a sales person.

Mike: But I remember what they said to me. They said, the question was, what are you really good at? And that was what they were asking me. And I said, I'm very good at sales. What are you not very good at? And I was like project management. I don't like project management. it's too chaotic and it's too unpredictable.

Mike: And I want to be there at dinner for my family every night. But so they said you don't need a sales person. You need a project manager, keep doing what you're good at. Find somebody who will fill your shoes in the areas where you're not good. And that was a game changer for me. And so I I brought on a project manager and trained him up.

Mike: And I immediately saw the dividends that paid. It was, yes, it was a salary that I had. But it freed up my time and actually helped me focus more on being a better sales person, because I didn't have to kind of juggle as many balls in the air. It was as a little bit less. and the next year we grew again, we got to over 2 million and the project manager, because he was selling so many change orders had gotten pretty comfortable with sales.

Mike: And our lead flow was still pretty big. I eventually moved him over to sales and then we hired another project manager and So by 2013 I had now 15 painters in the field, again, mix of employees and subcontractors and a full-time office manager, a full-time project manager and a full-time sales.

Scott: And did that model worked pretty well for you? And, and is that pretty close to what you're doing today?

Mike: Yeah, it is. it's very close to there actually what we do today with the exception of, I just have, I have two salespeople now and I have on top of having an office manager I also have a part-time admin assistant to help her as well.

Mike: And we we've actually, in terms of like revenue have not changed a whole lot over those, I guess now that's 2013. So about nine years, we've kind of gone a little bit up a little bit down. I've definitely had some interesting history of people who've come in and out of the business and had some, some good people.

Mike: I've had some, some bad ones. And some tumultuous times as well through that, but I I've been very fortunate, I think right now we are, we are set with a very good team. They're relatively new, my office manager that I currently have now as Danny, she's been with me for four and a half years.

Mike: My project manager Jimmy my or operations manager he is now coming up on a year that he's been with me. And then my two salespeople, one has been with me for just a little over a year at one spin for about three months. So a lot of relatively new people and my admin assistant has only been with us for maybe a month and a half, two months.

Mike: So there's, there's a lot of training still happening, a lot of coaching, a lot of mentoring and that's a constant in my business. I even no matter for my office manager has been with me for four and a half years. I'm still constantly. Seeking ways to help her and make her better

Mike: at what she does.

Scott: Awesome. So let's transition a little bit about one of the things that I think is so interesting about you is, is the lens for which you look at business and look at your business. I think that you have some very excellent ways of looking at our industry and your business that is, I think is refreshing and somewhat unique.

Scott: Sometimes it's more data-driven than emotional, which I actually like. So just, in your own words, tell me a little bit about how you see the painting business, your business, and what, what, what makes you different or what's your approach that you think is maybe unique or different than what sometimes we hear about in other cases,

Mike: Yeah.

Mike: I am, I'm a big proponent of like, I want to see the numbers. you and I have talked about this in the past that a scientific approach to it. Instead of like letting my feelings dictate what to do I've learned that emotional decisions are sometimes not the best decisions but usually the numbers don't lie.

Mike: And so I'm constantly looking at statistics and trying to see what's good. What's not so good. and what are the reasons behind it? So I'm always tracking numbers in terms of sales or revenue gross profit leads coming in on a weekly, monthly annual basis. That kind of a thing, where are we with labor hours?

Mike: How far we can book out and tell potential clients as they're calling us for estimates. I've had some people on my staff who are like emotional people who kind of lead by their emotions. And what I see is like they get worked up about something, whether it's positive or negative and they kind of want to run with it.

Mike: And it's like, you got to slow down, you know, w wait until things calm down. Like as any business owner has had we've, we've got our ups and we've got our downs, and there's been plenty of times when I've been upset about something or disappointed by something. And I want to make this immediate change, but I've learned when I make those kinds of rash decisions in the heightened, emotional state that I'm in.

Mike: They're usually not very good decisions. So I'm a big believer. Waiting at least a few hours, if not even a, at least the day before I calmed down and settled down and reassess, do I want to go in direction a or direction B and use logic to lead me versus emotion.

Scott: Awesome. I love that. So thinking about through some key KPIs, some key performance indicators, what are a few that you would use that you use to guide your company, even starting at the top?

Scott: Like, how do you determine your revenue or how big you're going to get, or how do you, how do you know your staffing levels? I mean, at the, even at the macro level, how, how do you look at the business from that point of view?

Mike: Well, I look back at old stats and, you know, especially being a seasonal as we are, I know.

Mike: I can look back on every year for all 17 years and see what percentage of our work we did in January versus February, March and so on. And so I make goals based off of that and look at previous history. And so obviously like everybody I'm looking at revenue and breaking that down into a weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual type of thing.

Mike: I'm looking at the average number of guys. I need to have working in the field to meet those numbers, knowing a certain each painter produces X amount of dollars per day, per week, per month, and so on. So how many painters do we need to have in order to meet these goals? Looking at the average job size, looking at sales wins in terms of total count, as well as dollars, one and dollars lost breaking that down, you know, and, and kind of seeing what's our sweet spot.

Mike: Do we, do we sell more jobs that are at $10,000 or more at $1,000 or that kind of thing. And our average job size over the last couple of years has been around $5,000 a job. So I know exactly how many jobs we need to sell per month to reach a certain goal. So those are just kind of a few things that I'm looking at.

Scott: So yes, you did hear that, right? He has data from 17 years, so that's amazing. you've mentioned a little bit about you being more logic driven, more data-driven and less emotional driven. How does that play into your company culture and are there ways that your temperament and the way you look at things is helpful and it's attracted a certain team and are there times or ways that you think that temperament sometimes can actually have an impact that's negative?

Mike: So, you know, our culture is definitely a little interesting because we have a mix of employees as well as subcontractors. So not everybody interacts with each other. The subcontractors don't really know the employee painters and, and vice versa, but you know, one thing I'm big on with everybody who works for me is being positive, celebrating wins and trying not to get too down either.

Mike: Looking at mistakes or failures as opportunities to learn versus criticizing. So I try to be very careful about how I talk to my staff about mistakes or things that don't go the way you planned them to go. Transparency, I think is a very important aspect of it. my guys see our numbers.

Mike: every contract that they are given every, every job we don't give work orders, we just actually just give them the contract. So they see the amount on the job. And I feel like if I hide that I'm not used to, I used to be that way, but I felt like I was not showing trust to them if I wasn't being transparent about the numbers.

Mike: So I don't share every little number with them, but they certainly see the jobs that we do and the money we make on each individual job. And for the guys who might question it or think that I'm making a million dollars a year because of what we sell, then I say, I've sat down with them and try to break down the numbers too and say, these are used to pay for the bands and pay for your shirts and insurance and so on and so on.

Mike: So I really try to explain it to them and break it down as to why we charge what we do so that I can pay them. And then also keep this business running. I think accountability is a very big, important aspect of any business. And it's not about you know, pointing fingers and, or you know, figuring out who's at fault for anything.

Mike: It's it's a matter of taking responsibility for your own actions and being ready to deal with the consequences and learning from it. And cause I'm a big proponent of learning. I encourage my staff to go out and make decisions and deal with, take the risks sometimes. learn from it.

Mike: You know, obviously I don't want anything that's going to cost me tens of thousands of dollars, but sometimes they'll make decisions that I don't agree with and sometimes it'll hurt and sometimes I've watched them make decisions that I know are not going to go well, but I let it be because sometimes they've got to feel that pain in order to really learn.

Mike: and I think most people, appreciate people who take responsibility. I think most customers understand humans make mistakes. And when we do, we just, we take responsibility for it and we do what we gotta do to fix it. So I think that's a, that's a big part of how we handle things.

Scott: That leads me perfectly into a little bit about your management style, which you just kind of hit on. But if you would give us some inside, look a little bit about your management style. And so what are your meeting rhythms with your staff? What does accountability look like in your organization, which you just mentioned?

Scott: That there's a lot of it. And you know, talk to me a little bit about how you coach and mentor your staff and, and at what levels do they get your access or get your time? Cause I know you're obviously very busy running the company. So how do you, manage your staff top-down and are you coaching the coach or, what's the vibe and style inside of Home Works Painting?

Mike: We do constantly have meetings. I run a sales meeting with my two sales people. Every Monday eight o'clock and one of those Mondays will be in person. The other Monday will be via zoom. And the reason is because every other Monday we do crew leader meetings where we're going over upcoming jobs for the next two weeks.

Mike: And those are about six 30 every Monday. Those go for about an hour, hour and 15 minutes. It's my chance to interact with the guys. I really, I only have seven employee painter, so it's a crew leader meeting, but it ends up being really all the painters come to this meeting. We talk about the upcoming jobs, any issues that have come up, we celebrate wins and reviews and you know, those kinds of things and then follow that with a sales meeting, with my two sales people.

Mike: But I also do every other Tuesday. On the weeks where I don't have a crew leader meeting I have an operations meeting which is with my salespeople, my operations manager, and my office manager. And we will also go over jobs coming up, but we also do a scorecard where we're seeing like how many leads have been coming in.

Mike: How many jobs have we won? what's the average number of guys we have working on a daily basis? Have we had any callbacks? Why did we have those callbacks? And then any outstanding issues that have come up. And especially now over the last, I'd say year, because as I mentioned earlier, a lot of my staff is fairly new with them.

Mike: Most of them having a year around a year or so of experience. So they're still learning a lot and none of them came from other painting companies. So this is their first experience working in a residential painting company or any paint company at all. So I sometimes get into conversations about, look for this, or, you know, this time of year, this is going to come up just based on my previous history and, just knowing the rhythms of the business.

Mike: And so I'm constantly trying to coach them of what to expect. Oh, I ran into this with this customer. They talked about this. Here's how I would approach that. So I'm constantly coaching them and sometimes it's On the spot a phone call here and I'm giving them my point of view on it, or it's sometimes it's during those meetings.

Mike: So I'm a big believer in constantly coaching, constantly trying to improve, but then not hovering over their shoulders. And checking on them every five minutes to see if they did what I told them to do. But I do at the same time I use the phrase trust, but trusting you guys to take care of what needs to be done, but then I will look and see and kind of dig into the numbers or dig into quotes or look at the schedule and kind of see like, all right, are they following what I want them to do?

Mike: And if not, they, maybe I need to make a phone call or text them and kind of give them some feedback. Hey, remember we talked about this. This is why we should do it this way or that thing.

Scott: I love the meeting rhythms and the what I know about your team is that on the calendar and it's non-negotiable so I love that, that expectation.

Scott: what, if anything, do you wish you were a little bit better at in your business or if you could wave a magic wand, what are some, what are one or two things that you might wish you were different at?

Mike: One of those things that's kind of like a, a positive and a negative about me is my level of intensity.

Mike: I'm a believer as the leader of the business, as the person who has to set the example, I need to be the hardest worker in the room and set that tone for everybody else. Sometimes with that it can be intimidating to others, my level of intensity and, and sometimes it can make people a little nervous and, make them think that they've got to match my intensity I do want them to match my intensity.

Mike: But I also realize I own the business. So none of them are going to probably love it or care about it as much as I do. I hope they love it close to as much as I do, but I understand that, you know, they don't, but I think if I could wave a magic wand, I think I would try to soften myself a little bit.

Mike: you mentioned at the beginning of that, I I'm kind of cold as the joke goes and some of our masterminds and stuff like that. But yeah I can separate the logic from the emotion kind of going back to that part of it too. And I cared very deeply about these people but I can also at the same time drill into them and say, why did we do this?

Mike: Why do we do that? And, you know, coach them and set expectations and maybe even reprimand them. But I do it out of trying to improve them, not to make them feel small or to ridicule them. It's more of like my approaches to, help. But sometimes because of the level of intensity I have, it can come off, not the way I hoped it

Mike: would.

Scott: I'm of course I'm a student of businesses. And one of the things I appreciate about appreciate about Mike. Is the logical approach, right? that's the part that seems a little bit like, oh, it's not very Instagram worthy. Cause you know, there's no raw influencer here, but the fact is I've actually watched Mike's company.

Scott: I actually believe he's built a team that actually is in step with him and is attracted to him. So maybe it's not a lot of you know, fufu, you know, raw stuff by in fact he's got a really solid, data-driven you'd know what you're going to get from Mike he's he's, he's loyal and he's got, has integrity.

Scott: And I think he's attracted a team that actually speaks that language. So, we didn't even get into culture and, and we're going to have a bunch of other conversations. but the idea of there's more than one way to run a business, integrity, and honesty and all that can be part of.

Scott: Lots of styles of business. So I actually think Mike has done very well to actually track people that respond to his style and I, and I love it. And he's got a very strong predictable result from the staff he's developed. So so as we wrap up just any couple of things you might say to somebody that's emerging or just starting out and maybe is in their first half a million or million.

Scott: any counsel you might give them as they're, drinking from this fire hose, what would be some things you'd say to the younger MC

Mike: yeah. There's there's a few things I'd say. Get systems in place document as much as you can, as early as you can, the sooner you get systems in place, this is something I struggled with in the beginning too.

Mike: And I had just kind of stuck everywhere and stuff. And I still have some of my spiral notebooks of where I wrote stuff down. Like these ancient archives that seems like sitting on my shelf right now, but document, document, document, every little thing you can, especially while you're small so that when you bring somebody on, you can train them maybe to help you document would be to hire a coach, to hire somebody who can kind of help you with that documentation.

Mike: And maybe someone who can kind of give you some guidance on how to put some systems in place and how to make that first non painter hire, or maybe even hire a painter for the first time. And kind of what to look for. There. And I think the last thing I would say, especially for somebody new, when he was hungry and is looking for every little bit of work to learn, to say no.

Mike: going back to that time where I had that explosive growth. One of the biggest things that happened during that time was that was the first time I learned the same note. And as I was learning to say no more and more at the same time my business was growing, it doesn't sound logical, but it was, I was finding where I wanted to be, what I did not want to do and what I wanted to do.

Mike: And I learned that, you know, sometimes you got to turn some people away and turn away some work in order to focus on the things that you're really.

Scott: You can't say yes to the right things if you're spending all your time on the wrong thing. So I love that. Well, Mike, awesome. I appreciate your time.

Scott: And like I said, Mike's got Just so much wisdom that we're gonna definitely have him back some more and he's got more in them and if we didn't cut it off here, we'd be here for a long time, but I appreciate you joining us today and I'm grateful for your contribution.

Mike: Thanks for having me. It's a lot of fun.

Scott: Great. Thanks.