Today on the More Cheese, Less Whiskers Podcast, Chris Wysokowski shares his journey from working in his family’s painting business to helping others grow theirs. He discusses transitioning from hands-on projects to strategy and business development, emphasizing the importance of maintaining relationships with past clients.
Chris explains how to treat completed projects as "homes under management" and stay top of mind through regular communication. He also introduces methods to create more opportunities from each job, using tools like an annual touchpoint calendar and circle radius prospecting.
Chris's approach focuses on building long-term success through smart planning and relationship management, shifting from chasing new leads to creating a steady stream of work from satisfied clients.
Lots of great ideas for you in this episode.
Summary:
Chris emphasizes the significance of maintaining strong relationships with past clients, viewing completed projects as "homes under management," to enhance business revenue through repeat and referral opportunities.
We discuss systematic approaches to maximize a painting business's potential, including the use of an annual touchpoint calendar and innovative metrics like "gallons under management" for project scope assessment.
Chris provides insights into effective customer engagement and project management, introducing strategies such as circle radius prospecting to expand business opportunities from a single job.
The episode delves into the development of a structured and repeatable business growth system, emphasizing the documentation of processes and the use of CRM systems for better client management.
We explore how Chris's strategic insights, influenced by industry leaders like Jay Abraham and Dan Kennedy, can empower entrepreneurs to enhance their businesses, particularly in local markets like Eastern North Carolina.
The conversation highlights the potential for impactful change through clarity and continuous improvement, setting the stage for a transformative year in business development for painting contractors.
Show Links:
ProfitActivatorScore.com
BreakthroughDNA.com
90MinuteBooks.com
Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 258
Dean: Mr Chris.
Chris: Hey Dean, how are you doing?
Dean: I am so good. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Okay, everything's fine then. Welcome aboard. You are the kickoff for the new season of the More Cheese, less Whiskers podcast. So excited to have you here.
Chris: Thank you, yeah, I'm excited to be up here as well.
Dean: Awesome. So let's start with maybe telling me the Chris. How do you say your last name? Chris Wysokowski, that's it. Wysokowski perfect. So let's start with you kind of telling me the Chris Wysokowski story and what we're hopefully going to work on today.
Chris: All right, I've been in the home improvement and painting business since I was 12 or 13, which has been about 25 plus years.
Dean: Was it a family business that you were?
Chris: Yeah, my father, my grandfather and some of my other relatives were all in the painting business to some degree and some of them had their own businesses and I started off painting with them and then, through that, I worked with a couple other painting contractors and eventually, in 2009, started my own business and been doing that since and struggled for a long time with that, because, while I knew how to do the work and stuff, I was never taught the difference between doing the work and actually running a business.
Dean: Getting the business is different than doing the business right, and managing the business is a whole different thing as well.
Chris: Right, yeah, they're two totally different things.
So while I was good at the skill of painting and I learned a lot of different skills being around the home improvement industry and started doing more stuff like remodeling and stuff, it wasn't until probably 10 years into me actually running my business where I started focusing on self-improvement and learning more about working on the business with marketing and sales and systems. And then within the last couple of years my mission and passion has changed from actually wanting to do the home improvement work to being able to teach other people how to start working on their business self-awareness, realizing, hey, this is, uh, I don't know what I'm doing here about running the business.
Dean: What was the turning point for you on kind of getting that awareness? Where did you turn and what did you discover?
Chris: um, well, the turning point was at the time I just recently had my second child and I was tired of struggling um not being consistent because I didn't have consistent marketing or consistent sales in my business. And once I started attending different events and listening to people like you and Joe Polish and like Jay Abraham and people like that learning Jay, Abraham was one of the catalysts for me.
Dean: Like I remember, back in 1991, in that era, you know, I had this trifecta of things that happened. I learned I discovered Michael Gerber's book, the E-Myth, which was like a big turning point for me. I got the idea of working on your business versus in it and using it to create a prototype. You're going to duplicate 5,000 times. And then Jay Abraham and Dan Kennedy discovered those all around the same. Kennedy discovered those all around the same time and that was like the foundational stuff of the. You know the great love of marketing that I developed because I was doing. I coincidentally used to run a painting company when we were in college and so I learned. I learned about marketing. You know, doing that out of necessity, for our own business as well. But yeah, that was so. That's great. So you're in. You got some good background there. Do you remember the first things that you did as a result of the new information that you were kind of learning that they like the first thing that you did that you said, okay, we're on the right track here.
Chris: Other than just the improvement in my own mindset, actually being able to have a strategy to just put content on Facebook and be able to see results from that in my painting business and be able to see results from that in my painting business without really spending a lot of money, just taking the time and effort to put in my work on social media just so other people can see it.
Dean: Yeah, start that process. What kind of things have you discovered that worked the best? That worked the best, or what was the? What was the first thing that kind of encouraged you, that you, you got the. That confirmation moment. I call it.
Chris: Well, I guess part of it too, was trying to identify my ideal client for my home improvement business. So, just picking people to be friends with on Facebook that I thought would fit that profile and put my content out there and just wait for them to need some of my services.
Dean: Do you have? Where are you?
Chris: Located in Eastern North Carolina.
Dean: Eastern North Carolina. Okay, great, so do you work? Do you still run your painting business?
Chris: Yes, on a small scale, it's just still for me. It's just me and my brother mainly doing the work. I never really had an interest in big business Right.
Dean: Yeah, you want to have your own thing and do your business. How wide an area do you cover?
Chris: For the most part just within my county, basically, or the city, the city of Greenville, north Carolina, which is about 90 to 100,000 people.
Dean: Perfect Right. So you got about a 10 mile or 15 mile radius around where you're going would cover everything, probably that whole, that whole area there, and that's great. So the good news about the kind of business that you're talking about there is that it's all. It's a hundred percent locally delivered service. You can't digitize a paint job right, and that's one of the things that you know you're going to uh anybody in that, things that you know you're going to uh anybody in that. That business is a uh. There's a big win, uh, there right Is that you can have multiple uh. You, you can work with somebody in each market to use your uh, use your methods. So tell me about what your package would be or what your approach is, how you work with you're working with painting, other painting companies, people who are running home improvement businesses, or what's your is or what's your right?
Chris: um, well, I guess that's where I've kind of struggled with transitioning into the coaching space and trying to teach them that because just from talking to people in the industry and local people and people in different facebook groups, there's a lot of people out there that are haven't professionalized their service. They don't have a lot of people out there that haven't professionalized their service. They don't have a lot of systems in place to build value or have any kind of repeatable system relate that value from my business to my customers. But I have it, I guess, niched down myself for the coaching business to whether it's just painting contractors or the home improvement industry in general, and also whether I just help them with marketing or sales or processes, just because I know there's a lot of different strategies for each and.
I haven't.
Dean: I think that initially, you know, part of the thing is that you're going to have an ability to go deeper and more relevant if you are focused on a specific industry, if you think like painting contractors, for instance, you can create a system that you can overlay on any painting business, where you don't really have to do the same kind of modification that you would do if it was a, you know, a plumbing business or a remodel business or anything like that.
Part of the advantage is that you're kind of giving people a shortcut. Right, you're giving people that you've already taken the time to do 80% of the work that they need to do and the last 20% is personalizing it, installing it for their systems. Right, like you've, you've, over time, put together the entire operation manual, if you want to call it like that, operating system for the, for the painting business. Now, where are you in terms of that completion you know of getting, if you were to say how, how ready to implement is your system with the right, with the right painter, with the right painting company? And are you coaching people now, by the way, or is this a startup that you're kind of? This is where you're hoping to go.
Chris: Worked with helping some people for free, but no paid clients yet.
Dean: So you're trying to make this a paid. This is what you want to kind of aspire to. Right yes, at who your ideal prospect is. Like. What would be the ideal uh, you know painter painting company to work with and I'll ask you what would be the best thing that you could do for them if they would just get out of the way and let you do it right. Like what could you? What is the impact that you could have, knowing what you know and what you have already packaged um to help transform their, their painting company?
Chris: right. Um, if they were to be able to just implement the systems that I've already put in place, they would be able to get an increase in profit and maximize as much as possible each lead that comes in and convert, sell for higher prices and not really compete with the competition based on their price.
Dean: So do you have a way for them? Like, if you take, this is very similar to the, you know what we do for the real estate business in terms of we've got all of the things that the realtors need to be able to do. If you were to say for the painting company, right, if we were to look that, have you got a way for a painting company to generate leads to, to get, uh, leads for their, for their business?
Chris: yes, um, through different social media, even just organic content, a system to do that, um a radius marketing plan with door hangers and postcards around projects that you've done, work for yard signs and networking and things like that and so do.
Dean: Do you do talk to me about one of those strategies like what's your most reliable magic trick If you were to come in, if I had a painting company here in Winter Haven? And do you work with startups or would it be primarily? Who would be your ideal? Someone who is already actively doing the painting business?
Chris: Yeah, it would be someone that's doing enough business and has a crew where they can step back and start implementing the stuff and focus on that and have the ability to do that without being in part of the production all the time.
Dean: Okay, so how big of a company is that typically Like? What would be the number of people and revenue? Just like paint a picture of this ideal painting company.
Chris: Probably in the 200, starting at the like 250 to $500,000 range of revenue. Cause some of the businesses that I've seen and worked with they just by doing small tweaks they can increase their profitability and that would give them the ability to invest in some of the other things to more build their brand better.
Dean: What would be the um what? How profitable would they be with 250 or 500,000? Um with um their current profit state or like, what are you, what are you typically, would you find and what would you say as the gold standard for them? Like what you've been able to? Uh is your business, would you call. Would you point to your business as the prototype, as the like? You know, ray Kroc had the first McDonald's right, the hamburger university, the, the, the prototype for uh doing it. Would you use your business as the? Uh, the example?
Chris: Not necessarily because, like I said I, I didn't really ever have a vision of having a big business myself. So, I didn't. I haven't grown like a hundred or, excuse me, like a million dollar painting business myself, just because I don't want to do that.
Dean: Is that the aspiration? Do you think that a lot of where would be the like? What would be the aspiration that most people would have if they were your ideal client? They want to go from $250,000 to a million, and how high is high? What would be? What are you finding if you were to break down like the segments?
Chris: like the segments. If the the ideal goal for a lot of the people are right now, or to get to the million dollar plus and there's companies out there a million dollars would start to be like mid-range painting company, like a million to five million would be in the middle to high mid painting business and then you can go up to tens and multiple tens of millions with bigger businesses.
Dean: Got it so. But a million would be the good aspiration for a single location operator, founder-led business in a local market of 100,000 people. That's an aspiration or possibility. Okay, perfect. So there's lots of those, there's lots of markets that those could apply to Plenty of those people. And so what kind of margins did you say would happen on a?
Chris: million dollar, you know, half a million dollar. A million dollar. Different people without any kind of systems. A lot of the people that are starting out or even been in business for a while maybe get 20 to 30 percent gross profit, where my goal for them would be to be at a 50 percent gross profit profit.
Dean: So there's your target 50% gross profit, and that alone would make a big difference. If you're saying, if you're through operations and through the systems that you have, they could and their pricing model, they could be able to get to a 50% profit margin. Yes, is what your target would be. Okay, and I asked about your magic tricks, or what would be the first two or three things that you would implement for somebody if you're going in, and things that can make the biggest, the biggest difference for them right?
Chris: um, probably one of the biggest things that I would say, and which was one of the biggest things I realized after already running my business for almost 10 years, is I didn't keep track of all the customers that I did projects for. So I wasn't able to reach back out to them and stay top of mind for them. And once I actually started doing that through email and keeping in contact with them through direct mail it made a big difference.
So one of the things I would, the first thing I would do, is say keep track and keep in contact with every lead and every customer that you have.
Dean: I mean that's kind of the thing right If you look at it that how many clients, let's say, on a $500,000 business right now, how many jobs would they be doing in a year? How many homes would they be in?
Chris: Depending on the size of their crew. If they were just being conservative to say doing one project a week, I mean that's 50, right there In between 50 and 100.
Dean: I look at that and you think, okay, so if they've been in business for how long typically will be the ideal for you that they're kind of in business at least two or three years or? Have they been in business for a longer time and they're kind of flatlined at that probably, starting with in the three to five year range, perfect.
So they've got already a potential. Uh, you know they've got a potential. The people that they've been in the house, that they're the incumbent paint provider and I always love to you know how we talk about the before unit, the during unit and the after unit. This is part of that. After unit there is thinking about all of their. You know, I always like to have to add the words under management. So if you talk about and do you do interior exterior painting companies, that doesn't matter. They do both residential interior and exterior.
Chris: Yeah, interior and exterior.
Dean: Right. So if you think about it that you know I always think about with an electrician client, we've got a concept that we call panels under management. So the electrical panel is under management and they've got almost 10,000 panels under management here in Polk County. And with a HVAC client, we talk in terms of climates under management that we're managing. You know 10,000 climates in Polk County and so if you think about this, as you've got, you know, 250 surfaces under management.
Or you know paint, you know, whatever it is homes under management that you are, you're the incumbent provider of painting services for them and odds are that they're. You know, if you did one, if you didn't do a full house painting job, that there's a good chance that there's going to be another. They're going to need another paint job, right? So keeping in touch with them and measuring what we call their return on relationship and so if you have, I think it would be valuable for you is to think through how can I document and create what I would call your proprietary metrics.
So if you look at the, you know the way that you look at it. If you look at it as a well, how many repeat and referral transactions can we yield from this group of your, of the you know homes under management kind of thing. And so if you look at it, do you have a sense like with the real estate agents, we have a gold standard of managing. We teach them to get 150 relationships and that we get them to manage that relationship portfolio for a 20% annual yield. So if we say that you've got you know 100 or 250, you know homes under management there, this is under management what would be the yield that you could get? So it'd be interesting how long have you been taking this approach in your own business where you started managing the relationship with your after unit?
Chris: The last five years or so.
Dean: Okay, great, so you got a track record of this. How many homes under management do you have? How many?
Chris: I have probably, in that amount of time, right around 200, 250 or so.
Dean: Okay, perfect. So if you look at it that do you measure independently the revenue that comes from your after unit on an annual basis, on a rolling 12 months. This is how we we do it is you look at all of the revenue from the last 12 months and you attribute all of the revenue from the last 12 months and you attribute, you identify of the new jobs that came in. Which of these jobs were people that we've already been in their house we already it's a repeat business or they were referred by somebody who is one of our homes under management and you know. Looking at that, that gives you a sense of what your return on relationship is. Do you have a ballpark of how, or just even anecdotally, how you might think that would play out?
Chris: Yeah, through I know one of the years that I've tracked. I think it was the first year that I actually started tracking it. There was over $100,000 that I brought in just from referrals and over $100,000 that I'd brought in just from past clients, from repeat, right yeah.
Dean: So that's a valuable metric. You that may not be paying attention to that or they may have a sense of it, but they're not doing anything to really orchestrate it that if you were to show them what your model looks like. So if I say if I'm talking to you as a real estate agent and I talk about your after unit and I mentioned this 20% annual yield yield that we should be able to generate 30 transactions from that group of 150 people, and if I now inquire to you about what happened in the last 12 months, how much repeat and referral business did you get? That may be the first time that they've ever thought about isolating that metric. Right? So they see right away that these metrics are at effect in their business, but they're not even aware of it or know how to control the knobs and dials that make it go up or down. Right, so pointing it out to them when you say that here's what you should be doing, here's what the gold standard is, and you're at the level right now where you need proof that this is right. You've got an idea, a hypothesis, and maybe you've done it in your business. Here You've got kind of evidence that this works, but you doesn't sound like you've taken it to another business yet to document and prove that you have a repeatable right and maybe maybe you've kind of helped them kind of bring awareness to that. But you haven't doesn't sound like set up a protocol that can be packaged and installed in somebody's business If you say, just bring us, here's what we're going to do with your 250. We're just going to identify who your 250 are and then this is what we're going to do. These are the postcards we send, this is the emails we send, this is the outreach we make, this is the communication style that we have. And, looking, you'll see immediately that once you apply this protocol, they were, at X, a smaller amount of revenue coming from their after unit and then all of a sudden after this, fully attributable to the things that you did, this was the difference in the outcome of the after unit, and so that's part of it. You know, is Michael Gerberizing. You know that, in a way, is creating the prototype that you can install in somebody's business. That way, that would make what you have very valuable.
Now, if we go in, and what have you got? Maybe talk to me about a little bit, about what you actually did to elevate the repeat and referral business that you got? Because you were, like you said, not really paying attention to it and I'm sure just coincidentally, you would get referrals. You would get people say, oh, we used Chris, they were great, you should give them a call. So you might have gotten repeat and referral business, you know, just as a matter of course, but you weren't really doing anything to orchestrate it, it sounds like. But when you did start orchestrating it, what kind of things did you do? What is the playbook?
Chris: Yeah, like you said, I did get some repeat business and referrals just because I was doing a good job, but I didn't have any kind of system in place to make that happen consistently. So I started using email campaigns to the clients that I've already had and just send them monthly reminders, different things, just letting them know I'm still around. Yeah, sending postcards with different promotions and incentives on them, sending Christmas cards, thank you cards and then actually having a business card that looked like a gift certificate which was like a referral piece to give them.
Dean: To give them, for them to use or to refer to give to somebody else.
Chris: To remind them to refer us to other people and to give them an incentive. Like you'll both get $100 or $150 off your next project, or whatever the thing is, you could use for that.
Dean: So yeah, and that's to formalize that process. There's a great, there's a really good opportunity there. So all of that, you know, if you think about a lot of that is just knowledge. If you were to lay out for somebody the annual touchpoint calendar kind of thing here's all the things that we did. You've got a ready to install after unit for their painting business, and to be able to document and show what the value of that is would be a really tremendous thing.
You need to set up case studies for this of somebody that they installed it and this is what happened. Because the good news about all these metrics is they're retroactively. You know you can figure them out retroactively. You can figure out what's happened in the last three years. Let's look at all of your jobs and look and see what the source was for all of them, and so this was the amount of your return on relationship currently. This is what I'm showing you that you could be doing and I'm the gap right when this is the protocol to get you to this, and then you document what happened, right, this is what happened with John and Bob and this is what happened with Mark and Connie. You know that you're, you've got track record now documented that this is something that works. You mentioned some of the circle radius prospecting. Are you talking about the door hangers around the jobs that you're currently doing?
Chris: Yes, doing that and sending postcards to those same houses.
Dean: Yes, how many do you choose? What's your kind of approach to that?
Chris: With that, especially if it's in a neighborhood that I would want to continue working in or build my business in. Depending on the neighborhood, maybe 20 to 30 houses around the project.
Dean: And what would you send to them?
Chris: Just a postcard saying that we're going to be in the neighborhood and offering a estimate.
Dean: A free estimate for a painting? Yes, okay. Free estimate for the or painting yes, okay, um, oh, you know, I just thought of something that might be a good uh thing for, uh, measuring this after unit is maybe calling it gallons under management, that because you measure job in the term of how many gallons of paint it's going to require. So at you know, at 22 graystone we've got, you got 10 gallons under management or whatever the thing is. That's a good way to get the scope of the project too. If you think about all the surfaces of all the gallons of paint that you have in all of Greenville, you may have how many gallons in a typical job.
Chris: You may have you know how many gallons in a typical job, depending on whether it's a whole house or not. Still, I mean 10, 15, 20 gallons, yeah, so if you think, about that.
Dean: You know, if you've got 5,000 gallons under management in Greenville, that's a pretty good metric of how you literally painted the surfaces of Greenville. It's almost like square feet, right, but that's gallons under management gum and that's kind of a proprietary metric that you could wrap around in measuring it here or there. So I think that would be a cool thing. So I think that makes a big. That would be a cool thing in terms of the the during unit.
That's where this circle prospecting would come into Into play, and one of the things that we look at there is to look for multipliers. Like if you look at the uh, you know, the job multiplier index, you might say that every painting job that you get comes with some other opportunities. So it could be first of all, to set up the next job or an expanded job, because you got it, they came in. We want you to paint the family room and the living room and the dining room. That becomes the job. But then it expands to. Well, let's go ahead and do the bedrooms or the bathrooms or the kitchen or whatever else it is, so that expansion of the job is one opportunity to multiply.
A second would be to get another job within the 20 in the hot zone there of the job you're currently doing, and then an opportunity to get a referral or an introduction to from the people that you it. If they're going to refer somebody, it's highly likely that the conversations about the paint are going to happen in the first 30 days of their inner circle coming into the house and say, oh, that looks amazing, we're thinking about getting our, we should do that same thing thing, or I love that color, you know. Oh, Bob, let's do our place too. And for them, in that moment, to be able to give somebody a gift card that they can use to get the job done by you right, that's a. I think that's a really interesting. That's a really interesting metric to kind of set you know, an aspiration towards.
If you look at it, do you have a sense of how well that 20 to 30 houses around? How do you have any sort of metrics around what happens when you do the door hangers or you do the postcards and what is your multiplier protocol?
Chris: With that. Typically it's been one to two projects around the house that we're doing the work with two projects around the house that we're doing the work with.
Dean: Wow. So every time you do a job it turns into one or two new jobs because of that and that's reliable, so very you know that's the kind of thing that if somebody's not doing that you look at. So part of the thing we do with the realtors, we created what we call their listing multiplier index and that we look at every time. You get a next listing in the neighborhood and you can get a referral from the seller Right. So we look at those five opportunities and we take somebody's last 10 jobs and you've identified that there's five opportunities that come from the things of expanding the job. You already have getting two additionalowner in the next 60 days after you do the job.
So if you say to the painting company then that you look at them and say of the last 10 jobs that you did, how many of these opportunities did you get? Did you get an expanded job? Did you get a job around that one? Did you get a referral from the homeowner? And look at it and add that up over the last 10. So let's say you know you look for on the realtors, we take this there's a possible 50 points that you could get. If you got all of those, all those things happen. And then if you take that number and divide it by 10, that gives you what your listing multiplier index is.
So if you take those jobs, you say how many jobs additionally did each one of your last 10 jobs turn into? Add that up and divide it by 10. So let's say that they got 15 jobs out of the last 10 that they did. Then we divide that by 10 and get 1.5 as their multiplier index, right?
So if you look at that and say that the people running our program, running our targeted mailings around our referral conversations, our job expander dialogues, our process for following up with people for 30, 60 days after to orchestrate referrals, our gift card strategy, that those you know, our clubhouse leaders, have a job multiplier index of 3.5, that that means that they're missing out, they're losing out on all of these jobs that they could be getting because they don't have a system for multiplying the jobs that they have. Right to make the most of it If you've got it packaged where, modularly, you can plug and play. That's why it's important that thinking just about painting contractors initially is the smoothest course of action because you don't have to reinvent this, for you know all kinds of industries. You do it just for the painting, the painting industry.
Chris: Right, yeah, I guess that's where I was struggling to put it together, because there's so many different industries within just the home improvement industry the home improvement industry but being able to narrow it down to just a painting, like you said, I can already have all the stuff that I've done, so it wouldn't be hard for me to help somebody implement what I've already done to end their painting business.
Dean: Perfect, because that's where you're at right now. In order to really like expand this and to create this into something that's a business, is that you need? You're at the point where you need to document that you've been able to do this in someone else's business other than your own. Right, you're implementing those, those strategies.
Chris: Right.
Dean: How many are you working with right now that you're? Because you mentioned you've been doing this kind of for free with some of them.
Chris: Right now two or three, but I know two things One, doing it for free, and I haven't had a clear system for them to be accountable and take action.
Dean: Yeah, you're just sharing ideas, right, like that's kind of, hey, do this, try this, do this, but you're not. If you look at the layers of how we want to do, you've got an idea. Your hypothesis is if you did the things that I do, you would get the result that I got. That's your hypothesis. You don't have proof of that yet. So the next level of this is that you've got to prove that somebody who did what you did in their business got this result.
Then, when you move from that proof stage now you can elevate it to a protocol, and the protocol is this. So I think what you're doing is you're taking what you've done, you're sharing it with someone else, you're documenting everything that needs to be done in order to get it. And when you get it to that protocol level, now you've got something that can be packaged and protected, that this is your patented process for doing these things. And you're just right now at the idea stage where you've got an idea that this could work. But you need to document it, you need to protocol it and you need to package it and roll it out. Then you need to package it and roll it out, like, once you've got a system, that you know that this works. That's where you're going to be able to build a business around it, you know.
Chris: Right, I guess one question I would have with that just say I come up with whatever the package is past client, current client package to increase that gallons under management multiplier or whatever Should I only focus on that right now and get the metrics for that?
Dean: And then I think whatever you've got like you know you want to start documenting, like, start building with the two or three. If you've got two or three allies who will let you do or will do what you say to do or to you know, go along in a case study. You know with you that you're kind of doing it. You're using it to document. Well, this is what actually needs to be done. You're going to see where the friction is Like. You may find that it might be friction for them to get the metrics you know, like to figure out how much of their business came from. Repeat, that's not going to move the needle. What the most important thing is that they can identify the gallons under management that they have right now out in the marketplace. They can. They've got all the invoices, they've got the people. Hopefully they've got a CRM system. If they don't, that's base camp one. They've got to get to that level right. Then they can start now with the communication, with the messaging, with the mailings.
Whatever you're doing, whatever your, whatever your protocol is, you say this is what you should do, this is what you should do, and then monitor the result right. Because if you show it, one of the biggest things that you're probably wondering is how to price this right. Like, how do you price what you're doing? And so part of it is going to realize that, depending on what level you're at, like you could package these things, you could just give people access to the things that you do and then pay you a straight monthly fee to have access to everything. And if they don't have, how many of them have a CRM or or is that? Are they at that level, or or are they kind of flying just with their internal records and stuff?
Chris: their internal records and stuff. Most of the people that I've talked to that are on the lower end of that spectrum, don't have a CRM or anything.
Dean: Okay, so you, what do you do? You have one, you have a system for that. Okay, so you know you might look at even that'd be the kind of thing that you could do a white label of GoGo clients, like our CRM. The one I use is my own and you know I have a program called GoGo Agent where I've taken all of those tools but then I load it with all of our real estate specific stuff. So if you had a CRM that you could pre-set up for people to implement the things that you're doing whether it's the landing pages, the email templates, the text messaging, all of those things so all they had to do was put, get new people into the, into the process or manage the during unit experience for people. But it's kind of exciting, you've got a real uh.
Chris: You know you're really at the beginning stages of something that could be a very valuable thing for uh, for painting companies right and I think, being able to narrow it down to that and get the actual proof and show that, whatever that multiplier is, without the system it may be a one 1.5, but using this system it may be a 1, 1.5, but using this system it could be 3, 3.5 or 4. Yeah, and when? You?
Dean: put a monetary value on it. What's the average job size? Is it $5,000, $3,000? What's the average?
Chris: Yeah, and between 3,500, 5,500. Yeah, yeah, and between 3,500, 5,500. Yeah.
Dean: So if you look at that, that they do 50 jobs and that there you know there's a difference of if they could just duplicate that, that's pretty easy to see how you can double your business just by doing the multiplier strategies.
Chris: Right, okay, I guess my question with that is then, once I have that system set in place where it's proven and repeatable for the businesses, then I would be able to go and use like upsell systems and teach them that on top of the multiplier system.
Dean: Yes, yeah, I think that's it that you've got a business development system. That's kind of you could that. Maybe you look at it as a one year transformation and because they're not going to be able to implement everything all at once. But if you start with the optimal build order of, let's start with what you've already got. Let's start with the jobs that you're on right now. Let's send some door hangers to the 20 around there and let's put out an A-frame sign with a take one box on your outside of the house when you're on the street doing the job or you know, and you start thinking just like a strategist how could we get the most out of this?
Chris: right yeah, I guess that's where that comes in if they're already doing 50 to 100 projects a year yeah then they don't have to really do anything else but implement this system with the what they're already doing absolutely right.
Dean: Yeah, and that's maybe that's where you start is let's start with the things. Let's start with the signs you have in the yard right now, because while they're up, I'm sure they put up a sign while they're doing it, or an A-frame sign beside the truck when you're doing it, or whatever. Right that, there's those opportunities. That would be kind of the fastest acting way to jump on.
Chris: Right, yeah, I appreciate that. It gives me a lot of clarity of where to start.
Dean: I love it. So can you unpack for me just a little bit?
Chris: What do you see now as your action steps or your next steps here that you're To be able to put my processes for the past excuse me, past clients referral system and radius marketing into a system that I can say to the other business owner hey here, implement this in what you're already doing and let's track that and get the proof of the profit and the amount of projects that come off of that just by doing that.
Dean: I love it, and then you've got something that's going to be a no-. I love it and then you're. Then you've got now, then you've got something that's going to be a no-brainer for people that your price can be. You know a fraction of what the value of it is, you know right, love it.
Chris: Yeah, I appreciate it. Like I said, yeah, it gives me the thinking to niche down to just the painting contractors and just focus on that one area of growth for now. Then, once that's proven, then you can add other systems in to even become a bigger multiplier.
Dean: Yes, that's exactly right, and you know there's lots to do to just document the real estate one and have it done or not, the real estate, the painting niche. You know there's lots of opportunity there to think about it again that you're building a system, you're not building something a job for yourself that you can be removed from, that people could run the system that helps painting contractors grow their business without you having to be involved in the process. You know.
Chris: Right, that goes a long way. I love it.
Dean: Well, that went fast, but I think you got a good starting point and a roadmap here. You're in a great business and I think you're going to change a lot of people's lives, so that's got to feel good.
Chris: Yeah, I appreciate it and yeah, just being able to focus on that, I think I'll be able to help a lot of people get some clarity on just improving what they're already doing.
Dean: Awesome. Well, stay in touch, chris. Let me know how this is all playing out, and I'll'll look forward to hearing the follow up story here.
Chris: All right, yeah, I appreciate it. I'll definitely keep in touch with you.
Dean: Thanks, Chris.
Chris: Thank you Bye.