Building a Strong Team in the Painting Business Progress over Perfection

everybody to another episode of the pursuit of purpose

my name is Chris Kiefer

and today I have Sean Kennedy

from Kennedy Painting in Saint Louis

so Sean thank you so much for coming on today

no thanks for asking me Chris

appreciate it

tell me uh the like 2 to 3 minute uh

bio on who Sean Kennedy is

the origin story right

yeah okay um

uh so I uh got into painting

um I didn't do very good in high school

I actually barely got out of high school

um I was the guy smoking cigarettes behind the gym

not paying attention

um uh kind of fell into painting like a lot of us do

um worked for a couple hack outfits uh

over the years and uh

but one of them was a

was a company that was really

great and actually showed like the

the idea of what a business could look like

um I grew up outside of Chicago

and then moved to Saint Louis after meeting my wife

and when I came down here

I worked for another one of those hack outfits and uh

until that ended up working its way out and started uh

basically a truck and a brush

actually was a 84 Buick Lesabre Limited and a brush uh

was the was the was the origin of Kennedy painting uh

did a job for my rear for my um

my landlord um

after leaving that other position um

that turned into a couple jobs for him

which turned into a friend of a friend and

and then that's where it started

so up to now we're uh I

I've upgraded from a Buick to a full size pickup truck

um we have 50 employees now in the company

um you know

and uh and are

are doing pretty well been in business 25 years uh

so truck and a brush to 50 employees and and

and a truck now so

that's awesome

I just had to uh

look this up

so this is the uh

oh that's it was it was uh

we it was nicknamed the plump cause it looked like uh

it was all monkey poop brown

so but that's it

that's her right there yeah

no reverse it had had a yet be creative with parking

all that's the plant right there

yep that's her

have better wheels on it though that's it

imagine that going down the road with a 40 foot ladder

strap to the top that just as professionalism so uh yep

no no it didn't last long yeah

I guess that I my head it didn't

it didn't have any reverse

so it was a it was a short lived

it was a short lived vehicle once I had

to start working

so working for myself so yeah

so um how like you

you start this business

and then now you guys have been in business for

how many years did you say

uh 25 years legitimately so

far as the government knows so yes

so what was the like over time

some these are

these are things that when I think of Sean Kennedy

that like I think of

but you're constantly like

of all the business owned

painting business owners that I talk to

you are one of

the people that is more interested in just like

just let's get a little bit better

and I don't know if this is something that you would

relate to but I remember in high school

I had a coach that was just adamant on

we just need to get 1% better every day

let's look for like just a tiny

what can we do better

like that could be

we're gonna eat healthier

we're gonna get a little more sleep

we're going to

you know do that extra rep in the gym

but like whatever it was

he was always like

let's just chip away do

do a little bit more

and then that 1% every day is gonna add up

and we're gonna be significantly better than

the people that are coasting or taking it easy

does that like

did you have a time in your life where you like

adopted this mentality or mindset

or where does that desire for

constant improvement come from

um I ask you a question

I think as I've gotten older

I've been more open to the idea of incremental changes

versus when I was younger

you go down and you wanna

you know you wanna attack the buffet

you want everything off the buffet

versus as you get older

you kinda realize that

small change over a long period of time is much more um

it's it's better

it's easier on everybody

it also is more likely to stick

versus trying to change a whole bunch of things at once

um I don't know

I've always been you know

I've heard this

this drive that I have in myself of just

little improvement

improving things

it's been phrased as not always a positive uh

to be honest

there's a lot of

I don't really stop to celebrate successes

I'm onto the next thing I

I think which can burn people out

um I think I've been in

in the past accused of being a pessimist

um because of the I I

I tend to be a gap person

like if we hit 95%

I wonder how we could you know

what happened to the other five

you know instead of celebrating the 95

instead of celebrating the a

I look at we just got an a instead of an A+ so

um so it's not a great

characteristic trait of myself in a lot

in a lot of instances

it drives my wife crazy

I'm surprised she's still with me

um but uh but it's

it's gotten better

I think I've made it more as I've gotten older

I'm just turned 50

so as I've as I've gotten older

I've Learned to dial it back a little

bit to something that's more manageable and

and really more meaningful it

it's it's a lot easier to stick

at that 1% every month than it is to try to get

you know big

big changes quick

so that's making me think like

I can relate to what you're saying about

when tell me

I could be totally projecting

but for me if I

if I'm the business owner and we set a goal of

100,000 of whatever

in whatever time frame that is

but that's the goal

we hit 95,000

the fear that immediately comes up inside of me is that

if I celebrate the 95,000

then I've just discredited the goal

and then next time we

have a goal

then the company knows that

Chris is still gonna celebrate if we get close

does that resonate with you

or is that just me

is that that's where my mind goes

yeah so yeah

there there's

there's definitely truth to that

like you don't want to celebrate okay

you don't wanna

you don't wanna just

just keep moving the goal post closer and closer

so you're you're hitting goals

or I think it diminishes the goal

but I think it is also good to look at that

if you come up short a lot

maybe you're

we as owners sometimes set maybe two high goals

maybe we maybe we are unreasonable and in some of that

so um but but there is truth to that you don't

good may be good

but it's not great

uh I don't know if that makes sense or not um

and and there sometimes a lot of times there's

there's celebrating

good is worth celebrating um

great is really worth celebrating and uh

making sure you're not uh

you know you're not

rolling out the red carpet for

for for an average month when you really had something

set higher to drive toward but uh

but you gotta make sure that you're you're

you're looking at the successes

you know you're working with people's strength

people's successes

my well cause I'm thinking that uh

I feel like

this is maybe something that I read in a book

but the or this thought

I don't know where it came from

but it's like for myself

if I have a goal of hitting something personally

and it's just an internal goal

maybe I wrote it down on a piece of paper

told my wife

but when I don't hit it

I'm more likely to give Grace to myself and be like

oh you know

there were circumstances whatever

but it's like the

it's that transition from how I manage or

or coach myself versus others

and the fear is that if I give the same

you know Grace to others

then they are not going to have

the same drive or whatever that I have um

I don't know if

if that resonates with you at all

but that's how

that's like

I know that the right thing to do is to treat

others in that same way

and just trust that high performers

or the people on my team are going to want to

you know they

everybody wants to win

so why should I be ruthless in that

like expect expectation

but I also I don't know

I kind of feel like for myself

I like having coaches that are like

you could have done better

and it's like yep

you're right

you know yeah

yeah people

people certain people do better with being challenged

and it's funny

I'm less likely to give Grace on myself

than I am on my people I

I I and again

that's something that's changed over the years too

I used to just be hard on everybody

myself even twice as much but um

but I really tried to

I think one of the things that is

you look at the big numbers in business

you look at your big KPIs and you

if you're if you're hitting the big numbers

there's always something

there's always something that's gonna be off

there's always something that's gonna be screwed up

there's gonna be something you're coming up short on um

but try to set the stage for people to win at

at what they're good at

I think that

in the past

I really worked on

tried to work on or might

just might perceive deficiencies of the people that I

that I'd worked around

tried to work with them on

getting better at what they're

not great at

instead of really embracing what they are good at and

and and leveraging that

and I think that's been a fundamental change in

my company in my happiness

my personal happiness too

instead of looking you know

like I said earlier

as a gap person

I look for that

that shortcoming

instead of looking for the shortcoming in the person

you look for the strengths of the person

and try to work with that

and I think that changes things and sets people up

that doesn't mean you don't hold them accountable

it doesn't mean you don't still strive for hard goals

but you framed it in a way that

that you're working toward their

their strengths

equal the success of wherever you're going

that reminds me of uh

uh the book

James Clear Atomic Habits

have you read that book

uh no yeah I think that's a good point um

so it has he has a quote in there that is

you do not rise to the level of your goals

you fall to the level of your systems and um

the this conversation is just making me think

the correct way to do it is

obviously if you hit the goal or not

and I don't know if you agree with this

but I would say as I'm working through this

opinion myself right now in real time

instead of celebrating the goal

you should be celebrating the systems that

you have in place that are in design to hit the goal

right but if you did all the things that

if you hit all the KPIs and you still miss the goal

that's when we're gonna celebrate

that you were 95% of the way there

because the systems are in place

but then conversely

if you hit the goal

but you like were giving 40% or 50% to the KPIs

you know is that something to celebrate

I don't know

like the did we

it's just like trying to optimize

the system to give the result that you want

so like this year we are down on revenue

we set a goal of 5 million this year and we're not

we're breaking 5 million

or we're gonna be short of that um

but our profit is great

you know so I'm willing to sacrifice I

I would I would rather have the profit oh yeah

I'd rather be over on profit and under on revenue

than over on revenue and lower on profit

so to your point there

it's so even though we're not hitting all of our goals

the systems and the and the um

the progress we've made this year is definitely worth

celebrating uh

to those people

so not and we're not hitting all of them

I'm not gonna be hardline about that

it's a lot easier to say that when

when profit is the number you're hitting

and not revenue right so

yeah it's a lot easier to say that when you have money

in the bank versus not so

um how do you um

well I guess what other

I have other questions that could be going deeper

in a direction that my mind's going

but what other like topics on this

what are their thoughts questions

comments do you have on this idea of

like leading a company towards constant improvement

um in general

yeah I I think there's a

a couple of things

I think you wanna take people with you instead of

driving them ahead of you or pulling them you know

you wanna you wanna

you wanna take them with

you instead of dragging them behind you

and I think that's uh

there was a book

uh I think it even had that title or something

like taking people with you or

or something like that

that I read years ago um

but it really is that that

that not everybody is going to be as driven

as the next guy or as able to do as the next person

but you need a team to succeed

and if you're just constantly whipping

whipping the mule to get that extra step out of them it

it sometime you

you get it turns on you

it can turn on you really quick

where you start losing culture

and all the stuff that you work for

you know the goal at the end of the day is it's

you know these

these KPIs that we look at in businesses

they really are the related to like

people and a team that has to help you get there

and if you if you

if you forget that and just focus on the number

you have a you have ability to

to sabotage yourself and either driving people too hard

um for years um

I asked of people things that they couldn't give me

they just weren't good at that

thing that I needed them to do in their role

and you know

we parted ways

and unfortunately

in some of the instances

we parted ways not as friends

which is never good when emotions take over in business

um but but yeah

making sure that you're not breaking

you're not breaking the car trying to get off the hill

do you have any suggestions or tips or things that

you've Learned in managing people

that you would give to an owner

that's like beating their head against the wall because

their people are not hitting the goals

and it's like

it's like diving into that question of maybe you're not

maybe the goal that you're giving

the person isn't suited for that person

skill set or their personality or whatever

but what like tactical things

and I'm thinking in my mind

I'm thinking like disc

profiles um

levels of leadership

I don't know that whatever stuff you're drawn to

but that kind of

that sphere is where I think is interesting

and I'm not an expert in it

yeah I I think first

you know if you're not hitting for not hitting

someone's not hitting goals you

you internal eye you look

are the goals correct

or they you know

or they make sure they're not overly

ambitious or burdensome um

and then looking at

you know the persons uh

habits that go under the behaviors

and going into reaching those

and then finally

if it's something that once long from so I had a um

one of the guys that helped me start the company really

uh he and I work together and

and would hire people and that'll him

he progressed into a position of as a field supervisor

or as a foreman um

he was great painter

really great guy

but did not

did not like conflict

I mean he actively avoided conflict

so in a lot of times as small businesses

we we promote

people up into positions that they just fundamentally

don't have in them right

because that's what you need at the time um

and and that was one

one of the situations that you know

got to a point where he was stressed out completely

because he was being asked to have

all these confrontations of quality and

and discipline with

with the painters that reported to him

and he was getting run over

and I was getting more frustrated

and we realized just hey man

it's just it's not in you

it's okay it

it's but if you don't

if you don't wanna paint

and you don't wanna manage painters

then probably working

at a painting company isn't a good fit for you

so we had to part ways um

but I think that's one of those scenarios is that

for the for different roles

there's different

personality types and behavior types that you need

for those roles

you don't want a

you don't want a bookkeeper that's really

not good with details and super gregarious

you know the life of the party yeah

you don't want uh

you don't want a field supervisor that is afraid of

having conflict and having hard discussions with people

same thing with sales people

you don't want a salesperson that isn't driven to

hit goals um

and the quicker you can identify

I think people really are who they are

and you can work with them

and this goes back to like saying

instead of working with people's deficiencies

you can improve them slightly

you can give them tools and

and and scripts and procedures and systems to better

or to better some of them

but in a lot of cases

the systems and processes were putting in place

are us just trying to prevent failure

they're not fostering success

so working with people strength allows them to really

expand what they're good at and

and do that

but but again

there's a lot of people that are just wrong for the

the the the

the the right people for the wrong role

and uh and you

gotta find a different seat forum in

in the company or you just part ways and

everybody's typically happier and less stressful when

when you come to have those conversations

so I'm thinking

uh you've got

you've grown this business

um to now you guys are at is it 4 million or no

yeah I was going

we're just gonna

yep just try

I'm I it's making me think of the statistic of like

you know 90% of businesses fail

and I think it's something like even after

that's in the first year

but then um

or no I think it's

over within the first five years or something

there's a huge

huge percentage of businesses that don't make it

so there's two parts of this question one is

I don't know if you've ever heard of the term

zone of genius or like your unique ability Dan

Dan Sullivan calls it your unique ability

and everybody

once you find your unique ability

the more you can do that thing

whatever it is

and then out delegate or outsource everything else

the better off you're gonna be

and the more fun you're gonna have

the more money you're gonna make because your

that's where you're you are

uniquely designed or set up to provide the most value

which is going to in turn bring in the most

you know value revenue back to you

but I don't know if you've ever heard that term before

but I would say in reflecting on 25 years

what would you say

is Sean Kennedy's unique ability that

enabled him to run this business from zero to 20

to 5 million in 25 years

yeah and and of all the growth

the I think in 29 2009

2008 or something like that

we were doing a half a million

so the so the most of the growth

so the first whatever was 10 years was just

everything went through me um

I think my unique abilities become

that I'm pretty good at

at putting teams together

I'm pretty good at

at at fostering discussions between people and

and and you know

and putting teams together

um I think when I got out of my own way and

let people that are better and smarter than me do

do their job

uh things have gotten a lot better

um you know

even that it

it took a long time for me to let go

and especially as a small business owner you know

Kennedy painting

you know you

you wrap yourself up in your identity

that's why I named it Kennedy painting

right it's not

I always say that's the worst thing I ever did

was name it Kennedy painting

cause it's not about me anymore

it's about you know

I'm just an employee of the company

if I get hit by the bus tomorrow

suit my accounting manager

can sign my name better than I can for the payroll

so you know

it's really my ability to find people

to put them in positions of success

and then get them to work with each other

constructively

I think has been

has been the most rewarding thing for me

and I think the thing that I'm I'm

I'm decent at anyway

I wouldn't say good I'm decent

have you heard that term before

unique ability

Arizona genius

uh something around that

not exactly that phrase

but but but yeah

you it and I think it goes to

allowing people to do what they're really good at

and getting out of their way

and then maybe even putting a team that you know

you put a couple of people together that um

I think a good team is diverse right

you have the auditor on the team

you have the enthusiastic person on the team

you have the

you know the um

uh you know

the person that really likes just

that can break it down into little pieces to

get things implemented

you know I uh

if it's all one person

you're only getting

and this is where we're at like

you know again

the the the

the zone of genius

a lot of times when we start our own business

it is us we are huh

it's like when you go to to

you know yeah

you're everything and um

it's like when we

you know we've

I've been reaching out to

to smaller companies

we're trying to hire on painters and

and staff to grow

cause right now we're limited

we're limited in our market by my ability to

get more people and more

more leaders and more painters

and so we've been reaching out to smaller companies

competitors to possibly buy them up

but when you talk to somebody you know

Joe Blow's painting is really just Joe Blow I mean

there's nothing there

except for a bunch of broken ladders and Joe

and if he doesn't come with the company

then there's really nothing to buy um

or there's nothing to really work with

so from I've heard this said once

that every entrepreneur

in order like

in order to grow as a business or as a person

well first of all

in order for the business to grow

it's only gonna grow

as much as the leader is able or willing to grow um

and so I've

this is something that fascinates me

but I love having people

entrepreneurs talk about the

ceilings that they had to break through mentally

or the limiting beliefs that you may have had that were

holding you back from continuing to grow

and it could be something as simple as like

not believing in yourself

well I guess that's simple on one hand

but it's also

really massive if you don't believe in yourself um

but do you have

does that resonate with you

do you have any

limiting beliefs that you feel like were um

if you could have gone back 25 years ago

and told Sean Kennedy hey

you know know this

that would have made this journey

much more efficient or less painful

or whatever

uh yeah um absolutely

I think you know

one of the first big lessons that you know

you learn is that if you wanna scale something

you gotta you know

you gotta get out of the way

um a lot of times

you know for years

I limited what our company was able to do

because I had to be involved in everything

the head trash around

well says Kennedy Painting

so only I'm the best salesperson in the company

or it says Kennedy Painting

so the customer needs to see me on the job site

um that's like the first big lesson that I took away

is that you need to get out of way yourself sometimes

to let to let the

uh you know

what prevents someone from getting out of the way

control uh I mean

typically don't go into business for yourself

cause you're easy to get along with

a lot of times we have as owners

we have control issues

um I'm sure in

in in your business

I'm sure there are certain aspects of

of what you do that you have

certain things you've gotta

you feel like you have to keep your hand on

or just doesn't get done right

so welcome back

but then the solution obviously is like okay I'll

I'll give up control

but it seems like there's

I was taught I'll use an example of uh

I won't I will not try and keep the person anonymous

but a person

a friend I know is uh

growing this business and they

they are doing every single aspect

and it's a media thing

so it's not it there

it's like video editing and stuff

and they're just doing all of it

and to me I'm like

there's other people that can video edit

there's other people that can do the outreach and like

it's just so obvious something should be delegated

but they're in this mindset

I don't know if it's fear of

that's where I would say like

what is the thought process

cause I do agree that it's control

but isn't there also like some aspect of um

I don't know if

anyone else would want to do this for me

or it's almost like

you're not giving yourself permission to get

grow the business bigger

like if you actually thought

when you were a 250,000 dollar painting company

that you had the capacity to lead

a 4 million dollar painting company

or five or six or seven

it's like you were miss

I would say a lot of people are missing

the belief that they have what it takes to be that big

if they had the belief

they would immediately be like

right now you think differently today

and if you were

if everything was taken away

and you were dropped out on the street

and you had your Buick Lesabre again

it would take you you know

a couple years to get to where you are now

there are self limiting beliefs when you don't know

for some for a lot of people

some people

I'm more of like a researcher

I like to I like to

to kinda plot out a couple of different

options before I make a decision on it and and um

a lot of times that's limiting

you know uh

I think not wanting to just jump in um

and and fall on your face

uh that's that could be hold people back

um I think the

the control issue of somebody can't do it

as good as I can do it

that's more of an ego thing um

I don't know

but that can be limiting

just not knowing what you don't know is a lot of it too

there's also a lot of it

a lot of hesitation at

at smaller sizes when

especially if you're trying to build

a team of managers or even the next level beyond that

Amanda full management team is that

there's a lot of stuff that we do in growing a business

as starting out as the entrepreneur

then developing it that you

you just do it because you do it

you don't know how you do it

you don't know how you got there

you you know

cause everything swimming around all the time

a lot of the limitations could even be as like

hey I don't even know the first step of

training somebody to take this position over um

and that's a real that's a real concern too

is is slowing down enough to write down

and start setting up processes and systems

so you can repeat that

but even from the beginning

that's a daunting task too

it's like who's got time

I'm trying to run this company and do sales and

get stuff produced and

and answer the phone and make payroll

who's got time to sit down and actually

who's got the luxury to sit down with a

cup of coffee in front of the fire and

write down how I make decisions you know

and that can be that can hold you back too

but that's also

arguably some of the most important things

that you can invest your time in

have you heard of the book

uh who not how

oh yeah yeah

I haven't read it but I've heard of it yeah

it's though the principle I think

you know anyone can

the way I always describe it is that the

the world in our education system sets you up from

you know first grade of like

here's a problem

figure out how to solve it

here's a problem

figure out how to solve it

here's a problem

figure out how to solve it

and so we go into business and we're like

oh problem problem problem

how am I gonna do it

how am I gonna do it

how am I gonna do it

and then you are just caught in this

you know problem solving mode

and entrepreneurs are quite good at that

so feels good we're solving problems

but the big unlock to really scale

is to see the problem and just ask yourself

who do I know that could solve this problem for me

you know perfectly

much more quickly

efficiently

whatever um

and there's a number of aspects of a painting company

business that I would think like

again this is

you know this now

but I'm just thinking like

the things you just said about

teaching someone how to be a manager

you don't even have those resources

but it's like

knowing what you know now

I would assume that

you probably have a number of coaches that on Day 1

you would have called and said hey

I need help with X

y and Z get this training program for me or like

like those types of specialized knowledge

things that you quickly identified

I don't know how to do this

but rather than the traditional way

which would be

I'm gonna take 3 years to figure out

how to do it myself

I'm just gonna go hire the person that

has been doing this for their career and train my team

yeah I outsource it

or even when a big problem comes along is to you know

you can even tackle it internally

but you're trying to outsource

you're trying to get out of your head

like the thought process to train your people

like I think that's like you said

with entrepreneurs

the first thing you wanna do

is you wanna jump on that grenade

you know I wanna

there's a problem

I'm gonna tackle it

it's gonna get done and we're gonna move on with my day

whereas catching yourself to slow down

and ask people what their thoughts are

and then take the time to coach people through a

decision making process

allows you to get out of the way

down the road

I think a lot of um

entrepreneurs they

they have a hard time maybe with trusting

um you know

trusting people to do things or make big

decisions in their absence and

and in doing that

in slowing yourself down

and getting more people involved in

or the right people in your

inside your own company

involved in helping with the decision making process

they're showing their

their everyday building that

that trust that you have for them

either they're showing you that

that they are competent people

you made the right decision in hiring them

they are smart

they can do this

they don't need you

and a lot of times you're just you know

you just need to get out of their way

and let them do it you know

you wanna have the right expectations

cause the other side of that is okay

now I'm gonna delegate everything

and I'm just gonna go fishing everyday

and you're leaving your people to to you can

you can pendulum too much in one direction

either you do everything or I do nothing

and either way

I'm a victim of

of the circumstance

but I'm your

it's your own fault you know

what is the future of Kennedy painting

what are your goals for the business for yourself

um what does that look like

yeah I I think I'm at an interesting point

I just turned 50 um

my wife's gonna she's a school teacher

she teaches high school um

and she's gonna be retiring in 10 years so that yeah

my son is 15

he's gonna be driving next week

hopefully if he

he doesn't crash the test drive car while the guy

while the the the driver's license person's in it um

but now there's some big changes

you know there's

there's empty Nestor syndrome is on the horizon and and

uh you know

I've spent the last 25 years

you know in this business owners

we sacrifice

we you know

these things aren't built on

you know somebody said a while ago

success starts after 40

and it's not

it's not like 40 years old

it's after 40 hours a week

it's that it's that 60th hour

you put in is when the real change happens

when you're

when you're growing something right

at the end of it

you know as we as I

my goal right now is to develop

a fully functioning management team that

can make these big decisions

and me get out of their way and let them operate

and I've also got it

I've got the next round of great young

I've got a few people that are in their 30

mid thirties

uh upper thirties in my company of

of young managers that are invested in the company

and engaged and enthusiastic about it

and I wanna make sure that

as I start winding my way out

that there's something to turn this over to

uh you know

whether that's internal buyout

whether that's a management team ownership

uh something like that um

but I'd like it

uh you know

I think my job is to

to steward this thing help

help mentor these young people coming up

and steward this thing into the next uh

the next life

uh cycle without me

so have you

have you successfully gotten out of every like

aspect of the business other than managing the managers

no um not really

I'm I'm kinda like the chief utility player

um like if we need sales

I'll I think I'm gonna sell maybe 400 this year

which is really not very much um uh I

I still do operation management on a more directing of

of bigger things

um you know

ultimately the goal is my job is to

to do nothing but make sure everything gets done right

that's the that's the

that's the goal but

but I also still enjoy it

and I think that I still enjoy doing sales

and I still enjoy doing some

as I died this morning

I teach the leadership class in the company

so we have our junior crew leaders coming up

I teach a 10 week leadership class and I did that at

starting at 6:30 this morning

but I enjoy that

I think the goal is to get

to a point where maybe I never relinquish everything

but you start doing what you wanna do

and you start doing things that have the bigger

greater impact

um like I said

I do very well with I

I enjoy the process of things

not the result

if that makes sense

I get bored with it

I do good when there's chaos going or when

when there's

when there's purpose to things

hmm um any other thoughts on

will move towards the closing questions

any other like wrap up thoughts

things that you came to this today with your

like on your mind of like whatever business advice

leadership thoughts

things like that

yeah and and you asked me before

what I would have told younger Sean and

and some of it is like No. 1

don't take yourself so seriously

I mean you gotta have fun with it

I mean we're not

we're not I'm I'm

I'm run a painting company

I'm not doing something

I'm not creating

I'm a curing cancer

um you know

that there's

there's bigger problems in the world than Mrs

Jones is bathroom

not getting a second coat of paint properly

um you know

and I think putting things into perspective uh

I think I would have saved myself and a lot of

people that have worked here over the years

uh a lot of stress and headaches uh

had I taken a breather and taken a step back and

and not put so much pressure on everything all the time

you gotta pick your battles you gotta

I don't get my own way in my own company all the time

you know we vote on certain things

and I respect the vote and I get out of the way

um I think it's

it's better that way um

we get when you're

when you're an owner and you

you're if you're too close minded to things

and it can only be your way

if you're the torture genius right

that might have been

one of those books that you mentioned earlier is that

but if you're that torture genius

it's probably you doing the torturing yourself

it's not you know

anything outside uh

that that's affecting your

your your life

there's gotta be a quality of life there and uh

um and I'm finding that now which is

which is great

I feel like uh

the development of my management team

um and the people that I have

the team I've been able to assemble

um I'm finding that now which is

which is great

and it's exciting to see what

what the next steps gonna bring

um what uh like I have

I just want

this is the phrase that uh

it's one of those weird

you know like name or word associations

where it's like someone says Sean Kennedy

and one of the phrases that is just

ingrained in my head from the first time

I don't well

it wasn't the first time that we talked but it was

it was in our discovery process of doing

automation work with you guys

um but you said that basically

you understand that the hardest part for you is

writing the check

and then the

and as long as you

I can't remember how you phrase it

there's basically

like identifying that it's painful to

to see money leave the account

but all but if you know that the

like the end result will you know

there's gonna be some pain as you

optimize systems and what not

to me I feel like I

I guess I'm curious if you could dive into

your decision making of like

how do you go about

large decisions that you're making in the business

cause you also brought in your team to help

you know filtered

ask questions and what not

but ultimately

it comes down to the business owner

what is your strategy when making large

investments or decisions that are gonna

affect the business

yeah that's

I think it's a great question

I I've Learned to socialize these big ideas

a lot of pain and a lot of changes gonna come from

I think the point was when I uh

I mentioned that is that

my biggest pain is writing that

is writing my signature on a

on a on a check

I don't I'm not gonna be the one implementing it in my

own company

I'm not gonna be the one doing all the

the tech work and the

and then completely turning

all of my technological systems into up people for

six months right

there's a lot of pain associated with that and

and I've taken a I

I really believe in company culture and

and you know

at a certain point

there's a decision to get made and there's greater good

but you also wanna make sure you're not

breaking things just for the sake of

you're bored with the

you're bored with the current status uh

so I've Learned over the years is that if I'm

having a crazy idea

there's a couple of people I

start socializing that I know it's going to effect

I'll throw it out as like a

sir socially socializing some of these ideas

of like hey

I just was had this crazy idea

what are your thoughts

and then it's almost like an

it's like a soft pitch of

of of an idea

and then you start getting your feedback and

and sometimes if you don't like the answer you get

you take it to somebody else

and pitch it a different way

and you work on your message and

and start trying to get some buying around it

because if you just come in

you know it

years ago I'd go to a conference

and I'd come back and they'd be like oh crap

Sean's back from a conference

I wonder what the hell we're gonna do now um

and and it it

it freaks people out

people are not used to changing

people don't embrace change

like a lot of us do as owners

you know we embrace change

we embrace chaos

we embrace improvement

and a lot of people don't

a lot of people just

they just wanna show up and

get a paycheck and go home and

kiss their wife and kid and

and do it again the next day

and so you gotta make sure again like that

I think that the philosophy of bringing people with you

and making sure there aren't

any there's always gonna be turbulence

but it isn't

crazy up and down

it's not spikes and walls and spikes and walls

you wanna keep

steady progress

people can handle steady progress the whole

putting the lobster in the

putting the lobster in the boiling water thing right

yeah put it in your rays up to well

maybe that's

maybe they just

boil the hell out of those things

I don't remember

haha

so they don't know they're getting

they're getting cooked

big lobsters

you just don't come in there and you eat them but uh

you know the analogy raise the

raise it slowly over time versus fights and walls so

so last last couple questions here

three book recommendations that you would

suggest for the listeners

so uh three books that I've read over the years

I've read a couple of them

I've read multiple times um

first one was good to great um

I think that was that's a

really good book about best practices of business

in terms of

you know uh

all aspects of business

the best practices of

of some of the best businesses and and um

another book that I read uh

fairly recently

a couple of years ago

we were coming out of a bad

couple of years where we were

struggling with profits

and losing a little bit of money um

profit first

and I don't know who wrote it um

probably like counter somewhere um

but that's a great book about financial management

a lot of times as owners

and another thing that I would have told myself

when I started uh

set aside a little bit of money for you you know

you pay yourself first

don't just take whatever's left over at the end of the

end of the month

it's a you know

we typically

you spend with what you have right

you you know

so if you basically a better way of

of breaking your finances up

so you always have some money

and you make better decisions

better fiscal decisions if you

strap your accounts a little bit um

then the last book we just read as a

as a production team

so my field supervisors and my ops guy and myself

we read uh first break all the rules and um

that's a fantastic book in terms of

to what we were talking about before

of working with people strength

instead of trying to fix all their deficiencies um

people typically are who they are they have

they can change things a little bit

but a guy that doesn't

that it absolutely hates and is horrible at

public speaking is never gonna give up

and give the state of the union right

so you can improve things

a certain bit

but you can never fully overcome it

so work with your strengths of your people

and if there's a major deficiency

try to team them up with somebody else that has that

that other side of the coin

um and and build

build teams around that so

awesome

um I've heard that book but I've never read it

so I'm adding that to the uh

the list here

um and last question

what is your favorite movie

yeah and I thought about this

I really don't have a favorite movie

I don't I probably do

but I don't watch a lot of movies

but I just recently watched air that one

I think it was on yeah yeah

that was a that was a really good movie and uh

especially from a Chicago boy from the Bulls era

it was fun to watch and uh

I thought it was really well done

it was good acting

it was it was uh

it was good

it was enjoyable

so it was it was in

it was a movie that uh

you know it's

it's weird my

my wife likes like crime dramas that I don't

I don't wanna

I don't know

she likes to see the worst in people of these

like First 48

all these crime dramas

I don't get into that

my son doesn't

so this is a good movie that we could

all actually watch together and you know

not be offended by what the other one wants to

see so air was

just the running a business based on like principles

and you have this founder

who wrote down these principles and then the

I can't remember

is it Ben Affleck or who's there

maybe it's Matt Damon

yeah Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck's is film night

but Matt Damon the

um the guy who's putting the deal together

he just throws the film nights

like principles in his face is like

this is what

I can't remember what the uh

what his number one thing is or one of his like 10

you know principles he's like

I thought that you did this

and he's just like

thinks about it

he's like yeah

alright you got me

yeah that's the power of a team that's the

that's the power of a team is when you have that

level of trust there

and you can throw

when I get my

my words thrown back in my face and they're right

I gotta own it and uh

that's what makes things that

that's what

when you know you have a good team that is

on board with that improvement that

that that you're striving for as a company

super fun chatting

appreciate you taking the time to come on today and um

I know we'll

we'll be working together for many years

and I look forward to it

cause it's always good picking your rain

absolutely thanks Chris

I appreciate the uh

the opportunity