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
From 110K To $1.7M: How Ryan Pettis Scaled Fast
What does it take to jump from $110,000 to $1.1 million in a single year—and then keep climbing toward $2 million? Ryan Pettis joins us to share the unvarnished playbook: get crystal clear on the end goal, surround yourself with bigger players, and execute faster than your fear. He started at 15 with his great uncle, saw the gap in professionalism, left college to go all-in, and then built a business that runs on systems instead of heroics.
We dig into the real inflection points: stepping off the tools, investing in marketing with the right partners, and installing the roles that matter—office admin, production manager, and finally a sales rep who fits the culture. Ryan explains why the jump from $1 million to $1.7 million was tougher than getting to seven figures, how callbacks and crew mismatches exposed missing SOPs, and the exact cadence he used to stabilize quality: weekly 1:1s, team meetings, SMART goals, and relentless follow-up until new behaviors stick.
Hiring is where many owners stall, so we go deep there too. Ryan hires for coachability, professionalism, and competitive drive over industry experience—his new sales rep had never painted a wall. We break down how to define role avatars, screen for values alignment, and use DISC assessments to tailor coaching and pace change. You’ll hear practical sales metrics—close rate, average job size, net sales per lead—and how transparency turns team members into intrapreneurs who protect margin and push growth.
If you’ve been collecting insights but not changing behavior, this conversation is your nudge to act within 48 hours. Set the target, borrow belief from mentors who play bigger, build systems that outlast you, and coach people instead of managing tasks. Subscribe, share this with another contractor aiming for seven figures, and leave a review with the one change you’ll implement this week.
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 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. I'm super excited today to be speaking with Ryan Pettis. He's built a great business. Welcome to the podcast, Ryan. How's it going?
SPEAKER_00:Going great, Daniel. Thank you so much for having me out here today. I've seen a lot of what you guys are doing and helping a ton of people out there. It's uhwesome. Saving a lot of people money too. So that's great.
SPEAKER_01:I appreciate you saying that. And I know you're killing it over there as well. Um, could you just give folks an understanding of who you are and what you've accomplished? How did you get started in the painting industry? And what have been some major milestones along the way?
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, so I started um when I was 15, I started just painting with my great uncle, and he was a painter for a while, uh, about 40 years, started to learn from him and uh kind of realized that there's a big lack in the industry of professionalism. So really just sought out to giving that personalized experience, giving it the personalized, professional, um, you're taking care of experience. And I'm not necessarily always like the you know, absolute 100%. We had the best products, best quality, but just giving that experience has been something that we've really valued going through that. And so starting with my great uncle, we would for the first couple of years, he would get a project, I'd work with him, I'd get a project, I'd go work with him. And like it was kind of just this family thing that we did for a bit, and then he retired. So it was kind of like I kind of had to make a decision once once we kind of parted ways and he retired. I was actually in college, I went to college for about um a semester and a half. And we got to that spring semester and we were about halfway through, and he was kind of slowing down. And I was like, man, I either need to decide do I am I gonna do college or am I gonna go full into this painting company? And I remember being on a call with Sam Creaney from uh Forward Media, and he was like, dude, just go into it, push it, go for it. So I was like, all right, we're gonna go full on. Uh, dropped out of college, went full on to the painting industry, um, got hooked up with Joel Marcado pretty early. And I think those were some of like the bigger milestones of like Sam, uh, well, Spencer Hayward uh kind of brought me into this group of painting companies and professionalism. And then Sam from Forward Media helped me with like kind of get Facebook set up, and then um meeting with Joel Marcado, he was just he changed my life, not only the business, but he changed my life. And then from there it was just kind of figuring out like what's the next step, and then hiring an office admin, and then hiring a production manager, and then growing the company and hiring sales. And it's just kind of that that as you go, hiring the people and then realizing like, oh no, we're not making any money, what's going on? And then okay, now we need to make one, now we have to pay this bill, and like figuring out all that um has been pretty interesting as we grow.
SPEAKER_01:No, that's awesome. Um, so how how long have you been running your painting business at this point?
SPEAKER_00:So when I when I turned 50, when I was 15 in the summer, so I was my birthday's in the winter, so I was about halfway through, worked with my great uncle for that half of the year till I turned 16. Once I turned 16, I started my own company. So and I'm 20, just turned 21 about a week ago. So it's been about five years um that we've been running the painting company. But the first couple of years, it was kind of more so working with my uncle, and he just had I had kind of had a company, but it was kind of working for him.
SPEAKER_01:Gotcha. So five years, you know, you started uh with your um your great uncle. And where where were you in terms of revenue from when you started to now?
SPEAKER_00:Oh man. Um, when we started, I mean, we were probably doing maybe 40,000 a year. I mean, it was very small. I was going to school, I still wanted to hang out with friends, you know, 16, so I was still kind of living that life. Um 17, I think we kind of brought it up to like 70,000. Um, when I was 18, I think we kind of brought it up closer to like 100. And then um turn 19, we were at 110. Um, turn 20, we went to 1.1 million and then turn 21, and this year we'll finish just shy of about 2 million.
SPEAKER_01:All right, that that's amazing. So just make sure I got that right. 19, you're at 110,000 and then 20, you're at a million. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, it went from 110 to 1.1.
SPEAKER_01:All right. So you you 10x in one year. Yeah. That that sounds like a pretty crazy ride. Uh, what happened?
SPEAKER_00:Um, what happened? Yeah, a lot of things happened. Um, I realized that um you can make a business out of a painting company instead of just going to paint every day. Uh, I took myself off the tools. I hired marketers, Facebook, I hired Ford Media, and I hired Joel Marcado. And just being around those people just kind of pushed growth. It was a lot of work, uh, a lot of late nights, a lot of really early mornings, 4:30 a.m., 5 a.m., waking up and in the office till 11 o'clock. But it all of that, yeah, it's just a grind. Um, but a lot of support, which I feel like if you can, if you can find a mentor, you can find a group that you can be around, I think that's where it can really help you get to that next spot. Because some people look at a million and they're like, man, I want to hit seven figures. That's crazy. And some people look at a million like that's like 10% of our revenue. Like, you got it, you're nothing. Yes. Right. So it's it's all in like how you put the perspective. And I think when you hang around people that look at a million dollars of like, you're just starting, like, that's not that much. I think it forces you to go to the next level versus people that are at stuck at that 500,000, 700,000. Um, they're not driving you to hit that million mark. I think if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:No, that that makes a lot of sense. So it sounds like you got linked up with Joel Mercado, Joel Mercado, uh, Ford Media Marketing. You got LinkedIn with um uh Spencer Hayward, and kind of in the group of people who were had big goals, were doing a lot of revenue, uh, or had done it before. And just from kind of it's that saying it's like you're the average of the five people you hang out with the most.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:That's what it kind of sounds like. So you you basically kind of immersed yourself with successful folks and probably I'd imagine started learning a lot quicker, and you were able to take that and implement it very quickly, apparently, if you 10x the business. Um, what what was were there any big unlocks, you know, from 19 years old to 20 years old? Like what what what do you think really moved the needle in that time frame?
SPEAKER_00:That's a great question. Um real quick to go back to that, like you you are the people like the five people you surround yourself with and execution. I think it's a great saying. And I think it's 100% true. I think another thing that a lot of people don't realize is that all the answers they need to grow are all right in front of them. You know, you look at podcasts like yourself, you look at podcasts like Painter Growth, uh Painter, Paint Your Path Podcast, like all these podcasts, you listen to them, you will find the answers that you need to grow. But there's maybe 30, 20% of people that will listen to the podcast. And out of those 20%, there's 1% of people that are actually going to execute. And I think listening to these podcasts, hearing other stories, and then realizing how can I take that information, put it into my business and execute it. And I'm not talking like someone comes, listens to this podcast, and they hear something that they want to do, and three months later they're doing it. I'm talking they hear something tomorrow, they're implementing it. And then by the next day, it's already full on company wide. This is what we're doing. Let's try it. And I think where a lot of people might slow down their growth or maybe fail a little bit on that is the sense where they they don't execute as fast or they get scared, they get nervous. And I'm not saying that like executing super quick is always good, right? Because we've done that and we've been like, oh crap, like we screwed up. And you just kind of have to figure it out and go from there. Um, I think the biggest things that we've unlocked is just coachability, you know, like not being above yourself. So like I I hear some people around us where it's like, I don't, I don't need a coach, you know, I don't need someone to tell me how to do this. I'll just I'm gonna grow. I'm gonna keep doing it. And if you it depends on your goals, right? Because it tends it depends on what your intentionality is of the business. If you want to grow the business to not be involved in the day-to-day, I think you need a coach. You need maybe not a coach, but you need people surrounded by yourself to do that. Um, but I think if you if you enjoy being on the tools, you enjoy doing everything, um, then do that. Like if you love your craft, go for that. But I think for me, it was really identifying like what is my goal? And for me, my goal is to not be involved in the day-to-day. I want a five million dollar company at least that we can have an ops manager, we can have someone that's managing the company, and I could be out of the day-to-day. So I can live my life, I can enjoy my life. Um, and I've grinded really hard to be able to get there. And I think when you understand like what your goal is, I think everything else gets clear. And for me, it was really deciding like what is my end goal? What do I need to get there? And what do I need to accomplish? Who do I need in the organization? You know, how many leads do I need? What do I need here? So it's just really breaking everything down. Um, that was probably like my biggest unlock, realizing what I wanted.
SPEAKER_01:So your biggest unlock was getting really clear on what your your goal is and how to get there. And how to get there.
SPEAKER_00:And who I need to be surrounded with and what what things are needed to be there for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And then just from there, just implementing. Because I think you're you're right where you said a lot of folks they might be doing the first part, which is they're listening to the right podcast, they're going to events, maybe, maybe um maybe they're even they they have a coach even. But they're not implementing either fast enough or enough to uh uh to take advantage of the learning that that's uh uh supposedly is happening, right? Um I think Alex Hermozzi talks about this a little bit where he's like you didn't really learn anything if you didn't change your behavior. So if if you you're going to a conference and you supposedly learned a bunch of stuff, but if you didn't change anything you've you do in your day-to-day life or in your business, you probably didn't really learn anything. You just kind of were entertained uh with information and then moved on. Uh so it sounds like from from what you're saying, is you did a lot of implementing to see what worked. You took, you know, learned from your coach or from whoever and implemented it quickly, like the next day, even, or or that week to to see what worked and what didn't, or how you could tweak it to make it work. Is that am I reading that right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, no, you're exactly right. That's exactly what we did. We took we took little nuggets from painting companies across the country that were super successful, and we I took my favorite things and I put it into the company, and I said, these are things that we need to have, and then did them right away. Um, and yeah, you're you're exactly right on what you're saying for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Cool. Um so you you 10x in one year by getting clarity on what you wanted to accomplish and then how to do it, and then just hanging around the with those with that group of folks that helps you get there. What was the biggest challenge during that year?
SPEAKER_00:Oof, biggest challenge. Um oh man, I think time is always one of them. Like I don't have enough time to do these things. Um, I was trying to do the sales while still running a million-dollar company when I I think um I think was fine for that year. I think like when we did a million, I think that was fine. You know, I think it was great. Um the biggest challenge was just like really understanding the processes of like you go from 100,000, you're you're painting yourself. You maybe have a few helpers, possibly, maybe. Um, and then you go to what do you have, 10, 12 painters, you go to a production manager, you go to an office admin. Now, what do these people do? Like, what is their role? What are the responsibilities? Like, we didn't even have a description of job titles and like what you're responsible for until January of this past year, which was after we hit a million. And it was like no one really knew what they were supposed to be doing. So I feel like, but and I didn't have the time to build it out, right? I didn't have the time to tell you like this is what you're responsible for. Here's your SOPs, this is your processes. Um, I still don't even have them all built out, but I have them built out so we can operate. Um, so we're close. But I think the year, the year from a hundred thousand to a million was, dare I say, not that bad. It, it, it, it wasn't as bad as I I thought it would be. Um, it was tough, yeah, but I think the hardest year that we had was this past year of that a million to 1.7, because I did all the sales. We were hired for a sales rep the whole year, but I couldn't focus on the business. I couldn't focus on the growth, I couldn't focus on structure because my days were so set on growth or so set on sales, uh selling. And I mean, I had a 50%, I have a 50% close rate. We have a$5,300 average job size. We're NSLI is about$2,600. We're we're I'm hitting those good metrics to be able to keep the business growing. But I'm a great salesperson, but that's not where I should be. I'm even better on the back end because I know I can understand numbers, I understand the business processes, I'm great with marketing, I can figure that stuff out. So I think the biggest roadblock would be really myself on just being able to step away, put someone in there. But yeah, people always talk about like that that zero to a million. I feel like that was easier than the one to 1.7. I don't know if you hear that from anyone else, but for me, that was my case.
SPEAKER_01:I think most well, most folks don't get to a million. So it's like that's what you hear most about. Uh, but you're probably right in that it's it's always harder as you as you grow in your business, you know, as your business grows, you're you're getting to the next level. The boss to beat is always harder. Um, but uh it's just less people have beat that boss, so you hear less about it.
SPEAKER_00:Uh but uh I think yeah, I think maybe real quick, I think one thing that really helped me is I've never been a painter. Like, yes, I painted houses with my great uncle, I helped, I I I kind of knew what I was doing. The only kitchen cabinets that I've ever sprayed is my house, and I screwed them up. But we specialize in cabinets, we do craps on the cabinets. Like I we do knock down ceilings. I could not even do a knockdown ceiling. I don't even know, like I don't know, like I don't know how I don't even know where it'd start. So, like for me, I love the trade, the trade's great, but I don't know how to do it. So for me to be able to tell people, like, yeah, you go do this, you know how to do that, focus on it, do it. I'm gonna focus over here. I think I see people where they they try to go back to the tools, where they try to go back and like, I'm the only one that can do it this good. I'm the only one who can have it this done this way. It's not true. If you if you could at like find people that know what they're doing or coach people on your process, they can do that and allows you to focus somewhere else. So for me, not knowing how to do things actually increased me to be able to focus on what I am good at, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. No, it makes last podcast that I can't remember, or a couple of podcasts ago, I was talking with somebody about this, where it is actually helpful to not know how to do the thing because you feel like you're not tempted to take it over because you know you're not gonna be the good person to do it. So it kind of helps you to to grow more more quickly. Whereas like if you're a if you're a crafts person and you have super high standards and you're just amazing at painting, that's gonna be harder to give up and you know to to give that to someone else when you it's easy for you to just jump in and say, like, hey, you need to do it this way, or let me let me just do it for you real quick, which is easy in like the short term, but it's harder in the long term because then you're you're basically robbing that person the opportunity to to grow their skill set when you step in for them. So that does make complete sense. Um let's so uh doing the the 10x uh when you're when you were 20 from 110,000 to 1.1 million. Uh the the thing that was uh difficult was the lack of processes and clear duties and responsibilities because you were just basically super small, it went 1.1 really quickly, and that was the biggest challenge, but you got through it and and you're you know correcting that that issue. What was the um then you said from 1 million to 1.7, it's you know 70% growth, still really fast growth. Uh you were saying that you were still doing the sales, and this is residential repaint, all of this?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, every maybe 30,000 from commercial and a 99%, 99.8% residential repaint.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So that's a lot of a lot of sales calls, and you're doing all of them while also trying to make sure that the business was running. So uh so it sounds like the biggest um bottleneck was you in that case, where you were just kind of spread then because you were you're the salesperson, but you were also you had a production manager, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. We hired one when we went from zero to a million. That was a big help there.
SPEAKER_01:But you were still kind of overall responsible for marketing, even though you did have a marketing company, still like overseeing it, and you're you're still overseeing your production manager, like I'm sure mentoring or you know, giving feedback. And did you have an office admin or yeah, yeah, we've had an office admin all the time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And so you're also their boss, too. So uh you're doing a lot of things. So could you how did I guess um how did you get through that period? And what what why did you wait so long to do to uh to hire a salesperson?
SPEAKER_00:I think to answer your last question first is I didn't want to settle. Um we had a ton of applicants. We have a ton of applicants, but uh we have a very unique culture at our company. I think we do, of we get along really well. It's not Like it's a like we joke around with each other, we we laugh, we have fun. It's not like this, oh, I gotta go to work and I gotta do this, gotta do that. Like we enjoy what we do, and I wanted someone that could fit that culture, so I wasn't gonna put someone in the position that wouldn't match with the rest of our company. Um, you're exactly right though. We did, I did a I did so much this past year, and I think one of the one of the biggest things that that helped this year was my wife and I being on the same page of this is the goal. I know we have to sacrifice right now, but we're sacrificing to get here. And her and I understanding that. So when I would get up at 4:30 and I didn't end my day till eight o'clock at night, she was okay with it because she knew that, hey, we're sacrificing this because we're gonna get to here. And she would help with the business and do stuff like that. But I think I hear a lot of people were like, their spouse isn't happy with them because they're working so much or their family life isn't working. Um, but I think setting clear expectations of where do we want to go? And then once you identify where do you want to go, uh, how are you gonna get there? Well, if we want to make X amount of dollars and I'm still gonna sell because we don't have a salesperson, that means I'm gonna have to work those hours. And I think for me is is putting a lot of trust in our team of like, I didn't have time to manage them and coach them. I hate the word manage. I I think the word manage should really be coach because managing you're telling people what to do. Uh so I think coaching them is something that I kind of lacked on this year, especially our production manager. And just this past month and a half ago, we or two months ago, two and a half months ago, we hired a sales rep, um, a consultant to go out, meet with homeowners, discuss the project, give them a proposal, uh, and get the job closed. And it takes a lot of work to coach someone, to develop them, to teach them your process and also ensure that they follow through on it. And for this past year, block scheduling really helped me of like this time I'm doing this, this time I'm doing that. Um, sales are between this and this time, and just kind of cramming everything in. Not every sales appointment went the exact way I wanted, where I was able to present everything, I was able to go through everything. Not every project had the same outcome, even if it was the same type of project, because we didn't have processes in place, because I wasn't able to sit there and build them and work with our production manager. So this year was kind of a crapshoot in some ways, but yet our goal was 1.5, and we'll probably end at like 1.7, 1.8 somewhere in there. So we still did better revenue-wise, but there was a point in the summer where we had a ho we had a really high callback rate, our quality wasn't there, we had the wrong crews in the wrong places, we had the wrong crews on the wrong jobs. It was just a lot of things went wrong. And I think learning that and then identifying like how can we fix this moving forward is really good. But it was a lot of work, and I don't think that anyone should do that. What I did of like that 1.1 or 1.7, like in doing all of the sales, I think it's just too much. Um too much to do successfully, and each other role that you have to fill because there was a lot of lack of leadership, there's a lack of development. Um, one thing that I think helped though is that we do I do meet one-on-one with our team weekly. So our production manager, our salesperson, our office haven't. We have a team meeting as well, and it's the same time every week, all the time. And just reconnecting with them, discussing challenges, discussing how we're gonna change it, going to the next year next week, and then recapping it. How do we do what's the next challenge? Fix that, recap it. There was a bunch of that. Literally every week for almost four months, we were changing things. It's like non-stop. Um, but our team's great. Like we have a a rock star office admin, a rockstar product production manager, and a salesperson who's just starting and he's starting to kill it as well. So really having the right people in the right seats help.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. I th I think uh just the fact that you're able to 10x in one year is a testament to your team because if you didn't have a rockstar team, you probably probably wouldn't be able to produce that much revenue uh that quickly. Uh so that makes a lot of sense. And you mentioned also before that you kind of waited a little bit longer for the salesperson because you're looking for the right person. So I guess what are you doing on the hiring side to make sure you're getting those A players?
SPEAKER_00:Uh so we actually signed up with Hire Bus. And they are going through, they're interviewing, they're kind of seeing um getting the people in, and then um from there, I'm interviewing them and just kind of doing my final like, hey, are you gonna be a good fit, a good culture fit? I mean, right, everyone should have an avatar for each position that you're looking for. What is the type of person that you want? Get this person, and then do you match the these core values? If you don't match, you're gone. If you do match, yep, let's hire you, let's see how it goes. And we just couldn't find someone that matched our values and matched what we had uh until about a couple months ago.
SPEAKER_01:So you mentioned core values. Um, I'm assuming skill would be one of those things that you're looking for. Uh is there any other things that you're looking to make sure that is the right person?
SPEAKER_00:Funny enough, the sales rep that we hired, he has never done in home sales before and he knows nothing about paint. He's never painted a wall in his life. Nothing. So we're really not looking for that, right? We're looking, we want someone who's coachable, who's willing to develop and willing to learn our process. We want someone who is professional, who automatically they're professional. They dress nice, they present themselves nice, their texts, their calls, everything's professional. Um, and someone who's willing to go after it, someone who's willing to go above and beyond, who's willing to um compete, you know, someone who's willing to just try hard, go for it. If something doesn't work, the next deal is gonna close, the next door is gonna open. And like those are really the few things that we're looking for. And they seem so basic, but there's not a lot of people out there like that. And business owners are usually that way of like compete to the next thing. If this doesn't work, let's try this. Um, we have to succeed. But it's it's I think finding in what we would call an entrepreneur. You know, your entrepreneur is the owner of the company, they're building the company or whatever. But your entrepreneurs, the people that you hire, that they feel the same way that you feel about the company of let's grow it, let's get it better. Like I just had a sit down with our project manager of like, what is your goal for next year? Like, what do you think the company can do? And the same answer he gave me was what I already put down on paper and already kind of projected. So being aligned and knowing like your team knows where your company's at. They know your numbers, they know where the company's at, production, job costing, gross profit. They know those numbers and they now become the entrepreneur of I want to protect this company. I want this company to grow because I see the growth and I see what's coming versus someone who's not. If that kind of answers your question, I don't know if it does.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, for sure. And I I know you're some of this might be because you're using hire bus, but how are you screening for coachability, professionalism, core values and being competitive?
SPEAKER_00:I think, yeah, a lot of it comes down to higher bus, like what their scores and stuff like that. But the other thing is just having a conversation about them, you know, like what what's your goal in you know, one in five years, both personally and professionally. And if they're like, hey, I I want to kind of do similar to what I did last year, um, want to kind of comfortable with this or whatever. If you can hear complacency, they're not gonna be a good salesperson. You want someone who's going to drive who's we do at our company. Anyone else they can do whatever they want, but at our company, we want someone who's gonna drive to the next sale. Um, coachability, I think, is is a really hard thing to know before you interview them or like as you're interviewing them until they actually get started. So I think finding ways to ask those questions of, hey, do you have a sales process? Yes. And are you really comfortable with that? Are you open to learning a different one? Or do you kind of you you want to stick with what you have? Well, I like what I have. I'm, you know, when I have something, I kind of like to stick with that. Okay, sounds good. Immediately, hey, we have a process, we want them to follow it. We've invested tens of thousands of dollars into it. If you are telling me right now you want me to you want to stick to your process, how is this gonna work out? You know, and then you also have someone, you know, we had someone who wanted to change our sales process, who wanted to change our um our compensation structure, who didn't agree with our um, they said our average job size wasn't accurate. And it's like, I track the numbers, I know what's going on. And if you don't trust me here, how can you trust me there?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So really just identifying asking questions where you're not giving them the answer, but you know the answer that you want. And if they don't answer the right way, it's not gonna work. So I think that's something that we look at as well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And and once you can get those A players in, it makes your life so much easier. I'm I'm sure you've experienced it's just uh the the the comparison of getting an A player in versus getting a C player in, it's it's pretty painful, um drastic difference there. And and I think it goes back to what you're saying is that you're able to really because you have those A players in those seats, you're able to really trust your team and you know that it's getting taken care of. They're doing their best to make sure things are working and and if they can't figure it out, they're they're working through those and problem solving and and trying to make it happen. Yeah. Um are there any because you you know you're doing those those weekly meetings um when you're giving somebody how do you task somebody like how to to ensure that you're communicating what you want to happen and um giving them but giving them the leeway to figure it out as well, um like so that it gets accomplished. Like how do you how do you work with your team to to get things done? Is there s a certain format of how you ask them to do things or how how do you approach that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a great that's a really good question. I'm gonna go maybe even a little bit deeper on that. Um I think that comes down to coaching, I I think personally, of when you're you need your team to do something, it's a lot of people. You're familiar with John C. Maxwell?
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Possibly, yeah. So he has that book, Five Levels of Leadership. And I don't know if you're familiar with that or any of the listeners are, but he talks about a positional leader where you're the boss, you're in charge, listen to me, go do it. Versus the person who can have that influence, you know, the fifth level, the top level of that influence where hey, like let's try this, like let's go here, you know, maybe it works to do that. And I never try to tell our team do this, this, and this. What I try to say is, hey, what's working well, what's not working well, what do you think we should do differently? How do you think we should accomplish that? When do you think we can have that completed? And from go from there. Um, so I'm basically creating a SMART goal, but they are giving me what's realistic for them and then their answers. Now, if they tell me it's gonna take us two years to do that, I'm gonna say, hey, come on, man. Like, what's realistic of when we can do it? Is it actually gonna be like a month or is it a week? Like, when can we actually complete this? Uh, well, I guess if I did this, this, and this, we could get it done in a month. Yeah, that's more reasonable. Let's let's do X, Y, Z, you know, whatever it is. And I think really understanding your people, because for a project manager, I could be a two, but our sales rep, I'm a five on the levels of leadership. And I'm way more influence with our sales rep than I do with our project manager. And how can I influence him to make decisions and be that entrepreneur and follow kind of what I'm asking him to do? And I think the first part starts off as like, you need to be very clear on your expectations of this is what I expect, this is what I want done, this is what I need you to do. Um, how do you feel you can do that? What do you foresee being a challenge? How do you overcome those challenges? When can it be a like asking all those questions? And then once they kind of figure that out, this is where a lot of people that I've seen fail as managers and as leaders, they never reconnect with them. So they say, hey, go do this. Okay, it's done. I delegated it. I don't ever have to touch it again. We're good. But three months later, you go back to that person and you're like, dude, what's going on? Why didn't you do this? Like, why aren't you doing this anymore? Well, you as the leader have to take that responsibility to follow up with them each week, you know, or whatever, how quick you want it done. For us, we just implemented a new process in production for initial walkthroughs. Well, I go do an initial walkthrough, and then our project manager does an initial walkthrough and I review it. And then I do one and he does one. And then I leave him be for a week, I come back and I watch him do the walkthrough. Well, I watch him do the walkthrough. I'm like, dude, you forgot these three things. I have the SOP. Let's read it, let's figure it out. Okay, I need you to hit on these three things. I do another walkthrough, I let him be. Come back two weeks later. Hey, you're still forgetting this one thing. I need you to make sure you follow through on this. Okay, sounds good. I come back a month later. Is this good? Yep, you're doing good, great. I come back a month later. Oh, remember you're falling off the trail. Get back on here. And I think a lot of people don't want to take the time to do that because they want to be able to delegate and say, I never have to worry about this again. And a strong leader will follow up with them, ensure it's getting done, and be able to help them and coach them to accomplish it. And for me, that's something that I've really tried to do this year of understanding our team, what makes them tick? You know, what does their disk assessment say? How should I coach them? How should I mentor them? And then really figuring out once I know how to coach you, let me change a process that will help the company and guide you to that. And I think for me, that's been something really big about asking our team to do things, about coaching them, stuff like that. Um, if that's a little bit deeper, but hopefully that makes sense.
SPEAKER_01:No, no, that's really good. I I love it. And you mentioned the disk assessment. And uh so when they come through hire bus, that's where they're getting that disc, filling out that disk.
SPEAKER_00:They don't get a disk through hire bus. Oh, is it not through hire bus? You do it a different. No, so that's separate. Yep. So there's a hire bus score where hire bus has their own assessment. And then once they complete that assessment, we call them, we review them if everything kind of sounds good. Then they're completing Jason Phillips disk assessment. And at that point, we're understanding how do you tick, what what do you like, what do you not like, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And for those listening, disk is basically like a personality assessment. Um vectors, dominance, influence, supporting, and conscientiousness, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, steadiness, support, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So that you use that disc uh assessment to understand how they're motivated and how you can avoid, you know, um, I guess speaking to them in a manner that might not connect with them as well. So speaking to them in a way that will connect with them and motivate them better. Is that is that right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you're exactly right. And and a way that maybe someone can understand that a little bit more is um someone who likes processes and systems, the way that you approach a system change is gonna be different than the way that you approach someone who just is always trying to get more done. Um, someone who's always like go super dominant, like go, go, go, go, go. You can throw in a system, they're gonna learn it quick, they're gonna execute. But someone who's a little slower paced, who likes the system, who likes the processes, if you change that, you have to input that slowly and you have to get them to realize that they like it because it's helping them, versus the faster-paced person, you can implement it and they're ready to go. So it's just, and that's different for each one on your team. So you have to understand them and understand how to coach them on it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And with the C, you're gonna probably have to answer a bunch of why questions as well. You know, you can ask my wife uh how how how uh she knows that. So cool. No, I I think this is a really awesome conversation. I feel like we could keep going for like another couple hours, um, but I want to be respectful of your time. Do you have any last thoughts or asks of the audience before we let you go?
SPEAKER_00:Um, not so much. I think the the thing that I want to probably leave people with is we've we've said a lot of things, and take the things that we've said and look at them on a deeper level of leadership, of coaching, of development, of the people that you have. Like those are all things that when you look at them on a deeper level, you'll be able to succeed. You'll be able to do more uh and really identifying those. Take action. Don't just listen to this podcast and be like, well, I'm gonna go back to my day-to-day. Like, and I'm not saying what works for me is gonna work for everyone, because that's not true. Like everyone does things differently. Um, but go grab that book, John C. Maxwell, Five Levels of Leadership. Understand people, make your team uh take the disc assessment, show them why we're gonna take it, show them how it's gonna help them. Understand people, understand your team, support them, let them grow. And once you get there, watch your whole company grow. Everyone's gonna grow together. So I want to leave leave with that.
SPEAKER_01:That's great. Great last thought. So I really appreciate your time, Ryan. And for the listeners, with that, we will see you next week.
