Nick Slavick’s Journey from Owner Operator to Industry Leader

Summary

In this episode of the Off the Ladder podcast, host Branden Sewell speaks with Nick Slavik, a seasoned professional in the painting industry. They discuss the importance of leadership, the myths surrounding the painting business, and the transition from being a craftsman to a leader. Nick shares insights on managing teams, the significance of mentorship, and the challenges of pricing in the industry. The conversation emphasizes the need for professionalization and accountability within the painting sector, as well as the importance of understanding client preferences and market dynamics.

Takeaways

The painting industry has many myths that can hold business owners back.
Leadership styles can significantly impact the success of a painting company.
Transitioning from a craftsman to a leader requires personal growth and development.
Finding mentors and support is crucial for business growth.
Scaling a painting business takes time and requires a solid management structure.
Effective team management involves clear processes and accountability.
Setting standards is essential for maintaining a positive company culture.
Pricing strategies can greatly affect the perception of value in the industry.
Understanding client preferences is key to finding success in the market.
Mental health and personal development are important for business owners. 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Painting Industry and Leadership
02:54 Myths in the Painting Industry
06:06 Employee vs. Subcontractor Models
08:59 The Role of Leadership in Business Success
11:57 Overcoming Craftsmanship Mindsets
14:59 Actionable Steps for Growth
17:49 The Journey of Building a Team
20:47 Managing People Effectively
27:22 Building Effective Teams
29:47 The Challenges of Management
32:53 Learning from Mistakes
35:50 Finding Your Place in the Industry
38:59 The Value of Craftsmanship
45:10 Understanding Pricing in the Industry
51:34 The Owner Exit Fallacy
54:48 The Importance of Mental Health

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Transcript

Branden Sewell (00:02.102)
Hi everybody, am Brandon Sewell. I am the owner of Seal Pro Painting, located in central Florida. I'm also the host of the Off the Ladder podcast. We exist to help home service business owners learn so that they can lead well and ultimately live life off of the ladder. I'm excited about today's guests. I've got Nick Slavik with me and Nick Slavik is the owner and founder of Nick Slavik Painting and Restoration.

And Nick, it's a pleasure to have you on here today. Looking forward to our conversation. If you could, for the listeners, just give them a quick introduction to who you are, where you're located, a little bit about your company, and things like that.

Nick Slavik (00:42.328)
You got it. So this is technically my 33rd year in the industry. My dad started me when I was very young. I've owned my business for almost 18 years. It'll be 18 years this fall, my painting business. We are a residential repaint business with 25 to 40 people in it, depending on the time of the year. We also have a specialization in historic restoration, some fun stuff like mural painting and things like that. I am the host of Ask a Painter Live. It's a weekly live social media show.

kind of about what we talk about here. That's been going on for almost nine years and I am the current board chairman of the PCA, the Painting Contractors Association. It's a 140 year old nonprofit that serves our industries and if that wasn't enough, I am a father of four and a husband. So that's a pretty rounded out full schedule.

Branden Sewell (01:33.527)
Yeah, well, I've known of you for a long time, obviously being in the painting industry for a while myself and I've been on your lives, I've seen you on other podcasts, so I've seen you from afar, so it's really a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak to you and I do appreciate you making the time. One of the things that I really love about

this whole topic of getting off the ladder is deep inside is I feel like it's one of the best ways to elevate the industry, right? If we as owners and founders of our companies can better ourselves, become better leaders and lead our teams and lead better companies, it's gonna help to professionalize and make the industry elevate. And so,

You're probably familiar with Jason and goodness his last name is blanking on me Yes, Jason Paris Yeah, so I've had Jason on here and we had a great conversation about that and you know I'd love to like talk a little bit about that with you too because obviously you have a very diverse perspective when it comes to our industry being the leadership position that you're in

Nick Slavik (02:31.82)
Is it Paris? I've heard of them.

Branden Sewell (02:55.895)
You know and just you have the opportunity I would assume to see a lot of different styles of painting companies leadership styles You know here of different ways that people are leading and moving their companies forward and so I'm just curious to hear from you. You know, we talked about Some you had mentioned before the show that there are like there's these myths that we hear about companies, right and I think

There's probably some myths that I believe that might be holding me back or there's myths that listeners that are tuning into this believe about what a painting company should look like and what, you know, success looks like. And I'm just curious to jump into some of that. One of the things that Jason and I had talked about was like this whole topic of, you know, employee based companies versus subcontracting and

What's the best way to really build a great company, elevate the industry and professionalism within the industry, and really have great success? And so I'm just curious from your standpoint, what is your opinion of that? What are you seeing? Where would you like to see the industry go? And what kind of feedback do you have for our industry to...

to really improve and elevate ourselves.

Nick Slavik (04:25.102)
So if I'm hearing you, there's a few questions there. Is the main question subs or W2?

Branden Sewell (04:32.073)
yeah, so I think that's a part of it. it, you know, and, and then I talked to somebody recently, so I, and I just to kind of get this out there, I think that the way is W-2s, right? I think maybe you could throw in some subs here or there, you know, as needed, but I'm, I really love the, the idea of like W-2s and that model.

But I also had some myths that I believed about subs that had me on this track of like, I'll never hire a sub. And then I met with this gentleman who has a very, very successful company and he's been in business for goodness, longer than I've been alive. And I had the pleasure of sitting down with him for two hours and I just was expressing my thoughts about it. And he kind fully

You know just corrected it or i don't know if i would say corrected he gave constructive criticism to my opinions and said he basically said that i was ignorant on the topic and because i was ignorant on the topic that that was creating some of the myths that i believed about it does that make sense.

Nick Slavik (05:44.738)
Yeah, many of the, especially if we're talking about myths, I mean, you're talking to a guy who for 25 years lived and deeply held most of the basic myths in our industry, because I never talked to another painter and I never had any data. And then I got a crash course over the course of five to eight years of actually coming into contact with people like Jason Paris that will quickly and violently dispel those myths with data. so people don't do this to prove you wrong. They do it.

Branden Sewell (06:07.872)
Right.

Nick Slavik (06:14.792)
the right people do this to round you out and to open your mind to other things. yeah, mean similarly I've had that same thing. I thought the only good companies were W2s. I thought subcontractors were hacks and it was a cheap way to do stuff and none of the subcontractors were good. And then I met this couple from Nashville called Harpeth Painting and they only run subs and they're in architectural digest because of the quality of their work.

So it opens up your mind to many things. And so my answer is subs versus W2. I say yes. Use them all. Why would you limit yourself? Should you only do interior or exterior painting? Yes. Should you hire men or women? Yes. I mean, all this stuff is like, I wouldn't limit yourself. I would say whatever options you have, whatever capabilities you have, express them to the fullest extent. If that includes both or one of those, I would do that.

Branden Sewell (06:46.775)
Right.

Branden Sewell (07:06.231)
Yeah. So obviously you're saying like you see companies that are doing this very successfully. I would assume like, you know, so you see a company who's running all subs. I'm sure you see companies who are very successfully running all W2s. Do you think that this is something that I've kind of wondered in my mind? Is there a specific leadership style that is best suited for one or the other?

Or do you think that it's simply like that each one of us has to learn how to do it the right way. And if we learn how to do it the right way and we know how to do it, then either can work. I'm just curious to hear what your opinion is on that, because I'm sure you see both done well.

Nick Slavik (07:50.498)
Yeah, you want to talk about myths. When people say...

W2s suck or subs suck. It's typically because they're not good managers or leaders. That's just me being honest, because for a very long time, I wasn't either. I know an amazing amount of companies who do both very well. I even have some friends who do each of those things very well, who still hold some of those myths or have some very deep-rooted opinions about why they do one or the other. And then you can kind of backtrack that to geographic location, company history, their upbringing, things like that.

If you ever meet a company who has 150 W-2 painters and they've been around for four generations, a lot of times stuff like that works because it has worked for four generations and it's a machine with a flywheel that just keeps on rolling. Same thing with the sub model. But if you have to start up something today, it's basically your ability to recruit and retain top talent and manage them. And if I'm being honest, me saying this as I was one of these bad managers and leaders too, most of people's myths about the pros and cons of

versus W2 or vice versa are rooted in their inability to manage them and hold them accountable if I'm being honest.

Branden Sewell (09:00.855)
Yeah, that sounds good. I mean, that's essentially what the gentleman who I met with had said to me. And this is a guy who has his business currently is international. So he has locations in other countries. It's pretty phenomenal what he's built. He's not in the same industry. He's in soft washing, but still phenomenal what he's been able to accomplish. But he he does operate off of a very

I mean it's mostly subcontractors so what he basically said to me is what you're saying he was like the reason why you believe that is because you're you haven't developed as a leader to understand how to recruit and retain the right subs and even like have a good vetting on boarding process for it and he basically said like if you have the right leadership the right recruiting the right.

way to hold them accountable and all of those things. He said it can work very well and help you actually. So I just thought it was a great perspective. I mean it comes up very often and I'm sure you know that. So I appreciate you sharing your perspective from the position that you sit in. The other thing that I would ask is, you know, for you from what I've gathered, you are a craftsman, right? So

have an appreciation for, you know, just the actual work and doing it. That's not a perspective that I have, but it's a, you know, it's something that I constantly get questions about or address with, you know, guys who have like this deep appreciation for the craft. And obviously there's obstacles or mindsets or myths that they have to overcome. Like, you know, I have friends of mine who

You you hear these common sayings all the time like if I don't do it it can't be done or if I don't do it it's not going to be done right. So my question for you for the listeners is if they're in this position where they're out in the field they're the craftsman they're doing the work what are some steps or advice you would give them to go to grow personally and go from being that person you know out on the tools doing all the work themselves to.

Branden Sewell (11:25.247)
developing themselves and growing to the point where they can lead a team and have other people do things too. What did that journey look like for you and how would you encourage them?

Nick Slavik (11:36.206)
Yeah, so theme in almost every myth that we'll likely talk about is you are the problem. You're literally standing in the way of all this happening. And I was. Again, I can talk of this deeply because I spent 25 years in this craft before I started trying to overcome a lot of these myths. So the data portion that I can give is you are not the best.

I hear this all the time. This is the most common thing ever. Well, Nick, listen, I appreciate everything that the PCA does and that all this other stuff, all this information, but the problem is I'm the best. I'm already the most expensive in my area. I get that all the time and I'm booked out two years. I can't raise my prices. I can't get better and nobody can do it to my quality.

And in the kindest, gentlest way possible, I would say you're lying to yourself. All of that is not true. I can guarantee you with data, you are not the most expensive, right? Also, quality-wise, I can guarantee you you're not the best as well. And if you're booked out two years from now, a simple math problem will tell you you're giving away your work. So in the end, the data portion that I can add to this is let's talk about a scale of 0 to 100, 0 being the worst paint job ever and 100 being theoretically

Branden Sewell (12:22.836)
Mm. Right.

Nick Slavik (12:47.092)
Perfect which nobody has ever done right? It's just an impossibility. It's like the temperature absolute zero theoretically. It's there. Nobody's experienced it so Mastercraft people like me who have been doing this any craft for 30 plus years can probably get a 98 out of 100 right will never be perfect But we can get so far beyond what any client expects We'll only pick ourselves to death on it my master crafts people can do about an 88 to a 92 my apprentices can do about a

and my clients expect a 75. And when I say a client expects a 75, it's not that a client expects C work. A 75 is already better than any DIYer, any homeowner you can do, right? And they only expect and will pay for a 75. Even the minimalist-y trained human in my company can put out a 78, right? Nobody's perfect, there's always gonna be flaws. But when somebody says I can't possibly hire anybody,

Branden Sewell (13:29.463)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (13:38.967)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (13:44.728)
because nobody can do a 98 out of 100 like me, you know what? That's probably right, but you're also not the best. There's plenty of people that can do this better than you. You're not good enough to recruit them, and you don't have anything to offer them. Also, great, don't hire anybody, but then you're alone, and you're already doing 20 points higher than what the client will pay for, and you could bring somebody in, and you might have to help them out a little bit. You might have to look the other way. Some things might not pass your standard, but...

Branden Sewell (14:03.17)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (14:11.508)
The objective of all of our companies is to exceed the client standards and not our own. Now, it's great if we can do that and keep pushing the craft as well, but that's not the goal. You can get paid for quality that's a lot less than what a lot of us would consider really, really world-class work.

Branden Sewell (14:21.41)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (14:27.752)
Right. Yeah, and I mean, that's that's been my experience. You know, I know that it's probably there's a different emotional tie to the work than I have since I wasn't I didn't come from like a craftsman background. I came from sales in the industry. So it sometimes it's hard for me or I feel like I don't have the authority in a way to to say that. And maybe some craftsmen don't really

hear me because i will you wouldn't know you want your craftsman and but i do know what i've experienced. Yeah.

Nick Slavik (15:00.918)
Another great excuse to not do something, know, because I've said all this stuff before. Like, how could you? mean,

If you haven't for 20 years bled and sweat and commiserated and had an achey butt, all that's BS, man. Listen, typically the trades are hard on us. We martyr ourselves for them. We labor very hard. mean, it's 92 degrees, 100 % humidity out here. We got 40 people out there sweating their brains out there today. To not come home with a little bit of that angst and it's like, this isn't fair, completely understandable, right? But at some point, gotta come, if you can live in that world,

Branden Sewell (15:25.016)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (15:34.626)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (15:38.04)
that's fine. But if you also want to grow business, your ability to get out of that mindset is the only thing that's holding you back.

Branden Sewell (15:45.111)
Yeah. So let's start kind of like a grassroots for somebody. So let's say somebody is in this position. Can you go back to like what that process looked like for you? What were some of those first steps that you took that you, you know, so maybe give some action items to the guy who's like, you know, I really I'm I'm killing myself. I'm working crazy hours. I've got so much work. I'm running myself into the ground.

I need to hire a team. just don't know where. I don't know how to start. I need to get off the ladder. just don't know how. What are maybe some actionable steps that you would give to that person who's in that mindset, who's in that place to just get started on that journey? Like, where did you start? What would you tell them to do?

Nick Slavik (16:32.226)
Very few people can do this alone, me in particular. So you gotta go find other people who are way better and farther along in seasons of life with you and surround yourself with them and ask them for help. Humble yourself, put your ego aside and ask them for help. And then once you form good relationships, you can kinda get into this coaching slash mentor slash accountability relationship. And it's amazing if you find the right groups of people like the PCA, the Painting Contractors Association, you find 140 year old nonprofit where it's full of certain

leaders, there's people that go out of their way. their purpose in life is to reach out and help other people and sometimes they have a hard time finding worthy candidates. So you coming along as a worthy candidate is a great thing for them. I did that and it's those people who very firmly but very empathetically called me on my BS and that was the thing that got me out and spurred me into action.

Branden Sewell (17:24.428)
Yeah, I talked about that a lot on here how, you know, even, you know, for myself, I just firmly believe in always having a coach or mentor of some sort. And I've had to, there's also been seasons where I've kind of changed my coaches. You know, maybe one coach worked for me in one season and then that I outgrew that and moved to a different coach. you know, I've hired

coaches for many different aspects, some specialty areas in my business, know, maybe a coach that specialized on marketing or a coach that specialized on leadership. And, you know, others who specialize more on like the numbers side of things and sales and profit and losses and stuff like that. So I usually recommend to those who listen to my podcast to get a coach.

and work on yourself. And, you know, we often talk about like, you know, you have to start with you, work on yourself as a leader, make sure that you are investing in yourself, reading, listening to podcasts, you know, and I think that that has to do with humility. Like you have to realize, hey, I don't know everything, I need help. And if I'm going to go to another level, have to, I need to learn. So I'm often

you know, talking to guys about and gals about, you know, that whole aspect of it, working on yourself and growing. So, you know, early on in your business, you're doing the work by yourself, you move up, you start growing a team. Can you talk a little bit just about like what that journey looks like? What was the timeline for it and what did it take? And if you could get, you know,

maybe a little bit more specific, like did you go out on your own and hire a guy and work with them for a little while and then eventually leave that guy by himself and hire some people to work with them and then slowly grow that way? What did that growth process and transition look like for you?

Nick Slavik (19:35.66)
Yeah so the

The macro timeline is it took me from the day I decided to grow a big professional company to the time where I would argue that I had the things in place and was kind of doing it. It was about three years. And that's what I find when I talk to a lot of even big coaching entities in the painting industry and then home service industry and stuff, when you follow a thing like EOS or traction or some other sort of professionalization path,

Honestly, it takes about three years. Now, you can get everything in place within a couple months, which I did. I just hammered and I got everything in place, but then to operate it, use it and refine it took two and a half years, give or take. And also during that time, there's a huge asterisk by that, which is the biggest thing that was holding me back. I could have done this in 18 months, but I was not a good manager and I wasn't raised to be a good manager. I didn't have any examples of a good manager. So basically three years I had the basis

of it, we were operating what I would understand as a professional company. And about five years is when we really hit our stride, where I got repetitions with estimators, coordinators, project managers.

Master craftspeople, subcontractors, ancillary trades. I really got enough repetitions in to understand what a management flavor and rhythm is. And then even leadership at that point of visioning for a company of that size. So yeah, three to five years. And generally, what had happened was is I had three young craftspeople working for me and they had been with me for years and we had one truck and four guys and we just hammered. We just hammered. We were so good, so fast.

Nick Slavik (21:18.678)
We always surprised each other by how good and how fast we were on all these projects is knocking them out over and over It was kind of just like set it and forget it kind of stuff We all knew what we were doing all three of them left on a Friday night to go do What I would argue is pretty good pursuits two of them went to go do religious mission work and one of them went to go be a pilot to do religious mission work and they all did and it was great and I was super pissed and I was super proud of them at the same time because you know you go from a really well operating profitable form of company which I would argue

Branden Sewell (21:43.595)
You

Nick Slavik (21:48.48)
is one of the most profitable forms of a home service industry is owner operator plus some people working around him. That's, I mean, you really can sock away some money at that point, but they all left. And at that point I was like, we need to do something different because it's an emotional roller coaster. So that's when I set off on the path to professionalization. Three years we had the basis, five years we were really rocking and.

Branden Sewell (21:59.373)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (22:10.254)
In my first year though, I do a lot of very tightly controlled scientific experiments where we change one variable, look at the results and then make decisions. But I also am very optimistic and I like massive action. So in my first year, I hired two people at a time, made them a crew, worked with them, trained them myself. The second they were a viable crew, I went and got other ones. And we built a company from zero to 10 people in one year, doing all W2 employees that way.

Branden Sewell (22:36.29)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (22:38.126)
And then the next year we went to 22. And then after that, I got a ton of repetitions in and then we kind of just took it back down a little bit, but then built it up the right way as you know, the scientific experiment was I need to see where this thing breaks. So let's just keep adding people till it breaks. And over a two year period, we got up to 22 people. And I did find out that my care for the client, sorry, I got a fly buzzing around here.

Branden Sewell (23:00.834)
Mm-hmm

Nick Slavik (23:01.038)
Care for the client was not where I wanted it to be. The projects got done, we were profitable, it was fine, but one person running 22 people is not a long-term sort of strategy. So what I figured out was I spent 75 % of my time each week doing project management. And in my company, project management is connecting a client, labor, and paint. And then the vehicle is the schedule, right? So 75 % of my week was taken out with project management.

Branden Sewell (23:11.948)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (23:29.966)
So it told me the bottleneck there is project management. I hired my first project manager. We went back up and grew to about 2.5 million. And then, yeah, we just kept progressing after that. We added in the little Lego blocks of hired my first estimator. And then we had a silo. We had a project manager, an estimator, and enough painters to do 1.5 million. In my industry, your industry, it's kind of a math problem. That is a silo. Now, if you want to grow again, you just add another silo, an estimator, project manager, and enough painters to do 1.5 million. And we're at about that 3 million mark right now.

operating professional finishing shop, subcontracting, part-time W2s, full-time W2s, and all sorts of fun stuff in between.

Branden Sewell (24:07.737)
Right. Now, it's funny because as you're saying this without really thinking about an advance, I'm looking at myself and I'm like, that's kind of the track that I've been on. When I first started my business, it was all subcontractors and then in 2022, I switched to all employees. And my whole initiative in that

Well, actually, so from 2020 to 2022, was the transition. By 2022, I had all employees. And I had kind of hit that growth, and it was like pushed really, really, really hard, figured out what my mistakes were, and then kind of like rebuilt it to where I'm right now, where I'm at is with 10 guys. And then it's, like you said, it's like trying to just...

duplicate that process over again. One of the things that I have a question for you, when you're growing your team to that size, obviously the quality matters, people matter, what kind of advice would you give to those who are listening who are growing a team on...

How to do that, how to grow the team, how to manage the people. Obviously you said you had to learn how to be a manager. There's obviously mistakes you probably made along the way. Could you kind of speak to what were some of those main mistakes that you made in managing people? What did you have to learn? How did you get better? And what does that look like for you now?

Nick Slavik (25:52.588)
Yeah, so there's three.

There's three ways that can produce success or failure with subcontractors or W-2s, because they're all humans in the end. Number one is getting the right humans in, so recruiting. Number two is the processes you have in place that build a game board for your people in which to play. So they're not just out there in blue ocean trying to figure it out themselves. And number three is the actual management of those humans. So what do you do to support them every day? And of those three things,

you can usually, if you look at why a company is having a horrible time or a very good time with subs or W2s, you can just look at those. typically during, if they're having trouble with them, you can point to one of those, or maybe even all of them, that aren't working very well. So A number one, figuring out who you want in your company. And there's all this BS about, only need A players. Listen, man, you're hiring an $18 to $20 an hour ploy. I don't know what your criteria is for A players. They're not

Branden Sewell (26:52.536)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (26:54.576)
going to have any resume, any good jobs in their past. They may hop around every six months. The references are all their friends. I say all this with love, but I'm in the business of hiring young people who have no actionable resume. They don't interview very well. So literally, you're just taking a chance on somebody, hoping they're a decent human being. And then either within the first two weeks, they're going to work or you fire them. And that's just how it works. And that's what entry-level employment looks like, right? Same thing with a subcontractor.

this is going to be great. Everybody says nobody's better than me. I do all sorts of these projects.

You give them a project and they either work or they don't. And it's the same thing. And you kind of have to treat them the same way. So number one, understanding that there's no magic personality profile that will tell you if somebody's going to be good or not. There's no magic set of interview questions if they're going to tell you good or not. You can do some things to make sure you don't get a bad person in, but you've got to make sure you get the right people in. Number two is the systems you have in place. And there are some very hardcore systems that you can put in place to

guide your people so that they understand what you expect of them. And I would argue that all of these systems, and then the third thing, management, has to be done consistently. It can't be, I hired this person, I trained them, and now I just want them to work. Humans, even us, need constant, constant support. And I would argue, the farther you go on the experience ladder, I mean, it could be down to that every 30 minutes somebody might need something in a company, right? So either you put a trainer in place to train that person shoulder to shoulder,

or you have to do it. But that still exists. You can't just show them a standard operating procedure, watch a video, send them to a client's house and get it done. We know this.

Nick Slavik (28:37.026)
But in practice, we all do it because we don't want to train people. getting the right people in, putting some systems in place, something very simple is like our morning routine. At 8 a.m., every single crew owes me a project plan. Here's the budget. Here's my plan for hours. Here's what's going to happen today. Every day at 8 a.m., every day at 3 p.m., they have to confirm whether they're on track or off track. That helps with scheduling. It helps them understand. But it's also this skeleton of a framework of what we hold in this company as important,

these time budgets, right? Because all of you want to do good work. That's never a problem here. I'm not trying to constantly push quality. The thing that we also need to do is get the heck out of these clients' houses because they're sick of us from being there so long. The third thing is the actual management. How do you interact with them? Daily, what does it look like? If you were to wake them up in the middle of the night and say, what is it like to work with Nick, they're going to say something.

Branden Sewell (29:17.847)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (29:27.862)
right? And it could be good, it could be bad, it's probably accurate, whatever it is. So it's those three kind of lumps. And I mean, the list of failures goes on a million times over in each one of those for me. I have failed more than I've succeeded with employing humans and subcontracting with humans. And I think most of us have if we're doing it right.

Branden Sewell (29:28.514)
Yeah, right.

Branden Sewell (29:33.634)
Mm-hmm.

Branden Sewell (29:48.695)
Yeah, it's definitely super challenging and like for myself, I had mentioned, I think briefly, like I just had a learning moment for myself. And that was, I like to be very kind. you know, whether it matters or not, I'm a Christian and I hold to those morals very tightly. And so I'm always trying to be very kind and compassionate towards my employees.

You know, I've had mentors tell me, I've had, you know, business owners, I've even had some of my guys tell me, they're like, look, you're so kind and compassionate that you let people just walk all over you and you want a standard, but you don't want to enforce a standard. You want to avoid conflict, so you allow whatever to fly, but then that creates a bad culture for the rest of the team because

when you let so-and-so get away with something, the people who are doing it the way that it should are getting upset because you're letting them get away with it. And they're like, well, why do we do it right if you let this person slide? it's kind of been a progression, but that was a big learning experience for me with managing my team. And I just had a meeting today with my entire team. And I just said, hey, I apologize to them. I said, hey, I'm sorry.

where I failed to lead you guys and I know it's affected everybody. And from now on moving forward, this is how things are gonna be. And these are the standards that we're gonna hold to. And this is gonna be our process for holding that standard. And that was a hard conversation for me to have. And it wasn't in my nature, but that was just a growing experience that I had to have as a leader. So,

You know, I think that the biggest disservice I think any of us can do as business owners is to have this expectation that we're somehow going to get it all right and that we're not going to make the mistakes. think you have to realize, like, I've been, you've been obviously doing this much longer than I have, but I've had my own business for eight years and

Branden Sewell (32:12.844)
You know, I've just I've made so many mistakes along the way. And if I let like any of those mistakes become the reason why I can't take the next step forward, then I wouldn't ever, you know, have progress or grow. So I think what you're saying is really important. And I think that anyone who's listening to this has to like graphs that you can do it. But it's.

it's not gonna be absent of mistakes or failures along the way. You're gonna make those, just learn from them and move forward and get better. Don't expect for it to just be smooth sailing, because it's not.

Nick Slavik (32:54.702)
No, management is a process. And I have about five meetings a week. I don't want to overstress this and make this sound like it's more than it's not, than it is. But I have a meeting with a mentor. I have a personal performance coach. I have another performance coach. And I have two more meetings a week of friends and other entities that hold me accountable and coach me for this sort of thing. And all we do is talk about the interactions with humans.

And we don't even talk about clients anymore. All it is is internally, management styles and processes. management is an action. It's not a noun, right? It's something that is never done.

Branden Sewell (33:22.104)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (33:36.494)
And if we're being honest, there are very few real or real good managers out there. And statistically, if we were to just gather up 100 business owners in the painting industry, it's very likely that about 92 or 93 are not managers and may never be managers. And therein lies the stress and the friction with what we do, because the only thing missing from our industry or the thing that would actually help our industry a lot is true, tried and true managers, not a founder trying to be a manager, a literal manager of human

Branden Sewell (33:42.104)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (34:06.448)
who can listen and ask questions and show some empathy but also hold standards. That's not the typical business owner. Typical business owner is a salesperson and a visionary. And that's the opposite of a manager.

Branden Sewell (34:15.16)
Mm-hmm.

Right, right. So now on that topic, like, where do you think different people find their place within that? So what I think is interesting, there's I want to say it's either Tommy Mello or maybe it's Tom. What is Tom's last name? my goodness. Tom of the contractor fight. I can't remember if it. Huh? Reaver. Yes.

Nick Slavik (34:43.254)
or Reber? Tell me Reber.

Branden Sewell (34:46.454)
Yeah, sorry. either Tommy Mello or Tom Rebert. Funny that they have the same name, kind of. I think it's either one of those two who have kind of like said like, hey, like some of you guys shouldn't be, you know, business owners are running a business. You should be working for somebody who is like built to do that. I don't know if that makes sense, but.

Do you does that resonate with you do you believe that or do you kind of do you think that that plays any role in elevating our industry of saying like hey some of you guys should probably you know instead of. You know maybe taking. Twenty thirty years floundering and struggling and trying to do something that you want me to do maybe you should go be a really great craftsman for a really great company does that.

Does that resonate with you or do you think that everybody has a place to be a, you know, leader of an organization, if you will, and really help to elevate the industry? And I hope that makes sense.

Nick Slavik (35:52.032)
It does. So one of the things that amuses me the most that Jason Paris has said in public and especially during conferences, like he'll even open up some of his speeches and I am going to clobber it. I can't do it as succinctly as him, but he will do something where he says, who here wants to be exceptional? Right. And everybody's like raises their hand. He's like, well, put your hands down because only 5 % of you statistically will ever be exceptional. There's a thing called a bell curve and you

a statistical outlay of where people, where there's the normal people, there's the outliers, there's the high outliers and low, and it's just statistics, it's just data. And so it's funny, but it's true. And when you overlay it onto our industry, it's like, yeah, there's only one to 5 % of all the painting businesses in the United States and Canada are large and professional. And by large and professional, we're talking.

million bucks or higher. You know, we're talking seven people or higher. So there's not that many people doing it. And that would tell you a couple things. Either it's very, very hard, which it is not impossible. There hasn't been enough people attracted to this trade. Or the people in it haven't cracked that code yet. And when we look at it from an industry-wide thing, I think it's less of like, why aren't these people running big businesses? Or aren't they capable? I think there's an origin story that kind

is a good indication of where we are, which is there is not enough big professional painting companies who have standard operating procedures, employee manuals, benefits, year-round work, a supportive management team, fulfillment, other good people there to employ a lot of these people. And when you cannot, if you're a very good craftsperson, master craftsperson in this industry, and you should be making between 30 and 40 bucks an hour at a minimum,

And if you go out there, statistically, by the bell curve, you're not going to find a company to work for. You're going to find a painting company, but they're not going to have any of these things in place. So then what do you do? You start your own business. You say, screw it. If Brandon will only pay me $35 an hour, I'm starting my own, and I'm going to charge $45 an hour. Now you can see a good painter, might be a good business owner, but who knows, starts their own business because there's no other options. Well, they think they're just going to go out and paint for more money, but they're forgetting

Nick Slavik (38:13.968)
about free estimates in the evening, buying materials, doing tax accounting, profit and loss statement. And then they're like, wow, I'm so busy. Everybody loves me because I do good work. Let's hire on people. Well, now all of a sudden, you've got to spend all your time being a manager, doing all the business stuff for free. And then meanwhile, you're not doing the thing you love. some people, I fought this for a lot of years, some people find their way out of that, through that, in that. And some people fight it to a bitter end. But the greatest part of our capitalistic society is that you can't do that forever.

Branden Sewell (38:44.248)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (38:44.366)
A high pain tolerance and a very productive painter hand will extend that for you, but you can't do that for 30 years if it's not working. Nobody can do it for 30 years without it. We have things called mortgages and bills and we have to buy food and there is a self limiter to that, but I will say that, you know,

Branden Sewell (38:56.823)
There you go.

Nick Slavik (39:01.59)
I don't look at the people in our industry and say, you're never capable of being leaders. I'll say that there's, number one, there's not many good examples. I didn't have one. I left my own family business because I didn't align with core values. There wasn't a great example. And yeah, all those sort of things. There was no managers or anything. And I will say that if there was a bunch of very big professional painting companies, a person like...

A person with my skills could make a hell of a lot more money being a painter and work a hell of a lot less than sometimes owning a business. But then there's a few of us who actually can grow a 25 to 40 person business, provide a whole bunch of great opportunities, and I can actually create more surplus value for those around me doing this than for painting myself. And sometimes that's a hard thing to come to terms with, but it is true.

Branden Sewell (39:49.793)
Yeah, that's really good. I think that unfortunately I don't know what the answer is to figuring out how to, and I know I talked about this for a long time with Jason and I know he has like what he's trying to do to elevate the industry and all of that. I know that it's something that I would love to see happen, like just this elevation and

professionalization of business owners and larger companies because the thing that I, even though I'm not a craftsman, I have a deep appreciation for the people who do the work, right? It's, you know, I tell my guys all the time.

I feel like the trades in general are extremely undervalued. know, the work that the trades do, whether it's painting, plumbers, know, HVAC electrical, and the list goes on, I think they're undervalued. But I feel like painting can sometimes take an even like harder blow, you know, as far as being devalued. But I think of like,

Here in Florida, like we offer a ton of value as far as like making sure the outside of people's homes are protected against, you know, wind driven rain and storms. Like we have so many stucco homes that, you know, this the pain is it's literally the thing that protects it when we get these hard wind driven storms or rain through storms. We see so many homes that get completely damaged just from rain, wind driven rain.

driving through stucco, cracks, things like that, and completely damaging the inside of people's homes. And it's like, you're bringing value, you're protecting somebody's investment through the work that you're doing. And you should value the fact that you're getting to do that. You're getting to bring that value to somebody's life of offering this work to them. And so I just feel like the people

Branden Sewell (42:02.519)
that do the work. I guess what I'm trying to say is I want to see them respected and valued and greater opportunities made for them. And it's really hard, like you said, to do that when the expectation is to hire somebody for $18 to $20 an hour because it's devalued, I feel.

And so I just, I would like for there to be this elevation. So it's like, okay, I can create careers for these guys where they can come in. Like I can talk to a high schooler and say, Hey, you can come into this trade and you can work for a really great company. And it doesn't have to be a dead end job, or you don't have to feel like you're losing in life because you became a painter. You can join this company. You can have dignity, respect for yourself, value for yourself.

Feel like you're a great contributing member of this community By the work that you do and it's not some second-class job you are valuable and then be able to pay a not just a livable Wage but a respectable wage, you know where guys can feel like okay. I can buy a house I can take care of and provide for my family and

I truly believe that that's like what my guys deserve, you know? And sometimes that's really difficult to even provide. was just having a conversation with a customer in our community. They were arguing about bids that they got. And one of their bids was for like $3,000 and they were getting bids for like $8,000.

and they didn't understand that. And, I just said, you know, look like it, and I broke it down for him. I was like, in order to pay a painter, a respectable livable wage, this is what they're going to have to make. This is what, you know, the costs would be for five days of labor to do your job. And if, if a, you know, a professional company were to come in and do that, they would lose money at the price that you're expecting that to be done for. And so.

Branden Sewell (44:21.707)
I just feel like even a lot of guys kind of can bring the trade down by how they view themselves or view pricing jobs fairly. And I don't know if you have any opinions on that, you know, it's like pricing can be a big issue for us. And I feel like if people don't understand business and they don't price jobs properly, they don't understand like

the real cost of doing business, then their pricing jobs way lower than what they should be. And it just drags the industry as a whole down because you're not, you don't understand how to price jobs properly to be profitable and to run a professional business. So I feel like that's, it disservices us. And I don't know what the answer is to fixing that.

Nick Slavik (45:11.278)
Yeah, I travel around and we do anonymous pricing experiments where for the last five or six years at all of our industry events, I probably do about 18 a year. When I'm given the opportunity to give one of my master's classes where I open up my business to everybody and share some of the practices and look for feedback, we estimate the same three projects and we have for five or six years. And I aggregate all the data anonymously and then I present it back to the people in real time about market prices in your area. So I can go to Seattle and there could be 85 contractors

We can all price the same exterior of a house, and in 10 minutes I'll show them what the market rate is in that area. I'll show them highs and lows and the deltas between all that. And the most remarkable thing that I've seen over five or six years of doing that, we have thousands of data points with this. It's one of the coolest experiments I've ever done. There's a 94 % difference between the highest and the lowest price between professional contractors across the entire United States estimating the same project, which is absolutely absurd because

If you were to go try to buy a Ford F-150 and you went to three dealerships and there was a 94 % price difference, two things happen. Number one, you feel like you're getting screwed, but you don't know by who. Is it the high? Is it the low? There's such a discrepancy, it leads to confusion. Number one, confusion leads to inaction. So now, when we go out and a client gets three estimates to sustain their deck and there's a 94 % price differential in there.

They're not trying to say, the lower is probably a cheap person, doesn't know what they're doing, and the more expensive, well, you're probably getting what you paid. They look at all of them and say, most of this experience was very unprofessional to me. There's an insanely wide thing of prices. I might not just do anything, because I feel like no matter what my choice is, I'm getting screwed. And even if you show up in a nice button shirt and you have a tablet and all this, they may say, I don't know, but I might be getting screwed on the high end from that person, because

Evidently that tablet costs money and they may be exploiting labor or other things. So that to me is People like to think there's the boogeyman out there this undercutter this magical Painter at least in our industry where it's like there's this painter who knows exactly what everybody else Charges and he has all his job costing and all his metric based bidding stuff down and he can systematically charge 60 % less

Nick Slavik (47:28.846)
because he wants to take a certain part of market share of all these other painters. That is hilarious. People laugh in a crowd when you propose that because this whole myth of when you start talking about why is it slow now, well, the price these people pay, it's like, yes, there are people who charge less. They're not doing it maliciously. They're doing it because they have no idea what they're doing. And in fact, most of us go out there and charge as much as we think we can charge for our services. There's nobody out there that says, well,

I should charge two grand to stay in that deck, but I'm just gonna charge thousand a day. Nobody does that. So what you're talking to is probably people who mean well, just do not do job costing, do not have a metric-based bidding thing. And it's not because they even know about it. It might be because they've never had that example. So that's what the PCA, the Painting Contractors Association and all that stuff is there for, which is just exposing people to good examples and access to information is sometimes all that we need. But then the person has to take it from there and actually do something.

Branden Sewell (48:26.741)
Yeah, so I just, there's so many painters out there. It's like, well, how do you reach all of them effectively to try and, you know, yeah, I'm sure it's incredibly challenging, but it would be interesting to try to think of ways to just meet them where they're at. Like, almost, I mean, this is a totally like in the moment thought, but.

Nick Slavik (48:37.24)
You don't. You just don't.

Branden Sewell (48:51.829)
You know, I'm just thinking to myself, what if there were representatives of PCA in different communities and, you know, they had like pop-up booths at like paint stores and like, hey, you know, PCA is going to be here for a day just as a resource and, you know, offer painters, you know, some just help, you know, whatever resources they would need, meeting them right where they're at, at their local store, wherever that wherever they decide to get paint. But

You it's just, I think that's, you said it very well and I love that data you shared about that 94 % difference because obviously I didn't know that data but I see it consistently and it is very challenging, excuse me, you know, especially when you, like as myself, like I am, I really want to create this very professional business and offer incredible value, not just,

you know, to our painters, but to our customers and our community, right? And really be able to invest in all three of those. But it is challenging when we go out there and we are faced with those situations with customers and...

Nick Slavik (50:06.051)
Well.

I will, this is another little bit of head trash that I held long ago, which is how are you gonna get these jobs when somebody comes in and charges 129 bucks to paint the walls in a bedroom and my company's charging 463. And that person will say, listen man, you're playing on the wrong game board. There is a thing called client preference. Like some people will go to Arby's for a roast beef sandwich and that's their preference. Some people will go to Manny's Steakhouse and they usually don't vice versa each other. So what I,

Branden Sewell (50:30.135)
Right

Nick Slavik (50:36.592)
you get present, this is what you, when you surround yourself with people who are farther along in this thinking than you, they'll call you on your BS, put their arm around you and say, listen man, I get it.

Branden Sewell (50:45.889)
Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (50:45.974)
you have probably lost jobs to somebody cheaper. Your job as a business owner is to find other opportunities, find the right people, find those neighborhoods that do support this. And there is a thing called client preference. There are some people that would never use the lowest bid. And just probably as many people as would never use the highest bid. So your job is to get out there and systematically find opportunities for your company and then keep refining that so you can be profitable.

Branden Sewell (51:09.707)
Awesome. Well, hey, Nick, I appreciate your time. We have a few more minutes really quick before we bring this to a close. You know, I just want to open the floor up for you. Is there any of those myths that you talked about or any information that you'd like to share with the listeners that you think would bring value that maybe you didn't get to speak about as we were talking? The floor is yours. Anything you'd like to share.

Nick Slavik (51:35.95)
Couple quit.

quick hot bits of stuff. There's something that we coined the owner exit fallacy years ago because we would typically, and especially because you're off the ladder podcast. mean, one of the goals is, you know, if you want to get off the ladder, number one, you have to make sure it aligns with your life purpose. Growing a big professional business is not for everybody. And this is not a value judgment. You have to make sure that aligns with your life purpose. If a painting vehicle or a soft washing company with a whole bunch of people is a vehicle

to help you achieve that purpose and you can only achieve that purpose with a vehicle like that, pursue it. But if it does not, why would you do that to yourself? That is not a good thing to do, right? There's many other places you can go to potentially support and be a vehicle to your purpose. Number two, owner exit fallacy.

This is a simple math problem. In our industry, you need to hire and train and retain about four productive painters for you to stop painting and then only run the business. And what that will do is a one-for-one swap of your income. If you're bringing home $75,000 to $100,000 a year as a single owner-operator residential painter, you're going to need to have four people operating in the field profitably, consistently, for you to replace that $75,000 to $100,000 income. Now, this means

professional business, standard operating procedures, employment practices, recruiting, training, job costing, P &L management, all this other stuff, just with four painters. Constant daily management for those people. You're gonna have to be the estimator, you're gonna have to be the project manager, but that is literally the math problem. And it's not because four people do what you do, it's because you probably don't pay yourself payroll, not you, everybody else. They probably don't pay themselves their own payroll and you don't count for your own time. If you hire somebody else, you don't just get what's left over and distribute it, you actually have to pay them.

Nick Slavik (53:24.32)
So basically by the time you're done with payroll and burden and all that other stuff or their percentage you pay them as a subcontractor, they're probably going to afford you about a 15 to 20 % net profit. And you're going to need about four of those to maintain what you had previously. So that's a simple math problem because a lot of people would come to the PCA and say, listen, I hired two painters and I stopped painting. And all of sudden, my company is like financially burning to the ground. It's like, yeah, you don't have enough. You need four to replace you consistently because.

You don't pay yourself a payroll, you're just taking distributions. And the last thing I can say is this comfortably, of all the PCA resources are great, your podcast is great. There's a whole bunch of insanely good resources out there. Honestly, if you got a couple hundred bucks a month, get a therapist. Literally, you are your own worst enemy. You can momentarily cowboy up to a couple million bucks, but if you don't address the things in yourself, which you said very early in the podcast,

That'll all come crashing down. And the most interesting thing that I've seen in this industry, for people who do this long enough, I've seen people with seven, eight, nine, $10 million businesses who eventually figure it all out, get a very smooth, profitable business, and they're only left with themselves. And they have not figured out a purpose in life or a vehicle to achieve that purpose. Thus, the midlife crisis and this angst and this potential feeling of dread. So I would say this, above all else, get a therapist.

Branden Sewell (54:50.389)
Yeah, that's good. I think that it's really important. One of the things that I focus on a lot as a business owner and even recommend to a lot of people not in some kind of soft way. think that's the other thing. I think therapy gets kind of like a negative connotation. We want to have this tough man mentality.

Nick Slavik (55:13.102)
especially in trades.

Branden Sewell (55:17.591)
I personally just hold to the opinion. I don't think there's tougher or stronger than being able to admit you need help. I think it takes a lot of personal strength to be able to say, look, I can't do this on my own. I'm going to push my ego and pride to the side. And some people might think that strength is found in that ego and that pride. But just for me personally, I found

my strength has been found in a willingness to like, let go, you know, to have some humility and say, hey, look, I can't do this. I don't know what to do. I need help. Whether that's mentally, physically, spiritually, any kind of way, but I think that's really wise advice to whoever's listening to this.

Nick Slavik (56:09.666)
Yeah, and if you want to be a big tough guy, big master craftsman, call it performance coaching. That's what it is. You can get help with job costing and P &L and marketing. Why can't you get help with you being a more performative human? Like, make yourself better. Like, that to me is the ultimate.

Branden Sewell (56:25.143)
Yeah, yeah, same here. We harp on that a lot here at my business, just that whole mentality of humility. And it's something that I have to butt heads with guys ever so often, but humility is definitely the way. So anyway, I'm going to bring this to a close. Nick, thank you so much for your generosity with your time and being willing to share some value with my listeners. It's been a pleasure to meet you and speak with you.

For anyone who's listening to this, if you're listening on YouTube, please like this, comment, share your thoughts below, share it with somebody so that they can learn from the content that we share. And then also if you're listening on any major podcast platform, I'd appreciate it if you'd rate and review the show, share it with somebody. And as always, I appreciate you listening to this episode and I'll see you next time on the next episode of the Off the Ladder Podcast.