Idaho Painter PodCast

I'm curious. So you just kind of highlighted it there. Nowadays all we know is YouTube. So when I can't figure something out, like I said, when I stayed in that house and I went to your video, obviously you had the guy in the paint shop that was not reluctant, but he was one of the few that gave you some insight. What was your process like before YouTube so that you could create the videos? You said this five year, so when you screw up a wall, what do you do? So like if I sprayed a door in the door ran, you had to sit there in a value way. What happened, what went wrong? Was the paint too thick? Was the paint too thin? I started going, gosh, it feels a little bit cool in here. I'm like, well, I've been painting the house a little bit. It feels a little bit humid in here. How does that affect how the paint's applying? And you had to start to analyze everything around you. And then when you're actually spraying the paint on the door, you're listening to the sound of the paint coming out of the tip. And it doesn't sound right this time because the tip is getting blown out, I learned. And you're just going, you're so in tune with that. And when you're wearing a set of headphones, you can't see that, you can't feel that, you can't hear that. And so you're so in tune with your environment to learn. And I had, I think like sports, like every sport I've ever jumped into, I'm excessive, compulsive. And so... So do you think that's just a characteristic of you, your ability to pick up on nuances and subtleties and like, perfect them? I think it's, it was my excessive compulsive personality as something I was born with. And I think the nuances and stuff like that, like in the trades and stuff, you can be taught to pick that stuff up if you're willing to learn, you know? But not everybody's able to apply it effectively. They're not. And I mean, not everybody's going to walk into the painting trades and become what I would say a really good painter. And just like not everybody that jumps in a swimming pool is going to be Michael Phelps. But from my perspective, it sounds like anything that you would have pursued would have been successful. So I don't know if it's necessarily that you're, I mean, you're obviously an amazing painter and you're amazing at YouTube and have great social media following. But I think any avenue that you would have pursued would have gone the same way. That I think you're so attentive to detail. I am, yeah, I'm a very detailed oriented person which can be annoying to some people. Are you writing stuff down? Like when you hear like, oh, like the spray sounds this way or like when it ran it, where's this temperature in your brain? It's, I, it's just, it would just log in my brain. I never wrote it down. I'd never wrote the information down. And so the difference, so the difference like, like when I would train my employees, they would come on my employees. I would hire college kids and I would give them a spray gun within a couple months and I would say, this is how you spray the door and they all learn the right way. I mean, I didn't want them to fail because then it would cost me money. So, but when they did fail because they all, they all would fail at some point in time. There was one, um, incidents where, you know, I was gone, I walked to the job site, a bogus space and road. And I, um, one of my employees was, um, spraying a full interior trim package. As soon as I opened the door, I was like, whoa, it's a little bit cold in here and I was like, whoa, it's a little bit humid in here. And I knew instantly there was gonna be problems and we walked around this house and I mean, it was a disaster. There was runs everywhere and I was like, inside me, you know, I start to panic and stuff and I was like, and I know my employee was fully panicked and wanted to cry and I was like, calm down. This is all fixable. And one thing I learned in life from Darren, my partner, and this is something I learned and it was an extremely valuable lesson that I used to this day and I've taught my kids is there was one time we were painting the door. We had, I mean, we were brand new painters. We're, you know, I got a family. I've got three kids at the time. I mean, we're broke, I need money. We're painting this customer's front door and we're pickle-staining her front door and all of a sudden it just goes bad and this looks like really bad. And I'm looking at this door and I'm literally, like a grown adult looking at this door, this door and I'm almost ready to cry because I can just see we're not gonna make money. I'm not gonna be able to pay my bills. The customer's gonna be upset. And Darren looked at me and he just, he started laughing at me and he's just like, what are you doing? And he's just like laughing hysterically and I'm just like, I want to like, strangle him, beat the crap out of him but he's twice my size, he's a bodybuilder and he's like, that has to do and he would really kill me. But he was like, look Chris, he's like, it's just money, it's just a door. It's like, it's fixable. If it's not fixable, well buy our new one. Who cares, it's $600. We'll get in back there, $600, it'd be like $1200. He's like, well buy our new one and we'll go make the money on another house and I was like, it amazed that he didn't allow it to affect him in any negative way. And I'm like, why am I almost ready to cry? He's laughing, looking at it with a completely different perspective and I was like, you know what, Darren, you're right. It is, I mean, we'll make it up. We'll fix it and if we can't fix it, we'll buy our new one and then she'll be happy with a brand new door. Are you able to not put so much pressure on yourself nowadays with that thought process? That whole lesson I learned instantly, like if a cost, if one of my employees breaks something, it's fixable. It is what it is. It's, I learn as a painter, every, everything is fixable and I teach my kid, I've taught my kids at a very young age. If something happens bad, it's like, look, McKenna, it's totally fixable. We can, if it's not fixable, we'll buy a new one. It's like, and so just calm down, relax. And that was a very valuable lesson and it made, it was like life changing in my career. And I, we're gonna talk about your family's involvement too in the business. But I wanna get back to the Facebook and the YouTube and when did you start to see the return from putting out content? You know, so Facebook is our Instagram YouTube. I mean, there's so many platforms out there. And what years is this when you first started? So I would say like 2003, 456, 2011 is when I started my YouTube channel. So 2011, I started the YouTube channel and back then, YouTube, there was no advertising. There was, you didn't make money on YouTube. You just did it, you know, for free. I did it to, because I had a passion to teach and educate. I did it because there was another painter on YouTube creating videos. And I was so obsessed with being competitive. I wanted to have more views with them, more views. And I also wanted to put out more videos than them. So as a race that like, catch up with his, and I don't even remember who it was, but it's just the craziest thing. That's Michael Jordan syndrome. Yeah, it's like my competitive nature just like taking over. It's like settled out Chris, you know, and, um, and so it was probably, this is, well, sound crazy, but it was right around. I probably had 10,000 subscribers at the time. In fact, and that was a lot. I mean, it's all relative. YouTube sent me this email saying, hey, do you want to monetize your channel? And I'm like, well, what's that? I'm like, what, yeah, whatever, click the button. And I didn't even know that was an opportunity until that point. It was, it didn't even exist. They just started it. They had to email you. They emailed me. I said, yes, they monetize my channel. I got a 75 yard paycheck the first time. And the camera I was using to make videos cost 75 dollars. And I was like, well, all the crap, that is amazing. And I thought that was the most amazing thing. And I was like, I'm rich. And, um, so, and so I got paid that very first time. And, um, and that was shortly after, you know, in 2011, I couldn't have been, you know, six months or something like that. And, and I had, and I remember I had 20, I think, 22,000 subscribers. And YouTube invited me to their headquarters in San Bruno. And I, um, and, and I thought I was big at that time. So I was like, oh my god, I got 22,000 subscribers. They invited me because I'm so huge. And so, and so I flew to San Bruno and, um, and I roll in there. And there was six, they invited me with 60 other YouTubers. And, um, Frodo's photos was there. Jared Polin was there. Um, the Wrangler Shark, Cody Cron was there. Um, Steve Ramsey was there. Woodworking for Mayor Mordoros. I became good friends with Steve. Um, became good friends with Cody. Um, make up by Mandy was there. And, um, the, and like she was making like a million dollars a year at that time. And that was a long time. I made a YouTube alone. She was. Yeah. And, and I remember that was when, so, I mean, it was when, you know, reality hit, Jared, um, Wrangler star, Steve Ramsey, they were all, they had to hit 500,000 subscribers at that time. And it was the race to 500,000. And that's when I was like, why am I even here? It's like, these guys, this is a joke. And, but I went through the seminar with them. And I walked out of that seminar going, I'm going to make YouTube my full time job. I'm, I'm, I'm going to figure this out.