Profitable Painter Podcast
Profitable Painter Podcast is a rich resource for anyone interested in starting, running, and scaling a professional painting business, offering valuable insights, strategies, and interviews with industry leaders. Through case studies and in-depth discussions, we deliver a vivid picture of the painting industry, with a disclaimer that any financial or tax information is general and not a substitute for professional advice.
Profitable Painter Podcast
Building Wealth Through Business Systems: A Painting Entrepreneur's Journey
In this powerful episode of the Profitable Painter Podcast, host Daniel Honan sits down with Gene Harris, owner of multiple Painter 1 locations and founder of Hoosier Admin, for an inspiring conversation about building a business with intention and impact.
Jean shares how his background in the Navy and property management helped shape his mindset as a business owner. But what truly sparked his entrepreneurial drive was planning for his family’s future, including long-term care for his special needs son. That mission led him to launch and scale not just one, but multiple businesses, all while stepping out of daily operations and focusing on building wealth through smart systems, strong teams, and a service-first culture.
Takeaways from this episode with Gene Harris:
- Purpose-Driven Wealth: How long-term family goals fueled Jean’s business journey, and why asset ownership beats a 401(k).
- Delegation Done Right: Why most painting contractors wait too long to give up the phones, and how Hoosier Admin fills the gap.
- Systemized Success: The importance of documenting roles, building reliable teams, and getting out of the "you = the business" trap.
- Culture of Hospitality: From project managers to painters, why customer happiness is the North Star (and how to hire for it).
- First Impressions Matter: Why offshoring your phones can backfire, and how a professional, U.S.-based admin team changes the game.
Whether you're just starting your painting business or aiming to scale out of day-to-day chaos, this episode offers a blueprint to grow with clarity, purpose, and peace of mind.
🎧 Listen now, then start building a business that supports your life, not consumes it.
Welcome to the Profitable Painter Podcast. The mission of this podcast is simple to help you navigate the financial and tax aspects of starting, running and scaling a professional painting business, from the brushes and ladders to the spreadsheets and balance sheets. We've got you covered. But before we dive in, a quick word of caution While we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date financial and tax information, nothing you hear on this podcast should be considered as financial advice specifically for you or your business. We're here to share general knowledge and experiences, not to replace the tailored advice you get from a professional financial advisor or tax consultant. We strongly recommend you seeking individualized advice before making any significant financial decision.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Profitable Painter Podcast. My name is Daniel Honan, I'm the founder of Bookkeeping for Painters and I'm also a CPA that works exclusively with painting businesses, and today I'm super excited to talk to Gene Harris. We're going to get into a lot of really interesting stuff. He's had an amazing journey in the painting industry. Welcome to the podcast, gene. How's it going?
Speaker 3:Great Daniel, how about?
Speaker 2:yourself. I'm doing well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad to have you and I really want to dig into your journey. I know you've had a pretty unique journey and I think a lot of folks are going to get a lot of value out of it. Can you kind of just give us the highlights? What is your journey in the painting industry been? How did you get started? What are some of the key highlights as you've made your way through the years?
Speaker 3:Thanks, yeah, so just a really high level. I didn't start out in the painting business. I actually started. I was in the Navy out of high school and then after that I started working for several different companies, operations wise, my final kind of. Prior to getting in the painting business, I used to run apartment communities the institutional quality stuff for 20 years all across the country. I was vice president of a couple of property management companies.
Speaker 3:And then, just one day, just looking at 401k, looking at retirement, I have two boys, one is 21, who's at IU currently, right now, and another one who's about to be 19. He's special needs with Pitt Hopkins syndrome, and dawned on me this is probably about eight years ago, now maybe nine, but that there's not going to be two of us in retirement, there's going to be three of us. And then what does that number look like? And then, thirdly, what happens to him when we're gone? And so how do you support a human 20 years after you're dead? And that's a pretty big number to figure out and realizing that the only really true path to true wealth is owning assets, starting with maybe companies or investments and I've had the experience of running companies for a long time never really for myself and I looked at franchising. I looked at several different brands and finally settled on a painting franchise, which is Painter One.
Speaker 3:Back in October of 2019, I opened my first Painter One business with. The idea at the time was to just build it up and sell it. So at the time it was a $50,000 franchise fee. You buy it, you run it for a couple of years, you make a profit, you put it on the market, you sell it. Maybe you sell it for three, four, 500 grand. Take that equity, you go into another franchise that requires a larger equity investment. You just continue to level up and there are actually guys that do this for a living. That's this kind of their model.
Speaker 3:Got into it. It was about 90 days. I was into it and I realized like, well, this is fairly I won't say usually fairly easy or fairly simple compared to what I come from. Right, it's not a complex business. You know you get some painting leads, you do some painting estimates and you paint the house and it's still painting right.
Speaker 3:And also and the reason why I chose a painting company was at the time, I was looking for something that was quasi recession proof. I don't think there's anything truly recession proof, but definitely I remember running apartments in 08, 09, and 10, during the last the real estate bubble, the real estate crash. There's still painting. That still occurred. It still happened, whether it be exteriors or commercially or whatever. But eventually someone's going to need something painted and a lot of people are going to get on a 20-foot ladder to paint the high stuff, for sure. And it's paint. And if you mess it up I know I'm oversimplifying it, but you can always repaint it right. I'm not demoing someone's kitchen or doing something like that. So I thought it was very simple.
Speaker 3:I got into it 90 days into it, realized why would I sell this just to start over in another brand? A whole new system, no guarantee of success, no guarantee I'll love it. New system, no guarantee of success, no guarantee I'll love it. And really expanding on my apartment businesses that I used to run, I had deals in Denver and Houston and Atlanta and Oklahoma City and all across the country, so I'm used to, I'm familiar with running teams far away and so I was like, well, why don't I just open up a second location? And in 2022, I opened Painting One in Cincinnati and at the time, my plan was to well do Cincinnati, which is about two hours from Indianapolis, then maybe Louisville, which is about two and a half hours from Indianapolis, you know, and kind of go around and then, once I've had three or four, maybe just start opening locations all across the country.
Speaker 3:And so if I had a dozen Painter One locations, that'd be pretty good for long-term. You know, wealth. And well, when I opened the second location that's when I realized at the time of my wife was my admin and I was like, well, I don't need to hire a second person to open up Cincinnati to answer the phones for Cincinnati, my wife can still do that. And that's what I came up with the idea of starting a business where we answer the phones for other painting companies and sharing the admin costs. And so I went to the franchisor, said I had this idea, they let us try it with a couple of owners, and then that eventually turned into what is now a Hoosiermin.
Speaker 2:Nice, that's awesome. Yeah, that's quite a journey and I definitely want to get into. There's a lot there that I want to get into. I'm going to start with.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the things that we have in common is a special needs child, and I thought it was really cool that you kind of realized early on like, hey, we're going to have to it's always important to save for retirement for anybody but adding that extra layer of not only like when I pass, but like what happens to my kids, or specifically my special needs child, you know, after I pass, like having that additional care requirement, like having that additional care requirement and it sounds like you kind of thought about retirement in early on, but also in a different way what kind of come to? Like what did you realize? And, if you don't mind sharing, like, what kind of calculations did you do? Or like, how did you? What numbers did you come up with? Like, hey, I need to hit this level of wealth, like anything that you would be willing to share in that regard. I think that would be super interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know if I have any specific numbers that I recall per se, like written down, like as far as like a goal number. I think if I had, really, if I had to really sit down and come up with a number, I'd probably be really depressed. So it's more or less. I just got to blow, I just got to blow it up as big a number as I can. I don't even know what that looks like, but no, it's more so. Like I said, our son is socially verbal. People love him. He's a very class, half full kind of person. Most of the time People enjoy being around him, but he doesn't have any kind of I don't know the word, maybe safety awareness. He still might walk out in traffic, uh, without looking you know, kind of thing.
Speaker 3:So he always needs someone around. He can do a lot of things on his own, but he's, you know, he'll never be able to cook for himself. You use hot objects, things like that, uh, you know. So there's a lot of things he'll never can do, um.
Speaker 3:But when you have a special needs child, in the beginning you're just kind of fighting the fight, right, you're figuring out their health. It's more focused on their health and their learning, and then you don't really think about because you don't know either, a lot of kids are one way very young. And then, you know, we all change, as we know, um, as we get older. But when he 19, that's about 11 or 12, and I was like, oh, you know, just kind of dawned on me, wait, he's not leaving, like he's going to be with us. And then then so, um, you know, if I'm thinking about sailing off into the sunset anytime soon, you know how, how, how do you support that? And then, um, and then more so, like I said, you know, let's say we live in our eighties, he'll be in his sixties, you know. And he has, you know, he has a brother, but again a. You know, we don't always know how our kids are going to turn out, whether they're going to be successful. But even if they are, do you want to put that burden on them and their family?
Speaker 3:So it's something I always talk to my kids about, especially my older one when he was going through high school and taking very advanced classes or doing a lot of work and things were getting hard. He just wanted to quit and I just told him. I said so. You may not see it today, but putting in the time and the effort today will pay its benefits. This dividends in the future. And wouldn't you rather have 10 doors to choose from one day versus one? Right? So you know he can look around the room and a lot of his friends and family, or his friends who he went to school with, didn't apply themselves or whatever, and now they graduate high school and they've basically got one door to walk through.
Speaker 3:Right, you know they got to go get a job and figure it out when, because of putting the work now, you know, have more opportunities. I'm kind of doing the same thing. Where, creating more opportunities, where we don't just have one horse, we have several and that's an investment world, they tell you. You know to diversify, right, so all of our eggs are in one basket. Like I said, I've painted one in minneapolis, painted one in cincinnati. Obviously two different cities, they're fairly close, so the economies are very similar. But still, and then, in addition to that, like I said, with hoosier admin, and then we also started a christmas light uh company, uh, last winter. So it's our fourth company that we have now and, um, one of them's got to work, right yeah.
Speaker 2:Nice.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I don't have any like specific numbers. It's more or less a strategy of you know, maybe I sit all the painting companies one day, Maybe I keep the holiday lighting company, the Hoosier admin. We can do anywhere in the world, it doesn't necessarily need to be in the city where a painting company, someone has to physically go out do the SOS. I need to be in the city where a painting company, someone has to physically go out do the SOS. So I have to physically go paint the projects and so you know, but maybe I get them to a point where they're just running themselves and there's, you know, someone else is running it and it's just paying dividends on into the future, you know, after we're gone. But again, the goal is really just more to set it up so they're all successful, and then we have choices and we have options and we can make those decisions, you know, at that time in the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like you've kind of building equity in your business to kind of build your wealth, which I think a lot of folks, a lot of painting business owners they don't I mean a lot of them do, but some of them don't think of their business as something they can build for enduring wealth. They think it's more like it's a job that I've created for myself, kind of thing. Yeah, but you're kind of like setting up the businesses to run on their own and you're the business owner. You're not involved a lot in the day-to-day. At least you're building it that way, that's true.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, involves a lot in the day-to-day. Uh, at least you're building it that way, you're probably, that's true. Yeah, yeah, and it's. I guess I want to. You know my advice would everyone start from day one. But I know a lot of people don't, don't, don't come from the professional world. They just started painting and then all of a sudden they have a business. They woke up one day and they have a business kind of thing and they have to figure out the business side of it.
Speaker 3:But yeah, it's, it's about setting up systems and processes. You know roles, responsibilities, having all that stuff in writing written down. So if you ever needed someone to step in, someone could absolutely step into where you are and just continue to run, and you're not the business in itself, right? Everything's not in a notebook and people just know your name and have your number. You have to professionalize it and so we've set it up since day one to be able to. You know, I have a GM in Cincinnati. She runs everything there. Haven't been back there literally since, physically since 2022. And Indianapolis kind of went both around the world. I've had estimators, I've had project managers. Indianapolis kind of went both around the world. I've had estimators, I've had project managers, I've had general managers come and go kind of over the years. No-transcript.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it sounds like your two painting businesses pretty much right now run on their own. You have a general manager that operates them and you have estimators and crew and everything. They're operating without your much input from you.
Speaker 3:It sounds like on call phone or whatever, but for the most part the majority of my time is one hour a week Just meeting with the entire team, just going through everything soup to nuts from just the overall business and just continuously providing input, leadership, guidance to what our goals are and keeping everybody on track.
Speaker 2:Nice. That's awesome and it sounds like kind of the key to this is obviously delegation. You know, get mentioned painting business. What were the hardest ones to make, processes for hardest roles to fill that you kind of figured out like maybe little tricks like to get the right person in a certain role or right process. What are kind of the pitfalls that you ran into while trying to grow in your painting business and getting it to run without you that you were able to figure out and solve?
Speaker 3:Yeah, but my number one. In my opinion, the number one most critical role in your business is the project manager, or the person who is the communicator between your customer and your painters, or your customer and your business. That, in my opinion, is one that is the hardest to staff for and it is the most critical component. The sales, the estimating piece. That's easy, I mean, anybody can do it. It's not difficult, it's not rocket surgery. It's all about there. Really, it's just about creating a relationship with the customer. Do you trust me to come and produce this project for you? Really, at the end of the day, you should be competing on price price. I know I see a lot of guys on facebook complaining about they got underbid or whatever, and that's going to happen. But if you, um, you just realize that that's just not your customer with the person who wants to go with the cheapest provider, um, you know, we try to be in the middle of. I've heard times that we were the most expensive and they and they still hired. So, really, the estimator portion is just did you show up on time? Do you look decent? Can you speak correctly? Does the customer just feel good about you being in their home? Essentially right. So that's what we're doing. You know a lot of businesses. You don't actually go in your customer's house. You're in their home with their children, with their pets, with their family, with their life, and do they trust that you're going to come and do a good job.
Speaker 3:It's really where it breaks is when you're producing the project right, so the painter showing up on time, are we covering? Are we prepping everything, everything properly? Are we communicating with the customer properly? And then at the end, you know, are we do what we say we're going to do? And if it breaks, then that's where the rubber meets the road and is the person who is the liaison between the customer, are they capable of dealing with it when it breaks, right, and a lot of people get stressed out and they get all nervous customers upset, and you can't get upset too. That doesn't help anything, right? And so I kind of coach my team in the sense of we actually this is going to.
Speaker 3:I don't know how else to say this, but we kind of like it when it breaks, and I know that kind of seems like evil. Like what do you mean? You like pain, like no, but the point is is when it does break. It's your opportunity to prove to your customer. That's why they hired you. They didn't hire you because everything's going to go right. You know, I think if everything goes right, it's easy. We would all agree if we took the customer out of the equation and we just went and did the job and they just paid us money. Wow, this is going to be a really easy career. But it's more or less what happens when it breaks. How do you handle it? It's really, if you look at it as an opportunity to prove to the customer, to go above and beyond, to make it right, to do whatever it needs to do.
Speaker 3:I've literally gotten five-star reviews from the most horrible situation you could possibly imagine. To turn it around and the customer is leaving us a glowing five-star review going. You know, you guys proved to us your character. You stood behind it. You continue. You didn't run away. You stayed here until we were 100% satisfied. But we'll have that customer like I know I'm super picky, right, you know we've all got that one.
Speaker 3:It was like they know that they're tough to deal with and the fact that you're unlike anyone else and you kept showing up with a smile and continue to work with them and through the issue, versus getting contentious with the customer. They recognize that and they appreciate that and then they start referring you. And then those referrals are the best because all their friends know that they're a royal you-know-what to deal with. They're like if Susan hired you, whoa, please come to my house. If she paid you and she likes you, then we know you've been vetted, so to speak.
Speaker 3:So in my opinion, that's where I've struggled the most, where I've had one of the higher project managers, and they do it for a while and they do okay, but they just get tired of, if something were to happen, dealing with that. Also, our crews have gotten way better too over the years. Now we've got some crews that have been with me almost four and a half years and it's the same people and they're amazing. So our quality has gotten better. So obviously that makes things easier to deal with. But yeah, just having that person that just has thick skin and can kind of let it roll off their shoulder and not take it personally you know you didn't paint it, you know you're not the one painting, you're just there to solve it and obviously if my customer is smiling, my painters are smiling, then that's all that matters.
Speaker 2:So yeah, project management tough. What sort of things have you found, like what are you looking for when you're looking for that project manager? Is there a certain personality type? Or, yeah, what are you kind of looking for?
Speaker 3:It is. It's really a hospitality experience, it's customer service experience. You know, necessarily you don't need a painter. You know you need someone who knows how to paint. That's the job. You know they're the one with the technical experience and you can learn from that person. As far as why this is a way or not a way, we can, you know we can educate the customer through that, but really it's that person that you know.
Speaker 3:I go all the way back to. I kind of glossed over it, but I used to run Hollywood videos and I had 13 retail stores with them back in the late nineties and I took over the. It was the least profitable, it was the top 10 least profitable districts in the company and in nine months we were the number one most profitable district in the company. You have no control over price, no control over advertising, no control over the product. In our business we have total control over all three of those right? So when? No control of these things, but yet somehow you're still to take care of your customer, and not only that, but your competitor has the exact same product. You do. Braveheart is your customer and not only that, but your competitor has the exact same product.
Speaker 3:You do. Brave heart is brave heart, doesn't matter whether you go where you go, and and so it was there where it was getting. Um, and I'm dealing with store managers now, not just the employee and everyone, but I'm starting with the store manager part, and it's you know, we've all heard the customer's always right. I was talking to my boss one day and she's like well, gene, it's not, it's it, it's the customer's always right. So when you're taught, when you're two years old, you're taught there's a right and there's a wrong, and so, therefore, the customer's always right, and then, intuitively, you're wrong, and no one wants to be wrong. And so there's a bit of an internal conflict there, and so I had to change the idea happy, right. So if the customer is happy, then everything's good, and so do whatever it takes. And and that's a broad statement, but it's intentionally broad and so you have to empower them to do whatever it takes. But not only that, it's not just the store manager, it's all the way down to the part-time I used to say $5 an hour, that's how old I am, part-time, hourly employee that's still in high school, who just comes in and works three or four hours a week. That person has to be empowered to do whatever it takes. To do whatever it takes to make the customer happy. And most people, most companies I talk to, aren't willing to do. Oh well, you know. They come up with a whole list of reasons why you know they can't do that and you know, and we're going to lose our shirts and whatever. And I proved it was the opposite. We made more money, the business made more money by doing that, and so finding that mentality, someone who can really understand that, that it's about you're wrong, it's not about the painter messed up. And I talk to my painters about that too. I'm like you know, I've had guys literally argue with me we're closing out a $10,000 project. There's one little thing the customer is pointing to that they want taken care of, and the painters argue with me about well, that's not my job, or that wasn't part of the scope, or whatever the reason is. And literally we're talking somebody's going to take five minutes to just go over, paint it or whatever we need to do to it, or whatever we need to do to it. And I tell them you know, I draw an imaginary line on the ground like a finish line. I'm like we're on this side of the finish line. Don't plant your flag on the wrong side of the finish line. Step across or buy to write us a check for 10 grand. Like, do the thing and get the check, get the money. Let's keep this machine going. Everyone's happy. Let's keep on going.
Speaker 3:Right here end up with a bad review. They probably you end up getting paid, but they're not happy about paying you. They're never going to tell anybody. You know we've all heard right, if you upset a customer, we'll tell 10 people. You know how much they hated you. It's hard to get people to brag about you, so to speak, so let's eliminate that, you know, from the equation. Now, my painters have been with me long enough. They and that's the thing, they all understand it and that's probably the number one compliment we get. If you go through our reviews, you'll read everyone's so nice, the painters are so nice, everyone's. So you know they're just. They're no way about the by the, just the the bedside manner, I guess.
Speaker 2:Right this you know, and uh, we're just, we're saying yes, we can do that and it's just, it's a win-win goal here, right, yeah, so it sounds like you're, you've built culture of hospitality from not just the project manager but the crews as well, where their, their whole, is making the customer happy yeah awesome.
Speaker 2:Um, one of the kind of the key things that I see a lot of folks make mistakes on is they try to hold onto their phone too long when they're in their business.
Speaker 2:You know they're doing hundreds of thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, and they're still answering their phone. From my perspective and you probably didn't have to deal with this well, you had your wife to help you with this but like this seems like this should be the first thing that you get off plate when you're delegating, when you're growing your business, trying to get out of the business, out of the day to day, because it's just like why are you still answering the phone? You're probably not going to be able to answer it all the time, and just getting it to someone who can reliably answer that phone can save a huge amount of money. Can you talk about what you because I know you deal with this on a daily basis with your new company, or I guess you've been around for a little while but could you go into the importance of getting rid of your phone?
Speaker 3:Yes, so you're exactly right. I mean, we were talking to a client yesterday. They're a $1.2 million painting company and they have nobody answering the phone.
Speaker 2:Golly.
Speaker 3:He doesn't even have a CRM. I'm like my eyes are like this big, like, oh my God, all right, let's start here, let's go. You're right, and it's not saving money, it's about producing. And that's kind of where it was born from, when I, you know again, I came up with a franchise brand and even the brand the other brands have, an answering like a call center, Right, and so a lot of the other franchise stores will have some sort of central call center. But it's in and that is.
Speaker 3:And talking to the franchisor for Painter One, even he started Five Star Painting and they had a call center and he hated it. He said it was the, the franchisees hated it, the customers hated it, like everyone. It's okay, it serves a purpose, it lets that first call in. At least there's a warm body answering the phone. But it that's it, though. Very transactional, it's very not not intimate at all, you don't get to meet it, you're not related, it's just hey, I need an appointment to two o'clock Tuesday, cool Bye, see ya, you know, and it's still don't know anything and you sound just like any other phone call. That happens. And so so we were. I realized I was like I didn't want that and the franchisor didn't want that and so there's no. There was a center for painter one. It was. The franchisee just had to figure it out. And, just like other painting guys who start getting busy and start busy enough where the phone's ringing and you're doing the estimating and you're doing the project managing, um, you know, when you're standing in like what you and I are doing now, we're just doing an estimate, my phone starts ringing, I can't take the call, and so by the time you get back to calling them back, they've probably called your other competitors. Just talk to your friends and family. It's not just me making this up.
Speaker 3:I had a conversation the other day with a guy. He was looking for a plumber and he said they called 15 plumbers 15 times. No one answered the phone, no one. And he said, by the time the 16th guy answered the phone, he's like I don't want a quote, just come fix it. He's like I don't make another 15 phone calls or 30 phone calls to get two more quotes. He was so worn down at that point he's like, please, so all those other guys and maybe they're busy, they're too busy to do it, but they could grow if they had someone to, like us take the phones for them, then then you're just adding value.
Speaker 3:So we, we look at it as a value add. So we get to that point you can't afford a full-time person, but you need someone full-time, because that call could come in at 9.05 or 5.35, right, and you literally just get two calls that day. But during the rest of the day what's this person doing? And so how Arcany was born out of was you can't pay someone full-time to answer phones for you yet at that point, but you need someone available full-time at that point. But you need someone available full-time.
Speaker 3:And so by us providing the admin and what that's what we've got was we can, we'll hire them, we'll train them, we'll staff them, we'll do all those things. And then you're, we're sharing that with you specifically. So if Daniel, we assign you an admin, then she's your admin and she might answer that she's yours, but she might be mine too and another's, but she's just our admin. We're sharing her. And so because of that, then we all can afford her now, because now we're all paying, we're all cost sharing. Essentially, it's sharing her labor costs for the value of now. Now, all of a sudden, we do have someone available and now we can start to kind of grow that curve up and and no, you know, no, uh, go on, go missed.
Speaker 2:Right, one of the things I'm starting to hear a lot about is, you know, to get somebody to answer your phone. But you know, get somebody that's from Mexico or from somewhere else, uh, to to answer your phone. What are some cause? I know you've probably seen this, but what are some of the downsides of doing that? Yeah, so, and again this, I know you've probably seen this.
Speaker 3:But what are some of the downsides of doing that? Yeah, so, and again, this is not me saying this, it's just us talking to our clients who come to us and they say, you know, I try to virtually, you know, they're called VA. Va is all rage right now. It's going to offshore VA, right, and again, that's fine and it works to a point. Right, it's very fractional, um, it's very transactional, it's uh, there's uh sometimes the language barrier.
Speaker 3:Sometimes we found, even when I talked to the franchisor painter one when he had the call center at five star uh, his call center was in canada and someone would call in for an estimate and they'd say what's your postal code? And they say postal code, where, where are you? And like, oh, I'm in British Columbia, and literally no other conversation. They would just hang up or they would say something like, oh, I thought I was calling paying in one of Indianapolis. Well, no, you are. So you get into this trying to explain who you are and what you are, and some customers want to deal with it. They don't want to talk to someone. They don't want to talk to someone offshore. They feel like it. They don't want to talk to someone. They don't want to talk to someone offshore. They feel like, oh, you're taking my information and are you even real? You know so there's a trust issue. Now, right, well, I'm giving you I had. We were here a couple of weeks ago where I saw you in Orlando and we went to again my special needs. I like to play video games, and so we went to Dretty Speed Lab and, for two hours for $2525, play all the video games you want. I'm like I wish we had one of these next to us, super inexpensive, but you had to fill out this form and it was a release form because they have go-karts and other things you can do in there, and my wife and I do it. We go through whatever. Her father and her mother-in-law were there and they stopped coming around the corner. So I go back to them and they're like we're having to redo. It's like, why look? Because I tried to use a fake email. I'm like, why like? Because I don't want to either advertise it. They just go on this huge rant about that. Anyone's giving their simple email. Can you imagine? They called for a painting. They got someone offshore. They're, they're. They're exactly that customer who's hanging the phone up because they just don't trust anyone anymore, and so having someone stateside is huge.
Speaker 3:The other thing we do in addition, you know again I'll expand on a little bit the whole point of we're not there just to set the appointment right. So the goal is when you call in, hey, you know like I'd like to get my house painted and tell me a little about your painting project, and so we're there to create a relationship, a memorable review on the phone. Some people don't want it, that's fine, but a large majority found, or you know, a lot of our setup calls are probably 15, 20 minute calls where we're talking about, you know, have you ever had a contractor before? What experience do you have? What are you looking for? What do you like? And next thing, you know we're hearing like, oh, my kids in college, you know now that we're talking about their kids and and and it literally showed up with estimates. And our clients do too. Where they're saying they'll show up and all the customer wants to talk about is the admin who they first talked to. Oh, I love your who's, that person that answers your phone, and you know, whatever, and I really love them so much and y'all are so much better than everybody. And you've already, you've already sold from the pack from that first call. You haven't even shown up yet to do the estimate. So you're, we're so far ahead.
Speaker 3:And then what we found is a lot of times because of that, when we we give the on-site, then I'd say a large, probably almost 50 percent of the time, we walk out with a check like literally the customer that yep, let's go ahead and do it, I'm ready to go, I trust you. Everything so far looks good to me and obviously it's a race to the door. If we can get there first, a lot of times we can cut out a lot of our competition. People have appointments, maybe set up the yeah, I'm going to call and cancel all you know, all my future estimates. This sounds reasonable. We hit the price we're looking for. I trust you're going to do the job and go and then. So then we produce the job, or if we don't get it, then part of what else it was, then we do all your follow up on top of that. So, again, in addition to that offshore person, you know we understand what you're doing, the city you're in, et cetera. And so, hey, daniel Gene was at your house yesterday, gave you quotes, a want to make sure you got it. B did you have any questions? You know we just continue that conversation and continue that and sometimes you know we'll, we'll call and text and we don't hear from people for a while and but we'll continue to do it and we've we've won jobs because you're the only one who continued to call me. You're the only one who continued to do this, and so we're finding that definitely the onshore admin is, is is is a plus.
Speaker 3:A lot of our admins, we found, are all college educated. That's the other thing. That's just blown our minds just going through this. There's a lot of folks out there who have real jobs, real careers, and then they need to go back at home Most of the stories because they have kids now and they want to be home with the kids and kind of work around their hours. Or, like us, or like yourself, they have a special needs child. Someone has to be there all the time and they're looking for something to do, not necessarily to pay the bills. Usually there's someone else in the home that's the primary breadwinner, so to speak, but they still want to do something during the day, maybe the kid's at school. So now I've got six or seven hours that I need to fill my time with, and really there's a lot of real work-from-home jobs out there and again we're just hearing this from them.
Speaker 3:There's like, yeah, when they go on these interviews, these, these guys are smartest or they're multi-level marketing or cold calling or whatever, and so again we're able to win and our clients are able to win from that too, because you know, you have, we have phlebotomists and nurses and just all kinds of really highly educated, degreed folks answering the phones. So you get a really high quality on the other end to your customer, you sound very professional, et cetera, and so a lot of those things have. And for the price point? The price point isn't much more than you probably could get an offshore person for on your own, but the quality is as far as and it's what we do and again we're the ones hiring the person, we're the ones training them for you in your business, where, if you go hire your own VA, you have to interview the VA.
Speaker 3:You have to hire the VA, you have to train the VA. You have to keep up with are they doing things, listening to the calls, et cetera. Are they doing things right, doing things wrong, et cetera. You have to continue to coach, re-coach, retrain. That takes a while, and then even then, if it, you know, maybe it doesn't work out after a couple of months. So then you have turnover and then you got to start all over, all over again. So now you're back doing all the phones again trying to find that person again, and so that takes you away from your business.
Speaker 3:Where with us it's, you know, almost set it and forget it and we turn it around. Or we're having calls with you. We're forcing you into a weekly meeting with us so we can review everything with you and make sure that we're keeping you on track and hitting the game. And then, lastly, with us too, because we're doing it for everybody else. Then you're benefiting from that group knowledge where we'll have clients go yeah, we're looking to do Facebook ads, or we're looking to do this, and do you have any other clients finding success? And what are they doing? And, oh, we have a client. You know we started this campaign for them and we do this follow-up and whatever. And so you're benefiting from that group knowledge. Um, what about what? What others are and succeeding at?
Speaker 2:so yeah, that's that sounds like a no-brainer. I mean, you're basically that first impression super, super important. You want to have someone on the other end answering that phone call that sounds professional, that knows your area like and can speak to it, and then also is able to follow up and set rates are super important, especially if you're doing outbound marketing like Facebook ads. Like you mentioned. Being able to follow up with folks provide that great experience to set the salesperson up. Success to close the deal. I mean this sounds like an amazing service. Where can folks learn more about Hoosier? Admin.
Speaker 3:Just go to HoosierAdmincom. It's Hoosier, like the Indiana Hoosiers, h-o-o-s-i-e-r Admin A-D-M-I-Ncom. It's a play on words, hoosier, admin, but we're based in Indiana. So if you know anything about the Hoosiers or seen the movie Hoosiers, that's kind of where it came from.
Speaker 2:It's been a while. I think I saw that when I was a kid.
Speaker 3:But I had to go rewatch it the other day just to see it again, so it was interesting.
Speaker 2:Was it Gene Hackman? Is he the yeah?
Speaker 3:that's right. Yeah, yeah, gene Hackman.
Speaker 2:Good stuff, all right. Any last thoughts that you'd like to give the audience before we let you go? Gene, you've been super gracious with your time.
Speaker 3:No, just if you reach out to me directly. You can just go through Hoosier Admin and you can find me there. You also go to parent1.com of Indianapolis or Cincinnati. You can find me there as well. I'm happy to chat. If people have further questions or want to learn more, I'm happy to help out.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thanks so much, Gene, and for the listeners. That's all we have for this week, but we will see you next week.
