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Host Scott Lollar is a 35-year veteran of the painting industry and founder of Consulting4Contractors. The 'Success Beyond The Brush' 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!
SBTB Ep. 17 | From $200K in Debt to a $3M Target: The Power of Strategic Focus
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[00:00:00]
Profit Wake Up Call
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Phil: We started to look at profits. The first step that we took was to evaluate our spray booth division and try to determine, you know, is this a drain on the business or is this actually pumping money into the business? We started to find wrong people in the wrong seats.
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 of our repaint work.
That was actually the only thing making money.
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 [00:01:00] 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.
Welcome to Success Beyond The Brush
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Thank you again for tuning into another episode of Success Beyond the Brush, where today we're going to be revisiting a powerful conversation that was originally recorded on our first podcast called The Beyond a Million Dollar Podcast. Scott is going to sit down with Phil VanderLaan of PMV Painting. And Phil's going to share his story that perfectly captures what happens when a contractor shifts from chasing revenue
to building a truly profitable business. So Phil first connected with us here at Consulting4Contractors as a client during a really challenging season in his company. And since then, Phil has become a really valued member of our C4C community. His journey highlights the impact of strategic focus, better financial clarity, and really just the courage to make difficult decisions about which work was truly [00:02:00] moving his business forward. So if you have ever felt stuck between growth and profitability, then this conversation with Phil offers a clear path forward for you toward building a more sustainable and really rewarding business.
Without further ado, let's jump in to this conversation with Scott and Phil.
Scott: So welcome to the podcast, Phil.
Phil: Yeah. Thanks a lot, Scott, I appreciate you asking me to be here.
Scott: So let's start at the beginning. Tell me a little bit 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?
From Canada to Painting Startup
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Phil: So I am from Canada born and raised in Southern Ontario, and I found myself in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1994, doing a four year college degree at Calvin University. 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 [00:03:00] full-time as a social worker. 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 going to buy half of his business.
He was going to continue on with commercial landscaping and I was going to do the residential side. Well that fell through. And I found myself without a job, I'd quit being a social worker. And so, decided that, hey, why not try to start my own business. I had done a little bit of painting with my dad.
He was a teacher growing up. So, you know, 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 it prepared you to be a lawnmower dude. That's great. I'm sure your parents were thrilled.
Phil: They were super excited for me. You know, I think about it back 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 [00:04:00] child and I was unemployed trying to figure out what to do. So why not start a business, you know, add a little more anxiety and stress to the mix.
Scott: When you opened up your painting company, were you a painter?
Phil: I was. What I did to get my first work was I joined the local area at Home Builders Association found one builder and started painting for them.
Scott: 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 kind of cutting grass and doing things along with doing painting.
Scott: Okay, so you're working for a home builder. That means you're in new construction. yippee-eye-ay.
Phil: Soon found out that they weren't going to keep us busy either. So when we joined that [00:05:00] Home Builders Association, we also went into the home show, set up a booth. 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 kind of a reminder of where we came from.
Scott: Oh, that's awesome.
Early Growth and New Builds
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Scott: Let's talk about the next few years then. How did the progression happen?
Phil: 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 out of my garage and just slowly added people as we needed it.
I think we averaged the three of 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 [00:06:00] to stick together here in the area and so we term it 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? What was the vibe? You know, tell me a little bit about your business. I mean, did you think you were doing well? Did you feel like you're doing well?
Phil: 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 out of 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, well, how many living rooms do I have to paint a week to make $10.50 an hour?
And it was one.
And I thought, boy, that won't be hard to get lined up.
Scott: yeah. So the bars artificially low there.
Phil: Yeah.
Scott: So at what point did you stop painting?
Floor Coatings Detour
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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 [00:07:00] five years or so, and so I had him take on managing the painting side and I dove headfirst into the floor coatings. So I got out of 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. You know, every time a painter says let's get into flooring I, tell them a couple of my stories and I try to sway them the other direction. You know, we would do a shutdown at a factory and we could make maybe 20, $25,000 in a weekend which seems great, but, you know, the first floor that goes bad, we were losing about $15,000 to redo it.
And so we did that for a while, and in 2014, I got tied into a pretty large project at a local community college. And I misbid the project, my subcontractor was involved. He misbid the project, and I ended up eating about $50,000. That was the turning point, once I figured out how much money I'd lost listed all of that equipment on eBay and sold it.
Scott: Nice and got out. So that was about [00:08:00] 2014 or so.
Phil: Yeah, that was about 2014. We took all of that I think I got about 50 cents on the dollar.
Spray Booth and Staying in Lane
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Phil: And so, 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, 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 out of space, we purchased a building and we built a spray booth. And we had an area for flooring too at that time.
But as soon as the flooring was sold we eliminated the space for that and just expanded the booth.
Scott: At that point you're into some spray coatings. What are you doing? What are you spraying?
Phil: 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 [00:09:00] really didn't have any customers outside of our own field customers at that point.
Scott: Okay, so fast forward, I don't know, next, the next five years. How's it going?
Commercial Expansion and Thin Support
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Scott: 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. Around 2014 or so, there was 15 of us at most. And we started getting to some larger projects. We did a large 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 mean, 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. You know, 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 found work where I could put, you know, two to four painters on site and kind of [00:10:00] put them there and forget about them for six to eight weeks while I did other things.
Scott: Yeah, sure. And at that time, did you have anyone else helping you in the office? Did you have a sales, you know, any other support staff?
Phil: Yeah, so we had, my wife worked for us you know, averaged about two to three days a week and did a lot of our books, did our HR things. I had an office manager slash administrative assistant in the office, but that was about it. That was three of us.
Scott: Okay. So, 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?
The Exchange Project Crisis
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Phil: We had a pivotal job that we signed on for in Kalamazoo. The adage, you know, 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 quote that project.
I felt honored for it. Did my, what I thought was my due diligence and built a bid, got accepted. And so we started this project that, [00:11:00] 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 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. 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 load was probably about $200,000, maybe $220k.
Scott: I would say that sounds about right. Yep.
Finding a Coach and Turning Around
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Scott: Tell me a little bit about how that job resolved and how you made your way [00:12:00] past that.
Phil: 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, I remember sitting at my office late one night, at my at my work office, just scratching my head, trying to figure out, you know, do I want to keep doing this?
How do I get to a better spot? I mean, there I see other business owners that are making money and I figured there's got to be something here that I'm missing. And so I just did a Google search and searched painting. What did I think I searched,
Scott: Painting Coaches
Phil: Coaches maybe. Yeah. And DYB came up at that time, you were with them and I 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.
Scott: I remember that time very well. Okay, so you got through the Exchange and what was [00:13:00] the next pivot you know, what happened after that? You made it through, because you got your change orders. I remember that. You survived the Exchange. Then what was your next aha moment?
Phil: 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, you know, are you making money on those jobs?
Yeah, sure you're estimating, but what's the end result?
Cutting Unprofitable Work
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Phil: And so, working with you, Scott, we started to look at profits. The first step step that we took was to evaluate our spray booth division and try to determine, you know, 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.
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Phil: And so we made some changes internally and in the spray booth to try to get that more profitable.
Scott: And
Phil: 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 [00:14:00] 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 of our repaint work.
That was actually the only thing making money.
Scott: So what'd you do about that?
Phil: Well, I fought you for a long time, 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. You know, being a Dutch first generation immigrant, my parents came over from the war and if there's one thing I was top of my parents was, you don't give up, you just keep fighting.
And so I just was like, no, I'm going to fight. I'm going to make this work no matter what. And then. Yeah, at some point you have to stop fighting and pull out the white flag, and that's okay.
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 [00:15:00] the owners of those companies and raised our prices, explained why we were raising our prices, and of the, I think at that time there was eight builders we were working for. We narrowed it down to two.
Mid Episode Break
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We are at the midway point of our episode today, and if you're working hard but still not seeing the profit you've expected, you are not alone. Many contractors grow revenue for years before realizing that not all work is created equal. Consulting4Contractors helps service-based business owners identify the most profitable opportunities in their business, build marketing plans that attract the right customers and implement systems that support sustainable growth.
So whether you are running a painting company or really any business in the service industry space, having a clear strategy makes all the difference. So please visit us at www.consulting4contractors.com to book a free discovery call with Scott today and learn how he can help you build a business that works for [00:16:00] you, not against you.
And be sure to check the show notes or video description for links and additional resources mentioned in our episode today. Let's hop back in to this conversation with Phil and Scott.
Repaint Focus and Debt Free
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Scott: So I want to just pause there and for those listening don't miss that, you know? Phil was afraid. And at this time you were about how much in revenue? I mean,
Phil: $1.5M, $1.7M.
Scott: Yeah, 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? So, and this is not original to me, but 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 to new things.
So when you did that, I would presume the [00:17:00] world didn't end. 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 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, 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 [00:18:00] and 700,000 of repaint.
Scott: You flipped it.
Phil: Yeah, we flipped it and we flipped the profit switch too, which was
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. 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: Well done. Yeah.
Scaling the Spray Division
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Scott: And the other thing that you did is you blew up your spray booth 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: We were fortunate for the PPP loans and the pandemic. I mean, it was a tough time to go through. We were able to keep our guys working. But those PPP loans we took two of them. 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. 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 [00:19:00] based on a kind of 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, 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 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 making [00:20:00] money.
Scott: Yeah. Nice. Today you have some staff. Just tell us real quickly what does your org chart look like?
Phil: Sure.
EOS Org Chart and Team Structure
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Phil: You know, I haven't mentioned EOS but for those of you who know what EOS is Gino 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, you know, that's one thing I'd probably tell those who are listening. Scott mentioned about fear. You know, there's a lot of great business owners that are all around. I'll tell you, a successful 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 know, you're just starting off, you know, reach [00:21:00] out, reach up. People are there to help you all around.
So we did that with EOS 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 customer interaction.
She does all of the scheduling. Meets with the crew leaders and does a kind of 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. And she's phenomenal. And I have an estimator now that works and we have a full-time production [00:22:00] manager in our shop.
Scott: Yeah. Awesome. What are you targeting for your revenue this year?
Phil: Well, we started ambitious at $3.3 million. Last year we did $2.7M. And, this was a tough winter. We made adjustments to that budget, down to we're shooting now for $3 million.
Scott: All right.
Culture Benefits and Hiring
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Scott: Tell me a little bit about what makes PMV special? What is your secret sauce? Why do people work there? What's your vibe? You know, tell me a little bit about, you know, 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. 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.
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 [00:23:00] teamwork, integrity 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 of 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 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. There was a work on the front end teaching about, you know, how to look at job site and how to, you know, what to count and what's important as far as, you know, 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 and a [00:24:00] half years ago, and met with his team, with his, well, 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, I'm going to get attacked, just the energy that came off them and not in a bad way. But they said out of all the benefits, they would prefer holiday pay and the reason why is a holiday costs them money.
They're at a barbecue on Labor Day or Memorial Day or 4th of July. And what happens? It costs them money because they're not getting paid and they're going to have to either make the time up to, to get paid or they're literally going to 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. It's family first, family friendly. Like what are the benefits here that are going to be helpful to your life? Not just benefit the company. And I'll never [00:25:00] forget that moment with that group of people and how clearly they told me holiday pay would really bless me and my family.
And that's, and Phil did that All right.
Tech Stack That Runs It
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Scott: Tell me a little bit about your tech stack. What's your technology and what, what do you use? What are your pieces there?
Phil: Our guys in the field for clocking in and tracking time. We use TSheets. 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 at how things are running as we look into the future and try to break the ceiling, so to speak.
So we, we use that for our bookkeeping, TSheets for our employees for time tracking, time off requests. We use a 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. For our CRM we got turned onto [00:26:00] Monday.com. 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 requests for employees and it's operational, it's doing operations now for our spray booth. So that is a really pivotal part of our tech stack. We also use Company Cam. We find Company Cam as a godsend. Very easy communication tool for pictures and we use it in our estimating process as well.
For estimates, we use Paint Scout. 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, Phil and I are old guys. I'm older than Phil for sure, but, some of you probably wondering about what he is talking about the QuickBooks 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 when he says TSheets, now it's called QuickBooks Time and I, [00:27:00] we'll just, we're just forever going to call it TSheets. So just deal with it. Yeah. Awesome.
Future Plans and Letting Go
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Scott: So tell me what's the future hold? You know, what do you, 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 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 has 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 [00:28:00] look like in a year from now? We want to be doing a million. Does that mean more space? Does the, is the shop and capacity there still to support that?
And I'm also looking at what is my place in the company? I don't want to be involved in the 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.
Scott: What a journey. So would you say that a few years ago, three years ago, you would call yourself what? Controlling or, I don't know the right word. I don't want to put, but I mean, 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 them in more capable hands than myself. I mean, frankly, I mean, if I think back to my, where I started I was a social worker. I loved people. I loved working with people, but I didn't really know anything about business.
All I knew was hard work would get me where I [00:29:00] 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 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, 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: You know, I think transparency with your top level staff is key. Early on when Kate, who's our operations manager, came on board and worked into that, she came in as a admin and we soon realized she could take on so much more, but we had 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.[00:30:00]
Scott: There you go.
Phil: That's been great. So it's, 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.
Scott: Love it.
Advice on Profit and Coaching
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Scott: You know, as we kind of wrap up our time, 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 you know, what are the things you'd say to help them get through to the other side?
Phil: Sure. you're going to want to take it on yourself. If you're like me, you're going to want to 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. 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 [00:31:00] we would be a little, a lot farther ahead. The other thing I would say is, you know, sometimes we talk about profit and we have some guilt over profit.
You know, profit's not a dirty word. I say that all the time in our business. When I talk to our crew leaders, you know, 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 got to 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'll become more and more.
Scott: Well said. Well go check out Phil's website. We'll put a link in this note. 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 I love the journey. I've loved walking it with you. And you know, it's just been a delight. So I do appreciate your time today and I hope, somebody out there got something out of your story. I [00:32:00] know they will, and I appreciate you being on the podcast.
Phil: Yeah. Thanks Scott for asking me. It's been a great journey and we got lots more to go.
Scott: Let's go.
Wrap Up and Next Episode
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Well, we've reached the end of this throwback episode of Success Beyond the Brush, formerly known as Beyond a Million Dollar Podcast. If this episode helped you think differently about profit, growth or leadership, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes designed to help contractors build stronger, more profitable businesses.
You can find links to a free discovery call with Scott in our show notes, or visit us online at www.consulting4contractors.com. In our show notes or video description, we also have resources and additional tools to help you and your business grow. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you in the next one.