Subcontracting Painters, Who Wins?

yes um welcome to live chat hey everybody we're live again it's been a while um it's been a while since we've been live um that little window is really bright yeah that's like what's that no we'll just turn us over here um all right so wow david fp is hanging out with us so um david's here um let's see who else uh renin is um nascimento is hanging out with us tonight so our topic tonight lisa what is our topic tonight we just got we just got back from ast which was a residential repaint um yes conference um advanced shop talk is what it is so um it's kind of interesting we've been to three of these conference events and um kind of one of the things we notice one of the trends we noticed is how many business owners are using subcontractors nowadays and how many business owners are um businessmen or salesmen starting painting companies with no painting experience and using subcontractors and doing really well so um they're doing really well they're doing really well i don't know how the subcontractors are doing but a little bit of a hot mess um but anyways so um so we want to talk to you guys about subcontractors if you are a subcontractor let us know and let us know what you think the benefits are of being a subcontractor and what um the negative aspects of being a subcontractor yeah and so we're going to talk about tonight i'm actually going to clean my camera lens and see if that helps the glare look at that it fixed it really yeah it must have been a fingerprint on the lens see that's how you can just fix things um quickly and easily so so brian can say subbing is a percentage of the quality the customers will receive so definitely somebody said um josh higgins says dang hi deaf now make sure they peel bond your house after pressure washing so kevin mccarth is giving advice to jiffers so they she asked a question about we got a lot of people jumping on so angie's list what do you think of angie's list um you know what so in advance shop talk um i don't there wasn't a lot of people that said a lot of good things about angie's list there was one guy one guy that um used angie's list and thought it was okay but um that that i thought that was going to be more widely used but um it's not um there wasn't very many people that really liked and i don't like that their people are posting and angie's list like you should pay 200 for painting a room like i i don't like that at all yeah so the value but people are asking other questions which is great but we really want to hear from you guys if you are a subcontractor tell us why you're a subcontractor is it because you're not confident in building bidding jobs is it because you don't want to bid jobs you just want to paint um we want to hear what your thoughts are and if you think it's good for the trades if you think it's good that you know you have business owners that do not know how to paint hot having painters do the work we just had somebody jump on that said he's a subcontractor for certapro and so we would like to hear let me see if i can go so let me read this i i can see right here eddie eddie is a um subcontractor for certapro and we why don't i mean hopefully eddie can give um share some of his experiences with it and you know um i guess some of what we need to learn so i have one guy who answered real fast okay go ahead he says we have a crew that we sub out our overflow to we take 25 off the top but we handle administration advertising collecting from the customers subs are given bonus based on receiving rave reviews so i'm my some of my um yo questions subcontracting and why why do you act as a subcontractor um for instance why would you subcontract to certapro and um and you're basically leaving a lot of money on the table versus just going out and getting your own jobs are people subcontracting for certapro because they don't have the experience marketing um they can't get jobs and keep a steady work uh i mean part of what we're doing in some of our upcoming business series uh is teaching you how to market your painting teaching you how to go out and find jobs um and and we want to help in that aspect we want to learn from you guys why would you subcontract and is there anything we can do to help your business so you don't have to subcontract so you can get your own work and and it's my i guess it's our opinion um that's if you get your own work you're going to make more money but um but there's reasons why everybody does what they do what they do and so um but once again we just need to learn you know from you guys so we can um you know work on our upcoming business series on why you guys are relying on um certapro or some of these other companies to give you work and uh it was amazing how many businesses at ast um had a complete 100 subcontracting model yeah and i think i guess you know our platform we want to equip painters so they can have success in their jobs and i think if they're doing it because they don't want to go out and get the jobs then i think that's a great model for them but if they're doing it because they're not confident in their skills you know we want to hear from you guys if that's some content that chris could put out to really encourage and help you so that you do not have to rely on the subcontractor model yeah i think i just saw eddie um pop on there i think it was eddie and he said that um he was using certapro they were giving him work because they supply him with steady work and i think you know uh and yeah that's i mean if you don't have work you have you have to pay your bills and so um you don't want to sit at home and so if you have to go subcontract to people then you got to sub contract but i'm curious you gotta um go ahead if other trades are doing this i mean do electricians subcontract at work do plumbers subcontract work drywall i mean is this just a business model um that is happening in the painting trades and so you know that's we just want to start the conversation and we do really want to hear from you i have some people that he's saying um that oh where did i just go he just said this kz fresh that our subs do high quality work with constant quality work they make good money so that's good to know and um west coast painting he takes pride in his work brian kim how about two to three years in the biz referral and repeat business is enough to keep you busy and eddie said well yes i'm subcontracting because i started my own last year and yes certapro is keeping me busy because i'm working on a more solid customer base and so you know i think i think we just want to have the conversation and we want to be part of the solution if there is pain in this process but you know would like to hear from you guys because we learned about it and you know we always had our own employees and i i wouldn't think about doing that because if you are a subcontractor do you um i think eddie was saying do you have your own work comp policy or since you're a business owner are you opting out of being covered and then if you get hurt on the job do you have adequate insurance because if you work for the company if you get hurt on the job you're covered and you're going to get taken care of yeah so um i guess i mean some of it is you know right right now there's a major shortage of painters out there and and where we live i can't speak for um you know all painters in all locales across the united states but it seems like there's just more work to go around it's just a matter of figuring out how to go do it do it or go get it and if you don't have the tools to you know market yourselves are finding those jobs you know maybe we can help you out with that and we we do have some videos on how to market your painting company but i mean we're gonna be having some upcoming videos we learned a lot at um the last conference we just got back from so um but we're gonna give away some gift cards yeah we give away tonight three fifty dollar gift cards so let's give away one right now but what do they have to do to get a gift card so we're going to give away three gift cards tonight to paint life supply co so um in order to claim your gift card when we say you're a winner is um go to paintlifesupply.com and down in the box there's the chat button where you chat from somebody at the store tell them what you want and um they'll verify that your winner on the show and we'll get your email address and we'll send you your gift card so paint life supply co um paint lifesupply.com to claim your gift card so so let's give it to eddie eddie um fagillio gilliam probably no we're sorry eddie man that's a hard name to pronounce f-a-g-g-i-o-l-l so he is insured and golly yeah he's so you're going to get your 50 gifts card but you have to do what chris just said about how to get it but um and he said he treats the certapro customers like his own and so far customers are loving the quality but the problem is is you have to do speed production and if you take too long you only make 52 minus the paint yeah so there's there's um that's interesting what he's saying about it so you know there's definitely there's definitely some logistics to it so my concern if i was actually subbing out to painters you know that they're just trying to hurry up and get the job done because they're getting a specific amount of money irregardless and they got to move on to the next job as quick as they can to um get the next job done to make more money and so they gotta produce numbers like fast and um so i guess i guess i would like to hear so it sounds like the benefit is you know you have a steady stream of work you don't have to go get the work you just have to paint but what is some of the negative things of being a subcontractor is there you know i don't know maybe that's the best thing to do i mean if you're not a subcontractor you're running your own business so you definitely got to have um well you got as a subcontractor you got to have insurance so um you know you got to have a licenses you got to have insurance um you've got to some of the um i don't know what are some of the things lisa running your own business about i was just reading the seed what are you reading i was reading some of the things so jake starling said speaking of giving away you gave my worker a pair of headphones the other day and he was so stoked worked so good he couldn't hear me all day lol no noise counseling oh yeah that's true so um oh b jordan 66 said i do a little bit of both negative is keeping all your eggs in one basket yeah so i mean to me one of the negatives about being a subcontractor is you're not getting the jobs yourself you're not getting a customer's email and contact information you're not building your own you know customer database up and that customer database is what's extremely value what's happening is certapro or whosoever you're subbing getting the work from they're building their database up and it's getting larger so they can continue to contact their customers send them out email newsletters send them out gift cards for referring on their business over and over again and they're developing that business they're developing the repeat customers and you're not you're not having the time to invest in your own company because you're having to just produce um work for somebody else that's running the business so you're not nurturing and developing your own database that and that's the key tool to getting you know on your own is getting your own customers and they're kind of like well um like that to doing new construction so if you're working for a builder and you're just painting house after house for a builder you got one customer you got one person that you can email and say i'm getting slow and help me in the winter time because i have no work and he's like well i only build this many houses i mean you can kind of see where that's going you have one customer if you're um and so you he he's giving you a few houses a month or maybe one a week if you're like we were at some at one point in time painting five exteriors a week that's five customers a week times four uh weeks out of the months that's 20 customers every month that you're adding to your list that you can email when times get slow or when you're going into winter time to say hey we're transitioning to wintertime here's a winter discount and jump on and get on our list for the winter time and as you're coming out of winter you start sending out those same emails to say summer's coming up we're booking jobs fast we're offering a 10 discount to get on our schedule bids are free and um and that's how you kind of just work with your list and nowadays i mean we used to actually send out the um hard copy of email newsletters we used to lick them and stamp them and send them out and and i used to have a folding machine that would actually fold the papers and stuff nowadays you can do it by email if you really need work and um and you're coming into these slow times you can do email and hard copy which is extremely beneficial and we get tons of work with those email newsletters so eddie says can you repeat the steps for the gift card please so to get the gift card um so eddie's one winner we're giving out a couple more tonight we'll give at least two more so um go to our website which is paintlifesupply.com that's our store um go to the store down at the bottom of the store there's a chat icon where you can you click on that and you actually get somebody live from the store if the store is open if not you still chat on it and it'll go um we we eventually see it just put your name that you won and then yeah and just so am i making it really complicated yeah all you need to do is say why do you ask me what how come you know what to say all you need to do is say i won the 50 gift card your name and your email address and we will email the gift card to you so why did you want me to say that whatever because i thought we wanted them to like or follow instagram paint life supply code so do you need me to say that sure you can say it i think you just said it okay so after you do that so what do we want them to do live on instagram well you just follow why instagram why we talk about instagram because instagram the store just started its own instagram account oh and so that's how you could find out about cells like oh right now there's a cell on miracle wipes oh you buy one you get one half off so if you follow paint life supply co on instagram you could find out the sells and the deals that are going on so there's some sales and deals there right now okay who runs that instagram um not me and not you afton does after daughter afton so we've got we got a facebook page and an instagram that's paint life supply um co and so go check out that follow it and afton is now she's managing that and she's got some really cool um ideas and stuff and some fun stuff she's going to be doing on paint life supply co instagram and facebook and if you want some cool deals she's going to be um it isn't going to give away one oh you're gonna give away another one so crazy fresh the bonus structure helps with the quality there's occasional hiccups but not much different than with my regular employees my subs do make more money than my employees do by quite a large margin so crazy fresh you just want a 50 gift card for our store and so same thing go to paintlifesupply.com go to the chat button say you won give us your email because that's how we get the the gift card to you and then you need to go follow paint live supply co on instagram and then we'll email that gift card to you tomorrow but i have a question for you um what is the downside as an owner of having subcontractors is there a downside would you in a perfect world would you like to have only employees or would you like to have only subcontractors because it sounds like it's a mix you have so i'd like to hear a little bit more from you so um and that's a that's a good um point too that that he actually made that his subs make more than his employees and i would definitely think that would be true so if you're an employee why not go out and buy your own tools get your own van and you can actually contact some of these companies that only do subcontracting models like certapro and it's amazing there's quite a few out there there's three really big ones in minnesota and we met one gentleman that has um five subcontractors that he uses and he's keeping them all busy so if you're an employee why not get your own band get your own tools and go out and sub contracting but the one thing once again getting back to you i would really encourage you um to go out and get your own work and one of the things um ast advanced shop talk that we learned that was very effective for most of these companies that use a subcontracting model is mailers they're sending out mailers and how effective mailers are and we've talked about it a lot how effective door hangers are and that's kind of the same thing as a mailer a door hangers um a little bit cheaper because the mailer you've got to you know create the mailer print it and everything and then you pay for a database a list and it was amazing on what we were learning they're really dialing in these lists so you can use um dial it down to specific demographics and um to households that make a certain amount of money which is kind of interesting so you can target it to houses above 400 000 they're probably more likely to paint their houses versus houses that are 75 000 and below i don't know and you can target neighborhoods um doing door hangers you don't have to pay for a mailer you just walk into a neighborhood that you think is good and you start putting them on houses you think that need to be painted and we did um it was interesting uh we have a story and we did a mailer once or a door hanger once somebody came back to us seven years later uh contacted us still had the door hanger and asked us if the discount was still good and we honored it because he's crazy that he still had it that long and at ast two days ago one of the gentlemen said he had a customer contact him with his mailer that was eight years old eight years old so you switched that ours was eight years and his was seven but he was 15 years old together i lied no you did it it was a what is it when you see numbers the wrong way what's it called i'm dyslexic dyslexic 8-7 now we'll never forget it's a long time it's a good thing you corrected me on that because yeah because that really mattered it didn't matter so why did that matter that you i don't know because i just remembered it was eight years for us and then seven years i don't know it's interesting because i think because you're just talking talking and so it's just we're making it's interesting because every like when i started telling that story i think i started off at three and you said it was four and then the next year i think it was i said it was foreign it seems like it keeps going up every year no we i know where the house is it's not even far from our house it's right by the river i remember too and i remember it was gray it's on floating feather turning into the oh so we must have two i'm i'm 55. we have i'm getting old we probably had one that was four years but we definitely had the one in eight years so anyways and you're the one that handled that so i never handled that stuff i mean you did i i all i i just listened to you but once again um i got memory problems and [Music] so i competed this weekend in a crossfit event with all the young kids again and um i guess i held my own once again do you think i held my own in that event yeah you did so we flew back from ast and we got off the plane we drove straight up to the mountains to mccall idaho where um the mccall throwdown was going on and that was on a four-person team and it was brutal i um really paid the price if you don't follow us on instagram you can 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