[00:00:00.220] - Brandon
What's up, dude?
[00:00:00.780] - Chris
Sunny outside. Another beautiful Oregon morning.
[00:00:05.160] - Brandon
It's funny you said that, actually. Part of my trying to make every minute count, I do a stand up with Wayne on my drive-in because I got about 40 minutes. That was one of the things I noticed this morning. I'm like, you know how much more fun I have every day when I get into my car and the very first thing I do is drive in the sun for 40 minutes?
[00:00:23.310] - Chris
It's beautiful, man. Yeah. Cara and I went for an hour and a half long walk in the forest last night. And it's just like, wow, this is... Oregon is so amazing. Yeah. I mean, there's about four months, about four months out of the year where it is just so incredible. And we have a forest that's right... It's in the city limits, and it's maybe a mile from our house. We go up there, and we'll take the dog out there. Last night, it was just Cara and I, and it was just really beautiful.
[00:00:52.830] - Brandon
This whole area is known as the Emerald Valley, right? Yeah. For those that don't know, this section of the Willamette Valley that Chris and I live in, this time of year, it's still amazingly green because we get so much moisture in the offseason. But then the sun's out. It's normally, let's call it 80 degrees. It's just literally beautiful.
[00:01:14.150] - Chris
Yeah, it really is. Hard to believe. It's hard to delete. It's hard to delete. Yeah. Anyways, that's great. Dude, we have a cool show today. I've been looking forward to this. So Tim Fitzpatrick, the last time I hung out with him, actually, we flew in his airplane. He's a... Oh, that's right. Yeah. He's an enthusiast on his own airplane. Cool dude, man. A renaissance guy into a lot of things, fitness and flying and toys and boating and really into his family. And he also runs a very, very successful painting business. Yeah, sorry. And that's how I first met him. I met him through the chamber years and years ago. I'd see him, and then I saw his people, and I just watched his business. Oh, and explode. They're celebrating 30 years, which is so weird because he's about the same age as you and I. Yeah, he's a young guy. Yeah. So he's like, I don't know. I'm Mid '45, maybe. I don't know, '46, something like that. And extremely successful. I mean, for people that live in Oregon, they'll immediately recognize the name of Fitzpatrick Painting. Now, Fitzpatrick Painting and Construction. And his facility.
[00:02:13.110] - Chris
Yeah. Yeah, the facility is right off of I-5, and he bought some property out there, I don't know, six, seven years ago, and just continues to expand it. But we talk about his approach to training in a business that is very, very competitive for labor. Yeah. Seasonal. Very seasonal. And his business is seasonal in that regard, too. And so they figured out a recruiting system and a training system. He talks about the old conventional method of training in the painting business will sound very familiar to most restorers.
[00:02:43.310] - Brandon
Yeah, everybody listening is going to go, Oh, that sounds like us right now.
[00:02:47.130] - Chris
I mean, shoot, we talk about leading the business through the numbers. We talk about employee retention. We spend probably most of the time talking about his philosophy and how it's evolved on taking care of his people and the internal company culture. And we even get a little tax tip at the end for those of you that are making money and don't want to give it all the government. There's a little thing there at the end for that, but it's Super fun. It was an awesome conversation.
[00:03:11.720] - Brandon
Yeah, he's a smart guy. And you can see, he's super down to earth and total entrepreneur in the sense that we got to flex into some areas that we are often weak in as entrepreneurs because the drive requires it, the machine requires it. He's very open and transparent about that, which I think is super cool and approachable. But all in all, it's a really rad conversation.
[00:03:32.790] - Chris
I think every owner will at least be able to aspire to where Tim's at with his business or model after some of the things he's doing at their current size. But I think it's pretty obvious when you talk to Tim Certainly, I've spent time with him one-on-one, he's built a really good life for himself. He enjoys his life. He spends it how he chooses to. And I think that's what all of us as business owners are trying to build. So anyway-We started, at least.
[00:03:58.210] - Brandon
Yeah, that's right.
[00:03:59.040] - Chris
That's Okay, so here we go. Tim Fitzpatrick.
[00:04:02.070] - Brandon
Love it.
[00:04:02.510] - Chris
Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast? I can't tell you that react, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:04:13.800] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours.
[00:04:23.710] - Chris
I'm noticing that and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose.
[00:04:26.700] - Brandon
No, I don't. I didn't. And I am not happy with it. Hey, all, thanks so much for listening to the show. Hey, if you're not already following, please do so and ultimately share, right? Like the coolest currency that we have in terms of supporting this is share it with a friend, share it with somebody, a colleague, a peer, one of your downline team members. Let them be able to take advantage of the information you're already leveraging in your favor. And finally, guys, if you hear a show that really moves you, that really moves the needle, will you please leave us a review? Those five-star reviews help us a Right on.
[00:05:01.780] - Chris
And listen, if you're trying to grow your business, you might consider checking out Floodlight's business opportunity audit. It's free. We provided it no charge. It's actually what we use to assess new clients as they come in. It's a 110 point assessment for your business. And we've now decided to give access to the general public for it. So go and take our business opportunity audit at floodlightgrp. Com. It's going to help you identify the biggest gaps and opportunities in your business right now. And at the end, it'll assign you a health score to let you know exactly where your business stands right now. So go check it out, floodlightgrp. Com/audit, and take the Boa. It's a great way to get a pulse on your business. Okay. Hey, welcome to the show, Tim.
[00:05:43.220] - Tim
Thanks, Chris.
[00:05:44.130] - Chris
Nice to have you on The Head Heart & Boots podcast. I've been excited about this chat. As I mentioned before we got on the call. You and I have known each other for a very long time. I don't really know the genesis point. I think it was probably some chamber of commerce meeting way, way, way back when I was a state farm guy. It's my guess.
[00:06:01.560] - Tim
Yeah, way back. I would guess well over 20 years.
[00:06:04.450] - Chris
I don't think I tried to sell knives to you that far back. I didn't try to sell you Cutco knives, did I?
[00:06:09.380] - Tim
You did not. But another guy with a beard that looks similar to yours has tried to sell me knives. Maybe it's like a prerequ in order to sell knives, you got to have a badass beard. I don't know. But you've never tried to sell me Cutco.
[00:06:21.090] - Chris
Beard sell, bro. I don't know who it is.
[00:06:23.390] - Brandon
They create comfort and approachability. That's right. I think is what happens.
[00:06:27.670] - Chris
That's right. Okay, so let me a little bit where this came from, because rather out of the blue, I think I texted you and I was like, dude, I'd love to have you on the podcast. And if I recall correctly, I was invited on a podcast, and I'm pretty sure he said something, maybe it was Jeff Silverman. I don't know who I was talking to, but I was talking to somebody, and they mentioned your training facility that you had developed somewhat recently, or I imagine it's probably been an evolution over the last many years. But your training system, and that's such a hot topic in the world that we operate in, is how to onboard a frontline labor, technicians, et cetera, how to train them up as quickly as possible. It's getting so hard to find frontline labor, regardless of what service sector you're in, and How do you retain people? And that reminded me of when Brandon and I came and visited your shop at a chamber event that you guys hosted. You have this really amazing headquarters off of the freeway there with, gosh, foosball tables and big screen projector TV thingy and this whole hangout area for your employees.
[00:07:34.760] - Chris
And so we were impressed by that. But I just thought this training topic and how you... It sounded like you have some testing system before people start working in the field and so forth. So I really... That's where I wanted to hang out a bit if you're open to that.
[00:07:50.510] - Tim
Yeah, 100 %.
[00:07:51.600] - Chris
Yeah. Okay. So before we dive into that, I guess maybe walk us up to that. Your 30-year anniversary is this year, 2024. Is that right?
[00:07:58.190] - Tim
This year, 30 years in business. Yeah, I was nine years old when I started. Actually, I was 19. I was 19 years old when I started. So I just had my 49th birthday and started... I called myself Tim Fitzpatrick, Contract Painting and Roofing, back in 1994. And I obviously hung up the roofing part. And then in 2000, I was married to Kelly in '99, and we moved to Phoenix. And I had a goal. And I'm... Squirl ran right in front of me. So I'm just totally diverting here. But I had a of having a painting company in Phoenix during the winter months and Oregon during the summer. So I got my contractor's license in Phoenix. It's beating the streets, like literally beating the streets, hitting the streets, going door to door. I mean, you name it. I was doing it, picking up the phones, cold calling, had the yellow pages that was this thick. And I'd sit in our two bedroom apartment and just go through the yellow pages and call property management companies and started drumming up work and hired my first employee. And then our daughter, Kate, who's now 23 years old, she was born in Phoenix.
[00:08:58.550] - Tim
And after she was born, and I decided, you know what? We don't want to raise our kids in Phoenix. So we moved back to Oregon. But going back and then we started hitting it really hard and treating it like a real business in 2001, 2002. And I didn't know what I was doing. I had no business schooling, no background It's just shooting from a barrel. I didn't know what a PnL was, I didn't know what a balance sheet was, none of that stuff. But you fast forward 30 years, and now I'm in this industry where if you want to be a plumber, you go to, I think, you become a journeyman a plumber. You go to school and you learn how to be a plumber. If you want to be an electrician, there's schooling that you have to have for an electrician, and you check the box, and you're a licensed electrician, you go and wire someone's home. If you want to be a painter, what do you do?
[00:09:42.980] - Chris
Buy a paint brush.
[00:09:43.960] - Tim
You buy a paint brush, and you hope someone will hire you, and you learn on the job. It was just literally what I did. I was 19 years old. You guys should have seen the first house I painted. I still remember it today. And the painter term was, there was flashing. It was terrible. I didn't know how to spray. But I learned. I learned on the job, on my customers' homes. And then what do we do as painting contractors? 99.9% of us were like, oh, I need an employee. I need two employees. I need three employees. We hire the employees, we take them to your house, and we teach them how to paint at your house. And we hope they don't screw it up too badly. And we hope that we can fake it, that this guy knows what he's doing long enough that we can collect a paycheck and move on to the next one. That's literally what happens. Oh, yeah. We decided, it's been an evolution of the last couple of years. I decided we need to build a training center on site here. We need to train our guys and gals here on site the skills that we've been basically teaching them out in the field.
[00:10:44.350] - Tim
So that's where that birth from. And Chris, you guys have both seen our training center. Brandon, you were here as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. Both of you guys were here. You've seen our Training Center. And I mean, it's literally it looks like the outside of a house. There's siding, there's windows, there's even an air conditioner, there's the gas meter, there's the electrical boxes, there's everything that you... There's the plants. So we teach our guys, well, how do you cover a plant? No, you don't cover a plant with plastic when it's 90 degrees out or you're going to be buying the customer a new plant. You don't cover the AC unit with plastic or you're going to burn up the pump and the AC, all of these things. We train them that here in-house. We have 12 modules that they go through. There's a test that they take, written and verbal. And then once they check the boxes, it's like, okay, yeah, I'm confident you have the skillset, you have the knowledge. Then they go out in the field and they start working on your home. So that's the model that we started. And we got some super exciting things coming, guys.
[00:11:39.530] - Tim
We just broke ground and poured the... It's not a foundation because it's called a monopore. But anyway, it's 140 foot by 70 foot. The building is actually going to be bigger than the building we're in right now on the freeway. That's being built a month from now, two months from now. It's going to be up. You'll see it. And the training center we have now is going to be Dwarf by the one that we do have, that we're going to have. So Chris, we've known each other for a long time. And I go by the motto, if you're not growing, and I'll even ask my team at all of our all staff meetings, say, guys, if you're not growing, and the whole team all in unison, you're dying, right? So we believe in growth. That's what we're about. And people ask me like, well, Tim, why do you do this? Why do you build a company to the size that you built it? Well, why wouldn't I? If I'm not growing, I'm dying. I'm not going to stop growing until I'm dead.
[00:12:30.830] - Chris
Yeah, give us...
[00:12:32.110] - Brandon
Live it out. Yeah.
[00:12:33.400] - Chris
If you don't mind, man, because I think it'll just help. We have a lot of listeners in the restoration industry, probably your average restoration company, if you could find an average across the 50,000 or so, according to the census, it's probably between around a couple of million bucks and then on up to some of the bigger companies, top 10 % of the industry in that $20, $30 million range. Can you give us an idea just your vitals? Where is your company at now? No head count, number of employees.
[00:13:01.460] - Tim
Yeah, without sharing exacts, we're on the higher end of the numbers that you just mentioned. And we have over, I think currently we're at like 110 employees. I could be off. It could be more than that. It could be less. Believe it or not, I'm not in the trenches to that degree anymore. So unless I go and look at the board and look at the numbers, I don't know at any given time how many employees we have. But everybody's why, you have to have a why. And my why 30 years ago was I wanted to make $100,000 a year. That was my why. I literally, 30 years ago, as a 19-year-old kid, I thought, you know what? If I could make $100,000 a year, live in a nice house, and drive a nice truck, I'm good. I'm good. Life is good. Well, here I am 30 years later, and that why has completely changed 1,000 %. My why now is not about the money. It's not about building a company that Tim can put more money in his pocket. My why has changed. Now I've got 100, 110, whatever that number is, employees that I stand in front of every month and I can look at them and I go, You know what?
[00:14:03.870] - Tim
I'm part of your success. I'm providing a good job, living wages for you. That's part of the why. And then I have management team that they have their why and they have their dreams. And so I'm able to... Tommy Melo actually said, make... How do you put it exactly? Make your dreams so big that everybody that works with you can fit their dreams inside your dreams.
[00:14:27.890] - Brandon
I love that.
[00:14:28.810] - Tim
And Tommy Melo, A1 garage. Look him up if you guys don't know who he is, this guy. Oh, dude. Next level. I know the guy, personally, I text him probably more than he wants me to. But so you're why it morphs and it changes as you grow.
[00:14:43.830] - Brandon
Yeah, it's it. Would you Dave, was there some catalyst to that? Were there some milestone moments where, not just because the business was growing and scaling, but something that happened, an experience that you're having, that begin to shift this perspective or the vision that you had for the business? Were there any of those?
[00:15:01.790] - Tim
Yeah. I can't think of a specific... I probably could if I think long and hard, but I think more than just a catalyst moment, it's... You guys have heard, if you want to be a millionaire, hang out with four other millionaires And sooner or later, you'll be the fifth one, right? So surrounding yourself with people that are better than you, not better, but people that are smarter than you, that have gone further than you have. I've done that. And I remember before we invoiced $1 million, I remember talking to some guys that they had a million dollar a year company. It's like, you're doing a million dollars a year. Oh, you're doing that? I can do that, too. And then you hit a million and you see guys that are doing three. And you start hanging out with guys in the room that are doing three, and then five, and then 10. And it just exponentially gross. Hanging out with guys that have walked where you haven't walked, for me, is a motivator. I hang out with Tommy Mello, who's done, I think last year was like 250 million. No, that's not going to be me.
[00:15:57.700] - Tim
It's not going to be Fitzpatrick Painting & Construction. We're not growing this company to the level that A1 garage door is. But being in a room with guys that they've taken it to the next level, for me anyway, it's motivating and it causes me to want to continue driving and continue going forward. Because there was a time, years ago, if you would have told my 19-year-old self, Tim, you'll have a company that's valued at what it is today and invoices the numbers that you invoiced today, I would have laughed at you. I was like, No way. No possible way. No possible way. Well, we're here. So what's my 59-year-old self going to be looking back on my 49-year-old self and saying, well, you know what? Look where you guys are 10 years from now. I hope I'll be laughing, going, Man, I never would have dreamt that.
[00:16:46.990] - Brandon
One of the things I do remember about our visit, I mean, shoot, now this has been many years ago, there was a general vibe from your leadership team. I remember we had an exchange with at least a couple of them, I think. I think somebody was more on the sales side of things, and then somebody was more operationally-based. It's been long enough now, I don't remember names, but there was a real sense of loyalty. There was a a commitment to the... A little cultish, actually. It stuck out to me because it was something at the time that we were building and developing with the restoration company that we were leading and building. And so it just always stood out in this thing of, man, somehow he was creating some sense of loyalty, this getting people on board and excited about the mission as much as you are. And clearly, that's worked in your favor because you're not in the trenches anymore. You're actually a business owner, and you're not self-employed by any stretch of the imagination. What do you feel like were the one or two principle actions or maybe posture that you held to create that and get that sense of loyalty and commitment early on by some of these leaders?
[00:17:53.800] - Tim
Yeah. Well, it's interesting to hear you say that, Brandon, because honestly, I would disagree with that. I don't think I did build the loyalty and sense of commitment early on because I was too focused and too busy on just... I was running a business. They say, employees come first. The employees are the backbone of your business. Yeah, that's easy to say. But for someone to actually live that out and really, truly take care of your employees and train your employees to the level of, if they want to leave, they can, but treat them well enough to where they won't. That's the magic. And I feel like we're still cracking the code, but I feel like just in the last few years, we've really cracked that code. And we've really started to embody the idea of take care of your employees. Make your employees feel like they are number one. How are you going to make them feel like they're number one? By making them number one and allowing them to be number one and letting them know I care about you, not just by what I say, but by my actions, whether that's me coming in on Monday morning's crew lead breakfast, putting the apron on, cooking breakfast for my team, right?
[00:19:06.140] - Tim
Or we have... I mean, there's so many things we do. I've got a... Where is it? It's right here. Have you guys seen one of these? The Rainmaker?
[00:19:12.800] - Brandon
No. I have.
[00:19:14.170] - Tim
These things are so cool. You fill it up with whatever denomination bills you want. You pull the trigger and you make it rain. So very often, Tim makes it rain at our all staff meetings, and there are large bills that are in there. So I'm just thinking of some of these things off the top of my head. They're paid. We pay our guys probably more than anybody else in the industry. We give them ETEO, personal time off. We give them a 401k plan with a 4 % match. We don't have to do those things. We give them health insurance, 80 % coverage. All of these things that we do for our employees that, sure, they could probably go to some other places and get some of that. But giving our employees, number one, a working wage, you need to take care of it with money. But if people think that just giving an Employee a raise is going to keep them around. They got it 100% wrong. Most people leave their job or quit their job not because they didn't get that dollar, or two, or three dollar an hour raise. They quit their job because they're sick and tired of the supervisor they worked for.
[00:20:16.210] - Brandon
Yeah, 100%. It's interesting that you say that because I think in general, as Chris was setting the stage for today, A, you talking about the training and the training investment and commitment that you have. I was laughing myself the whole time because we're It's an industry that literally takes your house apart and tries to dry it and clean it in such a way that we don't expose people and family members to things they shouldn't be exposed to. High risk, high liability. And 99% of restoration companies do exactly what you do as a painting company or did. And that's send people out to your home and have them practicing these complex things, right? Instead of running them through more intentional training. So we're susceptible to that, obviously. But I think the other thing is, is that you talking about this model of even a handful of years ago, you didn't feel like you were focused on that engagement, that loyalty, that commitment to the based on your employee. But what was in your head that you were fighting with? Because I know that our listeners are fighting that same fight right now, regardless. I mean, many of our listeners are above 20, 25, 30 million, and they're still fighting with this, this balancing act of how do I know that the investment I'm making in people is going to pay off?
[00:21:29.720] - Brandon
Like, it is the right move, especially in the early phases when cash is a struggle. And you might really be thinking about that decision from the, Man, can I afford to invest this? Can I afford to give this much margin away? Can you just walk us through some of that mental process that you were experiencing and how it finally shook out?
[00:21:48.890] - Tim
Yeah, I think it's a fine line because when you're first starting out in business, the idea of having a rainmaker, for instance, with literally thousands of dollars in it at an employee all staff, you're You're not going to do that. You're trying to figure out how to make payroll. You're probably not going to be able to... Maybe you can cook the bread. There are some things that you can do. You go in and cook them breakfast. You could buy a several dozen eggs and buy a cheap grill and cook them breakfast. So there are things you can do. But just having the mentality, I think what a lot of business owners... I shouldn't say that. I'll speak for myself. What I've done for so many years is I had the mentality that the customer comes first. No, the customer doesn't come first. I'm sorry for any of my customers that are listening, but you come Second, my employees come first. We have to take care of our employees. We have to invest the time, and you have to pay them what they want to be... Not what they want to be paid. Sometimes what they want to be paid is like, dude, you might want to go back to college.
[00:22:45.820] - Tim
But you've got to be investing in your employees. If we don't invest in our employees and we just invest in our customers, what makes us think that our employees are going to go out to our customers' home and invest in them? They're not. But if we invest in our employees and our employees are taken care of, it's really easy for them to go to our customers' homes and take care of our customers as well. So it all trickles down. But I think as business owners, we get stuck in this rut of, well, I don't want to pull out the rainmaker. I don't want to cook the breakfast. I don't want to hand out the bonuses. I don't want to have the bonuses. I don't want to have the quarterly parties, the tacos and beer Friday or all these different things, because that costs money. Yes, it does. But if you spend the money, and with that, the time on your employees, that's going to reep tenfold in how your employees are going to treat your customers, how they're going to treat you when they do get the call for the other job offer. They're going to, Yeah, I appreciate the fact that you're offering me $2 an hour more, but I really like it over here.
[00:23:39.860] - Tim
The grass really is greener, just like it says on our billboard. The grass is greener on the other side.
[00:23:45.390] - Brandon
Which, by the way, I don't want to get us spun out on it, but dude, you are the master of billboards. There's two companies that we know the owners of. Yours is one and Ironhead is the other, where I'm like, These guys have got a grip on billboards, and they are leveraging Changing it to the max.
[00:24:01.250] - Tim
I think Paul's got me beat. Paul's got me beat.
[00:24:04.490] - Chris
Oh, he might at this point. But, okay, another track I had because it's so relevant across all the service sectors is, how do you recruit people? I would think you're in a somewhat seasonal It's a seasonal business, although you guys have diversified now. You have construction services, you obviously do interior painting and so forth, which I would imagine helps bolster the work in the winter months, but still a fairly seasonal business, right? How do you find people? Is your training system robust enough at this point to where you can hire a Greenhorn who's never touched a paint brush? And how quickly can you get... How do you make that work? Year in, year out?
[00:24:42.180] - Tim
It's a dance. It's a fine balance every a year because we are seasonal. We're a seasonal company no matter what. Yes, we offer interior. We do a ton of interior work. We have our construction division, which, by the way, a little plug for Fitzpatrick Painting and construction. A lot of folks don't realize just how big our construction division is. We have seven crews out there all the time doing anything for windows, decks, sightings, small additions, remodels, fences, you name it, the whole gamut, dry rot repair. But every year, there's layoffs. We will not have a 10 or wherever we're at, employees right now in December. We hope that we'll have, I don't know what that number is. Is it 60? Is it 70? Is it 80? I don't know. But it's not going to be what it is. So we're cons. Every year, we lay off, and then every year, we lay off, and then every year we rehire. We hope to be able to bring some of those guys back, but a lot of those guys, they move on. Our team members, they know when we hire them, we let them know that we don't keep you based on your tenure, how long you've been here.
[00:25:38.680] - Tim
We keep you based on your productivity and based on you, are you a company man? Are you a company woman? We keep the best. I like this term and hate it at the same time, but we keep the best and we fire the rest. But as far as the recruiting piece, we have a full-time recruiter. She says recruiting and HR. But one of her roles is recruiting, is getting those bodies in, doing the interviews, processing them, everything that goes with all the back-end that goes into that. And then our training system, yes, we are at the level now, Chris, where our training center, we can literally take someone, and within two weeks, if they have the skills skill sets that are required, and they have the... I mean, some folks, you bring them in and it's like...
[00:26:20.670] - Brandon
Yeah, there's no hand eye.
[00:26:22.560] - Tim
There's no hand eye. They think they're going to be comfortable on a ladder, but they get on the second rung and they're gripping on for dear life.. But we find that out here in the training center, not at their home. But it's a balance, Chris. It's always a juggling act. What I'm hoping my vision for Fitzpatrick Painting & Construction is that I believe that we have a really good culture here. But I'd be lying to you if I told you that I thought our culture was just amazingly awesome. It's not. It's great. My vision is that our culture will be so awesome that we will literally have... We'll be turning people away. My recruiter that we use in the summertime, she'll be doing other things because we won't even need that because we'll have so many people that know just how good it is at Fitzpatrick that we line it up out our door to come to work for us. That's my vision. That's where I want to take this. And I know that we can do that.
[00:27:17.300] - Brandon
If you're cool with that, I want to hang in that for a minute because I think, one, kudos to you that that is the vision. I think one of the struggles that we see with a lot of organizations, and I fall prey to this, too, in our own business, is we just get so consumed with the doing that we begin to lose our grip on what our real role as the owner or the entrepreneur is. And that is creating this vision for where we're heading and aligning people towards that common cause. But as you say that, you critiquing your existing culture now and you saying, one day it's going to be this, define it for me. What does that look like? What are the missing pieces from your perspective right now to get you to that next tier?
[00:27:58.770] - Tim
Yeah, that's a good question, and I wish I could answer that. If I knew exactly what those missing pieces were and are, I could literally plug them in in the next couple of weeks and we'd be there. I think probably the biggest piece that's missing is we get busy in the busyness, right? And we get busy in just running the business and all of the things that go along with running a business. But for me, as my role, I'm basically tasked with... One of the things I'm tasked with is I train the trainers, right? So I'm the coach of my CEO, my CFO, my CMO, all All these guys that sit in these higher level seats, my HR manager. So being able to coach them in such a way and allow them to be able to run in such a way that they can treat our employees, attract our employees in such a way that our folks are like, Hey, I want to go to Fitzpatrick. We're not there yet. And I wish I had that secret sauce. But I think it starts with... I know it starts with letting... Your employees need to know, again, I'm going back to what I already said, I think, but your employees need to know that you care, and they're never going to know that by us telling them that.
[00:29:05.860] - Tim
I can tell you I care about you until I'm blue in the face. But unless I actually show you through my actions that I truly care, it's nothing more than words. And so our actions need to speak louder than our words, right? And we need to... Our employees need to know by our actions, by all of those little things, it's not just one thing. It's not the rainmaker. It's not the breakfast, it's not the quarterly all staff parties that we have or the casino night or the pinnacle trip that we have where we're taken to. And I stole that from... Who did I steal that from? I think that was from Tommy as well. Tommy, sorry. If you're listening to this, I steal a lot of stuff from you. But the pinnacle trip where we're taking the best of the best of our employees to Phoenix and we're going to put them up in a five-star hotel and take them to, hopefully, the best dinner that they've ever had in their life. We're going to treat them like it's going to be bougey, right? My teenage kids gave me that term, too.
[00:29:55.190] - Brandon
Bougey.
[00:29:56.920] - Tim
The things we learn from our kids. But, yeah, I haven't cracked the code, but I'm going to keep fighting until that code gets cracked.
[00:30:03.960] - Brandon
Yeah, I love that. Liftify. Com/bloodlight.
[00:30:09.250] - Chris
You've heard Brandon and I talk a bunch of times about the importance of Google reviews. Maybe even heard our episode with Zack Garrett, the CEO and founder. Recency, consistency, two of the most important things when it comes to maximizing the benefit from your Google reviews. Why not use an outside partner? Liftify is targeting 20 to 25 % conversion, right? So if you do a thousand jobs a year, you ought to be adding right now 200 to 250 reviews a year, every single year. If you're not doing that, you owe it to yourself to get a free demo from liftify. Com. See their system, see how it works, see how affordable it is. I promise you, you'll thank us. Liftify. Com/bloodlight.
[00:30:50.780] - Brandon
We spend a lot of money and a lot of attention trying to get that first call. And one of the things that we do once it happens is sometimes we leave it to chance, right? Who How do they mix up the phone? How do they respond? How do they walk that client into a relationship with us? Well, one of the benefits of partnering with a team like answerforce. Com is we can systemize that, we can make it more consistent. We can also have backup for when our teams need that help. Somebody goes on vacation, somebody's out sick. We get a storm search, we get cat event. All sorts of things can have an impact on how we receive that client. But the most important thing is they need to know that they've chosen the right team. And so answerforce. Com can support you, be a bolt on partner to help you consistently produce an awesome onboarding experience with that first call with your client. So answerforce. Com/bloodlight.
[00:31:41.990] - Chris
That's great. Cnr magazine, we're friends with all the folks at CNR. Michelle and her team, they do a great job of keeping their ear to the ground and reporting all the important information from our industry. You want to stay up on all the M&A activity and what the latest best practices are for selling your company successfully. She's got that. Great articles about all the four quadrants of our business. Cnr is constantly pushing out great material and leveraging great writers and subject matter experts in our industry. It is the water-cooler of our industry. So if you're not subscribed, go to cnrmagazine. Com. Follow them on LinkedIn. Follow Michelle on LinkedIn. Trust us, if you're trying to stay on top of everything happening in the industry, your best destination is cnrmagazine. Com.
[00:32:26.720] - Brandon
You guys, many of you have already heard about Actionable Insights and the training and the technical expertise that they bring to the industry. But how many of you are already leveraging the Actionable Insights profile for Xactimate? That's the game changer. It's essentially an AI tool that's walking alongside of you as you write your estimate, bringing things to your attention that should be added, that could be considered. All of them items that increase our profitability, increase the effectiveness and the consistency of that scope. And it can do anything from helping a new team member assimilate some estimating best practices. And it also helps the grizzled vets add back that few % that we've just forgot over time. So actionableinsights, getinsights. Org/ floodlight, and take a look at what the Actionable Insights Xactimate profile could be doing for you and your team. One of the things that we've seen, I think a lot of teams lean into, and once they do, it's very interesting the result that it begins to create. That's this idea that part of showing our people that we care about them is a commitment around establishing systems and processes. It's not just all the rainmakers and the breakfast, all of that, obviously, from a relationship perspective, is so impactful.
[00:33:46.140] - Brandon
But there's also just this more utilitarian raw business aspect that when we really dial in systems and processes, that's also part of the way that we show our people that we care about them. We equip them, we make them confident by the things that we put in place in order to make them more successful. What's your perspective on that? And what do you feel like some of the things that you guys have done, if you do agree with it, that you've leaned into to see that happen?
[00:34:12.990] - Tim
I agree 1,000 % with that. Why do you think it is that McDonald's can serve you a hamburger anywhere in the world and that hamburger is cooked exactly the same. You can order a hamburger in Albany, Oregon, or you can order a hamburger in Albany, New York. Or anywhere in between, and it'll taste exactly the same. It's through their SOPs, their standard operating procedures and their systems and their processes. They've cracked that. And instead of your employee having to think for themselves, and you have, for us, 110 or whatever it is, 110 employees running around trying to figure out, okay, well, what is the best way for me to do this? They have the Fitzpatrick way, and it simplifies everything. And then everybody's reading from the same Bible, and they're not tasked with, I have to write my own Bible, and I might forget how I did it last week. Now, how do I want to do it this week? I'm sure that causes a lot of internal stress. Could you imagine if McDonald's hired however many hundreds of thousands of employees they had, and they just brought them in, showed them how to cook a hamburger, and then it's like, we'll just do it?
[00:35:15.530] - Tim
Can you imagine what we would get? It's funny. I actually remember there was another painting contractor. This is another squirrel that's going in front of the screen here. But there was another painting contractor, he won't mention who he is. And he actually put an article. It was in the Gazette Times, Chris. This is back when people actually still got the newspaper. That's how long this was. And he referred to Fitzpatrick Painting and Construction as the McDonald's. And it was a slam, but I took it as a compliment. You're like, excellent. Thank you so much. So, yeah. Systems and processes are key. We do not, and being completely transparent, we do not have an SOP for anything and everything in our company. We don't. We need to. If we want to take this from where we're at now to the next, next level, that's the one thing that we have to get dialed in is our SOPs have to be just on point for everything.
[00:36:03.570] - Brandon
You know what's cool? I'm totally bogarting the entire conversation, but I think what's cool about hearing you say that, and I think it's a good reminder for myself. I think it's a good reminder for a lot of the teams that are listening. Again, We've got teams that are being very successful monetarily. If you look at top-line, bottom-line, they're crushing. If you look at them in context of many of the businesses in our industry and the service sector at large, they're doing really well. I think they forget that there's It's still this opportunity to reinvest time and energy and strategy time into creating these systems and processes, developing SOPs. It's a fairly unsexy part of the work for most of us. I mean, some nerd out on it, and it's great. But for many of us, it's a hard commitment to make, and it's hard time to invest because it feels like you're putting money and energy into something, and it's hard to see the outcome right away. So again, I'm just really encouraged hearing a guy like you. We don't have hard numbers on your business. Clearly, you're in a top tier. You're doing very well and continuing to grow.
[00:37:02.410] - Brandon
And to hear you saying there's this recommitment to, you've got to make sure that you're looking at it, and it is required to continue to go to the next level. It's just a solid reminder, I think, for all of us in our businesses. Yeah, 100 %. Along those same lines, man.
[00:37:15.580] - Chris
I'm curious if we could pivot slightly and continue in this path of systems and processes and that thing. We end up spending a lot of time with clients helping them identify their metrics and KPIs in their business. This idea of leading the business from numbers. I'm curious about your thoughts on that and how that's evolved for you over the years. In the painting business, I have a number of friends who did either College Pro or CollegeWorks painting businesses in college and so forth. One of my buddies in particular He told me about his first summer and made a bunch of top line and made almost zero profit because of mishaps and his team doing crazy things and breaking windows and falling through roofs and just all kinds of crazy stuff. So it's possible, obviously, to be fantastically successful selling. And at the end of the day, have very little to show for. So what are those metrics or KPIs that you lead from and your team leads from? What are you watching in terms of profitability and so forth?
[00:38:14.790] - Tim
Yeah, that's a good question, Chris. And I agree with you a thousand %. So I have a coach. I've had a coach. And if you're a small business owner, you don't have a coach, get one, right? Could you imagine somebody playing basketball or football or whatever it is at a high level and not having a coach? It simply doesn't happen. So you should have a coach in your corner. If you don't have one, get one. I remember my coach telling me, I've been with Brian now for 16 or 17 years. And I remember Brian telling me, Tim, the numbers tell a story. And it was just like in this year and out that year, because I'm not a numbers guy. Like I told you earlier, I didn't know what a PnL was, I didn't know what a balance sheet was, I didn't know what any of that was. I just literally shot from the hip. But you have to look at your numbers. You have to know top line. Yes, of course, you have to know top line. But you got to know what's your gross profit? What's your bottom line? What are you spending on marketing?
[00:39:02.560] - Tim
If you don't know those numbers, then it can work. And it works for me very well because I just had this innate instinct and somehow managed to make things work at a smaller level. If we were still doing that at the numbers we're running today, it would be a complete mess. But another thing, too, I hear a lot of guys and they talk about top line. Oh, I'm a $20 million in your company. I'm $30 million. I'm $40 million. I'm $10. I'm $50. Whatever it is. Oh, that's nice. I know guys in my circle, other painting contractors, not in Oregon. I'm thinking of one specifically, and they did $40 million last year. Guess what their net profit was? Less than one %. Wow. Less than one %. So a lot of folks get hung up on this at It's like we want to show our badge. Oh, I'm a 10 million. I'm a 20 million. I'm a 30. That's great. That's nice. Let me go all the way down to the bottom and let's see what you're making. Because you could make, I think we could all agree, you can make $100 million top line.
[00:39:59.490] - Tim
And if you You spent $ 101 million, your life's going to suck because you just lost a million bucks, right? But if you make $100 million top line and you manage to keep 20 % net profit, you just make $20 million, right? So a lot of guys get hung up on that. They just 20 million, $30 million, $40 million. You got to know your numbers, though. You got to know what's coming in the door, obviously. And you got to know what's staying on the table, how much of that money is staying on the table. I think for small business owners, too, especially of a lot of the bucket, and we call them bucket and brush. I don't know if that's DC, but the bucket and brush guys. And I was one of those. I drove a nice truck and I was able to buy my first home, but I had no idea about my finances. And I was maybe not They're leaving paycheck to paycheck, but pretty sinking close to that because I had no clue. And going from a bucket and brush or what a lot of small business owners do is they literally, they just go from one job to the next.
[00:40:58.650] - Tim
And it's like, wow, I just deposited a hundred $1,000 on my bank account. I've got to be doing really good when they don't realize that, yeah, but you have $110,000 that's on AP, accounts payable. You're not doing good, right? But they just keep rolling that through and somehow they magically make it work. And They have a job. They're not a business owner. Their business owns them.
[00:41:19.670] - Brandon
Yeah, exactly. They're self-employed.
[00:41:21.780] - Tim
And instead of working 40 hours a week, they work 80 hours a week.
[00:41:26.220] - Brandon
Yeah, hence the nightmare that we get you got sucked into by by accident. Do you feel like, so this is very interesting. So you obviously not your natural instinct. This is something that you've had to flex into and develop competency in for the success of your business. What do you do to, I guess in the earlier phases when not all of that was hired out or delegated, how did you make that transition? Was there a mindset that you had to hold on to as you're starting to do hard things versus what you're naturally wired for to get that transition to happen?
[00:41:58.590] - Tim
There was a transition, and that simply hiring people that are smarter than me. And I know that's not the answer you're looking for, but that's the truth. I understand numbers, but I hate numbers. I mean, I've got my call once a month with my coach and we look at the PnL and my eyes start glazing over. Sure, I understand what you said, but I hate it. I will never love the minutiae of numbers. I will never love the minutiae of writing an SOP. I hate it. I'm a visionary. I love building, creating, looking at things, the marketing. I love the marketing piece. So I hired guys that were smarter than me because I'm not a numbers guy. That's why I have a CFO. And she looks at all of our numbers. And I don't have to worry about any of that. And early on, when you can't... I'm a brand new business owner. They're not going to have a CFO and they're not going to have a CFO, and they're not going to have a CEO, and they're not going to have of these C-suites filled. But you can still have something. And if you don't have the ability to have someone on your team, you're going to have to do.
[00:42:51.560] - Tim
I did some of the dirty work myself. I did pay attention to the numbers, probably not like I should have back then, but I still paid attention to those. But If you're going to be a successful small business owner, you either A, have to do some of that dirty work yourself that you don't like doing, or B, you have to bring someone in that can help you with that. Because a lot of small business owners, the majority of us, we decided to go into business because we were either A, a good painter, a good roofer, a good carpenter, fill in the blank with whatever else. We were good at our trade. And so we said, I'll go into business for myself. But because you're a good tradesman, that doesn't make you a good businessman. And I think that's the reason a lot of small businesses fail because they're like, oh, I'm the best carpenter in the world. And they go out there and it's like, well, how come this isn't working for me? Because you know absolutely nothing about running a business, nothing about numbers. And you've got more in accounts payable than you have in accounts receivable.
[00:43:44.050] - Tim
And you're just bleeding.
[00:43:45.620] - Brandon
I love the whole thing of how many times businesses are started from the perspective of somebody caught wind of what the total contract value was and versus what they're getting paid. And they're instantly like, I can do It's better. We've had so many trades team members throughout the years from our different restoration companies get this vision of grandeour of, oh, man, I'm going to go out and double my income because I can just pay. I'll make all the money. And inevitably, we get a knock on the door of, this didn't go exactly the way I had planned. Is that what I'm meaning?
[00:44:19.380] - Tim
A hundred %. We used to operate by, I'll call it a closed book, and we didn't share with our employees. They didn't know what we were making. And it was so comical because most employees If you don't actually give them just basic 101 and show them this is what we're making, they will assume you're doing a $10,000 job. Tim's got to be putting at least five, six, seven, $8,000 of that in his pocket because he only paid me $30. They just do this whatever math in their head, and they always think that it is way better than what it actually is. And I think that that's actually one of the things that probably has helped with our retention with some of our employees. You guys know we live in the same town here, right? There's a lot of painting companies out there that used to work for Fitzpatrick, and that's all fine. It's all well and good. But since we've been sharing our numbers with our employees and they can see exactly what comes in and then what stays in and how much goes out and where it goes out, I think it gives them a better understanding of this is actually what it takes to run a business.
[00:45:22.040] - Tim
You don't just go get a contractor's license, slap your name on a truck, put an ad on now social media. It used to be the yellow pages, right? You've got to to work at it. And there's a lot of stuff that's involved with this. That's why we had two guys, two guys this year that started their own business. And one of them was about eight months, the other one was about a year and a half. And they both came back. They said, You know what? The grass actually is greener over there, Tim. This isn't what I thought it was going to be.
[00:45:47.220] - Brandon
Yeah, that whole GNA, that's a scary zone if you're not aware of what all starts to happen under those cost codes. As far as do you mind, you don't have to give hard numbers, obviously, but do you mind sharing What is that? How do you report on that? And how much transparency do you have?
[00:46:03.700] - Chris
Yeah, what does that look like? Is that part of the meeting? So we don't do it every month, but they'll know what the job size is, all of the gross profit.
[00:46:12.060] - Tim
So what our guys see is they see the dollar amount. They know what we charge for every single job. They'll see the gross profit. They'll know what that number is after labor, direct cost of goods sold. After all that is plugged in, they'll know the gross profit on that. And then we actually haven't, complete transparency see with you guys, it's been, gosh, dang, it's probably been over a year. This is something I got to put on my list of things to do. This conversation is good. Just gave me more work. We haven't in over a year shared with our team. We used to share everything below the gross profit as well, but it's literally been over a year now that I'm thinking back since we've done that. But we share with them marketing expenses. This is how much we pay for marketing on this. This is how much we pay for vehicles. All those vehicles sitting out there. Oh, my gosh. And we'd lightly share a lot of that stuff. Like even at the last meeting, I was thinking, I shared with the guys that I had just invested over $200,000 in vehicles. Sure, I didn't literally write the checks.
[00:47:05.580] - Tim
They're fine. It wouldn't be a good business owner if we went out and wrote a check for 200 grand for a business. There's a lot of reasons why you should either lease those or finance them rather than writing a check, whether you have the money in the bank or not. But we share a lot of that stuff with our team. But having this conversation with you guys is reminding me. I'm not sharing as much with them as I have in the past, but we used to share all of it. And they should know, okay, you did a $10,000 job. Wow, you only kept $1,000 on on the table for that job or $2,000, or whatever that number ended up being. They need to know that.
[00:47:34.060] - Brandon
Yeah. Actually, I think the fact that you pointed towards the element that this actually can be a retention factor is very interesting. I think that we see a lot of times there's this disconnect between leadership and downline, and it's mainly based on assumptions and a lack of information. It's rarely malicious intent. It's just this we start to spend a story if we don't really have the details. And the less details we have, the more room we have to spend a story. And often that story is a riddled with not truth. And it often takes us into a position that's not super healthy or builds unity or commitment. And it's funny because I feel like when we've talked about transparency in financials with most business owners, they're really afraid to do that. I don't know. I can understand. I mean, even in our business, there are certain elements where I'm like, I don't love sharing every element of the detail. But I think the more transparent you can be, it It just takes some of the mystery out of it. And now all of a sudden, they don't think you're buying new Corvettes every Saturday, but that you're actually a lot of that money is going back into the entity, into the business to do the things like you say, show our people we care about them, right?
[00:48:44.430] - Brandon
Do you have Anything to say about that? Was there a little bit of a mental gymnastics that you did as you started to become more transparent with your finances?
[00:48:51.250] - Tim
Oh, yeah, a thousand %. I remember back in the day, I used to tear, and this is when we were still using paper contracts, I would tear the bottom edge of the contract off before I handed it to my employees because I didn't want them to know what we charged for the job. Because I had this mental block in my head. If they know what I'm charging for the job, they're going to paint the story that's fictional. Yes, that is true. They're going to. And if we don't educate our employees and we don't share with them some basics of the numbers, you don't have to get into the weeds. But if they don't have a rough idea of what it's taking to run the company, they're going to paint their own story. And I guarantee you 10 times out of 10, your numbers are going to be way better than what they actually are. And you're going to be making way more money than what you actually are. That's the story they're going to create. So do you, A, want to create a real story that has real numbers, or B, let your employee create this fictitious story that makes you out to be this guy that's got millions and millions of dollars just sitting around at his disposal.
[00:49:54.700] - Tim
Because I don't care if you're running a million dollar business or if you're running a $40 million business, you don't Don't have millions and millions of dollars sitting at the bank at your disposal. It takes a lot of money to run a business. That building that we're putting up in the back here, that costs money. Everything does. And for our employees to be able to hear that like, oh, okay, great. And they also need to hear that the company is healthy. They need to know that. If you're working for a company and the company is not profitable, that's not a good place to be. You might want to look for another job because that company may or may not be in business tomorrow. But working for a company that, yes, I know this company is profitable. And I also know that this company invests back in both to the employees and in the company, whether it's a new building, whether it's new vehicles, whether it's training, a training center, you name it, fill in the blank, they're investing in the company. Well, now you've got part of that magic sauce, right? Because now the employees, they have that sense of security.
[00:50:50.040] - Tim
And they know that Tim is just not out there buying brand new Corvettes on the weekends, but he's actually taking that money and he's investing into the company. And, oh, yeah, I work for that company.
[00:51:00.950] - Brandon
Yeah, that's wise. I think there's profound relational impact when we're just more honest about what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how it impacts those that are on the boat with us. It's not easy to do mentally, but I just think the value in it long term, it's wise. I just think there's a ton of wisdom associated with it.
[00:51:20.170] - Tim
Yeah, 100 %.
[00:51:21.470] - Chris
We've covered a lot of ground. This has been really fun, man. As we get ready to land the plane, I got a few just more, I guess, curious questions for you. We have a big audience of business owners, and so I think it's always fun. We always get great feedback when we have owners on for these conversations. And so if I can hit you with some questions here at the very end. The first one I have is, you mentioned Tommy Mello, but what are some other learning resources, mentors, public figures maybe that you follow that you drive a lot of inspiration from, maybe podcasts you listen to or books that you're reading, that thing?
[00:51:53.940] - Tim
Yeah, I listen to Tommy Mello. It's Home Service Freedom. I listen to his podcast. I I actually listen to, and this isn't what this podcast is about at all, but I listen to a lot of real estate, guys. Because I think, Chris, maybe you know I've got a passion for real estate. So I listen to Brandon Turner, Bigger Pockets, Ryan Paneda, Out of Vegas. I listen to a lot of stuff that Ryan puts out. I also listen to... Oh, my goodness, his name just left me. He's the number one. I think he's the number one public speaker in the world right now.
[00:52:23.590] - Brandon
What's Tommy's piece again?
[00:52:25.500] - Tim
Tommy Melo, Home Service Freedom. Ed Milet. Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah. Everybody Everybody knows who Ed Milet is. I love Ed Milet. You either love him or not, but I love Ed Milet's material. Yeah, The Wealthy Way, that's the one from Ryan Pineda, but his podcast is called Wealthy Way. Contractor Evolution is another good one. Haven't listened to their podcast for quite a while, but they're on here, and I used to listen to their stuff. Contractor evolution.
[00:52:49.300] - Chris
Right on. Another thing, too, is business owners start to become more successful, and they've got more leftover money at the end of the year. One of their biggest problems becomes taxes. So if you could leave one tax tip that you've discovered over the years that's had the biggest impact on your overall wealth and personal income, what would that be? Anything stand out? Yep.
[00:53:09.310] - Tim
Buy real estate and do cost segregation on your real estate.
[00:53:12.740] - Brandon
I feel like we just had a five-second segment with Paul.
[00:53:16.520] - Chris
There you go. Paul, yeah.
[00:53:17.960] - Tim
I know Paul is in the same thing.
[00:53:19.870] - Chris
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:53:21.060] - Brandon
Do you mind just giving us the 15-second definition? What are you talking about there in case somebody hasn't heard about it before.
[00:53:26.350] - Tim
You better talk to Paul to get the intelligence. So cost segregation. I honestly couldn't even explain how it works. But basically what they do is, so say you have a property that's valued at a million dollars. They'll cost out however they do it, and they'll figure out how much money you can essentially put in the bucket that's tax-deferred that you don't have to pay taxes on that property. So we just had cost segregation on all of my properties. But just on the building here alone, I forget what the number was, but I think it was over $200,000 that my cost said guy. It's the same guy that Paul was actually the one that referred me to this guy. But I can't to speak intelligently about it. I really can't. That's why I literally write the check and have someone do it for me. All that I know is that those numbers save me literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on taxes. But taxes is one of those things. It's a catch-22. If you want to make money, you've got to pay tax. There's no magic bullet If you're making money, you're paying taxes. So, yeah, I made a bunch of money.
[00:54:18.420] - Tim
I had to pay a bunch of taxes. A lot of people go, that's a terrible thing. Is it a terrible thing? The alternative is, don't make any money and don't pay any taxes.
[00:54:25.170] - Brandon
Yeah, there is. But cost-save. But cost-save.
[00:54:28.520] - Tim
Yeah, that's the short answer It's buy real estate and cost-sake.
[00:54:31.690] - Brandon
Yeah. My limited understanding of this, and we actually that reminds me we should get Paul to talk about it. Yeah, we need to talk about it.
[00:54:36.520] - Chris
It's super fun.
[00:54:37.300] - Brandon
But the idea is, let's say you buy that million dollar piece of property, they're going to separate the dirt from the improvement in terms of its value. Then basically, there's a rapid depreciation model that you're able to recognize on the approved property. So not the dirt, but on the facilities, the buildings. That's where you get some really ridiculous numbers that you're able to look for favor. It's really powerful stuff.
[00:55:02.460] - Chris
Offset income, yeah.
[00:55:03.680] - Tim
Yeah, they're separating me. I mean, literally the light bulbs. They're figuring out how much is this guy going to spend on light bulbs for the next 10 years, and they're costing that into the number, all of it.
[00:55:11.220] - Brandon
It's super cool.
[00:55:12.110] - Chris
Is there a certain category of real estate that you like in particular that you've been more successful in?
[00:55:17.040] - Tim
I like multifamily.
[00:55:18.340] - Brandon
Oh, you do.
[00:55:19.290] - Chris
And do you like to jump in and invest with other people, or do you like to invest solo?
[00:55:24.500] - Tim
I invest solo. There's so many different ways to invest in real estate. I actually belong to a real estate this your mind. And everybody in my group, we all have our... One guy is doing syndication, one guy is doing short term rentals. I have one short term rental, but it's not what I do. One guy is doing multifamily, another guy is doing commercial. There's so many ways to invest in real estate. If you're someone and you're listening to this podcast and you have some excess money sitting around and you want to invest in real estate, but you don't know how to do that, or maybe you don't... I've got all the resources right at my fingertips. I've got a construction company and a painting company. So that makes it pretty easy for me to buy a piece of property and then go out there and fix it up and force the appreciation on that property rapidly. If you're someone that doesn't have that, but you do have some cash sitting in the bank, I would say, find some other partners and do a syndication, do a joint venture with some of these other guys. There's a lot of money to be made in that arena as well.
[00:56:16.120] - Tim
I've just never played in that arena. So for me, it's been the multifamily. I buy fixer uppers. They just happen to be multifamily. And then we fix them up and we hold on to them and buy the next one.
[00:56:26.200] - Chris
It's so smart when you're in the trades, when you have a restoration a construction crew. You've got great relationships with subs. I mean, that's a huge resource in terms of being able to cost-effectively remodel and renovate your typical real estate investor often doesn't have, right? So that's neat. Okay.
[00:56:45.640] - Brandon
I got a final question for you, Tim. If you had the one thing that you would pass on to somebody that's in their growth trajectory, let's say they're three, four million, they're headed to 10, 15 over the next five years, what's the one thing that Had you paid attention to this earlier, it may have been able to speed up the progress that you've had with your business.
[00:57:06.780] - Tim
The one thing that would have sped up the progress of my business is if I would have paid attention to my numbers earlier, that would have helped put me on the trajectory much, much quicker. But the one thing that I would have done is, and I mentioned this earlier, I think I would have got a business coach. If you're in business and you don't have a business coach, I don't care if you're doing $100,000 a year or $100 million, get a business coach. If you to be successful and you want to perform well, you need a coach, period.
[00:57:35.110] - Brandon
And what is it? What do you feel like is the real value that they're bringing to that relationship for you?
[00:57:40.240] - Tim
For most of us, if you're a business owner and you know all the answers and you've got it all figured out, you know marketing, you know your P&L, you know your balance sheet, you know how to... Everything that goes into a business, you've got all that figured out, then yeah, you probably don't need a business coach because you know how to do it. You don't need anybody to help you. But if you're like the rest of us and you don't have it all figured out, and you could actually have somebody in your arena that either A, has walked that before, or B, has to wear with all the intelligence to be able to see things from an outside, the 30,000 foot not in the trenches, because as business owners, we're in our business. We're in it. We own it. It's our baby. But having a coach that is not their business, they see things that you don't see because they're stepped back and they can see a broader, bigger picture. So there's so many reasons why you need to have a coach. Again, going back to athletics, I think we would all agree that it would be absurd for anybody.
[00:58:37.040] - Tim
I was actually watching the Olympics and sorry, total squirrel here, but I was watching ping pong. But you guys know that ping pong is in the Olympics? It's crazy. I got sucked into watching ping pong. It's the most boring, but yet not boring. I'm like, oh, my, ping pong. And they have coaches. They're a ping pong player, and they got coaches. So it doesn't matter what the sport is. These guys have coaches in their corner that are helping them perform at the best level that they can perform at, even the silly ping pong players. I like ping pong. I've got a ping pong table.
[00:59:07.280] - Brandon
I love it. I feel like we owe you now because you just pitch consulting for us really well, better than we can. But just to attest to what you're saying, we have one. And it's one of the biggest turns that we've had in our business this year is that we followed our own lead. And we have one to help us guide us where we're headed and think about things from 30,000 feet. It's very powerful.
[00:59:27.160] - Tim
Yeah, that's awesome.
[00:59:28.790] - Chris
Well, Tim, man, this has been really fun, dude. It's been fun to reconnect. And I'm glad you're doing well. And best of luck as you continue growing your business. And thanks for joining us today, man. Appreciate it.
[00:59:38.390] - Tim
Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Brandon. I appreciate it. This has been fun. I had no idea what to expect. You asked me to be on the podcast. Like, great. I've literally came straight from the gym. I got my workout pose on. And you guys, the lighting, you guys are in this cool studio with perfect lighting and all. And then there's me. I got this bright light shining on my forehead and a deer antler in the back. And I got to step on my game, I got to get the right lighting so maybe I can look halfway as good-looking as you guys do on camera.
[01:00:04.540] - Brandon
That's your next horizon, man. You just double the size of your business and start a podcast. You'll be okay.
[01:00:09.830] - Tim
There you go. All right. Appreciate you guys. Be well.
[01:00:14.260] - Chris
Thanks.
[01:00:16.600] - Brandon
All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[01:00:21.910] - Chris
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