Latest / The Home Service Heartbeat Podcast / From Knocking on Doors to Leading 6 Locations | Doug Caris of The Painting Company USA

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From Knocking on Doors to Leading 6 Locations | Doug Caris of The Painting Company USA · The Home Service Heartbeat Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this episode of the Home Service Heartbeat Podcast.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Jill Cressera, and today I'm excited to be joined by Doug Karas from the painting company USA.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: They believe in exceptional customer service and the integrity of their work, and they're not satisfied until you are.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: And their consistency and the flow of happy customers keeps the company growing.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Doug, thank you so much for joining us today.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: We are thrilled to have you on the show.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thanks a lot for having me, Joe.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Really appreciate it.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a pleasure.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking forward to this.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, can you share how you got started in the service industry and what led you to your leadership role at both the painting company and Arizona Painting Company.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: I believe you have another uh branch over there in Arizona.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: You got started over there.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us a little bit about how you got started with this and uh what led to your leadership role here at this company.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I started in the painting industry when I was about 19 years old.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I started working for a family friend that owned a painting company in Atlanta.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I started in the business by knocking on doors in the evenings, uh kind of co-calling, going door to door, setting up free estimates, and then painting during the day.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So learning, uh learning how to paint.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then from there, I spent a couple years in Atlanta, and then I worked for a painting company in Birmingham for a few years, got hooked up with my mentor, who was the former owner and the founder of our company out here in Phoenix.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was partnered with the company I worked for in Birmingham.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I spent three years there in Alabama, and then he offered me a job to come out to Phoenix to kind of run our sales team at the time back in 2012, and then he was ready to retire in 2014.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So he sold the business to me and I had two other partners at the time.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And now over the last 12 years, you know, we've been growing the business, went into, you know, four different states, we're in six different locations.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then, you know, about four years ago, I kind of hopped into the CEO role.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then that's my role today.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a long journey, but definitely sounds like you found a place where that fits.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us about um the biggest challenge as you're kind of starting this thing and growing it.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there had to be a lot of challenges and a lot of uh uh stress and drama when you face this growing uh initiative with all those different locations and so forth.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: How did you overcome it?
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh what can you do, what can you tell us about uh from the outside looking in?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: If I was a consumer of this business, uh what do I not know about that uh that it it that makes it tough to run this kind of a business?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, our business is very uh it's very heavily dependent on human capital, uh especially being spread out into, you know, like I said, six different markets.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um we have a general manager in place in each market.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the biggest challenges I think we faced kind of early on as we really started expanding and growing back in 2019.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: We went to Denver, Colorado, and we moved somebody there that, you know, hindsight is 2020, but you know, we probably weren't fully set up and ready from an operational standpoint and leadership standpoint to be able to go there and and to be able to handle if somebody in the general manager role ends up quitting or going to start their own thing or something like that.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's what happened kind of right in the middle of COVID.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: We tried making it work.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Me and my partners, one of us was going every single week there and trying to run the business from living in Arizona and trying to keep our business here growing and going well.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a big challenge.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we ended up that branch specifically, we ended up shutting that down.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that taught us a lot about when we expand to new markets.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like we need to make sure we always have people that are on the bench and people that are ready to be able to pop into those leadership roles if something happens to somebody.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think today that's it's been a still a really good learning lesson that's put us in a better spot today than we were back then.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me about the kind of service strategies that you've used.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's crucial for growing.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, like uh basically if I would say this, if I was a customer of um, you know, the painting company, uh, what would I expect uh from the from the from the customer service experience?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, tell me a little bit about uh like if I just said how does it work over there?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what would happen if you guys came into my house and tell me tell me how it works over there?
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we guarantee our customers six things and we teach on those six things, we train our guys.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: We even created a a class that we train put all of our foreman through.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's called TPC University.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of our onboarding, and then it's part of an ongoing class that we put them through.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And and one of those things, you know, from a customer standpoint is the first guarantee is we we're gonna show up on time with a smile on our face, right?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you can expect for us to be different than most contractors, which most contractors show up 20 minutes late, an hour late, don't call, just show up late.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, another one of those guarantees is that we're gonna do a first and final inspection with every customer.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're gonna give them a daily project update.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: So before our guys leave at the end of the day, we train them on how to go talk to the customer or call the customer if they're not there and let them know what we got done that day, what what time we'll be back the next day, um, all that type of that type of stuff to make it a customer experience go so much better.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, those are a couple things, those are a few of the guarantees out of the six that are probably from a when we're out there working on the job, like the three probably the most important ones that we like train and train and retrain our guys on how to do it properly.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it sounds like the communication strategy is really uh it's funny because a lot of people think like you'd have to have a strategy about how we're gonna paint places, but really it's more of a communication strategy, it sounds like to me, which is uh important.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: How important is that?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the community when you're in this kind of a business, the continu it's not just communicating before you sell the job, but then communicating you're inside the most inner reaches of people's homes or sometimes around their property and with pets and things like that.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how important is the ability to communicate uh with the client in a productive way?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's huge.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we think it's one of the things that separates us and one of the reasons we've been growing and we continue to grow.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and really, I think putting a huge emphasis the last two to three years on, like I talked about that class, TPC University that we've created.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that class doesn't teach our painters how to paint at all.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about communication.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: We role play, literally role play just on how to show up to the front door, right?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: We role play on how to ask for a review at the end of the job, um, how to give a daily project update, like all these things that just we want to make sure that every customer gets a world-class experience when they're using our company.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the only way to do that, especially as you have more and more people in your company and organization, is by constant training, having processes, SOPs, systems, and training on them consistently.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we found.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's been really a huge game changer, I think, in terms of our just consistent quality and a consistent experience we're trying to deliver.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: Doug, tell me about the um situation where you knew after starting this thing out, and uh even some of those bumping your head while you're trying to grow those different uh locations and stuff like that.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's uh it's hard to do.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: You forget that.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, somebody's got to watch that as well.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: You can't just be like he's got it, uh wish, right?
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: But um tell us about a key moment.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, maybe let's say from a customer's point of view.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, remember any stories uh that you can tell, even recent ones or maybe something a long time ago, where you're like you got feedback from a client that said, you know what, Doug?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think you're on to something.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is uh you guys is this is really different and better than anything I've seen from the other people that we've tried to get uh this job done by.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh any stories by either you know local people that uh you can share that uh can illustrate uh the kind of experience that a client gets over there?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think so.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think um one pretty recently is we did some work for you know radio personality here in Phoenix.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this radio personality he endorses a lot of different contractors and companies, and uh we painted his exterior of his home.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And afterwards, I remember him telling me directly that uh, you know, he would want to endorse us, number one, and number two, that he deals with a lot of contractors at his house, and the experience and the communication he got from us was definitely a level higher than he gets from even even most of the companies he's endorsing, um, which you think like they would be on their A game, right, when they're doing work for somebody like that.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, I think that that to me was a good you know realization that what we're doing is working and um people can feel that that difference.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good that's a good lesson.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I mean.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, you should uh people should think about that.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're just like one step away from the guy on the radio buying your service, and if it's not good, that's a that's a risky customer, right?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: It could be, yeah, it could really it could be great.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: You might mention you might mention you're like, yeah, I called Arizona Pinion Company, all those guys got their stuff together, whatever.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like almost like a perfect read-over.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, hey, we let's put an ad up there, and uh who knows, maybe you did, it might inspire you.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, I can see how that's uh it's a good lesson there that you never know who you're gonna work for, and it could be for somebody very influential like that to the public.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now, as you grow this business, how would I know?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, because there's all kinds of people, you know, do-it-yourselfers and the the college painters, like you know, you started out that kind of way too, it sounds like.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's uh real pros like you guys became at this point.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: But tell us about how would I know if I was the kind of customer that would do uh work well with you guys?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what what kind of what's the client avatar, though?
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: The the people who like the best client for us is people who blank.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: What would that uh tell us about that?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think the best client for us is somebody that is willing to you know pay to have somebody make it easy for them.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, our our customers want a simple process.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Most of them are a lot of them are dual income, um, sometimes only single, but single or dual income in the house.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: They're busy, they have careers, they want us to make their lives easier and give a great paint job.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think that's probably our our biggest avatar.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of not kids, a lot of families, and you know, us making their life easier and not difficult by like not showing up or not get communicating properly or leaving paint on the carpet, things like that are not what our customers are expecting.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us about uh the people who work for you.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because I I did look online and I do see that a lot of the uh customers mention a lot of the people who work for you and how important that is to uh to them, the relationship they create with the workers at your place.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what's your strategy or how what qualities do you look for when you're hiring top talent?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: So so if somebody wanted to work there, how would they know if they were going to be a good employer for you?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Or how would what can a customer expect to get when they hire somebody like the kind of person?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think a big thing is a clean cut person.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um we have six core values as well, though, that we try to hire and fire based on if people are either we're looking for people with these qualities, and then if we bring them in and start to realize they don't have those or they're not willing or don't want to live those out, then that's a reason we would fire or let somebody go.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think that's been kind of our guiding star.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we're also looking for people that are are hungry, that are goal-oriented, that want to grow, right?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're just trying to push and continue to grow as a company.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the only thing I the only way I know how to do that is by finding really good people that are coachable and that want to push and have goals and push hard towards those.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think those are some of the main qualities that we're really looking for.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh people who have goals are something you can you can you can it's easy to work with somebody who's motivated, right?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think the client gets the benefit and so does the company.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you mentioned about the training.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh like I've never heard anybody say, you know, uh, I gotta go to school I gotta go to school to be a painter, uh uh other than other other than maybe art school, which of course that's one of the most useless degrees uh for making money.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: But tell us about how uh you know the university or the curriculum you guys got.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I know I know I know it's uh it's you know I've tried, I think we've all tried to paint our own room or house or wall and realize that dude, we don't know what we're doing.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: This this is like uh this is tough, you know.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So and I know I I remember I was younger, I was like really young, like maybe 10 years old, 12 years old.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I gotta start making some money.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I went around the neighborhood and said, hey, let me paint your house or paint, and I I got a couple of jobs that just went door to door like you did.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I didn't I started realizing, hang on, this is actually uh it's getting real now.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was like I I started for the money and I think I did it for the wrong reason.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense, Doug?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't think you can be in this business for the for money.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's something that is you gotta have heart when it comes to this business, right?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: So tell us a little bit, tell us a little bit about um the training that your company does.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh on both on both the technical part of it and the uh people part of it.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us about the uh how often do you do that?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: And tell us about if I was an employee, what would I expect from be to be trained by you guys?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we put our our employees, new hires through uh, you know, a full day of onboarding in the office, and then they're usually their first one to two full weeks are with a kind of a training foreman, training crew before we let them go be on their own.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um now we do normally hire and and and look for you know painters that have experience.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the training process isn't as you know um in-depth, but we do hire sometimes.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times we'll hire somebody that may be pretty green, that doesn't have a lot of industry experience, and then they'll go on a crew as a helper.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then that foreman is tasked with with training and getting them up to speed so they could potentially become a a foreman at some point.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um but that yeah, the TBC University, again, that's something we we had talked about for years and years like a vision in our company and really implemented it, you know, developed it, implemented it probably about a year and a half ago.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we've put, I think, nine, eight or nine classes through that class now, eight or nine different classes.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we're around 120, 130 of our foreman have all gone through that.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been um really game-changing, though.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know of any other painting company in our industry that's doing something like that.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's something our our foreman feel that man, we're trying to invest and help get them better by putting the time into them.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: It is a major investment, but I think it's an investment that for uh, you know, for every dollar you put into it, it saves hundreds of dollars uh by dissatisfied customers or poor workmanship and the rest of it.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh definitely well worth it.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Without it, without it, you would never be able to continue to grow.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, because that show shows the growth is only possible with that.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, tell us about the leadership strategy that you have as the CEO of this uh wide-sweeping organization in multi-uh locations and things like that.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh, I mean, it's from the outside in it looks like it could be overwhelming.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what's your leadership strategy to make sure that uh you I guess the idea as a CEO is to get other people to do the work for us.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's a novel idea, right?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: How do you what's it what's your leadership strategy to do that for you?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, at this stage, yeah.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm not doing, you know, I'm not doing obviously any of the painting.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing very, very little sales.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: I still have a few customers that might reach out to me directly, but very, very little sales.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Most of my time is spent um with I have a COO and then a VP of operations that are, you know, really in the day-to-day, you know, working with our general managers and with our branches on the day-to-day.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm more kind of you know, spend a lot of my time looking for opportunities and in areas in our business that we're not running at full capacity or there's opportunities for us to improve.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to look for opportunities in areas like that that I can then bring to them and say, let's let's implement this, let's work on this, let's let's look at these strategies to continue to grow, but also get better and more efficient as a company.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, not easy, but man, having the right people on your team makes such a difference in terms of um as a leader, I think, enjoying your life and enjoying your your role, and uh or not if you have the wrong people in those positions.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean it's definitely hard when you got, but I do see that the uh one of the things I always kind of check, you know, when we try to qualify people for this podcast to see if they do have a heartbeat, uh, is uh is what's the impact of the real people?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, I see like you know, people who work for your company, such as you know, Alexander or Corey or Cornell who work here.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: I just got a few of your great assists up there, type of thing.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um, how do you uh allow those people to balance the efficiency of doing the work with delivering the personal service and the creating a relationship?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because creating a relationship is inefficient, but and doing the work is like, you know, the the more faster you do the job, the um the more uh the more efficient it is and the more money a company makes.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh how do you uh instruct employees to say, hey, uh, you know, hey, watch it.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Time is money, we gotta get out of there.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it more like, hey, just take your time?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Is it more encouraging people to take their time and just if people want to talk, have a conversation, or is it more, hey, we got things to do, you gotta get out, you got another job you gotta go to, or whatever.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us about how you balance the efficiency versus the connection you make with your client.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's a good question.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think there is a balance there, right?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Like most of our painters, I mean, every job, they have a labor budget, so they know we need to push and make sure we're finished within this amount of time or this many hours.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we also, you know, we'll extend that budget if needed, right?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: If there's something extenuating circumstances or something, you know, maybe we have a customer that um, you know, wants a higher level of detail or there's more nuances with their project that's gonna make it take longer.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like we we really train our people to make sure that we take the time and we slow down if needed to make sure we give that customer a great experience.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that also goes with from the start, the customer or foreman lets the customer know my job here is to give you a five-star experience.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if I don't, or if I'm not, I'm willing to let me know or let my manager know so we can make sure that we correct that quickly.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I think it's a it's a balance, but I think again, it goes back to finding the right people that want to care and give, you know, give a great experience to customers and actually care about that, versus ones that are just solely focused on making more money and then could care less if the customer's happy or not.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it takes a strong uh person with uh good self-esteem to be able to say, hey, you know what?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm if it's something I could improve, just let me know or let my coworkers know and I'll be happy to do that.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: As opposed to like, uh, I don't you don't want that kind of feedback, right?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: There's uh uh, you know, it's is that something that you train and that uh client feedback?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: How important is client feedback uh to your improvement process, the ability to improve there, Doug?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's huge.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: I read every single review that we get as a company, and some days we get five to seven in a day.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: I read every single one.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that's below five star, um, I'm reviewing that with the manager or somebody or my COO is like somebody we're reviewing it to find out why this happened, and then we're reaching out to the customer to try to either make it right or see what we could do or what we need to do in the future to make sure that doesn't happen again.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about this.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is a fun subject.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be let's go have a little fun, let's relax, have a little fun.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about the future of home painting, uh commercial even commercial painting, right?
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, uh, you know, I I like I I like I watch TikTok like the next guy, right?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I see all these things like, oh my god, look at the robot painting the wall or whatever.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, so tell us about how uh 20 years from now, if you could say, help help me imagine uh what are some of the changes that technology are bringing into the decorating and painting industry.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just everything from the vision of a decorating a house now with AI, and you got uh I'll let you continue, but go ahead and tell me what what do we see here?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Help me imagine how you how it would help design my stuff, how it helped do the work.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: And give me a little picture if you don't mind, a snapshot on that.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's let's have a little fun in the future and like let's go to future worlds.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's already some tools out there um where customers can and our customers we help them use these, but where you can take a picture of the front of your house and you can upload it right to Sherman Williams or some of the other paint vendors, and you can literally play with different colors on your house and be able to um really get a good idea of what your house is gonna look like and helps our customers with the one of the biggest pain points, which is which is choosing colors.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one thing.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the process is gonna keep getting better and better over the next few years.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, another area I definitely see in the next probably 10 to 15 years is especially on the commercial side, I can see a world where there's gonna be a lot more opportunities for uh drones for some of what we do, which would be some power washing, some spraying of commercial buildings, um, and even some robots, I think, on the inside of like think big warehouse, like long wall type buildings with nothing in the way.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think there's gonna be a lot of opportunities where.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: that's going to start to become a an opportunity for companies like ours to to invest in that would really over time save on labor and um have some more efficiencies.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah I think it's a lot more safer to have a drone uh get get to a high peak on some of these buildings or whatever and uh and the precision that I'm pretty sure the precision it would be uh much more accurate than what a human could do and things like that.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely that's that's interesting to think about.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Actually your business is one of the funnest ones to think about.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Tell what kind of just you brought up something about the pressure washing tell us about the scope of uh work that you guys do.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I'd never even asked that is it it's not although it says the painting company I'm starting to you're starting to leak it out Doug.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: You're kind of letting let letting the secret out.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like it's a little bit more than painting you offer tell us about the kind of scope of work uh that a somebody could get from you over there.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah yeah as far as um you know prep work we do pressure washing we do any type of repairs normally for any building or house so that includes stucco repairs, drywall repairs um you know obviously all the priming that it takes to prep a house um we do some light again light drywall repairs we don't do whole houses or whole rooms normally from new drywall but um some basic drywall repairs and um yeah those are some of the main ones we do window we offer window washing we do uh epoxy garage floor coatings as well oh you do okay yeah we do actually I I do a lot with that business that kind of a business I have a lot of people who are in the a garage floor I one of my it's one of my special uh uh passions actually is that really unknown I don't I don't have but actually I have a lot of people I work with in that business so it's uh okay passion and actually the even the even the home decorate I call home decorating not just painting because it's uh you know you're changing uh the mood and the uh emotions and uh it's really it's really uh an intimate business honestly and uh some of the best professionals I've seen who do a great job at it can really change uh the value of the home with it right tell me about that what's the impact of the service on the consumer what what have you what have you heard from what's what's your feedback you get from from clients after what after our project is done and all that tell me what kind of feedback you get I think the best way and I try to relay this to our team members but having painters come into your house and paint your house now we get this feedback from clients I can I felt it myself multiple times after having our guys paint for for me at my house but your home just feels cleaner it feels newer it feels like fresh like it's just you walk into a room that's been freshly painted or even having your outside your house painted and you you drive up into the driveway and just seeing that for me at least and a lot of our customers it just makes you feel better right makes you feel happier makes you feel like man this has been this is updated it's newer um and that's the I think that's a big difference that paint can really make is just changing somebody's mood and making you feel um put you in a better mood.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny because we are HOA at a place I live here in Playa Vista California uh they forced us they say you're by HOA you know laws you have to get this thing painted and we just we just moved in about uh 2021 I think it was and then it's like hey they got to paint this place I'm like oh wow what that's that's uh and then we then we're like all right let's get some things on we look we got then we're like oh well we're gonna do it let's do it right and so we did we did it and I tell you what it was like unexpected the the lift that I got uh emotionally from like you know this is like a nice house now it's like like uh I was like I go when you get a house and you get there for a while you're like you notice every little flaw and then when the guy came in and did everything the right way I'm like man this is I should have had that I should have done this we first bought it I'm not sure why I waited even two or three years on this thing right so it is like uh it is an uplifting uh change I think you can make in your life it can affect your life in a wildlife tell us about uh what keeps you motivated Doug I mean you're uh you're running all these different people got the university going all these locations and the marketing the the you know the the the customer uh connections you're making um what what gets you up every morning and what what motivates you uh and what's important to you in this business yeah I think for me uh biggest thing that still motivates me is is our people and you know I love um seeing people come into our business and uh get coached set goals have somebody helping them get to their goals um moving up in our business right we've had some of our even foremen that have moved up all the way up to general manager roles and to me that's one of the most exciting things so I'm constantly looking for as we grow and the reason I want to continue to grow is to be able to offer more opportunities for more people in the painting industry and I think um I think doing that and and and finding ways to be able to continue to do that has been the probably the biggest thing that continues to motivate me.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes either you're growing or you're dying I always say that's one of the things I always say uh let's have another fun question.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is an hour we we explored the future uh let's explore the past a little bit and say if you could go back and talk to that young Doug Karas maybe like the 18 year old uh young man who just graduated high school and was out there trying to find something to do to make a make a make a few make make a few pennies to turn a few nickels into a quarter you know remember those days uh use car Doug when you were younger uh tell us what would you go back and tell yourself you could give yourself some advice and look all the young people that are listening listen to Doug here because he's gonna be more on point than I would because that's long distance from me in the past but tell Doug what would you say to your younger self if you were like talking to you after high school what advice would you give yourself um man one of my biggest things I was trying to do soon after high school is I wanted to own my own business and I wanted to find a mentor to help uh coach me and teach me the things I needed to learn um versus I didn't go the college route.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't think I needed to and I didn't really want to go that route.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't I did exactly what my plan was you know so I I feel like that has definitely um kind of worked to my benefit.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say you know and just in terms of business once I got going and got in business and became an owner I think my biggest thing I've learned that I would recommend to anybody that goes into entrepreneurship is to know your numbers and to make sure that you don't put revenue and growing revenue in front of being profitable as a business.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's one of the biggest things I've had to learn that it's been good.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's been good learning but it's been also sometimes painful but making sure like every business to stay in business you need to be profitable.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be very tight on your cash flow and knowing exactly where your money's at, where it's going and making sure you have enough payroll and things like that as you continue to grow.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah I think making sure profit is um you're very important to make sure profit stays ahead of just growing revenue because it doesn't make any sense to do that because then just you have more headaches but you have nothing left at the end of the day if you're just trying to grow revenue.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think from a customer service point of view it's important uh to work with a successful business that is profitable because if you need them in the future they won't be there for you and you you know it's like it's like the unprofitable business the the servicism is good.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that's the thing that profit is the thing that allows us to do excellent service and to do the training and to do the trucks and to do the uh the quality that we bring to it it's uh it's impossible if we're not uh not not making uh enough money to do that I think you can see painters or people who do this job where they're not making money and the customer service frankly uh kind of sucks uh be honest with you you know so Doug uh one final question here uh and this is an easy one uh where can listeners connect with you or learn more to learn more about working for the painting company or possibly even hiring you guys what where would they uh get a hold of you guys do that yeah so best way to connect with me would be on LinkedIn if you just search Doug Karas on there that's the best way um to learn more about our company you could go to you know our Arizona Paintingcompany.com or you could go to uh thepaintingco.com that's for kind of our TPC USA or parent company um so yeah either one of those ways would be are the best ways to connect with us all right well that was another great conversation with my guest Doug Karas from the painting company and I really appreciate having you on the show Doug thank you so much this is an unexpected pleasure thank you yeah thanks a lot Joe and thank you everyone for sticking with us until the end if you gained valuable insight from today's episode we'd love you to leave a rating or review wherever you listen to podcasts.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: And if you know someone in the service industry or someone looking for a job or someone looking for a great uh painting or decorating company in Arizona or anywhere in the United States give Doug a call and see if he can help you.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone looking to scale their career business, send this episode their way.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: So take one key insight from today, put it into action, let us know how it goes.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: We'd love to hear about your progress.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: And thanks again for joining us and we'll see you on the next episode of the Home Service Heartbeat Podcast.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: Goodbye everybody