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I thought I knew my numbers, but come to find out I didn't. But yeah, we got into commercial. It was a natural progression in our business. I didn't have project management staff.
I didn't have the money to hire somebody to do that. And so I, I found work where I could put, you know, two to four painters on site and kind of put 'em there and forget about 'em for six to eight weeks while I did other things.
The general contractor that was running that project got fired at the end and we had outstanding change orders totaling about $80,000. And like I said in debt over $200k and the heat was on, the stress was on.
And I just remember sitting at my office late one night, at my work office, just scratching my head, trying to figure out, do I want to keep doing this? How do I get to a better spot? I see other business owners that are making money and I, I figured there's gotta be something here that I'm missing.
And so I just did a Google search and searched painting. I think I searched "coaches", "painting coaches", and that next day you and I started talking and that was really the start of the transition.
Working with you, Scott, the first step that we took was to evaluate our spray booth division and try to determine, " Is this a drain on the business or is this actually pumping money into the business?" And we soon realized that we started to find wrong people in the wrong seats.
And so we made some changes internally and in the spray booth to try to get that more profitable. And then we did the same thing in our field, and we started looking at all the jobs and realizing that there were sectors of our business that were basically losing money. And then the areas in our business or the customer base there was a small section of that was actually making money.
And so we determined that our new construction was a drain. All of the work that we were doing on new construction to keep our guys busy throughout the year was actually stealing all the profits from the work that of our repaint work. That was actually the only thing making money.
We kept talking about firing customers and that was a concept that I just wasn't comfortable with. Being a Dutch first generation immigrant, my parents came over from the war and if there's one thing I was taught by my parents was, you don't give up, you just keep fighting.
And so I just was like, no, I'm gonna fight and I'm gonna make this work no matter what. And then, realized yeah, at some point you have to stop fighting and and pull out the white flag. And that's okay. Yeah. And so we decided there were several builders that we were working with. There were some that were making money and some that most that we weren't.
And so we had a hard conversation I did with the owners of those companies and raised our prices, explained why we were raising our prices, and I think at that time there was eight builders we were working for. We narrowed it down to two.
Host Scott Lollar is a 35 year veteran of the painting industry, and founder of Consulting4Contractors. The Beyond $1,000,000 Podcast serves as a touchpoint to painting contractors who have hustled, sacrificed, and worked hard to get their business to where it is today. Now, you need the guidance, expertise, experience and team to make it into the multi-million dollar company of your dreams. You'll hear stories and interviews from "Brothers of the Brush" and "Sisters of the Sprayer" who have been where you are and are charting a new course for their company's success. Listen in and go beyond $1,000,000!
Scott: [00:00:00] My name is Scott Lollar and I'm a 35 year veteran of the painting industry where I've been part of growing several multi-million dollar painting companies. I have worn all the hats and have experienced everything you have experienced, are experiencing, or will experience.
There is lots of chatter about getting to a million dollars, but what very few focus on is what it takes to blast through Death Valley and create the multi-million dollar company of your dreams.
We don't focus on fads, tricks or shortcuts. We focus on solid foundational business principles and data that deliver results. This is the Consulting4Contractors "Beyond a Million Dollar Podcast".
Today I'm looking forward to my conversation with Phil VanderLaan, land owner of PMV Custom Finishes in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Phil has built a great company with a diversified product mix, and I'm excited to hear about his journey and share it with you, so welcome to the podcast, Phil.
Phil: Yeah, thanks a lot, Scott.
Appreciate you asking me to be here.
Scott: So let's start at the beginning. Tell me a little bit [00:01:00] about how you got here including maybe a little bit how you got to the US. I know you're from Canada, so tell me a little bit about how you got to Kalamazoo and how you started a painting company.
What was the early journey like?
Phil: Sure, yeah. So I am from Canada born and raised in Southern Ontario. And I found myself in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1994 doing a uh, four year college degree at Calvin University. At that time, like most students bounced around different majors and ended up falling into criminal justice.
Fast forward four or five years, 1999 or so, I was working full-time as a social worker working with delinquent kids and emotionally abused children. So after about two years working with neglectful parents and delinquent kids, decided I needed a change found myself cutting grass.
I was working for a landscape company for about a year. We had negotiated a deal. I was gonna buy half of his business. He was going to continue on [00:02:00] with commercial landscaping, and I was gonna do the residential side. That fell through. And I found myself without a job. I had quit being a social worker.
And decided that, "Hey, why not try to start my own business?" And I had done a little bit of painting with my dad. He was a teacher growing up. I faked it till I made it. I got a job with a local contractor and worked for about three months, learned a few of the tricks of the trade, and then went off on my own.
Scott: Wow. That's quite a story. Four year degree and prepared you to be a lawnmower dude. That's great. I'm sure your parents were thrilled.
Phil: They were super excited for me. I think about it back that at that time too, because during this time my wife and I had just gotten married.
We bought a house she was due with our first child. And I was unemployed trying to figure out what to do. So why not start a business, add a little more anxiety and stress to the mix.
Scott: Yeah. Now Calvin is, in Grand Rapids, right? It is, yes. So was your wife from Kalamazoo?
Phil: Yeah, she was and her father owned a construction [00:03:00] company in Kalamazoo.
And there was really no discussion to move to Canada. To get work visas and all that in the Canadian side is much more difficult. So we ended up in Kalamazoo.
Scott: So when you opened up your painting company, were you a painter?
Phil: I was, yep. What I did to get my first work was I joined the local area Home Builders Association and found one builder and started painting for them.
Scott: Wow. Okay. And then you were in business, so did you hire people right away then?
Phil: My first employee was a high school student, Mark Buttery, I won't forget him. In fact, the reason I won't forget him is because he actually knew more about painting than I did. He came from a successful painting company, a local contractor. And I gleaned a lot of information from him of how his old boss would do things.
Scott: So remind me, what year was this when you started your painting business?
Phil: So this was 2001, on the turn of the year from 2000 to 2001. It started very slow. I was still cutting grass and doing things along [00:04:00] with doing painting.
Scott: Yeah. Okay. So you're working for a home builder.
That means you're a new construction Yippe-i-yay.
Phil: Yeah. And soon found out that they weren't gonna keep us busy either. So we when we joined that Home Builders Association, we also went into the, uh, the home show. Set up a booth and in fact, I remember building the booth in my driveway and that first day of the show just answering questions that I thought were the right answers and literally faking it till I made it. And I actually I have a picture in my office of that first booth. It's a reminder of where we came from.
Scott: Oh, that's awesome. So let's talk about the next few years then. How did the progression happen?
Phil: Yeah, sure. So over the next few years, you know, I hired in a gentleman, Ray, who was in his sixties, had been painted his whole life. And another gentleman we just worked with the three of us. Didn't have a shop and facility probably for about the first six years. Worked outta my garage and just slowly added people as we needed it.
I think we, we averaged the three of [00:05:00] us or four for about the first five or six years.
Scott: Okay. And this is a mixture of new construction and repaint residential at this point?
Phil: That's correct. Yeah. So we have a term here in southwest Michigan called the Dutch Mafia. So being a Dutch guy and Dutch tend to stick together here in the area, and so we term at the Dutch mafia and I got involved with a handful of old Dutch builders and just kept on trucking.
Scott: Great. So things were good back then. You were making money, you think? Or what was the vibe? Tell me a little bit about your business. Did you think you were doing well?
Did you feel like you were doing well?
Phil: Yeah, I really, I had nothing to compare it to other than what I was making as a social worker. And one of the reasons it wasn't difficult to get outta that field is, out of college. I was making about $10.50 an hour. And the conversation early on about starting a business the joke was how many living rooms do I have to paint a week to make $10.50 an hour?
And it was one. Yeah. And I thought, boy, that won't be hard to to get lined up.
Scott: Yeah. So the bar's artificially low there.
Phil: Yeah.
Scott: So at what point did you stop painting?[00:06:00]
Phil: What forced me out of the painting was when we started a second division in roughly 2010. We called it high performance Coatings.
And so we started doing floor coatings. I had a crew leader at the time, or a foreman who had been with me for about five years or so, and so I had him take on managing the painting side and I dove headlong, headfirst into the floor coatings. So I got outta painting walls and ceilings, but I got into applying coatings on floors and we traveled all over the US.
Scott: Wow. And how did that go?
Phil: Not very well. We would, every time a painter says let's get into flooring I tell 'em a couple of my stories and I try to sway them the other direction. We would do a shutdown at a factory and we could make maybe 20, $25,000 in a weekend which seems great, but, the first floor that goes bad, we were losing about 15,000 to redo it.
And so we did that back and forth for a while. And in 2014, I got tied into a pretty [00:07:00] large project at a local community college. And I mis-bid the project. My subcontractor was involved. He mis-bid the project, and I ended up eating about $50,000. That was the turning point. I literally, once I figured out how much money I'd lost I listed all of that equipment on eBay and sold it.
Scott: Nice and got out. So that was about 2014 or so?
Phil: Yeah. Yep. That was about 2014. And we took all of that I think it got about 50 cents on the dollar and I got about a hundred grand that we used and we invested it into a spray shop and decided that we should stay in our lane. And finishing wood seemed to be a closer match than finishing concrete.
Scott: Okay. So at this point, obviously you have a shop.
Phil: Yep. Yep. We had, this is our second shop. So we originally moved into a small little pole barn set up a spray booth and a broken concrete floor, and tried to make that work. When we ran outta space we purchased a building and, yeah we built a spray booth and we had an area for a flooring too at that [00:08:00] time.
But as soon as the flooring was sold we eliminated the space for that and just expanded the booth.
Scott: Yeah. Nice. Okay, so at that point you're into the, some spray coatings. What are you doing? What are you spraying?
Phil: Yeah, so we initially set up that room to take on spraying of projects that were taking up space on site. So let's say shutters or cabinet doors. Trim packages, maybe we're doing a new house that was stained.
We would pre-finish the trim, but we really didn't have any customers outside of our own field customers at that point.
Scott: So fast forward, I don't know, next, the next five years. How's it going? You're in residential repaint, you're doing new homes, you have a spray division, but I know at some point you got into the commercial work as well.
Phil: We did. So at this point, I would say around 20 14 or so, there was probably 15 of us at most. And we started getting to some larger projects. We did a large[00:09:00] senior living center where we had, I think that's when I had my 13 painters on staff. I just remember that unlucky number 13, during that project.
We did well on that project. I think. I didn't, at this time, I didn't really know. I thought I knew my numbers, but come to find out I didn't. But yeah, we got into commercial. It was a natural progression in our business. I didn't have project management staff.
I didn't have the money to hire somebody to do that. And so I, I found work where I could put. Know, two to four painters on site and kind of put 'em there and forget about 'em for six to eight weeks while I did other things. Yeah, sure.
Scott: And at that time, did you have anyone else helping you in the office?
Did you have a sales, any other support staff?
Phil: Yes, we had, my wife worked for us, average about two to three days a week and did a lot of our books, did our HR things. I had an office manager/administrative assistant in the office, but that was about it. There was three of us.
Scott: Okay.[00:10:00] Let's go through to today. Tell me how have the last four to five years been for you and what have been the changes and the pivots and what do you look like today?
Phil: Sure. So we had a pivotal job that we signed on for in Kalamazoo. You hear that the adage a shiny, shiny object or the house on the hill.
And this was that house on the hill for us. So it was a 15 story building in downtown Kalamazoo. I was personally approached by the developer and his team to, to quote that project. I felt honored for it. I did what I thought was my due diligence and built a bid, got accepted. And so we started this project that, we called it the Exchange.
And that was a defining moment for our business. And the reason for that is we got way in over our head. We were tied into a contractor that didn't know how to run a project. In fact, we spent two years on that site and never once was the owners or the architects involved in a progress meeting. And so I think we repainted [00:11:00] the eighth floor about four times, the seventh floor three times, and it just went on and on.
And that's really that's a result of that job is why you and I met Scott. I found myself overextended full lines of credit were drawn. We were moving money from one account to another, just trying to make payroll and never really making any profits.
Scott: Yeah. And at that point, I'll put you on the spot here.
What would you say your debt load was about that time?
Phil: Yeah, so I think we were probably, our debt was probably about $200,000, maybe $220k.
Scott: Yeah, I would say that sounds about right. Yep. Yeah. All right. So you're doing the Exchange. We, that's when you're right. That's how we got connected and started working together and then out on the other side of the Exchange, tell me a little bit about how that job resolved and how you made your way past that.
Phil: Yeah, the general contractor that was running that project got fired at the end and we had outstanding change orders totaling about [00:12:00] $80,000. And like I said in debt over $200k and the heat was on, the stress was on.
And I just remember sitting at my office late one night, at my work office, just scratching my head, trying to figure out, do I want to keep doing this? How do I get to a better spot? I see other business owners that are making money and I, I figured there's gotta be something here that I'm missing.
And so I just did a Google search and searched painting. What did I think I searched coaches, painting coaches, maybe. Yeah. And D Y B came up. D yb. Yeah. At that time you were with them and I made a. Made a request, got a call that evening. And that next day you and I started talking and that was really the start of the transition.
Justin: Well, we are about halfway through this episode of the Beyond a Million Dollar podcast from Consulting4Contractors, and we still have some great content left for you. Before we get to that though, I wanted to let you know about some resources that are available [00:13:00] to you via the show notes. You'll find links to our website, social media outlets and highlights of this show.
You'll even be able to schedule a discovery call with Scott and our team to find out how Consulting4Contractors can help your contracting business. It's very low pressure. We'll ask you just a couple questions, see what your current situation is, and then get you started toward the contracting business of your dreams.
The best part about it? It's completely free. So just click on the link in the show notes, or you can visit our website at www.consulting4contractors.com and reach out to us there. Again, that website is www.consulting4contractors.com. Now here's the remainder of the show.
Scott: I remember that time very well. Okay, so you got through the Exchange and what was the next [00:14:00] pivot or what was, what happened after that? You made it through cuz you got your change orders. I remember that. Survived the exchange. Then what was your next aha moment?
Phil: I always was told, so my father-in-law, like I had said earlier, owned a construction company and was very fortunate to have him as a mentor and he never really and still to this day, doesn't get involved in my business, so to speak. But he would make comments to me like, are you making money on those jobs? Are yeah, sure you're estimating, but what's the end result?
And working with you, Scott, the first step that we took was to evaluate our spray booth division and try to determine, " Is this a drain on the business or is this actually pumping money into the business?" And we soon realized that we started to find wrong people in the wrong seats.
And so we made some changes internally and in the spray booth to try to get that more profitable. And then we did the same thing in our field, and we started looking at all the jobs and realizing that there were sectors of our business that [00:15:00] were basically losing money. And then the areas in our business or the customer base there was a small section of that was actually making money.
And so we determined that our new construction was a drain. All of the work that we were doing on new construction to keep our guys busy throughout the year was actually stealing all the profits from the work that of our repaint work. That was actually the only thing making money.
Scott: So what'd you do about that?
Phil: I uh, fought you for a long time. Yes, at least a year and a half. We kept talking about firing customers and that was a concept that I just wasn't comfortable with. Being a Dutch first generation immigrant, my parents came over from the war and if there's one thing I was taught by my parents was, you don't give up, you just keep fighting.
And so I just was like, no, I'm gonna fight and I'm gonna make this work no matter what. And then, realized yeah, at some point you have to stop fighting and and pull out the white flag. And that's okay. Yeah. And so we decided there were several builders that we were working with.[00:16:00] There were some that were making money and some that most that we weren't.
And so we had a hard conversation I did with the owners of those companies and raised our prices, explained why we were raising our prices, and I think at that time there was eight builders we were working for. We narrowed it down to two.
Scott: So I wanna just pause there and for those listening don't miss that, Phil was afraid and at this time you were about how much in revenue?
Phil: 1.5. 1.7. Yeah. Yeah.
Scott: So he's not a small business by any stretch, and yet he's afraid that if he tells some of these, large customers that give him continual work at a loss, that what would he do?
And this is not original to me, but I'll tell you, I'll tell anyone listening. When you say yes to the wrong things, then you can't say yes to the right things. So in other words, too busy losing money. So we can't focus on profitable jobs. And what happens is when you say no, To the wrong things. It opens you up [00:17:00] to new things.
So when you said, when you did that I would presume the world didn't end. And what was the result out of changing that thinking?
Phil: Couple things happened. One the stress level came down for me as an owner being worried and fearful of the outcome of our jobs that we're working so hard to try to make money on.
And the other thing is it all like magically worked out. I'd say magically, but it wasn't without a lot of work. So when we just made this decision, I would say this was probably 2020, maybe 2021. And so we're in the middle of the pandemic. All that's happening. But our job source went, I think we did 850,000 the year before with new construction at about a gross profit of 28 to 30%.
Fast forward one year later with an increased effort on marketing and targeting the work that we want with profitability, [00:18:00] we went from 170,000 of residential interior repaint that year. When we did 850 of new construction, the following year was 175 of new construction and 700,000 of repaint.
Scott: Yeah. You flipped it.
Phil: Yeah, we flipped it and we flipped the profit switch too, which was great.
Scott: Yeah. Yeah.
And also, by the way, can I ask you what does your debt look like today?
Phil: Today we don't have any debt. There you go. We have a couple of things. There's a couple of debts on the books, but it just makes more sense to make a payment than it does to take our cash.
Scott: Yeah. Well done. Thank you. And the other thing that you did is you blew up your spray booth. Your building and you really added a lot. Now tell us, this is fascinating to me. So just tell me a little bit about your spray division, your capacity, your capabilities what do you have there now?
Phil: I think I have to say that we were fortunate for the PPP loans in the pandemic. It was a tough time to go through. We were able to keep our folks working. But those PPP [00:19:00] loans we took two of 'em. And they helped give us a catalyst for the change and freed up some cash.
And so we took some of that money and we put it into our spray booth. Over that time we expanded. We currently have about 9,000 square feet dedicated to our spray operation. In that space, we spent some time during the shutdown and reorganized, based on a circular pattern of things coming into the building, going through all the different stages, and then coming out of the building that really sped up our throughput. Our efficiencies are way better than they were as a result of that.
So now what we have is we have a dedicated prep area. It's got its own dust extraction tables and all the equipment needed to repair and prep things to be painted or stained. And then along with that we have two dedicated spray booths, open face, recycled air booths. We have a stain development room.
So we have developed a practice of making all of our own stains. So our customers will just [00:20:00] drop off items to be matched and we'll do it internally. And then we also on top of that, we have an automated spray machine. And that is what we call our money printing machine. We feed it lineal goods.
We can prime, clear coat, stain. And as long as that machine's running, it's it's making money. Yeah. Nice.
Scott: Okay, so now today you have some staff. So tell, just tell us real quickly what does your org chart look like?
Phil: Sure. I haven't mentioned EOS, but for those of you who know what EOS is uh, Gina Wickman the founder of that system wrote a book, "Traction". And in that came the EOS principles, Entrepreneurial Operating Systems.
You know that book is amazing. It is thick, it's full of really great ideas. But one thing I've learned after meeting Scott is it's okay to reach out. And, that's one thing I'd probably tell those who are listening.
Scott mentioned about fear. There's a lot of great business owners that are all around.
And I'll tell you, a successful [00:21:00] business owner, would be the first one to share why and how they got successful. Because they've been through the, down, the tough and difficult times and they've learned a lot. And I'll speak for myself. I would love to share what I've learned about new construction and commercial with other painters, just to help avoid that.
So if you're in that spot where you're, you're just starting off, reach out, reach up people are there to help you all around.
So we did that with e os and we hired a implementer a year ago. And so that's really key with our staffing structure because part of that process is to build what that structure looks like with intentionality.
And so right now, currently myself, I sit as a CEO. I'm considered the visionary in the EOS structure. I have responsibilities right now currently of estimating and doing some project management. We're trying to get out of that and, kind of what we talk about getting out of the weeds and working on the business.
I have an operations manager and she's phenomenal. She runs every [00:22:00] customer interaction. She does all of the scheduling. She meets with the crew leaders and does a project management style from the office. And we have a office manager who is now moving into a split role office management and operations for our shop.
She's phenomenal. And I have an estimator now that works and we have a full-time production manager in our shop.
Scott: Yeah. Awesome. And what would you, what are you targeting for your revenue this year?
Phil: We started ambitious at 3.3 million. Last year we did 2.7. And this was a tough winter.
We made we made adjustments to that budget down to we're shooting now for 3 million.
Scott: Awesome. Tell me a little bit about what makes PMV special? What is your secret sauce? Why do people work there? What's your vibe? Tell me a little bit about, what's it feel like there?
Phil: Family is very important to me. And so we've built benefits and a structure for our employees that really puts family first. [00:23:00] And working at PMV second. And what I mean by that, we provide health insurance benefits. We provide paid time off paid holidays. We also do a simple IRA of a 3% company match and we do a quarterly profit share for our folks as well.
And what that why I say that's family first is, those are all benefits that'll affect our employees' families. And so we're focused on creating a culture where it's teamwork integrity and a, and just a fun place to be. One thing I've learned in bringing folks into my office is I got away from hiring painting professionals into my office.
I learned that you hire on skill and personality not necessarily on experience. And so everyone in my office all those folks that I listed none of them have painting experience, which is shocking, but it's worked.
Scott: Yeah. And even your estimator through careful use of [00:24:00] your estimating system he's able to go out and estimate without any issues and sell work, even though he's never been a painter.
Phil: No, exactly. It was, there was a work on the front end teaching about, how to look at a, a job site, what to count and what's important as far as, maybe stumbling blocks that'll affect a profit at the end.
But yeah, he's been successful. In fact last year, his first year he sold 1.4 million.
Scott: Beautiful. Yeah. I tell this story often and I want to tell it here. I went and did a site visit at Phil's company about four, four and a half years ago, and met with his team, these were his crew leaders. And we were at that time working at developing the benefits package.
And we asked them about this and I remember a visceral reaction from them. And we were talking about holiday pay versus PTO versus other benefits. And I almost felt like I was, gonna get attacked. Just the energy that came off them and in not in a bad way, but is they said [00:25:00] out of all the benefits, they would prefer holiday pay and the reason why is a holiday costs them money.
So they're at a barbecue on Labor Day or Memorial Day or 4th of July. And what happens? It costs them money cuz they're not getting paid and they're gonna have to either make the time up to, to get paid or they're literally gonna be short that check and they said out of all the things they wish they could really enjoy, those holidays with pay.
And that's what Phil's talking about is family first, family friendly.
What are the benefits here that are gonna be helpful to your life? Not just benefit the company. And I'll never forget that moment with that group of people and how clearly they told me, "Holiday pay would really bless me and my family."
And Phil did that and it's been great for them.
All right. Tell me a little bit about your tech stack. What's your technology and what do you use?
What are your pieces there?
Phil: Sure. So for our guys in the field for clocking in and tracking time, we use T-sheets.[00:26:00]
We switched to QBO online shortly after we started meeting together, albeit a very painful experience, but a very good one now as we look forward and how things are running as we look into the future and try to break the ceiling, so to speak. We use that for our bookkeeping, T-sheets for our employees for time tracking, time off requests.
We use Google Drive folders just to house all of our stuff that guys might need to be able to get access to like safety data sheets and company policies and stuff like that.
Our CRM, we got turned on to monday.com. For some of you who might know Mike Katounas or heard his story on this podcast, he was instrumental in helping us get Monday.com to organize our customer database. And so now we have a very robust Monday file that includes all sorts of things from our job list, but it also does all of our HR and our training tracking. It does our time off request for employees and it's [00:27:00] doing operations now for our spray booth.
So that is a really pivotal part of our tech stack. We also use CompanyCam. We find CompanyCam as a godsend. Very easy communication tool for pictures and we use it in our estimating process as well. For estimates, we use PaintScout. We started first on Estimate Rocket, moved to Paint Scout and have not been disappointed at all.
It's been a fantastic software and I might be missing one or two, but that's the majority.
Scott: Yeah. So some of your Phil and I are old guys. I'm older than Phil for sure, but some of you probably wondering about what he's talking about. The QuickBooks is our US old timers started on desktop and we had to do a conversion.
The conversion's painful. So some of you that never experienced desktop, be thankful. And then of course he when he says T-Sheets, now it's called QuickBooks Time and I, we're just forever gonna call it T-sheets. So just deal with it. Yeah. Awesome. So tell me what's the future hold?
What's cooking for the next, say, three to five years for you?
Phil: Yeah, that's the exciting part. I was never able to [00:28:00] look three to five years out. I was so focused on the here and now. And now with this EOS process, we've done a three, five, and 20 year lookout.
And it's exciting to think about. We've successfully switched the type of work that we're doing to more high profit center work, which is involved. Required a lot of marketing dollars. I, up until two years ago, never spent a dollar on marketing. And I think now we're less than a percent of our overall revenue, so still under.
But that marketing has opened up doors for expansion. So now we're having conversations about when do we get up into the Grand Rapids market. How does that look? When does that happen? Our spray booth right now is on track to do about three quarters of a million. And we're trying to figure out, okay, what does that look like in, in a year from now?
We wanna be doing a million. Does that mean more space? Is the shop and capacity there still to support that? And I'm also looking at [00:29:00] what is my place in the company? I don't want to be involved in a day-to-day. And I can tell you right now, I have no idea where my employees are working on site.
I don't know what customer is on the list for this week or next week. And that's a really great feeling. I used to be very afraid of that and but no, it's very freeing. Yeah.
Scott: What a journey. So would you say that a few years ago, three years ago, you would call yourself what? I don't know, controlling or, I don't know the right word. I don't want to put, but you were uncomfortable. Not knowing, right?
Phil: No, exactly. Three, four years ago I thought I had to have my hand on every string of the business. As soon as I realized take my hands off and put 'em in more capable hands than myself. Frankly, if I think back to my, where I started I was a social worker.
I loved people. I'd loved working with people, but I didn't really know anything about business. All I knew was hard work would get me where I want to go. And as soon as I brought people in that we're better than I am at operations and organization, at estimating, at managing production in the shop, the [00:30:00] business is flourishing.
Scott: Yeah. And so as CEO has there been any discomfort or any learning curves as far as you letting go and becoming more of a CEO and. And filling that seat?
What have been your challenges and what could you share with others as they grow and leave the operational piece behind and to others?
Phil: I think transparency with your top level staff is key. Early on when Kate, who's our operations manager, came on board, she came in as a admin and we soon realized she could take on so much more, but we had a real honest conversation and I said, look, I struggle with control.
I want to be in charge. I want to know what's happening. And this is very hard for me. And so you have full permission and the expectation that if I'm out of my lane, please tell me to go back in my lane. And that's been great. You know, as entrepreneurs we have a big ego and it's important to check that ego at the door when you got people around you.
Yeah.[00:31:00]
Scott: Yeah. Awesome. Love it. What would you say to emerging or younger, below a million, or people that are in that a million dollar zone, what are some things that you would tell them as a younger Phil to pay attention to, to focus on what, what are the things you'd say to help them get through to the other side?
Phil: Sure. You're gonna want to take it on yourself. If you're like me, you're gonna wanna just push forward and work hard, and if it doesn't work, just work harder. And that's, quite frankly, the exact opposite and the wrong thing to do. As we, like I had said earlier, if you are under that million and you're trying to break through to that, look to others who have already done it.
That can help you get to that spot much faster. Had I thought about or reached out to a coach early on in my career, I quite frankly don't know where PMV would be right now. I think we would be a lot farther ahead. The other thing I would say is, [00:32:00] sometimes we talk about profit and we have some guilt over profit.
Profit's not a dirty word. I say that all the time in our business. When I talk to our crew leaders, we're trying to hit 45%, we're trying to hit 50%. That's not a bad thing. We're in it to make money. At the end of the day, that's the goal. But in order to get there, we gotta make raving fans.
And so as long as we keep our customers super happy and they find us of value, the profits will come and they will become more and more.
Scott: Go check out Phil's website. We'll put it link in this notes. He's he's not really expressed this, nor would I expect him necessarily to, but he does some beautiful work.
They're close to Lake Michigan. They've been called on to do some insane work overlooking the lake and it's been fun to watch. So yeah, follow him Instagram. But Phil, love the journey. I've loved walking it with you. And it's just been a delight.
So I do appreciate your time today and I hope somebody out there got something outta your story. I know they will, and I [00:33:00] appreciate you being on the podcast.
Phil: Thanks Scott for asking me. It's been a great journey and we got lots more to go. Let's go.
Justin: Well, Thanks again for joining us on the Beyond a Million Dollar Podcast.
If anything you heard on the show today intrigued you or if you're just interested in getting in touch with Scott, please visit the show notes. You can click on the discovery call link to get started. We'd love to find out more about you. Your company and how consulting for contractors can help you grow your business to a million dollars and beyond.