Learn What is Holding You Back from Hitting $1Mil

Summary

In this episode of the Off the Ladder podcast, host Branden Sewell shares his journey as a small business owner in the home service industry. He discusses the importance of team dynamics, leadership, and the necessity of letting go of control to foster growth. Branden emphasizes the significance of professionalizing the business, managing cash flow effectively, and utilizing debt wisely to facilitate growth. He also highlights the importance of enhancing customer service through service contracts and regular team meetings to ensure coordination and success.

Takeaways

Branden Sewell emphasizes the importance of sharing his journey as a small business owner.
Managing cash flow is crucial for business growth.
Regular meetings can enhance team dynamics and productivity.
Letting go of control is essential for leadership and growth.
Attracting great people requires creating a desirable company culture.
Professionalizing the business can attract better talent.
Utilizing debt wisely can be a tool for growth, not a burden.
Customer service is enhanced through proactive service contracts.
Weekly meetings help in strategizing and improving team performance.
Learning from mistakes is key to running a successful business.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Journey
03:51 The Importance of Team and Leadership
10:00 Professionalizing the Business
13:24 Managing Cash Flow and Debt
20:27 Enhancing Customer Service and Service Contracts
26:05 Weekly Meetings and Continuous Improvement

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Transcript

Branden Sewell (00:01.23)
Hi everybody, I'm Brandon Sewell, owner of Seal Pro Painting and the host of the Off the Ladder podcast. And we exist to help home service business owners learn so that they can lead well and ultimately live life off of the ladder. Today's episode is gonna be solo. It's just me, your host, Brandon Sewell. In today's episode, I wanna talk about some things that are just going on with me, my business. We have a lot of positive things going on.

And I just want to share some of those with you and kind of share with you my journey and things that I'm learning along the way of being a small business owner, just like those of you who are listening. you know, right now we're in a pretty great place. Like I've got great guys who work for me and that's huge. We are, I've learned that in

you know, in the process of growing a business, you have to learn how to manage cash flow. And so I've really learned a lot about that lately, which has been helping tremendously. I've learned a lot about taking on debt, how to utilize it, be smart with it, make better choices. And so that's been pretty key. And then we've also been doing weekly shop meetings.

which those have been really great, plus doing a sales team meeting. I've kind of came from a past where I didn't really like meetings because I thought that they could be pointless or excessive. I was kind of like of the mentality like this meeting could be summed up in a text or

an email and what I found is like, of course you don't want to go overboard with meetings, but meeting regularly has been beneficial for the team. So, you know, just to hit on some of these points, you know, just in depth. like, obviously the whole point of this podcast is to help home service business owners who are in the field or who are just, you know,

Branden Sewell (02:25.15)
I feel like they're spinning their wheels trying to grow their business. Learn how to get off the ladder and learn how to just grow their business and move it along. Obviously what I'm trying to do is I'm not perfect but I'm trying to share mistakes that I've made, what I've learned along the way to maybe help you, the listeners, avoid some of the mistakes I've made, make better choices and get where I am faster.

you know, the reality is, like, the, the people that I'm going to be able to help the most. So like, if you're listening to this, I think the people I can help the most are those who are like, I would say like 500,000, 750,000 or less in revenue. If you're a bigger company than that, you might get some stuff from, from me, but

Chances are if you're doing over that, you're probably about where I am or beyond. So this is for definitely smaller companies. So anyway, as I said, some of the things I've had to learn are the things that I addressed at the beginning of the podcast. And the one thing that I want to talk about first is my people.

You know, I kind of harp on this over and over again in the podcast, but in order to grow, you have to be willing to let go of a lot of things, your pride, your ego. You have to let go of the want to control everything, the one or the need to feel like you have to do everything. I think there's a couple things that

stop, you know, the majority of contractors from ever growing. And there's two statements. If I don't do it, it won't get done. Or if I don't do it, it's not going to get done right. Those two statements hold more people back, I think than anything else, because you have this this mindset that nobody can do anything better than you. And that's it's so it's rooted in

Branden Sewell (04:50.734)
just the wrong mindset. It's rooted in lies. It's not true. There are so many like just think like there are so many people out there and there are so many people who can do exactly what you do and maybe even do it better than you. And so the

The challenge is to be able to admit that and then step aside and realize like the greatest thing that you can do as the business owner and as a leader is step aside and then help others fulfill their purpose and to give them a space and opportunity to do what they do well. But then, you know, create this culture in this environment where

Not only are they, you know, walking in their purpose, doing what they're great at and excelling at it, but doing it at a great company that cares about them, cares about their families, and wants to see them learn and grow in their opportunities and their profession. And so what you have to do is you have to be able to say, hey, you know what? It's not all about me. I'm not...

going to be the absolute best person at everything. I'm not going to be the only one who can do this. And then when you realize that and you begin to walk in that, then you can find great people. And so obviously the next step is finding great people. And what I did when I was trying to grow and I went from one season in my business where I only subcontracted,

I went to another season where I was kind of hybrid. Then I went to like 100 % employees had 13 lost them all. And then I've rebuilt. through all of that, all the lessons I've learned is you have to become the company that great people are attracted to and want to work for. And so it's not a question of whether great people are out there. It's really more so a question of whether you

Branden Sewell (07:10.518)
are attracting them. And this takes extreme ownership too. That's why one of my favorite leadership books is Extreme Ownership because it's taking away all of these lies and all of these, it's taking away your ability to blame shift and say, well, I can't find great people because of this or, you know, nobody wants to do this or whatever, all of the lies that we come up with. And it turns it back on you and says,

you know, there probably are great people out there. What am I not doing currently that if I would do or implement would attract the right people? And it's it's having this mindset of like, okay, I can never arrive, I'm never going to be good enough. So I can always take the blame, I can always take ownership of my business, I can always decide that if I can't if I'm not getting the right people in the door, then it falls on me.

and nobody else. It's not because of the economy. It's not because of the trade that I'm in. It's none of that. all falls back on you as the leader and as the owner of your business. So you've got to stop blaming everything else, take ownership and then start building the business that's going to bring the right people. Because I hear it all. mean, you know, in the painting industry, I mean, it's like

man, like all painters are this, all painters are that. There's no one who's really good. Nobody's reliable and like all of these lies and that's all of those lies aren't true. I have great craftsmen who work for me, who love what they do, who take care of our customers and are just great humans. so now are they perfect? Absolutely not. I'm not either.

But that's another thing is like you have to realize if I'm if you're not perfect, I'm not perfect, then neither are your employees and you've got to get over yourself and thinking you're, you know, so wonderful and realize like if you hire people, you're going to hire imperfect people just like you. You know, the reality is, is you might be a business owner because you're imperfect and you couldn't keep a job. So you went and started your own thing. So you're going to have employees who are not going to be perfect. They're going to make mistakes.

Branden Sewell (09:31.374)
They're not going to do exactly what you want to, but that's part of being a business owner. And so you have to adapt and learn how to lead people and how to manage people and diverse backgrounds and personalities and all of that. But all that to say is in order, what I've really found is like, so to get a great team, I had to become that company. had to

you know, professionalize myself. I had to professionalize how we looked to prospects who might want to work for our company. And there it might sound like silly things, but like having a physical location, whether like I started with an office, just an office, we didn't have a fancy shop, a big shop or anything like that. We started with just an office. And I was like, I'm going to make this a professional space where people can feel like, okay,

there. This is a professional business. They actually have like a place for me to come to that is a place of business, not a coffee shop, not a paint store, not the back of the truck at a job site, not a customer's, you know, front yard. It's a place of business. And then now we have a shop, but it's professionalizing it. Okay, well, you know, we don't just randomly

you know, wing it and bring people on. We have an interview process, an application and an interview process. have, you know, so there's some gatekeeping that happens. So you apply, you get interviewed, and then if you're brought on board, you have onboarding. There's a training part to it. And so it's making that process more professionalized.

I haven't arrived like that can still get better, but it's better than it was, right? It's not like it before it was non-existent and now I've implemented these things. And so it's like having that process for bringing people on board is going to attract A plus all star people to your team. And then, you know, and then it's taking it, you know, the next step. It's like, okay, well, how do we do business? How do we, what is our culture like? Do we have?

Branden Sewell (11:57.742)
a mission, do we have values, do we have key performance indicators, what does it look like to win, can you tell your employees like, this is what it looks like to win, is there career advancement opportunities, is there a path for advancement, do you have that documented, do you have it written out, do you have an employee manual, all of that is based around creating expectation. If you hire people,

but you're not great at creating an expectation of what success looks like them or how they can grow in your company. The failure to create that expectation can leave people resentful and spiteful and not want to work for you and leave and ask me how I know that it's happened to me. So you have to have all of that stuff. And as I said, I'm not perfect with all that, but I'm working on it and it's always getting better. And I know we can always improve, but

Those are things that I did get implemented that have helped and now I've had better retention. I've been able to grow my team, attract better people, offer great service and a great product to our customers. those are things that you have to do. Now, the other thing that I'll say with growing is it's very nuanced.

I'm not necessarily a numbers guy, so I don't really like digging into the numbers and getting super micro on that. I look at things more like a big picture. But because of that, there's challenges that come with growing. When you hire somebody, you have to realize, okay,

I'm going to increase my workers comp. I'm going to increase my payroll taxes. If you have company vehicles, you're going to increase your insurance costs on vehicles. You're going to have all of these overhead expenses that go up as you add people. And so you've got to think there's like this balance like as you grow producing enough and bring me enough sales and

Branden Sewell (14:19.982)
covering all of that and you know, little hiccups can throw you off. And so like in 2022, I grew, I had a lot of employees, but I didn't know how to manage cashflow. And so that was a big thing that I learned. And so now I've got, I'm using credit cards, credit lines, I'm using debt, I'm managing my cashflow better. it's, you know, you can try to take this position of like, oh,

credit cards are bad, I'm not gonna use them. I use them, then it's bad and you can even look at that like with credit lines or whatever and you can have this negative view of it or you can look at it as a tool. And the reality is, is it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. So you can have your credit cards and use them and...

in small ways like purchasing your gas, purchasing your material, have a credit line with your vendors and things like that. But all I'm saying is we had three jobs that didn't go the way that we hoped they would this year. And so that created some stress financially, all honesty. And so if it weren't for my ability to learn about how to manage the cash flow and get through those little hiccups,

those could be the moments that my business really struggles, opposed to learning how to manage the cash flow on like, let's say a month where it's like, gotta, you know, rent unexpected equipment, or I have to buy more material than I expected, or a job takes longer than expected, so there's more labor costs than I expected. So, you know, you can't necessarily plan for all of that. Like some things just happen, and you have to know how to get through those challenges and...

What I can say is as you grow, those challenges get more complex and you have to be able to adapt. You have to be able to manage your money and your finances in a way and get through and adapt and get creative and be smart to get through some of those hiccups. like I said, it's not a, you have to get past the mindset of thinking of it negatively and look at it as a tool. And so.

Branden Sewell (16:41.11)
Anyway, adopting that has been a huge thing. you know, that leads me to the next thing I talked about, we've mentioned how, you know, we've utilized debt in the past, I've utilized debt, and it was not smart, you know, I made dumb decisions. And, you know, I've, I've talked about this multiple times, maybe even the last episode, just how I took on debt, held the debt, the money that I got, and then went out and like,

finance something like let's say a vehicle and then had a vehicle payment plus I'm paying even though I had that money I'm still paying I'm paying debt on both now whereas it's like a fear mindset well okay if I if I take a business loan and I've got this debt well instead of hoarding that and being afraid go take that money and purchase whatever you're gonna need to produce more.

And so like going and buying a vehicle that's going to help you start another crew and do more work and take on more work. If you have the demand, like again, this is this is like doing things smart. Like you don't if you're like sitting at home and you can't figure out how to get the phone to ring. Well, figure that out first before you get debt and go buy a vehicle to go produce work that you don't have. But if you have a problem, like let's say you've got.

an excess amount of leads. Like right now, we are way over pace for what our goal was for leads this year. We're way over pace by like 40 or 50 leads, which is, it's a lot. And so because we're way above pace, it's like we know, okay, if we were able to convert more of those leads because we have more staff to do so,

Well, then naturally our conversion rate should improve and our sales will improve. And so it's saying like, okay, well, I'm gonna utilize debt to go purchase this vehicle that is going to help me produce work and I'm going to hire the people and I'm going to now be able to convert more and sell more and grow.

Branden Sewell (19:02.688)
And so that's like that's a smart thing. So two things there. Make sure you have the demand for the growth. And then secondly, make sure that if you utilize debt that you're not like making a dumb decision like I have in the past, like taking on a business loan and then hoarding the capital. Use that capital to buy what you need.

And I would say like try to avoid using capital for marketing purposes. Use it for things that going to that are going to be produced that will produce money, you know, that are going to be cash producing assets like, you know, to me, like if I buy a truck or a van, that is going to produce income, it's income producing.

So, anyway, those are things that I've learned that I'm doing that are helping us to grow. And then, you know, so lastly, we just bought a van, another van, as I'm talking about this. And we bought a car, cheaper car. Again, paid cash for the, well, we took out, we have a business loan, we use that money to go buy, pay cash for.

our new van and a sales vehicle for our sales rep. And we use some of that business loan to pay off other debt. So again, it's like we're reducing our cash flow. if I'm making like a, you know, anywhere between a three to $500 payment over here, and I've got this other, you know, payment over here, if I can pay off those debts,

and then consolidate that, now I've, it makes more sense. Like in the past, I've done the opposite. Like I said, I would like take on a business loan and I wouldn't pay off those debts. But this time it's like, I took the business loan, pay off the, you know, paid off two debts that I had. So that freed up cashflow that can be used now paying this debt.

Branden Sewell (21:23.342)
And I went and paid cash for these two income producing assets. They're going to produce income. Sales creates income that Van is going to produce income through production and paid for those. And now those are going to increase the income and I'll be able to pay the debt with no problem. And so it's just it's being smart. And like I said, I haven't done it perfectly. I've made big mistakes in the past.

but I've learned and now things are going smoother and we're growing. so, yeah, so we bought a van, we're gonna get that wrapped next week. We've got the sales car, gonna get that wrapped. And yeah, we're gonna increase our presence with that in our community and we're just driving things forward. with the new...

new van though, let me hit on this. We've started selling service contracts probably about a year ago. So we have clients who are on our service contract. So I've kind of been slowly implementing the service contract, but I haven't been pushing it hard because I wanted to make sure that once we push it, we have the ability to fulfill it.

What I mean is like have somebody designated to do that work. If those service contracts come in and there's visits that are needed. So this this fourth crew that I just started is going to be designated to doing interior work, service contract work and warranty work. So what that will do, it's going to enable us to sell more interiors. It's going to enable us to sell more service contracts and it's going to enable us to offer.

even better customer service because if somebody calls in and they need. There is warranty work that's needed. They're not going to be waiting for us to get other jobs done to come out. We'll just go ahead and send this crew to go take care of that, because they're going to be doing a lot of like small jobs, so our availability is going to be better. So the idea is to utilize this crew for that purpose. So I'm excited about that.

Branden Sewell (23:44.303)
we're probably even going to implement like a standard warranty visit. like instead of just waiting for a client to reach out to us and say like, hey, I need so and so address. Like let's say, like we just recently had a customer call in a couple of weeks ago and there was a window sill on the front of her house and somehow.

you know, moisture had gotten around this window and it was causing the paint on the front window sill to bubble and peel. And so we went out there and we took care of that for her. But instead of waiting for people to call us, what we may do just to increase our customer service is start making like it a standard that there's an annual warranty checkup.

Hey, we painted your house a year ago. We just wanted to call and make sure there's no issues. And if there is, we'll schedule a time to come out and visit and take care of it. Again, it's not trying to escape responsibility. It's taking ownership and saying like, hey, we want to serve you. We want to make sure that you are ecstatic about the service that we offer you. And we're not going to try to.

Run away from responsibility. We're not going to try and avoid, you know, our mistakes. We're not going to try to shift blame. It's like, hey, we want to know if there's an issue and we want to come out and we want to take care of it. And because I know as the owner, like if we do what's right and if we take care of our customers, then we won't be able to handle the growth that will come because it's like we just

We live by doing what's right and being those who take ownership and responsibility and just take care of our customers always. And so it's not a matter of like right or wrong. It's just, hey, we want to serve you and we want to take care of that. so anyway, that's going to be this crew's responsibility and I'm really excited about it. And so those are some of the things that are going on here at Seal Pro Painting.

Branden Sewell (26:05.678)
We're also doing a weekly production meeting in the morning. So we're doing them on Mondays and the whole team comes together in the shop. I have a few things that we go over on a board. So I have every crew listed. I have the jobs that they're going to be doing for that week or the next two weeks. It shows the revenue that will come in for those jobs.

And then the total revenue that should be produced every two weeks. And then we go over like, are there any callbacks or touch-ups that need to be done and go over trying to reduce those. We go over material that's needed and planning that out for the week. We go over like, are there any safety concerns or is there any equipment needs?

We're going over reviews and like making sure that we're hitting our targets with that. We're trying to hit 200 five-star reviews by the end of this year. Right now we have 131. We're averaging about six per month right now. So in order to hit our goal, we need to be averaging about nine per month. So, you know, we're strategizing on how to do that. We're really just kind of talking about like, hey, what

What can we do on production over the next couple of weeks to really just, you know, improve and drive things forward? So those have been really helpful. And then we're doing a sales meeting and we have a board where we go over, first we go over our conversion rate. Like how is that going? We go over like, what is our average job size? So like, are we converting well and are we converting at a high ticket or is our ticket dropping?

So there's correlation there. We need to make sure that our conversion rate is healthy, but we also need to make sure that our average ticket is healthy. We're going over, are we hitting our goals for leads? Are we bringing in enough leads? Are there any opportunities for marketing? We're doing thank you cards together, so we'll sit down and send out thank you cards. We write them out and send them together.

Branden Sewell (28:24.826)
We're also, so leads, we're going over average shop size, trying to think if there's anything else. Obviously we're going over our sales goals and we're going over just like sales strategy, talking about things that we can do to improve our sales process and just really trying to improve there. So that's been helpful as well.

improved our conversion rate since doing those meetings. yeah, so it's going well. But anyway, that's everything that is going on with Seal Pro painting right now. It's good. Of course, occasionally there's challenges that we face just like any other business. Like I said, the beginning of this year was a little challenging with some jobs not going as planned. But, you know,

the thing that would have broken us before we were able to get through because of some of the things that I've learned over the past six months to a year. So anyway, I'm going to bring this episode to a close. I hope you have found some of the information shared helpful. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and learn from some of my successes. And I'm learning just like you. So like this is real. I'm in it. I'm going through it day to day.

and I'm just doing my best to try and run a professional company that takes care of its people and takes care of its community. you know, I'm hoping that I can try to help some of you guys do the same thing. As always, if you need resources to help your business to be successful and grow and run more efficiently so you can focus on the things that matter most.

working on your business check in the show notes below I have resources for you they are affiliate links down below and I do get credit if you use my link to sign up for any of my resources so please if you're interested in any of the resources below please please please use my affiliate link so I can get credit for you utilizing whatever resources are below I would greatly appreciate it

Branden Sewell (30:41.678)
It helps to support me to keep doing this and helps us to make this better over time. As always, if you're watching on YouTube, please like this video, comment below, share, subscribe, all of that. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, please rate and review the show. And that's it. I'm gonna wrap this up. I will see you guys next time on the next episode of the Off the Ladder Podcast.