Starting a $6M/Year Epoxy Flooring Business

how inspiring is Brandon Vaughn he started an epoxy flooring business just over a year ago and today he's already got eight franchises generating more than five hundred thousand dollars a month on all that as a result of bold choices and creative and unique marketing approaches when we first got started we did not have the cash to be able to buy these Grinders that are like twenty thousand dollars our break even was within like the first 45 days so we try to have a system for absolutely everything we do but within like month two we almost went bankrupt no I mean honestly it's all marketing that's why we get those higher closing ratios and higher average tickets how did he do it well today you're about to find out [Music] all right you guys we are here in Vancouver Washington at a job site with Brandon the owner of lice Cody's Brandon why don't you tell us a little bit about this job site how many guys we have here the cost of the clients paying just so Their audience know what we're doing so very rainy job site today very much like uh really awesome which is really fun but this job we're doing the garage floor coating we're also doing the patio floor coating as well and this is about 4 100 bucks to to get this one done is it a one-day job or yep all of our jobs usually for a two-car garage is typically about one single day sometimes we can do three car garages in one day it's a little bit longer but we have normally two guys out on the job site we have three out here today because we want to make sure that we get this done obviously with the rain and everything sometimes it can cause some delays so that gives us a little bit of buffing and we're holding it up a little bit with the cameras and stuff but it's fun it's a welcome Interruption yes tell us about your background did you have any other companies besides wise coating and when and why you started this particular company yeah I have I've been in Home Services you know pretty much my whole life my dad was an owner operator window cleaner for 33 years so I started my own you know window cleaning exterior cleaning company too honestly the reason why I started wise Coatings I wanted something new I wanted kind of a challenge of you know starting a business I wanted to show the whole process of building it from zero to a million dollar company and and really kind of peel back the hood on growing this type of a business it's super satisfying to take like a really gross looking floor and then like turn it into a beautiful floor and see the customer light up and the margins are great it just was really really appealing and I like focusing on the marketing stuff and being able to have fun with the brand I was like oh we can have a lot of fun we're doing something different with this type of business nice and you're well branded we'll talk more about that later in the video your Vans your cars thanks I haven't seen anything as sharp and crisp as that let's talk about what were the biggest challenges for you as a business owner there's pretty much like three big challenges that we knew we had to solve one was having a good recruiting and Training System you know getting employees in up to speed because that's a big problem for a lot of business owners right now another one is marketing how to actually get the leads coming in in a consistent basis this is not recurring repeat work so like you always need to kind of hunt what you kill on like a daily basis and then the third thing honestly was cash flow you know we almost went bankrupt at one time and so you know being able to manage buying equipment buying supplies paying the guys and still having enough cash flow coming in was another big challenge absolutely I want to touch base on all those three things what can you elaborate like when it comes to finding people can you give us a tip trick yeah sort of for all those three I mean honestly it's all marketing you know what's a harder sell convincing a customer to coat their garage floor or convincing another human being to spend more time with you and your business than they spend at home with their families during their waking hour so sure that's a tough sell and a lot of businesses a lot of business owners you know they they don't think about the marketing that's required to get people to apply like there's people out there that would love to work at a job like this it's 100 marketing so you know when you do your job ad is like you know must lift 80 pounds must have clean driving record like you know is it lame or do you have like compelling hooks that really draw someone in and captures their attention are you tracking the links that they're clicking on and looking at literally as a marketing exercise and then the last one how when it comes to cash flow yeah especially when you're starting out you know when we started out with a very small budget that grinder there cost twenty thousand dollars right so we didn't have that cash at the start and we also didn't have very good business credit at the very beginning because they're like an established started last week um yeah we're not going to give you this loan oh no no no no no way so we rented some of our first equipment our first job is we actually spent the marketing money to Facebook got the leads went out sold the jobs had the jobs on the schedule then went to the rental shop to actually rent the equipment to do the jobs until we could build up enough cash to be able to finance and get the bank to see okay this business is going to be around by the way speaking on equipment we're going to take you guys to the store where you guys buy some butterflies reference to your first stuff yeah so come with us this week let's go [Music] foreign [Music] all right this is it here we go John Don here we go yeah so this is John Don this is where we kind of got our start with renting some of our equipment when we first like jumped up the business and got it going so tell us why we're here and what you can highlight yeah maybe the importance of having partners like this so this is John Don uh they're a national supplier of janitorial equipment floor Coatings equipment Floor Care Equipment Etc and when we first got started we did not have the cash to be able to buy these Grinders that are like twenty thousand dollars so they're really gracious at you know letting us rent some of the equipment and you know we've continued to rent equipment with them on some specialized projects and jobs but you know being able to have the option to be able to take one of these pieces of equipment that's twenty thousand dollars for this and to be able to rent it out for the day to just get you through that job helped out a lot on like the cash flow side of it had we spent that 20 grand that we had in the bank account and just bought a piece of equipment cash like we would have been in a position where like okay what do we got to sell to be able to make payroll this week so those first few months especially with the aggressive growth that we planned we we had to be able to rent and lease equipment and kind of like get that cash flow figured out yeah I mean we talked to Corey Edmonds and he was a big proponent of the fact that hey Finance lease if you can yes you know just like you be heavy on the cash so Corey thanks for that tip as well uh you guys if you haven't seen the episode check it out it was our previous episode same business as well thank you [Music] yeah man let's do it why is Gordon's headquarters all right hey guys we're aware Brandon where is this place this is our Portland headquarters and Shop office location nice this is where it all started man the origin story tell us about your sales process you mentioned it early in the interview I want to dive into it a little bit more so we try to have a system for absolutely everything we do and you know systems are just about consistency what do you say to the customer every single time on every single quote that you give that's how you can start kind of dialing in your closing ratio by trying out different stuff and seeing like what's the feedback what's the response what if I say this well my numbers go up a little bit so we kind of break down a four-part system that's connect discover show and close and apple actually uses this in their Apple Stores this is like not my invention this is not a real process and so somebody else came up with it yeah you connect with the customer first you know and when you go into the genius store and you know the Genius Bar you talk to someone that's typically what they do they try to connect with you somehow and then just discover you asked lots of questions about you know have you ever you know shot this in the past you know if we did one thing on the job that you know would totally make you frustrated what would that be you know agitate pain and then more questions and then you go to the show part where you actually answer and take each one of their pains that they listed one at a time and address them and then you ask for the clothes so even those types of systems and the sales process is really important you know we talk about our criminal background screen technicians and we really try to educate the customer on what to expect when you layer all those things together that's why we get those higher closing ratios and higher average tickets because every employee of yours follows those steps yes no deviation allowed yeah and we created training videos so it's not just me training new hires in the sales process we have it documented step by step in video format so they sit down in front of a computer and watch it and actually take tests to make sure that it you know they retained it what was the budget and can you break it down for us in a nutshell yeah so we started this with a fifteen thousand dollar budget that's it 15 gram yeah 15 grams and the big investment that we made was in the brand into marketing so we hired a company prolific brand design they did the wraps for us all of our brand manuals the website stuff and that was about 5k of that budget was kind of getting some of the branding and marketing stuff dialed in we also had no clue how to do the floor Coatings when we started this business I've never done this before you start this company you have no idea how to do it before so we budgeted two grand to travel down to a manufacturer and like learn how to do this and then another three thousand dollars pretty much another miscellaneous expenses and kind of getting things going and then five grand of that was dedicated towards marketing spent so literally month one we're like all am on the marketing side so we spent five thousand dollars in Facebook ads and running Facebook ads and getting that going and that's what generated our first 50k worth of work the very first month as long as I could focus on getting that kind of work coming in then we could really grow you know very quickly that's an amazing yeah so I understand that Weiss Coatings is a franchise yeah right for our viewers that don't fully understand what a franchise is can you give us the definition yeah franchise is the ability to be able to own your own location so you literally own your own business but you have a full corporate support structure you know we help out with the systems we help out with all the other back-end resources we help do your marketing and I'll be honest with you I've always hated franchises it's kind of ironic because I genuinely thought that I'd never actually start a franchise so I was like if I'm going to create a franchise I want to do things that other franchise companies don't do so like we pay for the bookkeeping the CRM systems we do all the Facebook marketing Google ad marketing SEO website work you know we pay for everything on the back end as well as give all of our partners you know exclusive discounts to products and things and we have a partnership Arrangement where you know we're incentivized to help them grow their business so you know a franchise is definitely an opportunity to be able to start your own business but not have to worry about doing it on your own that's incredible when you got started where was your break-even point time was when we got going it pretty much our break even was within like the first 45 days it's not bad yeah we started we started cash flowing pretty quickly pretty much in month one to where we could pay all the guys pay our marketing and had enough Revenue to kind of like really Break Even but within like month two we almost went bankrupt no it was a kind of thing second month I was like ah you know this whole experiment is a failure literally a month two we got down to 50 bucks in our bank accounts one job went so South that we literally almost completely had to like not pay our guys and go bankrupt so it was it was close to try to cash all this thing but you came out on top and we did yeah why don't we share that with our audience later because I think that that's an extreme Challenge that every business faces right that's a fun story so I'd love to hear that get your people watching guys yes please get your popcorn out so why would somebody join a franchise and what would you offer them as their partner essentially the big reason why we decided to kind of franchise this is there's something really unique when you have a whole bunch of business owners all over the country all unified under one brand one system structure is because you can focus on one business and it literally benefits everyone across the country which is kind of cool so I didn't really understand that concept until we really started kind of working on this we create all of our training videos so we have videos for a technician as soon as they get hired onto the team they sit down and they watch exactly how to do the process even if I don't know anything about if you know nothing about it whatsoever and you know scripts on what to talk to customers how to talk to them on the sales side of things how to connect discover show clothes and how to you know read body language of a potential customer how to offer packages how to schedule the jobs so the training library is massive because normally you know you starting your own business you have to create those systems for your employees you know in order to extract yourself out of the business so to be able to start off from day one having all of that done is really huge come long did it take you to complete those or build those jobs I mean I would imagine it takes time the previous businesses help you accomplish that quicker definitely yeah good point yeah the previous businesses that I had you know I had uh the systems pretty much really well dialed in my exterior cleaning business you know we were doing you know 400 500 000 a month in that business so when I started this business I was able to take a lot of those systems and kind of show the proof of concept of hey you could start a business from zero and get it up to a hundred thousand dollars a month in four months that pretty much using the same steps following the same steps so there's there's a bunch of other stuff that we do you know as well on the franchise side that's incredible I want to take a look at your branding here anything you want to share a highlight on why this could be a real game changer for any business do you buy do you lease for me branding is everything you know when you have the beat up truck with the magnet signs on the side and they come up and they get the quote on a napkin and they leave it with a customer like that's it's not going to get you those High average tickets they're only going to compare that person's quote to someone else that's kind of like similar in the ballpark I think it becomes just like all about the cost yeah but when we show up in this they're like okay this is a professional company we have the presentation folders We have the videos we have The Branding lockdown we have the AI power visualizer tool we adopt a baby elephant in their name they literally have a picture of the baby elephant and like give them a certificate like at the end of the job oh that's all automated that's a good selling point so you know all those things go into an emotional experience where they're like okay I can trust this company and we decide to lease all of our vehicles even this because I know you said you leased the Vans yep even this too so there's great leasing programs out there for vehicles like our van we have a Ford track lease on that and we pay about 800 to a thousand bucks a month and that includes a brand new vehicle they that includes all the upfit inside they take care of all that and the wrap so the wrap is always packaged into it and it's a hundred thousand miles bumper to bumper warranty all the maintenance oil change changes any of that stuff is all included in it so if anything goes wrong with it they'll give you a loaner vehicle while that's in the shop and if you think that you know okay we're doing about three to four thousand dollars a day in one of these vehicles 60 plus a month just one van yes so if that's down for one day three grand the the payment becomes nothing else how many franchises you have right are some of them just in the starting stage or already in operation and producing serious Revenue can you share a little bit about that yeah so the first one that we did was in Portland Oregon and that was the location that we started you know here locally and then from there last year we onboarded about four or five and then we had three more that hopped in this year so we're about eight locations total right incredible and growing yeah a year and a half into it yes and we have about 140 applicants to apply to be a partner location right now so how are they spread out across the States they're pretty much all over the U.S but there's tons of open territories that are still left over lots of markets that we're excited to find Partners to be able to join forces with in some of those markets and they're all in like newer stage so all of the locations are less than a year in their growth stage and some of them are already putting their second trucks on the road and kind of getting going with you know growing the business so anywhere from just getting started to get a little more established that's amazing started with one location here in Portland yeah and now you've got eight all across the United States I want to take a second and talk to our viewers and audience if you're someone that's always wanted to own your own business consider wise Coatings I mean they're giving up the viewers an exclusive franchise fee discount that is unheard of in this industry right we at uplift we go through due diligence to make sure that we offer our viewers the best opportunity out there and I really think your company is that so as we continue the interview you guys will get a first hand look into what it would be like for you to be an owner and partner with yourself so should we continue yeah man they're right about the diligence you asked me about a billion questions before we start yes we do thanks for confirming that Bob it's true before we go on make sure you click the link in the description below so you guys get more information about how you can become a partner with Brandon and get more details on the incredible discount that they're offering the amplify viewers so let's keep going all right I'm curious what the profit margins look like for you in this particular market like what's a good month what's a bad month when we first kind of got going we were pretty much breaking even the first few months that we kind of you know we're hitting things going month four when we did a hundred thousand dollars we had about uh close to 30 percent net profit in that month yeah and you know really it can be anywhere from you know five percent to thirty percent twenty to twenty five percent is kind of like what we Target and what we teach all of our partners to be able to kind of like strive for we have a what's called a pro forma and that shows exactly what percentages towards marketing towards supplies towards labor towards rents towards you know all the fixed expenses and variable expenses with the kind of that Target and that profit that we shoot for that's amazing is this a grinder okay because there's a vacuum so this is going to collect all the dust because these guys manufacture some serious amount of dust they have these huge concrete grinder Diamond bits of diamonds in there yeah and I pluck them out this is why they're so expensive why they're not just to Blade themselves yeah these little bits they're like embedded with diamonds so as they go into the the concrete they grind it away the only thing that can last yeah it makes a ton of dust so you have to have a system like this uh let's look around these are these are all Grinders because that vacuum and then we got grounded here so we have different sizes right so like a small Grinder like this it can do the job it just takes a lot longer and there's different types of Grinders this one runs off of electricity the grinder that we bought runs off of propane the big Advantage is you don't have to Lug around these massive generators that have to power these 240s it's a 240. you can't just plug in you cannot just plug into a customer's house so we've tried to you know really kind of spec out our equipment to say propane's easy to fill up you know all these different gas stations around you can just fill up really easily and you know you can carry on extra fuel with you so a little more of an investment but it also helps us do the jobs faster what tools and software do you use to manage the financial side of the business how do you manage the franchise is all synchronized together I decided to find out we've got a lot of software a lot of software programs yeah so the main one managing all the crews and getting that all done that's our big CRM called house call Pro house call Pro all right yeah I've heard about that it's amazing because everything is ran online we have technician tracking so we do Fleet Tracking you can see where all the technicians are where they're at this is right down in Tigard yep you can see our technicians you know uh Chris out there they clicked on my way when they traveled out there the customer got a text notification with like a little Uber style yeah tracking the technician to actually get there so the client can actually see exactly where yes the technician is yep they get a little link on their phone they click on it and they can literally see a map well of the technician just like uber shows and then when they start they hit the start button when they hit finish it tracks everything we can see information about the house that pulls from Zillow we can see the invoice all this services that we're offering pictures of the job before and after well before and then when the guys are done they'll take Afters and they'll attach it to this as well and then this is the financing button so when we send an application for financing we click one button and they get a little text message that they can click on and they can apply to get the entire job completely financed and it's fulfillment that's the yeah that's the financing part so as soon as we're done we get paid instantly but the financing company takes over the actual finance department with the customer that's pretty new let's talk about what we mentioned earlier in the video and that is the 50 month month two when you started the business right like you almost crashed yeah and then something happened right and month four you hit 100K yes what can our audience learn from that as well because some people can quit at that point yeah and you know I'll be honest with you there is definitely those moments and you know for me the definition of being an entrepreneur is you take on a greater than average risk for a greater than average reward absolutely and that risk is real and in month two we had a job that we figured would only take us like three four days we ended up taking this almost two weeks it hurts it was we just we kind of didn't know what we were doing a little bit there's a little bit of that yeah it's so wrong like three days to two weeks the coding that was on the floor that we were supposed to remove just was stubborn as everything and we called up you know experienced floor Coatings installers and removers and they oh yeah rent this piece of equipment didn't do it rent this piece of equipment wouldn't touch it rent this piece meanwhile we were paying the guys the entire time that we were trying to get this floor done and that labor costs along with the material costs along with the rental costs the cushion that we had in our bank account at month two just like disappeared and we literally had 50 bucks in the bank account we had payroll that was coming out that that very weak and we we got like one job in right squeaked in before we actually had payroll to where we were okay on the cash flow side I'd say that the you know the biggest lesson for me and kind of that whole experience was all types of issues like that comes from a lack of education and comes from you know being able to kind of like anticipate uh what what to do next and being involved with a community that kind of you know has learned those lessons so now that we have you know all these partners that have these kinds of experiences we know what to look out for and we can kind of help all of each other out as franchise Partners to say like hey don't do this this is an experience that we found stay away from that and when we first started we didn't have that support system we got a couple of our lumps and bumps and bruises so now our partners know what to look out for if you don't know something right yeah it's okay to ask somebody else 100 yeah for sure what tools software are you using for whatever purposes so we use dunzo so dunzo is our marketing and software platform basically this handles all of our automations so the second that we give a customer an estimate they get a 12-month automated follow-up sequence with you know mail that comes in text messages ringless voicemails emails all that's completely automated that's the way you didn't accept the joke so that the follow-up can continue on yeah the job is actually accepted and we've finished the job the second we Mark the job as being done yeah the homeowner gets a thank you card in the mail along with brownies that say hey Paul we're trying to earn some brownie points there's like a thank you card with a little QR code for them to uh do their review and also 100 gift card that they can give to a neighbor or a friend that's through dunso not the CRM that handles the correct technicians got it okay and then all the neighbors the software will take all the surrounding neighbors and will automatically send them out a postcard to says hey we're working in the area that's pretty and they get a sequence of three different postcards all the neighbors automatically without anyone on the team having to do anything that's crazy you're touching everything everyone yeah and this is the big part you know about actually working on the business that makes such a huge impact these are those thousand dollar an hour tasks of setting up these types of systems that provides such a bigger impact to the business as opposed to just being out in the field doing the thing and that's what my responsibility is is setting up all the back end systems what are we doing right now all right so we're going to mix up the product right now and get this all set up the guys are pretty much ready to get going with that so we're gonna just kind of get this set up so you know I would have noticed this last interview by the way we did with Corey you guys seen the episode the stuff that they're using is so potent I couldn't smell it within six feet I mean it's just potent you'll have a job that maybe doesn't you know pay out a ton it's still strong you got a weak lungs Paul I don't smell anything from here what is the difference between the products you use and kind of epoxy so epoxy products they have different cure speeds sometimes the smell is a little bit different we actually custom formulated our poly aspartic product to have zero vocs so there's like almost no odor nothing yeah so you don't have customers complaining about like man this reeks it smells terrible this is a very very unique poly aspartic it has a really good adhesion to the concrete the the abrasion resistance on it is super high and it really you know locks into the concrete itself and it has a lifetime adhesion Bond on it so we actually warranted with a lifetime warranty wow so then this is going to be applied to the garage floor sprayed around and then you're going to put plates on yep exactly okay I'm learning let's do it I'm learning what's one thing you wish you would have known earlier in the game that you think would have changed where you are today I wish I would have known how difficult it is to put down floor Coatings it surprised me part of the hell week that we talked about was that first job where we didn't know what we didn't know about removing existing floor Coatings even your two thousand dollar training trip even my training did not cover all of it that was the hardest learning curve was you know we had some floor replacements we had to do because we just didn't really know what too much we were doing and you know of course in the last year and a half we've learned way more and I wish I would have done a little bit more research on that front side to be more prepared on what to expect that so more research how did how did everything end up big thing we paid our employees you know we had enough cash in the bank that we got from that previous job to be able to cover payroll and you finished the job right finish the job even that job that took you two weeks it's done everybody's happy yes it is yeah yep let's time with Brandon let's dive into it and thank you to our audience for submitting these questions we greatly appreciate your involvement and support what percentage of Revenue do you pay yourself today I typically like to look for two different kinds of pay one is salary so typically I recommend about 10 percent of whatever your gross revenue is for for salary and then take the rest out in profit distributions gotcha you're not gonna tell us what those are profit distributions yeah what's the last one usually usually profit distributions you know if we're looking for like a targeting like a 25 net profit there's about 15 available but it really kind of depends on what your next phase of growth is you know if we're going to be reinvesting into the next month a little bit more on marketing I may pay myself a little bit less out of the business so it kind of depends on what the business needs as to what the profit is make sense what are you paying for marketing today 10 so give us a number right now if we're shooting a Duo um 150 000 worth of revenue for next month in our Portland location we'll spend fifteen thousand dollars that a month what is the current marketing strategy for you right now most it's digital marketing we spend a lot on Facebook we also do Google ads and we invest in SEO work to try to get more organic traffic coming in which one are you spending most on Facebook for sure yeah it's a great channel it's Interruption marketing so people aren't necessarily searching for it so your Your Hooks and your ads have to really like capture their attention and hook them in what is the system that you've implemented in your business that's been most impactful thanks to Brian for asking that question that's a good question I'd say probably our automation systems that we have so every time we give a quote we have like a year-long follow-up sequence for the customer we send text messages ringless voicemails emails actual physical thank you cards in the mail and then when the job's done we send thank you brownies and a thank you card and that just generates tons of referrals for us last but not least in this competitive market how do you demand higher prices compared to your competitors definitely value so you know perceived value is a big thing so Our Brands our presentation folders the education of the customer owners we've partnered up with different charity organizations to be able to show that we care more about just the floor and customers can see that and it's really hard to compare us to a competitor that's a lot cheaper because there's so many things that we do differently that they're like yeah we're going with the wise Coatings awesome well I can't wait to dive into what those things are yeah for sure let's keep going cool maybe just give us a quick tour what's what sure yeah so we have we have two offices we have one downstairs one upstairs we have all of our sample board setups for creating sample boards for customers we have all of our supplies and stock and inventory we have an iPad that has all of our inventory Supply systems so the guys will scan QR codes so you can see like here it's on Xbox QR codes on all the different things so they can scan it and they can check out materials and move it from the shop to one of the vehicles to just kind of and we have like automatic like ordering replenishing and that's all based off of our inventory systems check out their brand that's right polywise premium Coatings with our deer elephant there so the franchisees are required to buy is from you obviously that's how it works right yeah when everyone orders through one that's how we leverage that big National buying power and why we can you know literally charge less than what they would get it if they went to a store on their own so that's a big Advantage yep and this stuff don't stink either no way man is it just boxes full of environmentally friendly yeah we have I love that all of our different products we have uh we do have some epoxy products here we have our pigments and then our flakes right here this is the money these are the chips how many variations Brandon do you have a flake so is it is it unlimited because you're literally unlimited so we have an app where you can go on and you can pick whatever colors you want and then you can get Custom Blends we stock about uh 12 different variations because you don't want to overwhelm a customer with Choice people don't do well when you give them too many options yes decision fatigue yeah what else do you think makes rice coating different from the competitors in this market than other markets one of the biggest things that we do is you know we really focus on giving back so as you saw we have elephant on the side of our vehicles so we actually Focus like on conservation stuff so it should be ready to hand this over to the guys yeah thank you guys so you know we actually partnered up with the World Wildlife Fund and so we actually will adopt a baby elephant in the name of our customers it's literally on the conservation because out here you know the elephants there on the endangered species list and we wanted to you know our products are you know environmentally friendly and we also wanted to make sure that we're like investing back in to the elephants that we have on the side of our vehicles they're gorgeous I mean especially baby yellow fence uh and is that every deal or every transaction every floor that we do yeah every floor that we do part of the reason why we came up with the wise Coatings brand and why we use the elephant for our mascot is you know elephants are known for their memory and known for being you know Wise and they're very very loyal and they're tough like their skin is bulletproof right so it's like a big part of that is wanting to kind of like embrace the whole Brand Story into it and that's it sounds well with the customers when you talk about that they love it and that does make a difference you know they scared of little mice the tough to make elephants man I knew you'd find some kind of hole to yeah yeah I do actually there's uh one of those guys they test everything out MythBusters yeah yeah they did that yeah so maybe check it out anyway off topic here but so another thing I want to touch on and maybe we've touched on it here and there a little bit but it's creating the best customer experience right from A to Z you get that lead you have all these systems that you've mentioned what do you want to highlight like ultimately what does it come down to so I mean one of the cool things that we did is we actually found this app developer that makes this AI powered floor visualizer tool so literally when we come out to a job site we'll take a picture of their own garage and then we will use the tool to show them exactly what the floor is going to look like when the Project's done you know that customer experience and we print out the color that they want and we put in a presentation folder and you know as soon as we get that lead and give them that estimate we have you know that month-long follow-up sequence where they're getting you know thank you cards in the mail and text messages and ringless voicemails and automated like you know Home Maintenance checklists and all these other things that they get so the education component the Hands-On line component while we're actually talking to the customers coming out to their house and giving them a full consultation those things make a big difference not only in closing ratio but also the size of our average ticket too now what was the app or not this app is called flori f-l-o-o-r-i what's the cost um 149 bucks a month that's nothing 149 bucks a month and we you know have that installed right on our website so customers can come to our website you know upload their own picture or take one of our example scenes that we have and they can see exactly like you know what would that floor look like on my floor it's pretty compelling when the customer can future proof and see like wow this is what it's going to look like when it's done they get emotional about it you know and that emotion causes them to buy enjoying listening to you but I'm also yeah I feel like you're being watched we're being creeped on by these two creatures question is are they nice are they the biting kind I don't know I'm trying to give them an apple see what they do yeah go do a poll um later on you're not an elephant right which is the brand for wise coating but we still love you and we're going to give you this carrot how many employees do you have since we're on on that note um in Portland we're right about like nine nationally we have probably close to about 45 or so but how do you find wonderful employees which places which platforms give you the best return how does that work so one of the big channels that we look at is Facebook because if you think about who would you rather hire from the pool of people that are unemployed or find people that already have an existing job and maybe they love that job and they're pretty loyal to that company but at the right opportunity popped up in front of them and they're like wow is that employees pretty cool it's it's recruiting it's recruiting I like that it's a recruiting it's not employee theft it's marketing so we just design our ads to really speak to the people that we want to work with you know we talk about our personality about our core values and we want to capture their attention as they're you know scanning through their feed they stop in their tracks and you know oh wow this looks interesting you know he's talking to me oh well I could really see myself working there is this 100 dollar gift card yeah look at this you guys 800 bucks sitting on the counter hey I know I know that stuff I know that's going well just come to your floor 800 bucks off on the house that's awesome yeah so actually what's kind of cool about these gift cards is there it looks like a QR code chip yeah but that's fake so it's not pre-loaded there's no cash on this thing correct so this is a fake magnetic strip on here but we designed it to look like a credit card so that people would hold it with a little bit more value so this little code right here is dynamic and so every time we give out one of these we track that five digit code to know what customer actually gave this to somebody else so when they give this gift card they can give it to someone else and that gives them a hundred dollars off their floor and then we send it tells you they can give her a hundred dollar Amazon card oh wow very generous they get 100 discount and they also get 100 Amazon gift card in the mail as well how often does this come into play like which instances do you send out a hundred bucks every job that we do every job everything the one that we finished today they're gonna get a 100 gift card yep so we we send out automated you know thank you cards and brownies and it'll have like the 100 off cards embedded into a QR code to be able to scan take a look you guys it's a lot of detail here a lot of value yeah we want to thank you for your business we're a small family owned company referrals and reviews mean a lot to us so here's like our QR codes 100 off card and they give this to someone else they get 100 Amazon gift card and you can see the name hi Brandon this automatically pulls from our software right and pops out in the mail with their name on it without us having to do anything who's managing this for you this this designs you know again sending out and everything is it back to the software we just talked about it is yeah so dunzo dunzo is that software program because they're designed yep they did all the design of all the cards and everything that we have here is there anything else that we should share it with our audience when it comes to leasing versus buying and so how to make those decisions right we've talked about it a number of times but I just want to make sure we've hit every point when it comes to making those two choices you know when when you're talking about leasing versus buying equipment I do look at the cash flow side of things there's different ways to categorize those transactions so if you're leasing a piece of equipment that might hit your profit loss as like an expense whereas if you buy an asset now that lives on your balance sheet and sometimes Bankers look at those ratios like hey what's your debt to asset ratio and if you have a lot of things that you're you know buying on financing versus like leasing it or buying a cash sometimes those things make a difference in tax implications and make a difference in you know the health of your business that Bankers may want to look at so when I buy stuff I'm always thinking like okay I'm going to need to fund future growth I want to make sure that my my business looks healthy oriented yes it's not everyone's approach yeah right and so you know when I go buy brand new vehicles rather than getting a loan on those I lease them instead because that loan is going to show up as a debt on my balance sheet on that side whereas if I have those lease payments that are hitting every month those can get just go light as an expense of the business you know we're doing 60 Grand worth of work in one month and the lease payments you know eight hundred dollars it's like hardly anything right and then your guys are using new equipment guys don't forget to click the link in the description below to learn about the incredible franchising opportunity with wise coatings let's talk about your role as a business owner you're in a day up to job sites yeah it seems like that's not the case for you now yeah you know this in this business I wanted to do something very unique from day one which is not do any of the sales myself hey buddy he's like hey what you guys talking about talking about business business he's a business donkey all right yo I didn't want to do any of the work out in the field and most business owners they kind of get stuck in the field doing the thing and the second they get out of the field is when their business starts taking off and growing interesting so from day one you know I hired three people it can be really scary because that thought comes into your mind like how am I going to be able to afford to pay them and get this stuff going so our sales person we brought on you know was commission based at the beginning so he's also incentivized to sell the jobs and then we hired Spencer and got technicians in they could actually go out and do the work so if I just focused on the marketing engine to drive in leads and jobs and then they went out and did all the work then we could you know kind of be Off to the Races and just you know it's a risk years but then then it scales your company this way yes and that's pretty cool makes it to where the the razor's Edge is pretty thin and why we almost went bankrupt in month two was because you know it came close so the safer path of course is to get out in the field and kind of you know participate in either the sales side of it or the actual installation side of it as well but for me I wanted to kind of show like hey this can be done this way of course my previous business experience made that risk feel a lot less scary made it possible yep so when do these get applied like how do you put them on every job site do you ask for permission it stands there for a week you take it down or so these are our yard signs every single job we put them out front while you're doing it while we're doing it then we leave it and we just tell them like hey the longer you have it out there the better it is for us we'd appreciate the referrals if you get tired of it you can just fold it up and recycle it you know whenever whenever you feel better you have the option no pressure we don't go back and pick them up because they're only like three four dollars a piece with gas it just yeah it doesn't make sense and we put these literally everywhere we made put out 100 100 of these a month wow door hangers every single job that we do we put these door hangers on all the neighbors same Intel basically just before and after yeah so if you think about it the neighbors seen the vehicle the yard sign they have this on their door they're getting these postcards in the mail a few days later okay so they're just getting inundated with this and it causes them to you know give us a call right let's go look at the blades and I think we're on the diamond bits yeah I want to take a look at those here we go oh wow so these these I've seen them Diamond bit kits they have with these Diamond bonds oh wow how much would this cost this this is several hundred dollars what several hundred dollars for a second for the whole box yeah usually three to four hundred bucks you know lots of different bits you can see the little spine sticking out there the little diamonds honestly depends on the type of concrete that you're doing every job that you do you have a little scratch test and you scratch the concrete to see how hard it is and depending on the hardness of the concrete you use different Diamond Bond so you would use yeah softer bond for harder concrete and you kind of pick exactly what type of tool you want and some projects it goes down very quick if you have a lot of you know existing floor Coatings to peel up or you know you got a lot of stuff that you have to kind of you know flatten out and even out this is kind of cool when you think about you know the hand grinder so these ones getting close to the edges but then you need to have a hand grinder to actually get really close up against the edge and go around water heaters and posts and you know the porches you're not going to be running a big 800 pound grinder on top of the little patio you're going to hand grind it so is it all diamond based or is there other tools that are less expensive and can still do the job that pretty much all diamond based has to be yeah if you think about the concrete and how hard it is and you know steel and anything else is just not going to get aggressive down in and actually remove it so whenever they have blades that use to cut concrete blocks they're always Diamond embedded so you need that hardness in there this is the cost of doing business man you know which is part of the right tools a little bit higher barrier to entry with you know with some of this stuff because you want to start out with the right tools you also have a coaching company that you're part of Right Where You bless people with your knowledge you help them grow can you just touch on that real quick I think it's really cool what you do in there as well oh thanks man yeah so I have a company called conquer that's a business coaching company and we coach home service business owners all over North America how to grow and scale their business and honestly part of the reason why I started wise Coatings was kind of a experiment to show hey I want to show you how quickly you can grow a business not doing any of the calls not doing any of the sales not doing even any of the work in the field just focusing on systems and the marketing and sales and how to attract and retain and recruit employees onto your team so the coaching business actually what inspired me to go start another company and kind of document it and of course you know it's really grown very well and we found lots of pretty killer Partners across the U.S that want to kind of join us in the crazy Journey so that part's really helped out as well I noticed you've got some funky looking sucks are you a socks man yeah we are we bonded on beans we got the I got that as funky as you now everyone just knows that I'm the weird sock guy so that's you never have a boring job all the time I got nothing special it's just just some you know polka dots respectable you know respectable I like it thanks to my wife for the subscription I believe your core values are right there walk us through briefly kind of how you develop that sure uh everything seems to have a powerful message to it just by looking at it yeah so when when we anytime we've established core values in my previous companies we like to have an acronym something that's easy to remember because when people go through the exercise of creating core values they're like quickly forgotten right yeah it's a integrity and uh customer service and like lame stuff honestly so we have base everything starts with a strong base coat right base Foundation everything's like foundational so we have the Buffalo buffaloes and cows you know have you ever heard of the differences the Buffaloes and cows no no like out in the plains of Utah when cows see a storm approach coaching they run away from the storm and now the storm catches up to them pilts them for longer the pain the hail the wind they're tired they're tired yeah it eventually catches up with them and they endure that pain for longer buffaloes this is true they charge the storm I didn't know that when they sense it coming they run towards it and so they still endure it but they break through it faster so with this our core value of a buffalo we tell all of our employees that story and we say you're going to be the Buffalo you're going to run towards problems we're not cows we don't run away from problems the second you notice there's some damage on the floor there's a rattle in the truck don't be a cow and run away from it be a buffalo we're going to charge the storm we're going to run towards it ascending we want everyone to always be leveling up with whatever they do personally professionally down not down not descending so we set six-month goals for ourselves six week goals for ourselves all of our team members so that they have like natural progression of leveling up into business and personally professionally serve others first and then efficiency we deal with products that cure in like five minutes so you have to make every movement count run very lean so efficiency everything that we do don't use two motions when one motion will suffice so when we interview employees we talk about these and ask them how they feel about this and share stories on what this means to you and if people are like I'm not a servant I'm not going to serve people I hate that word it has to resonate with them each one yeah it's not a good fit right exactly what's one or two pieces of advice that you can tell our audience about the floor coding business I think the biggest thing is you know make sure that you're doing something different than everybody else you know anytime you get into a situation where you're you're going to go up against competitors you're going to be in a market with someone else you don't want a customer to just think like oh well your price is this much and this person's this much Apples to Apples the the low price is going to win right you really have to think about you know what's truly going to set you apart from your competitors to where you can close those higher tickets and not have to just be in this race to the bottom on price it's not fun to do this type of business unless you're getting a good product this business yeah yeah that's right well it's been a pleasure Brandon thank you thank you thank you appreciate it appreciate it well that's a wrap with Brandon the owner of wise Coatings I hope you guys really enjoyed it what an incredible business he's running incredible team and just the way he's approaching things I've learned a ton I hope you did as well thank you so much for watching we appreciate your time take a second to like subscribe and hit that Bell so that you don't miss any of our videos thank you so much [Music] foreign [Music] piece of advice if they're thinking of getting into the blur Coatings business let's redo that one yeah

2022-11-08 23:02

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