Latest / Epic Entrepreneurs / How a 26-Year-Old Turned Painting Into Premium Hospitality with Cedric Merrills of WOW Painting

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How a 26-Year-Old Turned Painting Into Premium Hospitality with Cedric Merrills of WOW Painting · Epic Entrepreneurs

• 0:28
  Bill Gilliland: Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs.
• 0:31
  Bill Gilliland: I am super pumped up about our guest today.
• 0:35
  Bill Gilliland: My name is Bill Gillilan.
• 0:37
  Bill Gilliland: I am the owner and principal at Action Coach Business Growth Partners and also one of the founders and principals of the Asheville Business Summit.
• 0:47
  Bill Gilliland: But today we're not here to talk about me.
• 0:49
  Bill Gilliland: We're here to talk about and spotlight WoW painting.
• 0:53
  Bill Gilliland: So I've got Cedric Merrills on the line here today.
• 0:56
  Bill Gilliland: Cedric, tell us a little bit about you and WoW painting.
• 1:01
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, uh thanks for having me on, Bill.
• 1:03
  Cedric Merrills: Um so my name is Cedric Merrills.
• 1:06
  Cedric Merrills: I started WoW one day painting a little over three years ago.
• 1:11
  Cedric Merrills: And and the reason I started it is, well, to give you some some background on me, I'm I'm 26 years old.
• 1:18
  Cedric Merrills: I came from the wedding photography industry.
• 1:20
  Cedric Merrills: I was a wedding photographer for several years, you know, shooting hundred-plus weddings, and I loved it.
• 1:27
  Cedric Merrills: And um the thing I loved about it is that it's like the point in someone's life where you have an ability to have a really big impact, and it really makes a difference for people.
• 1:38
  Cedric Merrills: Um, what I did like about it is that typically people want to hire you specifically, right?
• 1:43
  Cedric Merrills: People wanted to hire Cedric Marylands, and so I was looking at different opportunities, and I heard about the the franchise WoW One Day Painting, and um I was considering opening up my own painting business without a franchise, or I was considering going through a franchise.
• 1:59
  Cedric Merrills: Well, the reason I ultimately chose WoW One Day Painting is because every single person I met, whether it was like Brian Schoonmore, who started the company, or CJ in Nashville, or John Kalamazoo, they all had a laser focus on the customer experience.
• 2:14
  Cedric Merrills: And customer experience is one of those things where everyone says they care about it, but if you look at the reviews or or their customer experience, ultimately, usually it's not very good.
• 2:24
  Cedric Merrills: But every single person very, very much cared about it, had amazing reviews, and put the work into making an amazing experience.
• 2:31
  Cedric Merrills: And that was my philosophy with blame photography, and so that's why I joined Ultimately Wild One Day Painting and started in Nashville, um, to kind of make contracting a really easy and really enjoyable experience.
• 2:47
  Cedric Merrills: Because I think everyone has either had a bad experience or know someone who's had a bad experience with contractors, and my goal is to kind of change that perception uh and kind of elevate what what contracting can be through painting.
• 3:00
  Bill Gilliland: Love that.
• 3:01
  Bill Gilliland: Love that.
• 3:03
  Bill Gilliland: So let's talk a little business here.
• 3:05
  Bill Gilliland: Like you've done this for three years.
• 3:07
  Bill Gilliland: You were in the I guess technically the wedding photography business is a business too.
• 3:12
  Bill Gilliland: So but if you had to start from square one, what would you do differently?
• 3:16
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 3:18
  Cedric Merrills: Um the things that made a really big difference for us when we were starting on was getting really good at understanding the customer and what they needed and and wanted uh from our services.
• 3:34
  Cedric Merrills: That was a really big part of piece of it.
• 3:37
  Cedric Merrills: And the second piece was delivering it.
• 3:38
  Cedric Merrills: Um and when we started, we always kind of had that same ethos, but we weren't very good at it, relatively speaking.
• 3:44
  Cedric Merrills: And so I think I would spend even more time figuring out what are like the really good questions to ask on the front end so that we can deliver a really great experience on the the back end of painting.
• 3:54
  Cedric Merrills: Because ultimately, if you do that, um it's it's gonna work out great.
• 3:59
  Cedric Merrills: But if you don't ask those questions, you might never know some of the things that are important to your to your customers.
• 4:05
  Bill Gilliland: Love that.
• 4:05
  Bill Gilliland: Hey, Cedric, give us an example of one or two of those questions.
• 4:10
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah.
• 4:10
  Cedric Merrills: Um, well, it's very simple.
• 4:11
  Cedric Merrills: So for for us, our process starts at the the uh someone will either go online to book an estimate or they're call our call center called me.
• 4:20
  Cedric Merrills: Um and I'll ask them something like when you think about this project, what comes to mind as important for you?
• 4:25
  Cedric Merrills: Or I might ask them, have you worked with a professional painter before or contractors?
• 4:29
  Cedric Merrills: What did you like about that experience?
• 4:31
  Cedric Merrills: What did you dislike about that experience?
• 4:33
  Cedric Merrills: You know, just kind of really dive in to understand what's driving them, right?
• 4:37
  Cedric Merrills: Are they selling the home and they just need it sold as soon as possible?
• 4:40
  Cedric Merrills: So time is gonna be really important.
• 4:41
  Cedric Merrills: Is this their forever home where they want to raise grandchildren and they want this to be the they want this paint job to last 15 years?
• 4:50
  Cedric Merrills: Um, are they, you know, everyone has something different that's important to them.
• 4:54
  Cedric Merrills: Do they do the last painters leave a mess?
• 4:56
  Cedric Merrills: And so making sure we're really clear about exactly how we protect their home, how we're gonna protect their furniture, how we're gonna protect their floors.
• 5:03
  Cedric Merrills: Um, you know, is is that gonna be one of the most important things to them?
• 5:07
  Cedric Merrills: Everyone's a little bit different, but you know, I probably spend about 20% of my my talks when I'm talking with customers talking about the actual scope of what they want, you know, walls, baseboards, whatever.
• 5:18
  Cedric Merrills: The other 80% is really diving into about what what matters to them.
• 5:25
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, so you're after more about the person than the the job's important, obviously, in the in getting it done, but you know, it's got to be a fit personality-wise as well, with with what with what in figuring out what they want so that you can provide that service.
• 5:40
  Bill Gilliland: I love that.
• 5:41
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, exactly.
• 5:42
  Cedric Merrills: If we don't get that information up front, if if they're like timing was the most important thing for them, and and we don't go through the project with that in mind, we may do a perfect pay job, and they're still gonna be unhappy because it delayed their moving date, you know, maybe for example, you know.
• 5:58
  Bill Gilliland: Right.
• 5:58
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:59
  Bill Gilliland: No, that's a great example.
• 6:00
  Bill Gilliland: That's a great example.
• 6:01
  Bill Gilliland: So if time is more important, yeah, it's that's great.
• 6:04
  Bill Gilliland: So, what have been uh some of your bigger learnings as an owner and an employer since you started?
• 6:09
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, great question.
• 6:11
  Cedric Merrills: But the hardest part for me when I started was in lane photography, I did everything.
• 6:15
  Cedric Merrills: I could guarantee a perfect experience because I was the one doing everything.
• 6:19
  Cedric Merrills: In painting, I can't paint every single project, it's it's impossible, right?
• 6:23
  Cedric Merrills: And so I'm working through people.
• 6:25
  Cedric Merrills: Um, where when lane photography, I was just doing it all myself.
• 6:29
  Cedric Merrills: And so I had a it's become really important to us to not only find really, really good people, but also have the training and other pieces in place to make those people thrive, right?
• 6:40
  Cedric Merrills: Because you can take someone who's really, really cares about customer experience and really, really cares about delivering a good product, but if if they don't have the tools or the training to do a good job, they're not going to do a good job, you know?
• 6:52
  Cedric Merrills: And so it's I think it's getting really clear on the recruiting piece when we're hiring painters of knowing exactly what the type of person we're looking for is.
• 7:01
  Cedric Merrills: We call them in our business paths, a professional, um, trustworthy, ambitious, um, and then making sure we have that training piece to make sure that they can succeed, you know.
• 7:12
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, I think getting clear ahead is the is one of the keys so that you don't just get anybody off the street.
• 7:19
  Bill Gilliland: Love that.
• 7:19
  Bill Gilliland: Hey, so what are some common misconceptions about running a business?
• 7:24
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, well, the the biggest one, I I I have some friends who are thinking about starting businesses or starting small businesses.
• 7:30
  Cedric Merrills: Um, they all think if you own your own business, you get to work less, you get to make your own schedule, and it's gonna be easy.
• 7:38
  Cedric Merrills: And there's pieces of that, that's true.
• 7:40
  Cedric Merrills: You know, you you get to make your own schedule, but the reality is if you talk to anyone who's started a business or any entrepreneur, you're gonna work ten times harder than you'll ever work for anyone else.
• 7:50
  Cedric Merrills: Um, and it's just kind of a fact of life, especially in the beginning.
• 7:55
  Cedric Merrills: And so I think um a lot of people think entrepreneurship means you're gonna be working less, but the vast majority of the time you're working way, way longer, way harder, like, and it's gonna be way more stressful.
• 8:08
  Cedric Merrills: It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but you should go into it with your your eyes wide open.
• 8:13
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, no, that's 100% right.
• 8:15
  Bill Gilliland: I mean, what's the old saying?
• 8:16
  Bill Gilliland: You leave a 40-hour job to work 80 hours and make half the money in the beginning.
• 8:21
  Bill Gilliland: So uh yeah, it's uh it's a yeah, it's an it's an interesting one.
• 8:25
  Bill Gilliland: So what do you attribute your growth to?
• 8:28
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, honestly, uh the most experiences people have as contractors is just terrible.
• 8:35
  Cedric Merrills: Um, and so I think uh it's just true.
• 8:39
  Cedric Merrills: The bar is off the ground.
• 8:41
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, the yeah, the the the bar is low, right?
• 8:43
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, and so I think just by simply because I mean we our our name of our business is Wow One Day Painting, and and that's that's part of it.
• 8:51
  Cedric Merrills: But I think the thing that separates us is just doing the basics really well.
• 8:55
  Cedric Merrills: You know, we're gonna start the job when we say we're gonna start the job, we're gonna finish the job, when we say we're gonna finish the job.
• 9:00
  Cedric Merrills: We're gonna have really great communication throughout the whole process.
• 9:03
  Cedric Merrills: So, you know, for what that looks like for us is you're gonna have the estimate before we ever leave the consultation, right?
• 9:08
  Cedric Merrills: You're not gonna be chasing us for weeks just to get the estimate.
• 9:11
  Cedric Merrills: We're gonna have it before I leave, right?
• 9:12
  Cedric Merrills: On the start of the project, we're gonna walk through everything with you again to make sure you we're all on the same page.
• 9:17
  Cedric Merrills: It's also in the estimate, it's also in the notes for the crew, but we always confirm it one more time.
• 9:22
  Cedric Merrills: If you're not there while we're working, we're gonna be sending you photos throughout the day so you can see exactly how progress is going and be updated throughout the day.
• 9:29
  Cedric Merrills: And then when we finish, we're gonna walk through everything with you again.
• 9:32
  Cedric Merrills: And so it's just making sure those pieces of you know you know, the client knows exactly what to expect.
• 9:36
  Cedric Merrills: We know everything that's important to them, we're delivering that, and then we're making sure they love it before we leave.
• 9:42
  Cedric Merrills: You know, if if if you didn't do that, you're gonna have you know super happy customers and they're gonna recommend you to their neighbors and their friends, and like the majority of our growth has just come from recommendations from our past customers.
• 9:54
  Bill Gilliland: Love that.
• 9:55
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, it's not just do what you say you're gonna do.
• 9:58
  Bill Gilliland: Yep, exactly.
• 9:59
  Bill Gilliland: I mean, it's yeah, I yeah.
• 10:02
  Bill Gilliland: It's so simple.
• 10:03
  Bill Gilliland: It's not easy, but it's no, no, no, it's yeah, it should be.
• 10:07
  Bill Gilliland: It should be it should be easy, but it's it's an interesting one.
• 10:10
  Bill Gilliland: Uh, you know, I had a plumber, you know, that had it on the side of his trucks.
• 10:14
  Bill Gilliland: We show up.
• 10:15
  Bill Gilliland: I mean, essentially, when they said they were gonna be there, they were they made that was their deal.
• 10:19
  Bill Gilliland: So and that was that was their whole their whole business was built.
• 10:22
  Bill Gilliland: I mean, he had 50 trucks.
• 10:23
  Bill Gilliland: This guy was a you know, but he he was he was done well.
• 10:26
  Bill Gilliland: So um, so how do you balance personal life and demands of running a business?
• 10:32
  Cedric Merrills: That's a great question.
• 10:34
  Cedric Merrills: Uh I don't.
• 10:35
  Cedric Merrills: I was kidding.
• 10:36
  Cedric Merrills: Uh honestly, I'm someone who I I unlike ADHD, I've always been kind of hyperactive.
• 10:43
  Cedric Merrills: And for me, I hate nothing else more than being bored.
• 10:47
  Cedric Merrills: And I really enjoy business, I really enjoy running a painting company.
• 10:52
  Cedric Merrills: And so I'm gonna end up working a lot, not because I necessarily have to, especially as we've grown, but I really, really enjoy it.
• 10:57
  Cedric Merrills: So I'll I love talking to customers and I love trying to tweaking up processes to make them a little bit better, a little bit better.
• 11:03
  Cedric Merrills: Just kind of like, you know, if we if we get you know one percent better a day, you know, the improvement is gonna be massive.
• 11:10
  Cedric Merrills: Um, and I I just love doing it.
• 11:12
  Cedric Merrills: And so uh the majority of my time, and when I moved to Asheville, I moved to Asheville to start the business.
• 11:18
  Cedric Merrills: I didn't know anyone here.
• 11:19
  Cedric Merrills: Uh the only person I knew is my sister who's introverted and also didn't know anyone.
• 11:24
  Cedric Merrills: And so all my time and effort, and all most of my friends have come from this business, whether it's realtors that we work with or you know, flooring companies or roofing companies we work with, a lot of my social life and personal life is intertwined with the business.
• 11:39
  Cedric Merrills: And I love that because I love what I do and I love the people we work with, but it's not really like balance in the way that I was like, oh, I stopped working at five and you know, I I ignore business from 5 p.m.
• 11:52
  Cedric Merrills: to 5 a.m.
• 11:53
  Cedric Merrills: or something.
• 11:54
  Cedric Merrills: It's all intermingled and I love it because I love what I do.
• 11:58
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, the the uh yeah, balance is an interesting word, right?
• 12:03
  Bill Gilliland: I mean, if you love it, I mean it's just yeah, it's not I it's still work.
• 12:10
  Bill Gilliland: I don't believe that you know you never work a day in your life, you work every day if you but but if you love it, then it's fun and you you just you just keep doing more.
• 12:17
  Bill Gilliland: So I love that.
• 12:17
  Bill Gilliland: I love that.
• 12:19
  Cedric Merrills: So what what I find is like when I go on vacation, for example, like I enjoy it, and then after like three or four days I get restless, and when I start thinking about the business, and like, oh, what if we could do this?
• 12:28
  Cedric Merrills: And you know, my mind's always thinking about it, even even if I don't have to be.
• 12:32
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, well, you get a lot of uh you get a lot of your great ideas in downtime anyway.
• 12:38
  Bill Gilliland: So that's that's one of the reasons to have downtime just to just to recharge and get great ideas.
• 12:44
  Bill Gilliland: So I mean you've hired a fair number of employees.
• 12:48
  Bill Gilliland: What do you look for?
• 12:49
  Bill Gilliland: Like what qualities do you look for in employees, and how do you foster that positive and productive work environment?
• 12:57
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, great question.
• 12:58
  Cedric Merrills: Um, the biggest quality I look for is someone who's like professional, someone who's trustworthy, and someone who's ambitious.
• 13:07
  Cedric Merrills: You know, they want to grow, they want to learn, they have to be coachable because ultimately, you know, some of our best painters, you know, take Alex, for example.
• 13:13
  Cedric Merrills: He's one of our painters, he's amazing at what he does.
• 13:16
  Cedric Merrills: And before this, he he worked in the the restaurant industry and it's great with customers.
• 13:21
  Cedric Merrills: He really cared about his work.
• 13:22
  Cedric Merrills: He had never painted a day in his life, and we've turned him into one of our best painters.
• 13:27
  Cedric Merrills: And it's because in the grand scheme of things, painting's very much teachable.
• 13:32
  Cedric Merrills: We can teach someone how to paint.
• 13:33
  Cedric Merrills: It's much, much harder to teach someone to care about the work they do, or try to teach someone to be trustworthy, or teach someone to be professional, you know.
• 13:42
  Cedric Merrills: You you can you can do it, but we try to find really good people and then teach them how to paint.
• 13:46
  Cedric Merrills: And if they already know how to paint, great.
• 13:48
  Cedric Merrills: But we kind of start with the culture fit, making sure they, you know, they're coachable, they care about the work they do, and then and then we worry about you know whether they can paint or not.
• 13:57
  Cedric Merrills: And oftentimes we're we're teaching people how to paint that way.
• 14:00
  Cedric Merrills: We know they're going to do a great job, and they're doing it exactly the way we want them to do it because we know it delivers great results.
• 14:06
  Cedric Merrills: Um, Kendrick, another example, he moved here when I started the business about six months in.
• 14:11
  Cedric Merrills: He was in Seattle at the time.
• 14:13
  Cedric Merrills: He drove across the country, and this like 1992, like literally cars falling apart.
• 14:19
  Cedric Merrills: Like, it's horrible.
• 14:20
  Cedric Merrills: He moved across the country to work with me, and now he's one of our project managers.
• 14:26
  Cedric Merrills: He he helps interview and hire a lot of the painters, and he is extremely good at what he does.
• 14:31
  Cedric Merrills: And he had zero painting experience before before starting.
• 14:34
  Cedric Merrills: And if you look at our reviews, one of the proudest things for me is occasionally they'll they'll mention me, but the vast majority of them, they're like, Oh, Kendrick was amazing, Alex was amazing, you know, Mike and Dav and the rest of the team, they do a great job.
• 14:46
  Cedric Merrills: Like the mention the painters by name, um, and they do do a great job.
• 14:51
  Bill Gilliland: So I love it.
• 14:53
  Bill Gilliland: I love it.
• 14:54
  Bill Gilliland: So I'm gonna give you um so B Epic is an acronym that that we use.
• 14:59
  Bill Gilliland: Um, I'm gonna give you the definition, and I want like a quick, it's sort of a quick fire round, just your real, you're quick anyway.
• 15:07
  Bill Gilliland: But we'll give you, you know, a couple of sentences on each one.
• 15:10
  Bill Gilliland: So they it's bepic.
• 15:11
  Bill Gilliland: So B, the first B, well it's B, is um bring the energy.
• 15:17
  Bill Gilliland: So what are your thoughts around that?
• 15:19
  Bill Gilliland: Bring the energy?
• 15:20
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, bringing energy, yeah.
• 15:23
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, no, it's it's everything.
• 15:24
  Cedric Merrills: Ultimately, I think I'm someone who I work really hard just naturally, like it doesn't matter what I'm doing, I'm working really hard, and that permeates through all of our people.
• 15:35
  Cedric Merrills: I I think it affects the people we hire.
• 15:38
  Cedric Merrills: And so if I go to a job site, you know, Kendrick, for example, I'll tell you a great story.
• 15:42
  Cedric Merrills: Uh he's one of our most trusted and longest time painters, and he'll he'll if a job needs to get done, he'll he'll stay late just to get the job done, or he'll go above and beyond even what I would even consider asking, because I would never ask him to do a lot of these things, and he'll just do it because he knows it really matters to the customer, or it's really, really important.
• 16:05
  Cedric Merrills: Um, one time we had a customer who she was having a uh it was her birthday, and the painters found out halfway through the day.
• 16:12
  Cedric Merrills: And at lunch they went and got some balloons and a birthday card, and they like surprised the customer at the end of the day um with like a little birthday celebration, which I thought was so cool.
• 16:20
  Cedric Merrills: I had never even heard about.
• 16:21
  Cedric Merrills: They just did it on their own.
• 16:23
  Cedric Merrills: And uh, you know, it's those kind of like little touches that you only get when everyone in the organization, right?
• 16:30
  Cedric Merrills: Kendrick, every single painter, every single person on our team, is hyperlined around customer service and what matters to the customer, and has the autonomy to do it.
• 16:42
  Cedric Merrills: And so um we really try to grow through people because at the end of the day, the day this is a people business, right?
• 16:50
  Cedric Merrills: It's customers, it's employees, and we try to find really good people and then treat them really well and pay them really well and keep them for a long, long time.
• 16:59
  Cedric Merrills: Um, because you know it's it's everything.
• 17:02
  Cedric Merrills: People are the most important thing in this business, and frankly, in life.
• 17:06
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, I know I like it.
• 17:07
  Bill Gilliland: I like it a lot.
• 17:08
  Bill Gilliland: So the E and B Epic stands for education.
• 17:11
  Bill Gilliland: Give me your thoughts on education.
• 17:13
  Cedric Merrills: Uh it's everything, right?
• 17:14
  Cedric Merrills: We have so much more flexibility than most painting companies because we can take someone in who's never painted before and turn them into an amazing painter.
• 17:21
  Cedric Merrills: And so the applicants that we can hire is much larger.
• 17:26
  Cedric Merrills: We can find someone who has that passion, who is professional, who is trustworthy, and turn them into a painter.
• 17:31
  Cedric Merrills: Whereas if you're limited to only painters, you can find all those same attributes in painter, but it's much, much more difficult because the pool is so much smaller.
• 17:39
  Cedric Merrills: And so it allows us to have a really amazing team that most painters painting companies don't have access to because we're able to take someone, train them, teach them everything they need to know how to be a successful painter, and then put plug them into our system.
• 17:54
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, love it.
• 17:55
  Bill Gilliland: Having a great system there.
• 17:57
  Bill Gilliland: So that brings me to the P and B epic, which is planning.
• 18:03
  Cedric Merrills: For planning, um, it's really interesting.
• 18:06
  Cedric Merrills: Honestly, we don't plan a whole lot, uh, probably as much as we should.
• 18:10
  Cedric Merrills: I'm very focused on the numbers.
• 18:13
  Cedric Merrills: I know exactly where our let's say lead costs need to be for a channel to be profitable.
• 18:19
  Cedric Merrills: I know exactly where we need to sell a job at, I know exactly how many hours we need to have on the job.
• 18:24
  Cedric Merrills: And so if I'm evaluating a new marketing channel, for example, you know, I know if I can get qualified appointments at a certain price, I will spend as much money as I want to on that or can at that price.
• 18:39
  Cedric Merrills: It's gonna be profitable with everything else.
• 18:42
  Cedric Merrills: Um, and so I don't really look at it as like, oh, we're gonna spend $10,000 this month on marketing or you know, whatever it is.
• 18:49
  Cedric Merrills: I look at, you know, what are gonna be the most effective channels for us, and we're gonna spend the money on those, you know, we're gonna spend as much money as we can.
• 18:56
  Cedric Merrills: And the same thing with the the painters.
• 18:59
  Cedric Merrills: You know, we know how many jobs we have, we know how many leads we're getting.
• 19:01
  Cedric Merrills: We need this many painters, and we bring on enough painters so that we can get all our projects done, and we're no more than, let's say, ideally, a week or two booked out so that we can make it really easy for our clients to get their projects done.
• 19:14
  Cedric Merrills: Um, same thing with when we're uh selling projects, we know exactly where it needs to be priced at so that we can deliver a great service and be profitable and pay for the marketing and the insurance and everything else.
• 19:26
  Cedric Merrills: And so we probably should do more planning, but we kind of just focus on the numbers.
• 19:31
  Cedric Merrills: And as long as the numbers in each area of the business is where they need to be, um then we're kind of on track.
• 19:37
  Cedric Merrills: And we're just trying to try to try to grow and help as many customers as possible.
• 19:41
  Bill Gilliland: Love it.
• 19:42
  Bill Gilliland: Love it.
• 19:43
  Bill Gilliland: So, how about I inspiration?
• 19:46
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, great question.
• 19:48
  Cedric Merrills: Um, I get a lot of inspiration from luxury brands and luxury services outside of painting.
• 19:57
  Cedric Merrills: Um, one of the best books I've read is Unreasonable Hospitality.
• 20:01
  Cedric Merrills: It was a book written by Will Gallardo.
• 20:03
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, and and the whole premise of the book is I love in Nassen Park.
• 20:07
  Cedric Merrills: He he took this restaurant, made it the world's number one restaurant through a focus on amazing hospitality.
• 20:14
  Cedric Merrills: And so I look at that and and ask myself, how can we implement that into what we do for painting?
• 20:20
  Cedric Merrills: And we have, you know, when we finish a job, we'll bring customers flowers or we'll bring them uh a box of local cookies from mini batch bakery and we'll have a handwritten card for them.
• 20:30
  Cedric Merrills: Um we like at the anniversary of their job, we'll often send them like a nice handwritten no.
• 20:36
  Cedric Merrills: We we dive in and try to figure out what pieces can we steal from like restaurants, for example.
• 20:41
  Cedric Merrills: Like how do they introduce customers?
• 20:43
  Cedric Merrills: How do they welcome customers?
• 20:45
  Cedric Merrills: You know, can we have that same thing when we're introducing ourselves at the door for a painting?
• 20:48
  Cedric Merrills: You know, like what works really well in those industries?
• 20:51
  Cedric Merrills: Same thing for like uh jewelry, right?
• 20:53
  Cedric Merrills: You know, the way they talk about um their services and what they do.
• 21:00
  Cedric Merrills: Uh, you know, what can we learn from that?
• 21:02
  Cedric Merrills: How can we be more polished in the home?
• 21:05
  Cedric Merrills: And or like uh high-end hotels, for example.
• 21:08
  Cedric Merrills: If we look at Ritz Carlton or any of these you know, four seasons, they're all of their employees have an ability to solve customers' problems without having to go ask their boss, right?
• 21:19
  Cedric Merrills: And I think it was the four seasons, if I could be wrong.
• 21:21
  Cedric Merrills: Like if it's under like $100, they they can just solve it on their own.
• 21:25
  Cedric Merrills: They don't need to go ask anyone.
• 21:26
  Cedric Merrills: We have the same thing for our painters, right?
• 21:28
  Cedric Merrills: If there's a problem that they see that they can solve or a thing that they can make the customer's life better, they don't need to ask them, they know just already that to go ahead and go solve it, go make it a good customer experience moment.
• 21:39
  Cedric Merrills: Um, and so we try to steal from as many industries as possible the best practices and implement that.
• 21:45
  Cedric Merrills: Like, what does that look like in a painting company?
• 21:47
  Cedric Merrills: Um, and it's maybe teach difference.
• 21:50
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, no, I love that.
• 21:51
  Bill Gilliland: I love that.
• 21:52
  Bill Gilliland: It's sort of like I was I was thinking while you were saying, hey, we do it looks like a restaurant.
• 21:56
  Bill Gilliland: Do you do, I mean, do you introduce still say, hey, you know, knock on the door, hey, I'm Cedric, I'll be your painter today.
• 22:02
  Cedric Merrills: Uh no, exactly.
• 22:05
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:05
  Cedric Merrills: No, I love that.
• 22:06
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah.
• 22:06
  Cedric Merrills: Well, and and like before we and we're working on implementing this right now, uh, everyone has name tags.
• 22:11
  Cedric Merrills: Before we even get to the job site, the customer has a text, and they see everyone who's gonna be on the project, a photo of each of them, a mini bio about each of them.
• 22:19
  Cedric Merrills: Love that.
• 22:19
  Cedric Merrills: Oh, that's awesome.
• 22:21
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, and the customer's not there.
• 22:22
  Cedric Merrills: We're gonna have kind of like Domino's as a pizza tracker, we're gonna have the same thing for painting.
• 22:25
  Cedric Merrills: So they can see exactly what step the painting process is in.
• 22:29
  Cedric Merrills: They can see the latest photos, you know, they can know exactly what's going on, even if they're not there.
• 22:33
  Cedric Merrills: You know, those like small touches, but just a little bit better of an experience, a little bit more transparent, a little bit better communication, you know, at every single step in the process.
• 22:42
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, I love that.
• 22:43
  Bill Gilliland: I love that.
• 22:43
  Bill Gilliland: So the last one, MB Epic, is C commitment.
• 22:46
  Bill Gilliland: And I know you're committed because you love it, but tell us a little bit at your thoughts on commitment.
• 22:51
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, that's a that's a great question.
• 22:53
  Cedric Merrills: Um commitment is one of those things where it's always easier to say you're committed than to be committed.
• 23:03
  Cedric Merrills: But I I always try to measure it in in actions.
• 23:07
  Cedric Merrills: Um for example, every company says they're committed to good customer service.
• 23:12
  Cedric Merrills: I don't think it'll find a single company that says they're not.
• 23:15
  Cedric Merrills: And then you go read their reviews, and it's just like there's a small problem, and the company tried to charge me $500 to fix it, and even it was their fault, you know, whatever it is, you know.
• 23:26
  Cedric Merrills: And uh they you read the negative reviews, and it just doesn't seem like they really care about the the customer service experience, right?
• 23:37
  Cedric Merrills: And my opinion on customer service has always been is like, even if I'm convinced I'm right, like I know 100% I'm in the right around a situation.
• 23:45
  Cedric Merrills: If the cut if I think the customer believes their own story, like if the customer genuinely believes that I'm being malicious, if they genuinely believe we did something wrong, I'm gonna just go ahead and treat it as if we did, and we're gonna do everything we can to make it right, even if we're not actually wrong, because ultimately, you know, we we charge a premium price, we're not the cheapest paying company.
• 24:03
  Cedric Merrills: And the reason we do that is so that we can fix these situations when they come up.
• 24:07
  Cedric Merrills: You know, if we were barely profitable and we scratch someone's floor, it's gonna be really hard to go ahead and fix that floor, you know.
• 24:14
  Cedric Merrills: But the reason we charge a lot is so that when we scratch their floor, it's not a big headache.
• 24:20
  Cedric Merrills: Uh, and and that actually happened.
• 24:21
  Cedric Merrills: We scratched someone's floor, we had it refinished, completely redone before they moved in three days later.
• 24:26
  Cedric Merrills: And we're only able to do that because we're profitable enough, and obviously we made zero dollars on that job, but overall we're profitable enough to fix things when they come up because we try really, really hard to give the customer a great customer great experience.
• 24:39
  Cedric Merrills: But mistakes do happen, and we need to be able to fix it and make it a great experience, even in those cases.
• 24:45
  Cedric Merrills: Um, and I think too many people get caught up on being right.
• 24:49
  Cedric Merrills: It's like, oh, I'm right, it's not my fault this happened, and then they use that as an excuse not to deliver a good experience.
• 24:56
  Cedric Merrills: Um, and we we try to do the opposite.
• 24:58
  Cedric Merrills: We try really hard to deliver great experience, even in the cases where something happened that's beyond our control, right?
• 25:05
  Cedric Merrills: There's another contractor or the customer was misunderstood something, or whatever it is.
• 25:11
  Cedric Merrills: We're gonna try to do everything we can, even in those situations where it's not our fault, to still deliver a great experience.
• 25:18
  Bill Gilliland: Love it.
• 25:19
  Bill Gilliland: Love it.
• 25:20
  Bill Gilliland: Hey, what advice would you give others for business owners who are looking to grow?
• 25:25
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, I'd say the most important thing is to focus on improving your product on one side.
• 25:33
  Cedric Merrills: Um, because especially in in contracting, at least for painters, and frankly, most small businesses, there's no advantage you get in being the cheapest.
• 25:43
  Cedric Merrills: You're not Walmart, you'll never have the volume or whatever to be the cheapest price.
• 25:49
  Cedric Merrills: And so you shouldn't you shouldn't try to be.
• 25:51
  Cedric Merrills: You should try to be clearly the best product, solve the problem most effectively, make it as easy as possible compared to everyone else.
• 26:00
  Cedric Merrills: That should be one piece of it.
• 26:02
  Cedric Merrills: And you should constantly be putting a lot of your time and effort into improving your product in every way.
• 26:07
  Cedric Merrills: And the other part of it is you need to make sure you're charging enough for that product.
• 26:11
  Cedric Merrills: Um if you're not charging enough, you're not going to be able to deliver, even if you want to, you can't deliver great customer experience if you're not charging enough.
• 26:21
  Cedric Merrills: Um, if you're not charging enough, for example, and don't have the right insurance and something catastrophic happens, right?
• 26:27
  Cedric Merrills: There's there's nothing you can do.
• 26:28
  Cedric Merrills: If you're not charging enough and you want to um surprise the customer, bring them cookies at the end of the job, you can't do that, right?
• 26:37
  Cedric Merrills: And so you need to charge enough so that you're able to deliver an amazing experience and deliver a better product.
• 26:46
  Cedric Merrills: And I think that's the formula you have to work with.
• 26:49
  Cedric Merrills: Um, don't worry about people being cheaper.
• 26:51
  Cedric Merrills: There's always someone cheaper.
• 26:52
  Cedric Merrills: There's also always someone more expensive.
• 26:54
  Cedric Merrills: Figure out how you can be that more expensive person and deliver a product that's 10 times better than that person is delivering.
• 27:00
  Cedric Merrills: Uh, I think that's the much better path to growth than trying to be cheaper and kind of shrink your product.
• 27:07
  Cedric Merrills: I think it's much better to make your product so much better than everyone else that it's a no-brainer to go with you, even though you're more expensive.
• 27:13
  Cedric Merrills: And for the people who can't afford you, they wish they could go with you and they just can't afford it.
• 27:18
  Bill Gilliland: I think that's kind of the position you want to be in.
• 27:20
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, I know.
• 27:21
  Bill Gilliland: I love yeah, that's the position we've always taken.
• 27:23
  Bill Gilliland: I love that.
• 27:24
  Bill Gilliland: Hey, so what's the next big thing for Cedric and while painting?
• 27:29
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, really just doubling down on the basics.
• 27:32
  Cedric Merrills: You know, we we've grown every single year, including this year, and um, the more we grow, we can do bigger and bigger projects in one day.
• 27:40
  Cedric Merrills: Kind of the the three-prong things we focus on is making it really easy, um, guaranteed quality.
• 27:47
  Cedric Merrills: And if we can do those things, um I'm I'm happy.
• 27:53
  Cedric Merrills: So something we're rolling out right now is a lifetime touch-up guarantee, um, which is different than a warranty, but essentially it says uh if we uh paint a space in your home, your entire home, for as long as you live in that home, we'll come back once a year, forever, to touch up anything you want during our slow season.
• 28:12
  Cedric Merrills: So in painting, there's kind of seasons, and the slowest period is between December and January because everyone's spending time with the holidays, it's cold, you can't do exteriors.
• 28:22
  Cedric Merrills: So we typically have extra capacity during that time.
• 28:25
  Cedric Merrills: And so what we're doing is we're taking that and using it as a time where we can do touch-ups completely for free for our customers for for any project that we completed for them.
• 28:34
  Cedric Merrills: And so it's something that I don't think any other painting company offers.
• 28:37
  Cedric Merrills: And it's just that you know, making the experience a little bit better.
• 28:40
  Cedric Merrills: You know, you had a kid and they sprayed, they marked the walls away with a marker.
• 28:44
  Cedric Merrills: You know, we'll we'll come in and touch that for you completely for free.
• 28:47
  Cedric Merrills: There's no cost associated with it, and just about making the experience you know that that that much that much better in a way that no one else can do it.
• 28:55
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, I like it, Cedric.
• 28:57
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, I like it.
• 28:57
  Bill Gilliland: I like it a lot.
• 28:58
  Bill Gilliland: So, what's the best way for somebody to find you?
• 29:01
  Bill Gilliland: It's pretty easy to find you, but let's tell them anyway.
• 29:04
  Cedric Merrills: Yeah, absolutely.
• 29:05
  Cedric Merrills: So you can you can follow us on Instagram at Wild One Day Painting Asheville.
• 29:09
  Cedric Merrills: Um, you can see our reviews.
• 29:12
  Cedric Merrills: If you type in Wild One Day Painting Asheville, you'll see all our five-star reviews.
• 29:15
  Cedric Merrills: Um, and we may have a YouTube channel, but type in Wild One Day Painting, you'll you'll find us everywhere we're at.
• 29:23
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, I love it.
• 29:23
  Bill Gilliland: I love it.
• 29:24
  Bill Gilliland: I love it.
• 29:25
  Bill Gilliland: Listen, fantastic.
• 29:26
  Bill Gilliland: Thank you for being on the podcast.
• 29:28
  Bill Gilliland: Thank you for all you're doing in our community.
• 29:31
  Bill Gilliland: Thank you for sharing your learnings and your knowledge.
• 29:35
  Bill Gilliland: Um, I know that you're going to continue to be a massive success in the marketplace.
• 29:40
  unknown: Thank you.
• 29:41
  Bill Gilliland: Thanks for having me on.
• 29:42
  Bill Gilliland: And until next time, all the best.