He Went All In On His Painting Business... And it WORKED

This episode of American Builders features Frank Pileggi, Founder of Pileggi Painting. 

We discuss: 
- Starting a painting business in his late 30s
- The important of picking the right partners 
- Levers for growth 
- How deliver a perfect product

Learn more about Pileggi Painting: https://pileggipainting.com/

Presented by TradeGuard: https://tradeguardins.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Alrighty, everybody. I am here with Frank Polegie of Polegy Painting. Frank, I appreciate you coming on today. Let's start with just a little bit of background on who you are. You've been doing this for quite a while now. So maybe just take us back to the beginning and kind of walk us through the journey of your business.

SPEAKER_03 0:37

I can do that. Thanks for having me on, Garrett. Frank Polegy, Polegy Painting. I started Polegy Painting when I was 32 years old. So we probably have to go way back to figure out like, okay, this 32-year-old just started a painting company without knowing how to paint.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

That's let's let's do that.

SPEAKER_03 0:52

That's really not correct. I mean, because that's what I did. But when I was young, you know, 12 to 16 years, 12 years old, I was mowing lawns. You know, I was one of those kids that always had to work and always worked and always liked to work. And maybe that's kind of where my entrepreneurial ship started, and kind of how I taught my kids how to do, you know, that if you need money, you have to go to work, not to dad. And that's kind of how I was raised. So I was mowing lawns from 12 to 16, got in high school, and I learned one summer I went to work for a high school teacher and I learned how to paint. And I worked for him for a full year painting, learning how to paint, learning the industry from a one-man high school painting contractor that would just do it in the summer. And then the next summer, me and two buddies did it on our own. And so I painted mowed lawns with two other guys from high school through college every summer. So then graduated from college, got a straight commissioned sales job, representing motivational speakers and sales trainers and entertainers for corporate events and training. So that's my back background. And then fast forward to 32 years old, I'm representing professional speakers and trainers and educators for corporate conferences. And September 11th, a tax hit. All sales conferences, all incentive conferences done, just completely zeroed out. Probably not as bad as that industry was hit during COVID where you couldn't even leave your house to, you know, let alone go into a hotel. So I had three young boys at home and a wife, and I needed money. So I had a friend of mine that lived up the street from me that was in sales, straight commission sales, and was in a similar situation. So him and I started a lawn company, and then a few months later started a painting company. He ran the lawn company, I ran the painting company, and that's how we started. We actually started as a company called Colegygian Reed. His name, his last name was Reed. And that's where it all started in 2004.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Hmm. I mean, there's definitely a bunch of interesting themes there. Um, I think the early start is foundational for a lot of trades business owners, that high school lawn and landscaping business foundation. I've just seen it over and over again. How how that just kind of sparks the entrepreneurial spirit early on? It teaches you the value of hard work. I'm curious during that period where before you sort of went all in on the painting, did you have sort of an inkling or a passion to get out of the current job and go into the entrepreneurial? Uh, what was that like?

SPEAKER_03 3:48

I did at that time, and from 22 years old to 32 years old, 32 years old, when I was working in that industry, I represented, listened to the best authors and speakers on customer service, on sales, on marketing. And so there was always this one speaker that said, if you could be of service, you will always have a job. And if you could be of great service, you could always own a company. And so that's kind of where I went from there. And then when we started the painting and lawn service, I kept my other job for probably a year and a half. So during launch, at the end of the day, I was mowing, I was painting, I had a I was it was hard back then when you were kind of in halfway to have a great crew, and that's what took a bit to get started. But knowing what I knew when I was younger and what I learned from 22 to 32 years old from all these great professional trainers and speakers on the customer service part aside and the sales and the marketing, I knew what I was doing when I entered the industry. I just needed to figure out how to build teams.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

I was I just I just finished up a conversation with Luke Looney, who's uh he owns Good Boy Epoxy. And we were talking about that exact same thing where it's like when you're in the trades, you you kind of can understand the the tactical bits of it, you know what to do, and ultimately the hardest part becomes uh building a team. So we'll we'll put a pin in that, we'll get to that later. I want to talk about sort of the jump into entrepreneurship. So a lot of times people have sort of these golden handcuffs where you're making a great living at your job, but you have this passion to do something else. Sounds like it was maybe a little different for you where the industry was in a weird place. So you kind of had this forcing function um and a need to go and do something else. But I'm curious, when was the moment where you decided, okay, I can't, I can't be one foot in, one foot out. I need to make the full jump.

SPEAKER_03 5:54

There was uh one of my friend's dad's uh who owned a uh HBAC company, and we were all out one night and he happened to be there, and he looked at me and he said, Pelegi, you look really tired. I said, I am, I'm working three jobs. He goes, Well, tell me about it. And so I told him about it, and he said, When your sales and your side job equal what you're bringing in on your day on your regular job, he goes, It's time to go full force. He goes, Are you there? I'm like, I'm there. And so the next day I quit my other job and went all in. And that's basically how it started. Yeah, of going all in, where I just I couldn't do, I mean, there was not enough hours in the day to do it all anymore. And that's where you had to take the risk of just going, okay, I trust myself, I trust what I've built, you know, it's short term in the last year and a half of the new business. Let's just go for it. And that's when we went for it, which creates a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of you know anxiety on cash flow and working because it's hard to even get a line of credit from a bank when you when you need one the most. And when you don't need one, like now, it's easy to get it. It should be, you know, that world should be opposite where we went to the bank and got turned down for a I think a$30,000 line of credit. And so then you're just all in, and which kind of probably made it better because you were forced to actually make the cash flow work.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Right.

SPEAKER_03 7:24

Well, that's that's one of the hardest parts about starting is cash flow.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Absolutely. And I'd have to imagine the stress of having the kids as well and the family that you know, when you're young and you're you're John and I's age, it's a little bit easier to take these risks. But I'd have to imagine that sort of lit the fire for you to have those completely long hour days.

SPEAKER_03 7:49

Yeah, and probably it's for for if you're giving advice to any entrepreneur, it's better to do it when you're 24, 25 years old, and you're especially if you're single, not married, no kids, you know, you you could live on a lot less where we were forced to add a certain dollar amount where you had to make.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Right. So looking at it now, kind of explain where you're at today in terms of the company size, employee count, and then we'll kind of contrast that from the early days.

SPEAKER_03 8:17

When you start, I was on a ladder with guys. I had two or three guys painting, we had two or three guys mowing, um, and then it's just it takes time to build a team. And we ended up, I had like three guys painting, I was on a ladder, and then I then you also have to take, you know, figure out when to get off the ladder and just go be a business owner in sales and marketing. I was doing all of that now, but I didn't have my other side jobs to do. I was just focused on painting, which we painted, and I had certain hours of the day where I would go do bids and do the business part of it. But I was still part of the painting team for probably three years, and then got off the ladder and did more of the business side of just the painting. And that's kind of where it started coming together. I had a couple guys on one crew, I found some guys on another crew, and then I mean, the story of finding a team and trying to get guys is people to do the job that you need to be done when you're not there babysitting. So that took a bit, but once we had that, then we just built off that group and just kept building a team bigger and bigger. So, you know, you had three guys, and then three turned into five, got rid of the guys that were not pulling their weight and not doing the job and not perfect, but just not doing the job to where you know our clients were completely satisfied, and then got rid of them and then kept the other guys. And so we went to a group of probably 10 painters with one main manager on it, and that got to be too much for that one main guy, and then so what I did with him, he created we with underneath him, we created three new teams, and so because he couldn't manage all 10 guys and all the jobs, and me giving him all the jobs. So, what I did was broke up the 10 into three different teams, and we still exist that way in the with five different teams, same guys, same deal, and then they're they're in charge of who's underneath them, is how we built the team and the process. Um, so we we had one guy in charge of you know, nine others, and then we then we had three guys in charge of two, you know, and then we built from there, right? And that that worked the best when we built teams instead of one big team trying to tackle a lot of jobs and splitting up. We just said, okay, now you're in charge of this, and and then and I would just get the jobs organized for the guys, and the guys did all the painting.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

How do you know when to get off the ladder? You mentioned that is if you're talking to somebody who's in that exact spot that you were, what's your advice of when to say, all right, no more time on the ladder.

SPEAKER_03 11:10

Yeah, because you got to get off the ladder, you got to get off the mower, you got to get off, you know, you got to get off the you know, the plumbing, you got to get off of everything and just be as uh my manager and and more of a, you know, I turned into more of a sales and marketing customer service person than, you know, literally a painter, and that's what you have to do. And the timing of that is, you know, kind of when you can't keep up with all of it, and you're almost forced to show up at somebody's house to do a bid, and you look like you just got off the ladder. And that, and that's where a lot of my competition it was and is still. And so when I changed that, then that was that was that was the game changer of getting off the ladder. But you have to stay on the ladder for years. It was it was more of a financial thing, and then again, it's the same leap of faith you took before. Like, okay, do I trust these guys to be here every day? And do we know each other enough to figure that out? And at the time we did, and so I wasn't nervous, I wasn't nervous about getting off the ladder in as much as I was nervous about going all in, you know, because I was confident in who I had at the time. And I also had more time to check up on them during the day at specific jobs.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:27

I mean, I think that's your timing of that just as you know, it's kind of all on feel and where you are at the time, and you know, you're maxed out, and you know, you you need to, you know, then then you become a time management, you know, person where you just have to manage your time and have certain hours of the day specific to different things inside your business to do.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

I'm curious how you think about team formation. And I I just have continued to see it come up over and over again where the the way you structure the team is kind of the key to having that excellent product, where you know, every trades business owner agrees and admits that the most important part is having a great final product, and they believe that as the owner, but it's how do you distill that to the 15th guy on your team who you don't really know that well? Um, I'm curious how you kind of think about team formation and and how that impacts having an excellent product.

SPEAKER_03 13:28

Well, I I mean, I think when you form a team, whether you're, you know, even even if you form a grade school soccer team, you have to have some leaders on the team. And not everyone wants to be a leader, and not everyone's born to be a leader, and not everyone wants to teach themselves how to be a leader. So you pick the guys to run the team that are leaders, and everybody else is a follower. And to get them, to get the last guy to do as good a job as your head guys, and that you would do is just a matter of patience and taking time to work with them and failing on jobs. To where, Garrett, if we worked at your house, um, and this is where my quality comes in of how to do it is I would call you afterwards. I might not have been there when the guys finished at your house and said, Garrett, you know, how's everything look? Here's your total, and you're like, hey, Frank, everything looks great, but everything looks great, but and so I had to convey to the guys, let's get rid of the butts. And the butts were a lot of not cleaning up, not being nice, not being courteous to people's times. We're in 90% of the times, we're in people's houses or offices. I don't do new construction, so it's not like we don't have an open house and we just come and go as we please. We gotta, we gotta be, you know, cognizant of people's pets, kids, hours of when they're you know, taking kids back and forth to school, when we can get in, when we can get out of the house. So it was basically getting rid of the butts of when we have to go back to a house, when we're done, we already packed up, left your house here. Now I gotta go get guys off of another job that we just started and come back to you. So it was explaining to them that that costs money for everybody except for you, the homeowner. We're not charging you to come back because we're coming back to cleanup and to touch up, where we could have done that while we were there if we were more, you know, aware of the surroundings in your house and having it look like it was when we got there. And that's and that just takes time and patience working with the guys of that, explaining them, you know, nobody's perfect, but now we have to go back to Garrett's house and finish. And we're losing money when we're doing that. Not just me, you guys are losing money too, and that's the way we kind of put it that we're all in this together. I'm just not gonna lose money over it. You you guys are too. So let's go back and you're basically working for free. We all are. And that's kind of how it is. But building a team, you just have to find the leaders, and you know what? That's really not hard to find. Once you get on it, same with when you walk on a field, you could tell who's a leader. You could throw a ball out to a bunch of 16-year-old boys or girls and tell them to pick a team, and you'll find out in five minutes who who your leader is.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

That is true. I like the the get rid of the butts. That's it's a that's a short thing that you can remember, but it perfectly sort of captures the whole point of look around, make sure everything's good, and then you know, look for the butts so that you can get rid of them before they become an issue.

SPEAKER_03 16:46

And communicate with the homeowner. Hey, we're done in an hour. Everything looked good? And you would be like, Yes, everything looks great. Can you clean this up there? Can you touch up this? You know, are you guys picking up the trash or leaving it? Yeah, we'll take it all with us, you know, little things of communicating with homeowners when they're home. And, you know, that was the best way to learn that to a perfection was during COVID, where everyone was at home. So we didn't have to wait to come home from work to inspect our work that we thought was that we were done with. You were just there. So since then, rarely have to go back and do a cleanup. Maybe there's a touch-up here and there, but no butts, you know, the butts are gone, you know. And so no, no, and none of my guys are perfect, and I'm not either. With all that said, we got rid of 90% of the butts.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

That's great. It's very interesting. I didn't think about how COVID would impact that. It's fascinating. Um, how do you think you operate differently now compared to maybe not right when you started, but sort of five years in, you've got your footing, you feel like you're, you know, a true entrepreneur. How do you kind of think about how you operate differently, if at all? Um, and we've talked a little bit about focusing more on sales and marketing, but anything else in terms of you know just pure operations, how you how you move differently and hopefully obviously better than you used to?

SPEAKER_03 18:10

Yeah, I think I think that comes with doing so many different jobs in inside the industry of you know repairing sheetrock to not being able to repair it before, knowing how to bid different things. And as you learn all these different ways to do jobs, you learn within your industry how to be better and how to make more money while you're in there. So, you know, and also you could kind of I operate a lot easier now, and I know a lot more ways to make money at your house and even talk about it with you what I did at another house. Like, hey, you know, you're like, can you come over at 10 o'clock to my house? No, I'm doing a bit at a commercial job down there, down in KC Mo, but I could do at 11. I didn't need to say that, I just said I'd do it at 11. But you know, it's kind of like people name dropping. I'm dropping what we do to you without you knowing that. And you're like, oh, I have an office also, it's an overland park. Do you work out here? You know, or hey, I'm we just got done doing a job where we're scraping ceilings and doing popcorn removal, and it was just so dusty that, you know, sorry, you know, I look like this a little bit, I was just out of house. Oh my God, do you guys do that? I didn't know that. And so when you work at somebody's house, they just think that you do what you do. Like if I came in and painted your inside of your house and I didn't tell you that I painted outside or did this with inside the house, then you start creating experiences within your company of what you do. And then you build a walking network team within that. Meaning, I have a floor guy, I have an electrician, I have a handyman, I have interior designers, I have color coordinators, I have paint stores that all market me because I market them and we're friends, and we know that that I if I introduce you to my floor guy, he's gonna do a great job. And you're gonna hire him nine out of 10 times. And so you create kind of a walking marketing team within that. And so that's kind of how you build your whole network within your network, and that's how you operate different in your 10th year than you did at your first year, because I didn't know all those trades. You know, I didn't know a frame or guys that frames houses until now. You know, now if somebody refers, I somebody asked me for that. I could do that five minutes ago on my phone. Somebody asked me for a sheetrock person. My guys do sheetrock better than most sheetrock companies, so I'm gonna tell them that I do it. I know him. I've never worked at his house, but I will now.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

Right.

unknown 20:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:48

That's kind of where you operate different is through experiences in in my industry, in a service industry.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Absolutely. I was just talking on the last episode about this, where when you think about networking, it's oftentimes you think sort of the white-collar jobs of hey, you if you're a financial advisor, you got to have your network, you got to be on LinkedIn doing the doing all these things. But it's really, you know, immensely valuable and arguably, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the more valuable things you can have as a trades business owner, uh, not necessarily in terms of the customer network, but all the things surrounding um and sort of the sales funnels that you can get from working with certain people, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

So and that's one of the most important parts of the service industry is to create a network of people that are basically marketing your company every day. People are out marketing my company right now. I don't even know about it. And it has nothing to do with me paying anyone any money or any kickbacks or referrals. Just we just plug each other's trade when you're necessary. And when your clients trust you inside their house, they're gonna trust your friends of your network that you have to work inside their house as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Mm-hmm. I'm curious what advice you would give to the younger version of yourself. If you're going back to and let's we'll start at that 31, uh, you know, that that point where you you made the jump. Um, what advice would you give yourself at that point?

SPEAKER_03 22:18

I would give well one is in your business plan, if you think it's gonna take you three years to hit a number or five years to hit a number, know that that's probably not correct. That you're it's probably gonna take you longer to do that. So to have more patience in getting to your numbers. And so finally, I would just like, you know, you think you're gonna hit a certain number, sales number, which turns out to be a be a profitable number, in two shorter years. And so then uh my strategy was let's just grow after the you know, first to second year and second to third year is huge growth, you know, 30, 40, 50 percent. Then after that, you got to be like, okay, to control this and still give good customer service, we're gonna increase 20% each year. And then you kind of get to a point where you know that number's good, or you got to keep going, you know, 3%, 5%, 10%. But that's kind of where it is. I mean, so the advice would be patience, it takes more time. And then another one would be, you know, if you have a partner, because my I don't have a partner now, and then that only lasted seven or eight years, is to really evaluate if you need a partner. And if you do need a partner, make sure you do two to two different things within the company and you're not basically competing against your partner. And that's kind of where we failed as partnerships. We were doing the same thing, basically selling and marketing and managing guys. And my partner wasn't doing pulling the same weight that I thought he should with me compared to what I was doing. And then so that's two different advice. I would two different forms of advice I would give to a young entrepreneur that if you are gonna have a partner, really evaluate who that is and what your duties are within the company.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

That's fantastic advice. I do want to ask about in terms of patience, there there's kind of this balancing act that you have to play. And this is something I struggle with, where you do want to have that motivation of, hey, we want to double our business this year. Um while also still admitting that it's probably gonna take longer. And do you just have any thoughts on like how do you balance that? Where you want to have the motivation to keep going and you want to have a lofty goal, so you you give it all you got, but you also still want to not sort of be disappointed by that or understand that it might take a longer. I mean, how do you how do you kind of balance that?

SPEAKER_03 24:54

Sometimes if you increase sales by not so much, let's say 40%, but like let's say 20% of more qualified quality jobs that would give you more jobs in the future. So you're not really accepting every job and not really desperate to do every job that might not be your niche, and you're going outside your niche and failing just to hit your number. So you want to stay with what any which you do, and sometimes the quality of the jobs and those clients that provide those jobs are better than hitting a bigger number, and sometimes the bottom line is better too.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Let's talk about sort of bottlenecks or trends in the industry in your business. And you can talk about your specific business if you want, or just kind of the industry at large. Where is the biggest bottleneck that sort of shrinks growth for the you know the typical painting business?

SPEAKER_03 25:58

Well, I would say for the typical painting business, it's probably um a matter of labor, but keeping the labor and keeping the labor busy to where they stay with you and not go from company to company working for other other painting companies. So I I think you know, I think that's the toughest part is to just once you have the team built to continue to keep the same crews. And that's been key for my industry, where you know, if I'm working at your house for the third time, I have the same crew back every time. So now you're more comfortable with the crew coming in your house because they've been there before and you know their names and you know, you know, their personalities and their traits and whatever. So that's kind of probably the biggest bottleneck in our industry is that. And then I don't know, trends in in our industry are basically color trends, you know, of different paint colors, etc. And you know, and remodeling trends help us to where, you know, the old, you know, six-room main floor house is now three big open rooms. So that in that helped us a lot in and not bottlenecked it, it went took us to the next level of you know, all these remodelers in the trend of having more open spaces. And so there was a lot of remodeling going on and a lot of painting during COVID where people were like, okay, yeah, our kitchen needs to be bigger. Yeah, we could do this with the dining room. So it was it was more staying where they were and and converting different rooms into different parts of their life where they could, you know, have more time at home because that's where people were.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

You mentioned sort of the struggle of keeping obviously labor, getting the labor is an issue or at least uh uh a problem, um, and it's difficult to do. And an interesting sort of note on that, one of our affiliate partners, he has a staffing agency, and he put it in a in a great way that I had never thought about before, where he said the short the labor shortage is not on the actual labor side that most people think of it. It's on the labor that it takes to go and find those people. So the people are out there, but you might have to go through 5,000 applicants to find the one person. And 99.9% of people just don't have the labor to do that. Um, so that's just an interesting note that I heard where I was like, okay, everybody that I asked this question to kind of says the same thing, but it's flipped the script where the labor's out there, it's just finding it that takes the time. Um, and then you mentioned the other part of it, which I think is a little more nuanced, where now that you have the labor, how do you keep them busy? And especially with sort of the seasonality of it. Talk about that a little bit. Um, you have this crew. How do you keep them busy? How does seasonality impact all of that? What's your sort of strategy for that?

SPEAKER_03 29:01

Seasonality definitely impacts how busy we are, but the seasons have changed. If you could see now, I mean, we're we're in Kansas right now and it's going to be 63 degrees today. I mean, we need 35 degrees and above to paint outside. So the seasons have changed, but there's still seasonality. When it's snowy and rainy um and cold and icy outside, my phone does not ring that much. Regardless of what time of year it is. If we just have a bad day, you know, it's a slow day on incoming calls. We still have work going on. But then when when you after you do it for a while, you could find what work seasonality, what's what seasons you could do different things in your industry. Like so ours, I was at a client's house painting eight years ago, and she was staying at home with her kids, and she just had just get given birth to her fifth child. And this was in January, and she said, Frank, when you guys are done working on the inside of my house, can I pay you with a company check instead of a personal check? I said, Well, of course you can. I didn't know you had a company. What do you do? She goes, Well, we hang exterior Christmas lights on residential houses. I said, What who does it? She goes, Painters that are slow and long landscape companies that are slow. I said, Well, can you teach me how to do that? And so she taught my wife and I how to do that seven years ago. And so with now we're in our seventh year of hanging Christmas lights for our clients. And so that's a seasonal thing that we do for extra money when you know it slows down sometimes for painting, and sometimes it doesn't. Now it's just an added bonus at the end of the year. We're mid to late October till Thanksgiving. This year we did 150 houses of exterior Christmas lights. So that's something within your industry that you could find in. And my guys do all of it. I don't have to, I don't have to find new people. Well, my painter pain Christmas lights, and we we paint all winter long as well. And then we take two or three weeks off Christmas, New Year's break, and then we're back at it. So the seasons are January's our slowest month, but we're also off for 10 days of it, recharging our batteries and getting ready for for the year. And we usually start, you know, mid-January and get going then.

SPEAKER_00 31:26

Um, what would be something that let's say somebody's just starting a painting business? What are some of the complexities that you have found? Um, because when you look at painting, it's it seems straightforward, right? Yeah, everyone could paint, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:41

Everyone knows how to paint.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

Everybody knows how to paint. I I literally just painted my entire house, every square inch of it. So I can assure you it's not as easy as one would think.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

Not as easy as you think.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

But yeah, you have to have the time as a DIY or exactly a lot of time. Uh, what is some complexities though that people looking at the painting industry wouldn't necessarily think about?

SPEAKER_03 32:06

That you have to have a relationship with the painting companies. That's how, I mean, that's where it starts. Um because if you look at retail paint prices, they're insane. And if you don't have a relationship with Sherwin Williams or Benjamin Moore, um, where you have a designated sales rep that's setting your prices and getting you, you know, the the prices that you need to be competitive in the marketplace, that's probably where a lot of them fail. You know, they they're they're having the homeowners buy paint at retail price. So your price, if I gave you a bid on labor only and told you you had to buy the paint, your price is way more than all your competitors that have a relationship with uh the a paint company. That's just a simple little thing that you wouldn't think of. But a painting company has a relationship with a painting company, you know, a really good relationship. And that's that's where you have to start with, and you got to learn all the products, and you just you just think but you just think you can go paint and you're buying all the wrong products to to put on the walls or the outside and and for all the wrong prices. I mean, there's some gallons of paint that are over$100 a gallon right now, and you charge someone$300 to pay a little room and go spend$165 on paint and$25 on plastic and tape, you don't make any money. So that's little things that that probably if you're on the ladder too much and not doing math very well, you don't know it until you're losing money.

SPEAKER_00 33:33

Right. For all each job. I uh going back to the last conversation I had is the same thing with the epoxy world. It's the I think for trades businesses, I I would have to imagine that applies a lot of places where having a relationship with the suppliers allows you on your end, where let's say you get a job and you can go and go to Sherman Williams, go to Benjamin Moore, and get competitive quotes on your end. So you can almost become a competitive quoter on or sort of a GC, if you will, on your side of the things. And that helps you uh get lower prices as well. So uh love that. I'm curious. Um how do you try to maintain? We kind of talked about it a little bit, but the service at scale, we talked about uh having that the team and having the strong leaders. Would you say the leadership is the key to making sure that the job gets done right? Um, or is it kind of a cultural thing or any anything you can speak to on that?

SPEAKER_03 34:31

It is the leadership that that does it all. And you know, if everyone's involved in the money part too, of like we said before, of getting rid of the butts, then you know, if they're making more money by not having to go back, then everyone's more aware of each job when you leave it, of we're done. You know, if if oh my god, if Garrett asks us to come back after we just did all this cleanup and painting, he's got a better eye than us, you know, and that's that's it right there. Of just of just making them part of the team of of ownership, you know, take ownership of it, you know. I mean, it's all of our money. So let's make sure that when we get it done, we get it done.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

I that's great. That's something I've asked that question a few times. That's definitely something nobody has said yet. So love that. What would you say is the biggest lever that you guys have had for growth? Um, whether it's marketing, partnerships, sourcing, if you could only focus on sort of pulling one lever, what would you focus on?

SPEAKER_03 35:37

Well, that'd be a giving away some secrets, too.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Fair enough. Fair enough.

SPEAKER_03 35:43

I would say contracts to do painting for property managers. We'll we'll just leave it at that. That's been my biggest increaser of within your industry, find a little niche that nobody has.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

Right.

unknown 35:59

Right.

SPEAKER_03 36:00

We might one niche might be painting for schools every summer. It's not a niche of mine, but I do it for two or three schools every summer. And it's ends up being a big contract, and then they start sending your name to other places. And so those are a couple things where if you can get inside to a niche within your industry that not many are thinking of, because most people are thinking of just we're just gonna paint the inside and outside your house, and or inside outside of your bar or restaurant or building or office, and to where if you get a hundred different properties managed by one company that's in charge of the property management companies in charge of lawn and landscape, snow removal, paint, lights, you know, mulching, landscaping, that's that's where you could take it to a different level.

SPEAKER_00 36:54

I think that's I mean, I'll I'll I'll put it in in my own words, but in general, it's the the partnerships that give you, because with service businesses, it's a service business, right? And a lot of times those are one-off jobs as you're just getting started. And so what I've been hearing is kind of the key is how do you find that person, that partnership, that niche that gives you almost the recurring revenue that sort of a software business benefits from. Um, I think that is something, if you're getting started, something great to focus on. Uh, we'll finish up here with sort of what the future looks like for you. I'm curious if you have any, like what does retirement look like for you or looking to sell, uh, hand it off to someone else. What does the end goal look like?

SPEAKER_03 37:38

Yeah, well, the end goal looks good, and the the the future, near future, looks good. And in the time, and the fact that my youngest son, Josh, who has one more semester of college, has always wanted to join me in Peleggy painting since he was in eighth grade and kept that thought going through high school. And then I'm like, he was getting ready to go to college. I'm like, You serious? And he said, I'm still serious. So he like all three of my boys, they've they always worked for me during high school and college in the summers, but he actually wants to come on board and actually be with me and learn the industry. And so the future, I'm I'm probably more excited than him because I other than being on the ladder, I do everything now. I I sell the jobs, I market, I do all the payroll, I produce the jobs, I collect the money. And then so with Josh coming on board, I'll be able to concentrate and focus just on sell sales. And he will be with the guys. So he will be focusing on keeping teams together, building teams, and producing the jobs. So if I come to your house, Garrett, and give you a bid to paint the outside, and then I follow up with you and you accept the bid, when we schedule it, Josh and our crew will show up to produce it, and Josh will be there with the guys to finish it. So we pride ourselves on customer service and quality now, with having, you know, an owner at each job as we're finishing, will help us as well. And, you know, now that he's coming on board and I could just focus on that. I mean, it'll take us again six months to a year for him and I to figure out a system of how it's gonna work best and what our strengths and weaknesses are, and that's where we're just gonna be. But I might not ever retire now because I don't need to. I I might my workload might be cut in half, and my sales probably could increase by a fifth 40% over one year where you we're we're maxed out right now if I don't have help, if I don't have him or someone like him coming on board. That's awesome. I'm super excited, and pledgy painting is gonna be around for a long time. Um, whether whether I'm around or not, you know, but I'll I'll be around.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

That's gotta be gratifying.

SPEAKER_03 39:57

Yes, I'm I'm super excited, really looking forward to it. Um and that starts in July, July 2026. He'll be on board with me.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Fantastic. Well, Frank, where uh where can people find you and kind of who do you want reaching out to, whether it's people looking for a job, uh general contractors, customers, where can they find you and who do you want to reach out?

SPEAKER_03 40:19

Yeah, I mean, I mean, for we, you know, we do inside, interior, exterior, residential, commercial, pledgy painting, poledgypainting.com. Um, we're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, my phone number's on everything. Josh will be coming on board in July. His phone number will be on everything. We're pretty easy to find.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks, Garrett. Bye.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

Have a good day.