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
What If Your Painting Business Became Equity Instead Of A Job
In this episode of The Profitable Painter Podcast, Daniel sits down with Benson, founder of Legacy Paint Holdings, one of the most ambitious and innovative roll-ups in the modern painting industry.
Benson’s story is extraordinary: starting a painting company in high school during the 2020 lockdown, scaling to multi-location operations while still in college, consulting for over 100 painting companies, and now leading an aggressive nationwide acquisition strategy with 8 companies already in the portfolio.
He shares deep insights into systems, leadership, roll-ups, valuation, growth mindset, and what it really takes to build a $100M organization, the goal he's now pursuing for 2030.
If you’re a painting contractor interested in scaling, selling, or simply building a more powerful business structure, this episode is packed with rare and valuable knowledge.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How Benson went from a Craigslist ad and a minivan to running multi-location painting companies.
- The lessons from overseeing 300+ projects in one summer while still in college.
- What he Learned working with 100+ painting companies as a systems consultant.
- Why “systems”, not skill, determine whether a business scales or stalls.
- How traditional roll-ups work and why painting is primed for massive consolidation.
- Who Legacy Paint Holdings is looking to acquire, and why younger, hungry operators thrive in the model.
- Why mindset, reading, mentorship, and “failing fast” are superpowers in business.
This episode is part masterclass, part blueprint, and part inspiration, essential listening for any contractor thinking bigger.
Subscribe now and learn how to build, scale, and exit a painting business the smart way.
For being a loyal listener, I want to send you a copy of my new book Profitable Painter. Inside, I’ll show you the exact frameworks that have helped painting businesses save big on taxes, increase profits, and scale with confidence
Head over to profitablepaintercpa.com/book and grab your copy today. Don’t wait — this is my gift to you for being part of the Profitable Painter community.
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_01:Welcome to the Profitable Painter Podcast, the show where painting contractors learn how to boost profits, cut taxes, and build a business that works for them. I'm your host, Daniel Honan, CPA, former painting business owner, and your guide to mastering the numbers that drive success. So let's dive in and make your business more profitable one episode at a time. Super excited today to speak with Benson from Legacy Paint Holdings. Welcome to the podcast, Benson. How's it going?
SPEAKER_02:Good, good. Thanks for having me on, Daniel.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. I know you got a lot of cool stuff going on uh at Legacy Paint Holdings. So super excited to dive into the conversation. Uh, could you just for the listeners, um, could you give us an idea of how did you get started in the painting industry and what's been your journey along the way?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I uh grew up in a contractor family on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My family has been in the trade since the 70s, ranging everything from mechanical contracting, heavy-duty construction, electric, landscaping, HVAC, you name it, my family's been been involved with. So from a very young age, I had a a front row seat to what it looked like to run a successful contracting business, specifically on the back end side of it. Uh, grew up very entrepreneurial, wanting to help with the family business, raking leaves, shoveling driveways, every little side hustle that uh teenager would have, which led me to my senior year of high school, uh, which was uh the COVID-19 pandemic 2020. I when the whole world shut down, my senior year of high school shut down, and I was just waiting to go off to college on Providence College, Rhode Island, where I got my business management degree. Uh and I knew I wanted to do something during that time period, and I had always known I wanted to start my own trades business, sort of following the family footsteps. And so in April of 2020, I started my first uh company, a small painting company with uh my brother, who's two years younger than me. Uh, we had a minivan we were driving around at the time and a couple ladders at my uh grandmother's house. And with the limited painting experience we had from mission trips in years past, uh we put an ad out on Craigslist and we started a painting company. Uh and very quickly became good at the back end side of it, uh the marketing, hiring people, systems, financial planning, all of that. And by the time we got to the end of June of that first year, was completely off the tools, doing estimates, managing projects, sort of above the day-to-day of the business. Uh, and realized we were we were doing something pretty, pretty unique, pretty special, um, sort of wrapped up that summer, uh, early August of 2020. We did over 30 projects during that first um first summer and learned a lot in the process. So I go off to school uh in Rhode Island Providence College, where joined the entrepreneurial circles that are there. Uh, and this is when I came to find out about the the larger student painting organizations that exist across the country, which I was unfamiliar with when I started my painting business in Pittsburgh. Uh, and as I was learning about this, uh it dawned on me that, well, why couldn't I just create or replicate a similar version of this, but do it actually through students, since I myself was a student at the time. Uh, and so a friend of mine that went to one of these sort of recruiting pitches, we got to talking after uh the meeting and said, Hey, you know, here's what I did in Pittsburgh. Why don't you do this in Providence this summer? I'll do it in Pittsburgh and you know, we'll see what can happen. Uh, and so we went full speed ahead, ran everything in Pittsburgh, ran everything in Providence. And that summer of 2021, across um two locations, we did over 100 projects uh that summer and learned even more doing that. Certainly the the multi-location aspect, managing multiple crews at the same time, which hadn't really done uh the previous summer, uh, all of the you know, financial planning and bookkeeping, you know, multi-location, understanding our numbers and our margins and everything there. Uh, and we wanted to do it just the two of us before we expanded it a little bigger. So we go back to school that fall with all this experience that we had, and we recruited three additional students to open three additional locations that next summer. Uh, and so that next summer, we were in uh southern Rhode Island, a town called Newport, uh, Hartford, Connecticut, uh, and just north of uh New Orleans in a town called Hammond, Louisiana. Uh, and had five locations running that summer. Across the five locations, we did about 300 projects, was a little bit less than 300 projects, uh, and was certainly burning the candle on both ends. That summer, I was driving back and forth from Pittsburgh to New England to Louisiana and you know, put like 60,000 miles on my truck that summer uh and learned a ton doing it. And so we we go back to school and we're doing a call, you know, 360-degree audit on the last three seasons um of doing this and realized a couple things. Thing number one, we were operating during a 14-week season, and there are 38 other weeks throughout the year that probably could, should be finding a way to make some money. Uh, and B, relying on high school and college students uh long term probably wasn't the best solution in building, you know, a strong, sustainable business. Uh, and so that fall, um, started a consulting business called Precision Painting Advisors, where we worked directly with painting companies uh across the United States, essentially saying what worked for us, we're gonna help you know these companies with. So everything from sales and marketing, HR, financial planning, um, doing basic things such as making budgets, job costing, you name it, we would help painting companies with. And by the time I got to Christmas of that year, 2022, uh it became clear to me that that's really where I was passionate about and where I wanted to lean into. So I exited the student painting company um at the time and dove full into the consulting way. Uh spent about the next two years uh doing that. And I worked with over 100 painting companies across the US. Uh, companies as small as doing$40,000,$50,000,$60,000 a year, right? Sort of one-man show that is just going job to job, all the way up to companies doing eight, nine,$10 million a year that had 80 guys out in the field on a given day. Uh, and so I got the whole range of everything there. And what it all came down eventually to me was one word, and that one word is systems. You either had the systems in place that you could plug in and then delegate throughout the organization, or you didn't, and you were the bottleneck that caused the business to not be able to scale and to grow. Uh, and got into to thinking about this and seeing sort of the trends in the economy that have been happening with roll-up groups that have been put together in the HVAC space, roofing, plumbing, landscaping, electric. But nobody was really doing a traditional roll-up in the painting space. And so last year, uh, it was August of 2024, we got a group of initial investors together, uh, and we started legacy paint holdings and began acquiring painting companies. We've been acquiring painting companies across the U.S. since uh September of 2024. Uh, we have eight companies in our portfolio right now, um, from New England to Michigan to Pennsylvania to uh Texas and Oklahoma. Uh we're pretty spread out at this point uh and have ambitious goals to continue to grow and to scale and to put together this traditional rollout. So uh excited to be here, excited to be on the podcast, sort of share a little bit more about uh my story, my journey, how how it can be helpful to the other painting contractors listening to this.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's all that's an amazing story. And uh so you started running your own painting business in high school. Yes, senior year. Okay. Uh and then you went from running running one painting business to multi-locations during uh student uh when you're a student at university, and instead of doing the traditional like student works painting or college works painting, you basically started your own version of that and ran multi-locations during college, and then and then uh towards the latter half of your college uh period, you actually started working as an advisor um to other painting businesses, working with over a hundred painting businesses from startup to ten million and helping them with their systems, and then uh and then most recently in this past year, or yeah, this past year, you've you've started a holding company. So that is incredible uh amount of learning that you have done. That's the only thing I can think of that's what you've been doing, is just an incredible amount of learning in a very quick amount of time. Um so I'm just like, how how did you uh what do you attribute? Are you uh like what are you doing to learn things so quickly and then it implement so quickly? Like uh what's the secret sauce? So take some notes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Um, I mean it's it's been we're coming up on six years since I started the the painting company this coming spring. And I I joke that I've gotten my sort of PhD in the painting business world over the last five, six years. Uh and really it's two things. I I think thing number one is I I try and I joke, but I I want to fail fast. And what I mean by that is I want to go quick, learn quick, make mistakes quick, and then not make the same mistake twice. And I mean, I have a laundry list of things that that I have done wrong and failed at. And once I failed once, I was able to create the system that you know prevented that failure from happening again in the future. Uh beyond that, I I'm an avid reader myself. Uh ever I made a New Year's resolution of myself uh in 2020 that I was going to read uh at least one book a week. And I have very, very consistently read a book a week for the last five years. Um you look at the 50 weeks in a year, multiply that by five, that's 250 books over the course of five years. And I I like everything from your your fiction to your nonfiction to the business specific books to the more broader political landscape books. Uh I just like learning and learning new things and then trying to implement those things in my life and my business. And I think um, you know, refusing to settle has been a big part of it as well and and setting big goals for myself. Like we we have a goal that by the time we get to 2030, we're gonna be a hundred million dollar company. And I have, you know, no doubt that that we're going to be able to accomplish that that goal and um set big goals, accomplish them, yeah, move on to the next one.
SPEAKER_01:So it sounds like deliberate the learning is deliberate. Uh it wasn't an accident. Um and so you you said you're reading a book a week and you said it ranges from different things. Are you so you is it just whatever you interests you, or is it like something you're trying to solve at the moment, or like or is a combination of things? Like because it it you're obviously very um goal-oriented and driven. So it when you said that you read sometimes just through fiction, uh, that kind of threw me a little bit because um, I would think if because of everything you've accomplished so quickly, I would guess that your books would just just be like things that I need to read to get to the next level. But it doesn't sound like that's what you're doing.
SPEAKER_02:It's a combination. And I will say uh I I sort of like to follow threads where they take me, right? So I'll I'll explore one topic that I'm interested in and I'll take that topic to its logical conclusion and sort of read the books and everything that that come up there. Um, and and so for for me, I think fiction, and I don't I don't read a ton of it to be honest. There are a couple of good authors that I like when they come out with you know new books and stuff. I I like to read. But I think reading in general, no matter what the topic is, and they're obviously like very specific sales books or very specific financial books or you know, very specific books that'll help you in a specific area get better at something. Uh, I like reading a lot of people's personal stories, memoirs, uh, understand uh people. And I think that's what reading allows you to do. Um, they they talk about uh there's a guy I follow whose name is Dennis Prager, um, and he talks about the three mirrors that we all have. Mirror number one is the mirror that you look at every day when you're brushing your teeth and you see back at yourself. Uh mirror number two is if you want to understand how you think or somebody else thinks, go read what they've written, and you'll have a good idea of how that person thinks. Uh and mirror number three is if you want to get an idea of what your character is or somebody else's character, go find the five people that you spend the most time around. Whether it's yourself or somebody else, you have a good idea of yourself or somebody else's character. And I think on the writing side, uh the business world is so much about relationships and building relationships, and especially in the acquisition space that I'm in now, uh that's entirely what this business is about. And I like to understand different ways of thinking and different um perspectives of the world. Um, you know, and and wherever the threads take me, I'll I'll go and I'll follow them. Uh, you know, I I think it's good to have your your business specific books, but I think it's good as well to have a mix of of different perspectives that that are in there as well.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so it sounds like you're reading a lot of memoirs and autobiographies and biographies. Is that right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's a fair sentiment.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. No, that that that makes a lot of sense. Um and uh I I haven't done as much as probably you did. I uh for on the podcast for like a year I read a biography or autobiography a week. Um and it it definitely one of the I don't know who you who you were kind of I was kind of choosing entrepreneurs or military conquerors like Napoleon or something like that. Um and one thing that a common thread that uh that I saw was the something that you mentioned was thinking big, like having big goals was a common theme. And you can look at everyone everyone from Napoleon to Arnold Schwarzenegger to Jeff Bezos, like all those people who kind of accomplished more than you would think one man could accomplish, they always had like some really big goal, and and everyone kind of thought they were crazy uh for for going after it. Is that is that one of the things that you learned is to set goals higher bigger than what you th, you know, would initially kind of uh naturally set. Is that is that something you gleaned from your reading, or is that just uh an artifact of your personality?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'd say a couple things. One one of the characters that I've followed um closest, I would say, since I started my business personal development journey, uh has been Dr. Jordan Peterson. Uh you know, I read 12 Rules for Life right when it came out, followed his lecture series, and I've followed his his journey ever since. Uh and for for him, one of the big things that he says, which I completely subscribe to, is you need to set a goal, set an ambitious goal, you know, work backwards in terms of like what needs to get done every single day to accomplish that goal, and work every day like your life depends on it. And you're going to sooner or later accomplish whatever that goal you you initially set out was. And so certainly the the idea of goal setting and then being intentional, right? When they ask the uh quarterback at the end of the Super Bowl uh how he he won the Super Bowl and got there, he doesn't say I lucked myself in or I accidentally found myself here. Very similar in business and in life. You're not magically going to end up at the mountaintop. You have to deliberately plan and get there. And so that has been a big part of my journey as well. Uh and on a personal note, uh, you know, growing up, my my mom passed when I was quite young. I was nine years old, uh, sort of late elementary school, and had uh do have three younger siblings at the time. They were seven, five, and three. Uh, and we moved in with my grandmother. Um, and I had to take on a big role in terms of you know supporting my grandmother and helping to get us to the point where we are today. Uh and I learned from a young age the the power of just not giving up and to continue to push forward, push forward, push forward. Uh, you're gonna fail, you're gonna fall down, but you get back up, you keep pushing forward. Uh and I think a combination of like the the people that I followed and then you know the the personal experiences that have happened to me, like as as long as you just don't give up and you keep learning, uh you're going to become a a better person, have a better business, and be a whole lot closer to whatever that goal you have is. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you you mentioned it a couple of times now, um not being afraid to fail. Uh I think that's that's a a common fear of trying something that might seem a little risky, you know, like whether it's spending money on that marketing firm to help you grow your business or you know, hiring more of a team or hiring you know a certain position. Uh there's that that a fear of failure that's kind of preventing, which to be honest, they're probably right to fear. You probably are gonna fail when you try that, try something for the first time for sure. Um could you just tell me more about how you think about failure? And uh I guess did you have an issue with that initially? What what allowed you to kind of not be afraid to continue to just just push forward and fail multiple times and and not be worried about it and just learn and then move forward?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I I would say certainly growing up in an entrepreneurial household help. Right. Right. I I saw the the power of failure, you might be able to say, and the power of learning from from that failure. And so I I I guess I'm unique in that sense that that I understood growing up that it's okay to fail and it's not necessarily something to be afraid of, but something to expect because problems. Do happen, they will always happen, and you're just gonna have to learn how to overcome them and move forward. Uh, and so you know, I I definitely think that's a big part of it, but also just right and until you experience it yourself, and until you've knocked on 10 doors and been told no 10 times, and then had to knock on the 11th expecting a yes, like you're just not gonna get it in until you get it. And I think for, like you said, the contractors that might be afraid to you know spend a couple thousand dollars on on marketing or cleaning up their books or whatever it might be to invest back into themselves and back into their businesses. Um, you know, you're you you are eventually going to get it right, but along the way, you're gonna fail. You're gonna waste, you know, conceivably waste money. Uh and and there's gonna be um, you know, some roadblocks uh on on its way. And I think uh it's it's a lot easier in retrospect to take a look at you know your life and the years in your business and you know, paint the rosy picture that it might have been. But if you ask any successful person, they've had their share of stumbling blocks and failures along the way. It's just that they didn't give up when they they happen, right? Uh since we've been acquiring companies, we've had two that that we've acquired that haven't been good fits for the group, and we've had to, you know, cut our losses and move on from that. And that's something that has enabled us just within the past year plus of doing this, right? We now know very specifically what we're looking for, the type of business, the type of general manager that's gonna be running that business. We know exactly what we need now, but we probably wouldn't have had that if we didn't have a couple bad apples in the the first you know round of this. And so uh it's gonna happen. You have to expect failure and then learn fast and don't make the same mistake twice.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So just look, you know, you you've done so much so quickly, and we we talked about you're you're deliberately learning, you're not afraid to get the reps in and fail to speed up the learning process. Um is there anything else that before we move on from this that you think is a uh a key driver to being able to accomplish so much so quickly?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Uh I mean, like you said, we covered fail fast, learn fast, we covered the intentionality piece, we covered set your your big goals and and work towards those big goals. I I would say the the last big thing is surrounding yourself with the right people. And we talk about that third mirror, for example, of being character is who you spend the most amount of time with. And you typically become the the median of that group of close people that you're around. Uh and something I very intentionally did when I started um from the painting company to the consulting business to now the roll-up that we're putting together. Uh being mentored by somebody that is further along in the business world than I am today. And I have great mentors in the rollup space. I have one that exited twice from an HVAC roll-up studies put together. I have one that is pretty close to an exit in electric, and one that is pretty close in the landscaping um group right now. Really high quality, good guys that I talk to on a very, very regular basis and gather insights and data where they failed, so I don't make that same mistake. Uh and I think seeking those people out and whether those people I've I've paid mentors in the past, and I think it's it's good to have paid them. And I've also just connected with people and have built relationships with mentors where they wanted to help me and I needed help. Uh, and so I think having a little bit of both is helpful and investing in somebody that is further along in the path that you are, so that they can help steer you around those roadblocks is invaluable because then you get moved, you know, a couple months, maybe even years ahead of where you are. And you're still gonna fail yourself, but at least you have somebody to lean on that that has been there before and that's gonna help you in your journey.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and and going back to the biography, like especially autobiographies, those almost act like a kind of like a mentor almost, like the way that some of those I'm just thinking like Henry Ford's autobiography or um Sam Walton's, they're they're writing it and they're trying to basically kind of tell their kids or like the ones that come after them, like, hey, this is what I did, this is what I tried, this is what worked, this is what didn't work. So it's almost functions as a uh as a mentor uh for business, especially like those autobiographies of those like business owners that killed it. Um is that do you kind of view it the same way or I do, right?
SPEAKER_02:I I I think just reading it in general helps with that, right? You you understand more, you're learning more. And I I think it's a shame in in today's world where everything has been shifted towards the 15-second TikTok style videos, like we're not sitting down and reading and and learning anymore. Um and I think we've lost a lot in that sense. Um right, like I can't remember the last TikTok I watched, but I can sure remember the last book I read. Uh and like the lasting impact that a good book can have on you versus you know the meaningless short form video content that that exists today.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a great point. So let's just shift gears a little bit. I appreciate we kind of went really big on on there. Uh so I appreciate you going there with me. Um so legacy paint holding, uh you you mentioned that it's more of a traditional roll-up. Could you talk more about that?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Uh I mean, so roll-ups are nothing new. They've existed for as long as money has been invested into small businesses, these roll-up groups have happened. It's certainly not limited to the home services specialty contracting space. Say within the last five years, it's really been the golden age of private equities involvement in the home services space. Uh Wall Street Journal put out an article last October essentially saying if if you want to become a millionaire in today's economy, don't become a doctor, go become an electrician, go become a plumber, go become a skilled tradesman and run a skilled trades business. That is where the future of the economy is going. Uh, and so the roll-up, essentially what we're doing is pulling painting companies together. And we'll probably get to around 20 to 30 companies in the group before we eventually exit um, pulling their cash flow, pulling the revenues and the profits and systematizing and putting a ribbon on top of the business. And that's going to make the business inherently more valuable. So a typical painting company on their own in one location might sell for anywhere from two to four X at EBITDA. Whereas these roll-ups are selling all the time for anywhere from eight to as high as 16 times their earnings. Uh and you know, we've talked to private equity partners and groups about where you know we sort of need to be, and we're right within that range of eventually being in that eight to 12x earnings. And so it's it's the power of the economies of scale, where you get bigger numbers, more locations, uh, larger dollars, you're just going to get a much higher multiple on your earnings. And so what we're doing is that every partner that we get involved with, they are reinvesting back into the holding company, into the group. They are shareholders in the company. And so their ability to exit and to exit for a far greater multiple is is so much more than they would be able to ever you know accomplish on their own. And it's it's just what happens, right, when a large market like the painting industry is starts to consolidate in these roll-up groups.
SPEAKER_01:Gotcha. So uh just to recap, um, so a typical, let's just take an example. Let's say you have a five million dollar painting business that's netting a million dollars and net profit, aka EBITDA. So a million dollars in EBITDA, aka net profit, um, roughly speaking. So you could maybe sell that five million dollar painting business for like two million to four million, you know, that's that two to four multiple, because you basically take that two to four multiple and multiply it by a million, and that's you know, roughly speaking, you can maybe sell it for two to four million. But you're saying you're taking you know twenty, twenty, um, let's just say just to do the math easy, twenty of those five million companies, um, so that equals a hundred million in revenue, and instead of just doing a two to so a hundred million revenue on the same the same net margin, which was twenty percent, that would be twenty million in in net margin, net profit EBITDA, same thing. Uh so 20 million instead of just multiplying by two or four to get 40, yeah, multiply it by 10. So that would be 200 million, uh, or even even more. So um so basically you're you're combining these companies together so that you can um have a larger company overall under the same corporate you know structure, and then you can sell it for way more money because you'll bring in bigger players that are willing willing to spend more on on a company that has more EBITDA, more revenue. Um and then you're and the folks that are partnering up with you, it sounds like, and you can uh they're able to take advantage of that that roll-up success when you when you exit uh years from now. Is that right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and and so that that's the ultimate, right? There's sort of two primary reasons why a company joins our group. Yeah. Reason number one is we certainly grow and scale the business in the short term. We're providing the back-end support and the systems that are required for scale, but obviously long term, and we have a three to five year play here where you can go from essentially investing your business into the group um to turning you know into a millionaire within just a couple of years, right? It's it's very powerful what the economics of a rollup can do. And then even beyond that, to the beauty of the rollup space is the the multiple bytes out of the same apple, right? And so when we do get to the point where we exit, um, right, let's say an individual painting company at time of exit, their payout is five million dollars, just to use the round number. You know, they might um be given two million or three million dollars in cash and then reinvest that additional two or three million back into the next round that is going to happen. They will have the opportunity to get a nice return now on that two or three million dollars that they've reinvested. The next round will just be acquiring more painting companies, doing the same exact thing, and then flipping that to an even bigger private equity. Uh, and and so as that happens, uh, you turn your asset, your painting business into you know one dollars today, turns into five dollars tomorrow, turns to twenty dollars the the next day. Uh and and that just can't happen outside of any other vehicle of the roll-up.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. That yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. And uh uh it sounds like a great opportunity for some some folks. So can you talk more about where who would this be a good fit for? Um, like because I'm sure it's not a good fit for everybody. Uh who would really truly benefit from working with someone like Legacy Paint Holdings?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and we're very particular about the partners that that we bring on for the very reason of we need the right company, the right structure, and the right person at the helm of these companies. And so really we're we're looking for established businesses, right? We don't want the the one-man show or the you know company that has the seasonal helpers. We need an established business uh that at least has a crew or two out in the field, sort of bare minimum. Uh, and the owner of the company is not the guy that has the paintbrush in his hand from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. Uh ideally, we're looking for companies that are doing$750,000 or more in revenue, uh, that ideally have net profit margins of at least 15%, or more so shooting for 20 to 25%. Um and beyond that, we're looking for ambitious, hungry individuals. Uh and when I say what I mean that is the companies that we brought in, and I'm certainly not going to name them, but the companies that we brought in that that didn't work out uh was because they they sort of saw our group and our roll-up as more of a lack of better term, a retirement plan than something that they wanted to invest in and be involved with and wanted to grow. Uh and there just wasn't that that buy-in there. And and the two companies, older individuals that own these businesses, and seemed like a good fit at the time, but it just didn't work out the way we wanted it to. And so we're really looking for younger contractors as well. I think that's important for us in terms of the culture that we're building. Uh, I myself am 24 years old. Uh, company we just acquired in uh East Texas, the the guy running that business is just 23 years old. Uh the companies in our group, I mean, we're 40 and younger outside of one instance right now. Right. So we're young, ambitious, hungry guys. We do have a woman-owned company, uh that that that want to grow are eager and excited. Uh, and as long as those things are there, then then we're going to have a successful partnership. Um, you know, and and honestly, like to me, at this point, like the the person matters almost more so than the fundamentals of the business, because we know how to put the right structures in place, the right marketing team in place, the right production strategy in place, the right pricing systems. All of that is our bread and butter, and we know how to do it as well as anybody else does. And we can implement those things. But if we don't have the right driver in that vehicle pushing the business forward, then we might not even get involved in in the business in the first place. Um, and so that's sort of like the the ideal person that we're looking for. Established business, young, hungry, eager to grow, and and wants to create a legacy right for for themselves, their families, their businesses, their teams. Uh, all of that is super important to us.
SPEAKER_01:Gotcha. And you're the the benefit to them is they get that support to you've done this multiple times, obviously, on building the structure, helping with the systems, and helping you really grow that top line and and bottom line uh to get to the next level so that you you can take part in the the additional profits, and then obviously the long-term play is is that eventual um sale potentially uh that they could get that that high be take part in the the higher EBITDA um piece there. Absolutely. That's a pretty good summation. Okay, awesome. No, that's super interesting, and uh I feel like we could probably go on for the next couple hours. Um but I I know we got a little bit of a time limit here, so I want to provide you the opportunity to, you know, if you have any asks of the audience or any final thoughts, um, I'll open it up to you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I I think for the contractor listening to the podcast or podcasts in general that are in this specific niche, right? You you've probably already made the decision that I want to grow, I want to be better, I want my own business to be in a better space and a better spot than it is in right now. And certainly a financially focused podcast such as such as this one. And so talking about like the economics of the painting business and the roll-ups, and I'm sure that's appealing and intriguing to some of you. And we are actively looking for new partners uh across the country, right? We're we're not done in New England, we're not done in Pennsylvania, we're not done in the areas that that we are currently in. And so if this sounds like something that you know might be worth having a conversation or a sit-down about, uh, I would invite you to go to our website. It's legacypaintholdings.com. And there's a little form at the bottom of the website where you can fill it out and set up a conversation with uh myself or one of my team members. Uh, sit down with you, go through your numbers, go through your business, what your goals are, what your dreams are. And ultimately, if there's a fit, that that is our job to find that fit together. And and sort of the the last thing there is um so much of a painting contractor's potential is is all locked in their beliefs and and and what they believe they can or can't accomplish. Uh and it sounds really simple and really basic, but it definitely is true. If if you do believe that you can grow your company to five, six, seven, ten million dollars, and you set the goals and very, very specific, like micro-target micro goals, every single day that will help you to get to$10 million, you are going to get there. You're going to get a whole lot closer to there than you are today. So certainly don't don't limit yourself, don't limit your beliefs or your mindset or what you think is is possible because the second you stop growing is the second you start dying. And we we certainly don't want that as business owners. So I I appreciate the time, Daniel. Uh, it was was definitely a great conversation that we had here today. And um I I hope your your audience found some some at least uh a couple key takeaways that they can uh implement in their business from this.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I I really appreciate your time. I think it was a super interesting conversation. You've you've accomplished so much so quickly, and uh I uh I was taking notes, so I'm sure other people were too. Um I really appreciate your time, Benson. And for the audience and the listeners, with that, we will see you next week.
