From Painter to Profit Master

Chris Kiefer (00:01.298)

Welcome back to the Pursuit of Purpose. My name is Chris Kiefer, and today I am joined by Mike Gore-Hickman, who is the founder of paintergrowth.com. And I'm going to let Mike explain that in more detail, but before we do that, first of all, I just wanna say, Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to come on and chat. This is my, I always, Fridays are my podcast day. It's like cherry on top. And I get, this is, I love this more than anything that I do, is just connecting with people, having interesting conversations

areas of expertise and whatnot. So I'm looking forward today, but thank you for coming on today.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (00:36.222)

Yeah, man. Um, stoked to chat. Stoked to get into it.

Chris Kiefer (00:39.959)

So what is painter growth?

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (00:43.062)

Getting right into it, all right. So we are, I would say, the leading business coaching company who helps painting contractors specifically. So we help painting contractors initially learn how to get their own leads, learn how to run Facebook ads, learn how to set up cold calling teams, learn how to sell, how to close on the spot, how to sell for higher prices. And then once they have enough work coming in, we show them how to set up recruiting funnels, how to hire painters, how to hire production managers, sales reps, and...

Look at the financials and basically transition from being a painter to being a business owner.

Chris Kiefer (01:14.974)

Yeah, and I think we'll go back to like high level. I found you through a couple of different things, I think, but the one that I watched you on was the liftoff thing that Tanner Mullen and DripJobs put on. And I've seen, I mean, I see in a lot of different groups, you guys have your own Facebook group as well. And I just love, I love connecting with people that are trying to put out a lot of value.

and just like sharing information. You're very engaged online. So those things enough for me, we're like, all right, I need to connect with this guy because we're also in the painting world specifically and we're just focused on eliminating data entry, increasing reporting, connecting everything together so that businesses can do more with less, in particular, painting companies can do more with less as they scale because...

Well, I could get into my whole philosophy and opinions on software and tech and AI and all that stuff that's coming, but, um, that's why I was like, let's, we need to, I need to talk to this guy. So my question is, what is like, so you're now doing painter growth. How did you get to this and what's, what was the, the inspiration behind actually starting a mastermind? Were you a painter? Did you have pain in, in scaling? What was the, uh, what was the motivation to get, do what you're doing now?

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (02:35.904)

Yeah.

Yeah, so I ran a painting company for about four years back in the early 2010s. And by the time I was 22, 23 years old, we were doing just under 200,000 a month, which inflation adjusted to be like 340,000 a month now, like looking at charge rates. So and that was yeah, so I was by the time I was like 22, ended up having to shut down my business because my girlfriend, wife now.

girlfriend at the time, got moved with her job. And so I followed her, you know, love struck 23 year old, um, followed her across the country and just didn't feel like starting up another painting business in another city with no connections. Like there's something else I got to dig my feet into. So I got an opportunity to work online. I work, I got in the ground floor of a software company, um, help them grow. I've got to help them slash watch them grow from a startup to 10 million plus a year really quickly. So that gave me kind of like the inside scoop on how an online business is.

run and grown and like the different tools and systems and team members. And then, um, I was there for about five years and then started my company as a side hustle, which, um, which then as it gained steam became full time. But actually my first company that I started as a side hustle was a marketing agency. I was like, I wanted to be an agency and my pre no, post painting company, post a software company. Like I started a side hustle.

Chris Kiefer (03:56.17)

This was pre-painting company, after the painting company.

Chris Kiefer (04:03.794)

Gotcha. And can you move your mic a little bit closer every time you lean towards it? It sounds good and then it gets distant. Yeah, there you go. That sounds way better. Yeah.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (04:11.33)

I'll just like move around less. Okay, cool. Um, and so I was, uh, I started the side hustle marketing agency. Um, and then as I did more and more of that, I added a little bit of coaching on the side, cause I was like, if I can coach some clients as well, like that'll add to stickiness and clients will stay around longer cause like agency work kind of sucks and then I realized really quickly that I had a lot more impact on clients lives and businesses through coaching.

So we pivoted to like majority coaching company with a bit of agency work and fast forward a little while later. Now we do zero agency work. We're just a coaching company and we've really built that out. We have a team of amazing coaches. We have a team of 20, uh, coaches, customer success, marketing sales. Like, you know, it's an, it's an organization right now and we've, you know, helped over 400 painting contractors in the last two and a half years. Um, with, uh, yeah, with, with tons of

tons of great reviews and testimonials. So it's been a wonderful experience.

Chris Kiefer (05:09.762)

What is the like lot there so there's many consultants business coaches out there in your opinion What is the thing that painter growth is particularly? good at or like your Your niche that you feel like you've solved because like there's even the things you rattled off there there's so much to having a successful painting company and I feel like My current view on life is I want to find the expert. I don't know if you've read the

The Who Not How book by Dan Sullivan. Such a good book, but you want, we are trained growing up to how to solve problems. School teaches you, here's a problem, figure out how to solve it. Here's a problem, figure out how to solve it. And that's good for constructing our brains and becoming problem solvers or whatever. But as you get into the business world, there is a much faster way to scale, and that's not to figure out how to solve problems, it's to get the person.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (05:40.322)

Haven't read that one.

Chris Kiefer (06:07.03)

that can solve the problem the best. So that's the title, Who Not How. Find the who, who is going to be able to solve that problem better than anybody else could solve that problem. And I've tried to apply that in every area of my life, but I come back to with you, if someone's growing a painting company, let's say they got a lot of stuff figured out, what would be the reason that they're like,

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (06:10.467)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Kiefer (06:31.29)

if you need help with this specifically, or do you even, is that, I don't wanna put you in a box, but what is the thing that you're like, we do a lot of stuff really well, this is like another level.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (06:42.382)

probably say if I had to distill it down to one thing, it would be teaching painters how to get their own leads. And probably what sets us apart because like a lot of people can go out and they can teach people how to do flyers, they can teach people how to do Facebook ads, teach you how to go, you know, set up door to door teams and like we do all that. But I think what we're really good at is actually motivating people to do the hard thing. Because it's one thing to teach someone it's another thing to make someone like

Doke to go do it. So we found that the motivation is equal, if not more important than the actual technical training aspect of it. Right. Just like the, you know, you can lead a lead a horse to water kind of thing. So we put a lot of effort and energy into our community, into our group calls, into like the mindset stuff. And, and really. Like we have friends, like literally some of the biggest franchises in the industry.

working with us, inviting me and my team to their industry events to talk about motivation and to help get their franchisees off their butts because they don't do the hard thing. The franchisees are coming in, they're waiting for the Facebook leads, they're waiting for the Angie leads, they're just hoping that their business grows, but we're showing them how to kick themselves in the ass and actually go do the hard thing.

Chris Kiefer (07:57.918)

Love that. What is, I've always, the motivation thing is interesting that it's, my wife is a physical therapist and I remember this, she told me this a while ago when she was back in PT school, but they wrote down on a, it was pediatric physical therapy and they wrote down on the note, the child is unmotivated. And.

there was this discussion that she had with her coworkers about is the child unmotivated or have we just not found what motivates the child? Because you can't like, we all, I mean, I guess maybe there's somebody out there that doesn't, but we all have something that is driving us, right? And the idea of like, oh yeah, I've just got a bunch of unmotivated employees or unmotivated franchisees, it's like, I don't know, are like they're.

They're doing something with their time. What's driving those actions, right?

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (08:53.654)

There's intrinsic reward and extrinsic reward. Extrinsic reward is typically financially driven. If I do this thing, then I'll make the money. Intrinsic reward has to come from within, by definition. If I accomplish this goal, what does that mean for me as a person? What does that mean for my family? What are the internal rewards that I will reap if I'm able to accomplish this goal?

And so if we can help people understand what they're actually working towards, like I want to put my kids in private school. I want to like feel like I'm the man or woman who can provide for my family. I want to feel like successful business owner. And if you can really dial down what each person's unique, you know, intrinsic motivation is, um, you can really leverage that to make them do the things that they otherwise would not want to do all for their own benefit, but like going door to door sucks, but you know what? It's profitable as hell.

So like, let's set up a system, let's get you doing it, and then let's help you train a team to do it.

Chris Kiefer (09:53.002)

What is the, as far as generating leads, you mentioned door to door and other digital ones. Is that like, I guess I'll frame it this way. What is the most underutilized lead source out there that you feel like painters, if they just, it's right in front of them, it's like, what are you doing? Is it door to door or is it something else?

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (10:14.782)

Adorador is definitely one that's super underutilized, but I think that, I think that the one thing that painters, I mean, all most business owners struggle with is a fundamental misunderstanding of how marketing works. So they, and this probably one of the, I mean, I feel like I'm pretty lucky in my situation because I have the painting background, but I also have a business degree and I also was able to work for like a quickly scaling software company. It was actually in the physical therapy space. Uh, funnily enough. Um, but so my, my circumstance.

Chris Kiefer (10:41.578)

Where are you, sorry, side note, where are you located now?

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (10:44.824)

I'm in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Chris Kiefer (10:47.354)

Okay, and you sir is that you've been in Canada the whole time? Okay

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (10:50.945)

Yeah, I've been working online for the last eight years or so.

Chris Kiefer (10:53.97)

What was the software in the PT world? Okay.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (10:56.042)

I'm not going to get into that right now. It's fine. I'll tell you offline because it doesn't, it's not, it's not pertinent in this conversation, but the, the circumstances and my skillset that I've developed is actually, I think puts me in a really unique position to be able to offer a lot of value in this one, like very specific area, which is like marketing for painting contractors, you know, and scaling that online. So how marketing typically, like when someone goes in market, say they try Facebook and they're like, Oh, I tried Facebook and it didn't work. Facebook doesn't work for me. Right.

Chris Kiefer (11:00.077)

Hahaha.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (11:25.17)

I tried flyers didn't work for me. Flyers don't work. Right. And so what in reality, any, every marketing message can be broken down to three components, the media. So like the media, meaning what are you, where are you actually, what are you using, is it flyers, a door to door? Is it Facebook ads at Google ads? So what is the media? Okay. Then the second is the market. So who are you targeting in terms of like location as well as like what type of. Um,

you know, what type of demographic are you targeting with your messaging? But the third is the message. So, uh, media market and message, and that makes up what we call it. The marketing mix. And when a marketing campaign fails, it's not because the media failed. Meaning like Facebook ads don't work. Flyers don't work. Door hangers don't work. It's because of the combination of what you have, how you put that piece of marketing together failed. And typically, um, most.

painting contractors, they'll go out and they'll throw like a flyer or a Facebook ad and they'll say, we specialize in interior, exterior, residential, commercial, industrial, fences, decks, walls, floors, ceilings, and cabinets. We specialize in these services, right? All the painters, they're listening to like, Oh, yeah, we specialize in all those things, too. That's not what a specialization is. Right? So one of the things that we teach is how to niche down.

Chris Kiefer (12:39.878)

Indie man services. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (12:50.368)

Yeah.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (12:54.486)

In Canada, we say niche, in the US, you say niche. But basically, how can we create a stacked, three-tiered marketing execution to a specific community, all for a specific niche? So say we really want to get a bunch of cabinet jobs. We love painting cabinets. They're profitable. We've got a great system. We can crank out cabinet jobs with a high degree of quality. If that's the case, now we're going to put together a cabinet campaign that's going to start with.

door hangers and on these door hangers, it's just going to say cabinets. We're not going to talk about. Exteriors fences decks, like, cause if someone has a million dollar home and they want to trust a painter to paint their cabinets, they're not going to hire the same guy that's going to pressure wash your friends. They want to hire the guy that paints cabinets all day. So we put it, we'll put together a, uh, marketing campaign that is just for cabinets on door hangers, uh, hyper targeted Facebook ads, um,

hidden those doors as well like hiring a kid or someone to go door to door and just specifically talk about cabinets. And if you do that and you're just focused on one service, the return on investment you'll get for your time will be so much higher than if you're just trying to be jack of all trades.

Chris Kiefer (14:11.026)

Yep, I think that resonates deeply with me in the software world. I feel like, I always say everything in the world has trade-offs, that's in your decisions, like there's no right or wrong thing, even working with a coach or a different coach or just picking painting or electrical or whatever you're gonna do, there's trade-offs to everything. But there's not like the right way and the wrong way, right? And I think the same thing for...

In the software world, one of the things is that people are tempted or want to use the all in one system that does everything, you know, it's an, washes your dishes and rubs your feet. Like there's no, like going that route is, uh, is tempting because of the number of software apps that you have. But I believe that the best thing is to have, find a bunch of masters or niche tools and then get them all to talk together. And then you have like.

the world-class, almost custom software, that if you set it up right, that's like using, like we talked about earlier, company cam or all these niche tools that are very good at one thing and doing that one thing really well. And I feel like that's, back to your point, that's kind of what we want in everything. Like we don't want, we go to the doctor for some things, but then we also are going to the specialist that knows everything about one piece of the body.

you know, and I think homeowners are the same way. Like I want, especially when you get into more profitable jobs, someone, if, as soon as you get out of the price shopping and you just want to make sure that it's reliable, it's going to work and then I'll like it. Like, yeah, everybody wants the specialist.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (15:56.886)

Yeah, the generalization example that I like to use on software is like Go High Level. Like Go High Level is a good tool to get started with, but as soon as you want to like take your business seriously, you got to get off of Go High Level and go into dedicated tools like for CRM, for Calendar Tool, for a website, for landing pages, for like, you know, back end tracking, like Go High Level will do all that, but it'll do it okay. Right. But then if you get into like Active Campaign and Close or Infusionsoft and Calendly and you start using all these dedicated tools,

like everyone's just gonna have a better experience. It's gonna be more expensive, right? Cause you're having all these specialists, but like Calendly has spent the last 10 years just perfecting the calendar tool. Whereas Go High Level, one of their 20 things that they do is a calendar tool. So like who's gonna do it better?

Chris Kiefer (16:36.255)

Right.

Chris Kiefer (16:42.342)

I, the example to drive this home, I, uh, it's like, uh, chat, right? Um, I just, I want to look up the actual statistic on this. Cause I was talking to a contractor and they said that they use this one tool. I won't mention what it is, but they're like, oh yeah, it has chat in it as well. And I was, um, number of C. So, uh, yeah, they have the number here now. So I was like, oh, it does chat. And they're like, yeah, it's a team thing where you can communicate. And I was like,

Cause there's another app that also does quote unquote, like internal chat is called Slack. And Slack has 2,500 employees and over 700 developers, just doing chat. So it's like this other niche tool that does everything and chat, they've got how many different like specific business functions that they're trying to solve for.

And then it's like, and you're telling me that the 10 developers that they have that are split between 25 different projects are perfecting chat the same way that Slack is. And by the way, Slack costs $8 a month per user or whatever. It's like the world we live in is crazy to have the level of that tool for that inexpensive.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (17:51.223)

So.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (17:56.154)

One thing that I just wanna make sure I make clear though, is that a painting contractor does not have to specialize their entire business into that one service, right? These are just like niche marketing campaigns that will get leads because if you can execute, you're not doing software, you're doing painting. And you can paint an exterior equally as well as you paint interior and cabinets and whatever epoxy if you know how to do those things. But the homeowner wants to hire someone

who they perceive as an expert in that one thing. So you can do different campaigns different times a year, sometimes even back to back to the same people with different service offerings and they will feel that you're a specialist in each one of those. Case in point, I bet that for anyone who still gets flyers, a lot of us do, you've gotten, like you could get a flyer one day for a company that's saying they're like, an HVAC company saying they're like, FURNA specialist. Hey, we got a 1299 FURNA special or whatever, like we're FURNA specialist.

And then the next week you could get a flyer from the same company saying they're water heater specialists and you would never put together that it was the same company. But if you were in the market, you know, you're gonna need water heater. Oh, that's perfect. Water heater came right at the right time. Right? So that's, that's how it works. It's just like, you need to get the right, you need to hit them at the right time with the right message. And if you're just being a generalist, you're just gonna be less likely to be trusted.

Chris Kiefer (19:03.83)

Cause all you saw is the thing, yeah. Oh, I don't need heat furnace right now. Oh, I need water heater. So yeah.

Chris Kiefer (19:22.494)

Yeah, no, I think that the, and I would also say, and this is true, just think about my restaurant experiences. I, you know, like if you're gonna go try a place out, you might be drawn in because they have a particular meal or somebody told you that they had a great view or whatever, but it's the overall experience that then solidifies if I'm gonna do business with that person again. Cause I could come to you for the painting growth, right?

And let's say in the future you were like, hey, we actually have a really cool health program also. Whatever, I'm just picking something totally absurd. If your painting growth was amazing, I'm like, I can trust this guy. He wouldn't do something if he was gonna, if he provided this amazing experience here, I know that the other things that this guy does is also going to be of the same level of quality, right? So that's, I mean.

Exactly. Like, yes, pick something. Now you got their information. You're there a happy past customer and now continue to market to them, nurture that experience and offer them other things. That's like, I think my personal experience, I was the marketing director for a company over in Oregon, uh, painting company for three years and they did everything we did. You know, the we'd have, we literally had a deck, like a carpentry team. Um, and the thing is the reality was we had

legitimate like three to four million dollar companies, individual companies that were a part of this big brand. And it's like you could come in for cabinet painting and there was a team of people that just did cabinet painting all day long. So they legitimately were specialists. And then, but the brand and the experience was great. So you could come back and offer them a new deck or staining your deck or whatever.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (21:10.966)

This is why sales experience is so important, right? And people like that hear the word sales and they get turned off like, Oh, I don't want to be like the slimy salesperson pushing someone into something that they don't want. Well, that's bad sales. Good sales is a great experience for everyone because most consumers need a little bit of help to make a decision. They're calling you because they want to get something done. And it's like up to you to show them you're the right one. And you're if you truly believe that you're going to provide them the best experience, best end product.

compared to the rest of your competitors, then it's your moral obligation to convince that homeowner to go with you, or else they're gonna get a worse product, worse experience, right? So that's the transfer of trust. If they can trust you to do a good job and you show up on time and you have a professional proposal and you answer all the concerns and you sell to their needs and not just present a price via text message you know, six hours later, you're gonna book those jobs.

Chris Kiefer (22:03.634)

Yeah, 100%. I'm curious, I can't remember if this was you. If it wasn't, we can skip this, but I feel like somebody in one of the Facebook groups that we're in was asking about a follow-up cadence after you get a lead. Did you have or have you had conversations about that? Meaning like someone says, hey, I want you to paint my cabinets or whatever. And then as the business, what is your, if you're using text, email.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (22:21.25)

I can talk about that, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (22:33.398)

phone calls, a combination of all that, over the next however many weeks, what is your recommended or how do you think about it? Because I have opinions from my own experience, but I'm curious what you would say to that.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (22:41.566)

Yeah. Weeks is too long. You have like 48 hours really in total to convert that person, but immediate, like as soon as someone opts in, immediate text and email, like within one second, but the text, it should be open-ended, asking them to respond, but also you should be calling them within five minutes. And then over those next 24 hours, you should probably call them between like five and seven times if they don't pick up. And then after that 24 hours, if they don't pick up, just like a text.

and email nurture that's like less aggressive. Like once every few days, basically just keep getting after them until they say yes or no. That's how I look at it. But like first 24 hours, hyper aggressive, text, email and phone, it called immediately. And then over the next, you know, a couple of weeks, just more of like a casual drip and then they can put it in like your general campaign to be emailed once every couple of weeks.

Chris Kiefer (23:31.902)

Yeah, because I was, I'll build on that, this one thing that I saw, which it just doesn't make any sense to me, was the person was like, so after I get a web form submission, I'll call them and then on day two, I'll send them a text, and then day three, I'll send them an email, and I'm just like, what, like, the moment you get a lead, you do all three, text, email, phone call, as fast as possible, and then you can continue to do more of each of them, but.

To me, I was just like, I'm thinking about it from my own perspective. And I don't know why I think people put like their fear of phones or cold calling and they wrap like all phone calling into cold calling. But it's like, this person literally came to your website and said, please do this service for me. I'd like a quote and you're the professional. So call them up and like, I'm busy. So if you send me a text and an email and a phone call.

I'll respond via the one that is most convenient for me given wherever I'm at. You know? Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm in the same boat. You have to, and I would say anytime that I, when I was the marketing director, I said, anytime you call and you leave a voicemail, we built an automation that would send a text in an email every single time. It's like leave a voicemail, push the button, email texts like, Hey, uh, Mike, just reaching out about your project. Give me a call if you get a minute. And then, you know, so I just feel like,

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (24:47.079)

Mm-hmm

Chris Kiefer (24:57.652)

Yeah, I don't know. It's crazy to me that people are afraid about that.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (24:58.402)

Have you updated your iPhone? Have you updated your iPhone recently?

Chris Kiefer (25:03.434)

Uh, I mean, I think so. It's on automatic updates.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (25:06.134)

I don't know what, I don't know what one, I just updated it like the other day, like a couple days ago to, what is it at? It's the voicemail thing. So, I was just like, I was on my phone yesterday and someone called me and I kind of thought I knew who it was and wasn't 100% sure, but they started leaving a voicemail and the text started to come up on the screen of what they were saying in real time. And I didn't do it, but I think you can open it up and interrupt them and start talking to them. Yeah, that is, so if,

Chris Kiefer (25:12.17)

with the voicemail thing. That was game changing. I love that feature.

Chris Kiefer (25:31.978)

You can, yep, mm-hmm, yeah.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (25:34.974)

Other people are getting that, that like that just increases the value of voicemails because there's so many voicemails that I don't even like, I don't listen to them. Like sometimes I'll read the transcript a little bit, but I don't really do my voicemails. That was a game changer. Like this brings voicemail to like 2024. And so I think everyone should be using that again. So don't just like hang up when you get to the voicemail, like leave a legit voicemail, have a professional script that you talk about and then text them.

Chris Kiefer (26:00.318)

Yeah, and maybe start with, this is Mike from Painter Growth, like first words, you know? So they see, oh yeah, shoot, I was gonna answer that.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (26:06.014)

Yeah. I'm calling you back because you requested a call. Like remind them, you know.

Chris Kiefer (26:10.778)

Yes, yeah, 100%. So yeah, what else is, what else are you passionate about in this space? What is the, what are the things that you feel like you're most commonly re-educating or educating painters on? Like what's the, what are the misconceptions out there?

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (26:32.47)

Oh man, everything. There's just so many bad business owners. I'm sorry everyone listening, but there's just, you know, you come into business and you're a wonderful painter, you know, best in your city, you could paint a straight line from here to Timbuktu, but you don't know how to look at a profit and loss statement. You don't know how to do a personality-based interview process to weed out, you know, bad actors or people lying through interviews. So I think just like,

what we're doing really well is like on the front end, we bring people in and we have like a lead, revenue guarantee from when people join our program and people come in like, oh, we're gonna learn sales and marketing and that's it. But then we do kind of like a little rug pull, a little switch in debt because hey, you don't just need leads, but you need to learn how to be a business person. So we give them that like business in a box blueprint and help them within 90 days go from, I have like.

very little idea about business. Even guys running a million bucks plus a year, know surprisingly little about business compared to what they should know to be profitable. Like we have guys coming in doing a million dollars a year who make like 50K profit. It's like, okay, like you did a million dollar, you have a million dollar business, but can't you just go work at McDonald's and make the same amount of money? So even these bigger guys, it's like a lot of re-education, a lot of systems, a lot of numbers, a lot of things that are typically like looked at as boring, but like,

We try to make them fun and we try to make them easy. And we do like a lot of automations as well, but really it's just habits that, like learning and habits that we need to help painting contractors get instilled. And actually we have this workbook. I send these out to every new client, it's one of these. And so it's like we start out with priority management. So people have no idea how they're spending their time. So we have some really great priority management tools. Then we have sales tools, marketing tools.

sales tools, lead sheets, systems, SOPs. And then we get for our top level clients, they get one of these two. With all the gear.

Chris Kiefer (28:36.898)

Nice. What is the ideal customer for you? Like client, I should say. What's the demographics? Is there a particular area of the country or obviously painting, but how big a painting company? And what's the, like, what is success? Like, do they graduate or do they become a coach at the top level or like, what's like the journey of like the perfect, if you could have a thousand of them.

They're this size when they come in, they're this size when they leave, and here's what they've accomplished.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (29:05.738)

Yeah. So we kind of have two avatars of clients, types of clients that come into our program. So the first avatar, but you kind of like below 50 K everywhere from startup, people never even picked up a brush before to running a crew or two. Like that's kind of like our base avatar where we get the majority of our clients with that, like sub 50 K a month. And I think that's just because there's just more of those people, right? There's more small businesses than there are big businesses. So we get our

majority of clients there and we have a really great 90 day program to help them get tuned up and get a ton of leads coming in and ton of sales and, um, and even bringing on some more staff. And then we have our second tier, which is like that 50 K plus all the way up to, you know, our top guys doing like 850 K a month. And so in this, it's like more of a one-on-one program because it's not like they don't necessarily need to go through like business basics. So we meet one-on-one with one of our eight figure coaches and like we have crazy.

high performing coaches on the team. So you get one-on-one coaching with one of these coaches and then we just kind of pick and choose what modules you should be going through and it's more like implementation based instead of training based. So either like, and then we have a lot of people who graduate and we're working on our graduation program and making it more seamless and identifying people who we can upgrade. And so we're working on those types of like processes. We have some weak spots in the business, but for the most part, yeah, we get people from this first and then we...

graduate to the second when they're ready.

Chris Kiefer (30:33.622)

That's awesome, and you said you have 20 coaches now that are all, oh, 20 on the team.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (30:36.214)

No, no, 20 team total, 20 people on the team. Yeah. So five coaches, so the head coach and then four coaches. Um, and then we have, uh, you know, we have customer success managers and we have marketing team, graphic designer, video editor, uh, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (30:52.038)

On your team, and do you, when like, does a client or a business, can they like buy those services for you for like their business? Like do you answer phone calls or do you make videos for the customer or is that all for you, the painter growth team specifically?

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (31:06.282)

Uh, mostly in-house. Um, we're actually, we do some stuff like sometimes when clients come on, we'll offer them a Facebook ad build. So like my Facebook guy will go into their Facebook account and like build ad campaigns and do all the configurations and the setting up with the creatives and the copy and stuff. We do that, um, sometimes, but we're actually looking to do just like a low cost done for you website as well. We have a lot of clients who need websites. And so that's just kind of a pain point. So we're just looking.

Looking for a contractor who we can kind of give like a solid SOP to. Um, and then we could just give like an at cost, like maybe a $500 website. For our clients. Um, instead of them having to go spend like five or 10 K at like a, you know, boutique agency or something like that.

Chris Kiefer (31:51.634)

Yeah, yeah. Especially nowadays in the beginning, I talked to another guy who works with painters that, all you need is a Facebook page. I mean, that's what he was saying, to start out. Obviously, yes, you should get a website, but you can get leads coming in without a lot of the bells and whistles that a larger company, I would say, should have.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (32:12.898)

All you need is a Facebook page, an Instagram page, and a Google review page, a Google Maps page. So if you have those three things, you don't need a website. Like we have a client who's been with us for like two and a half years. He's doing over $100,000 a month and he has no website.

Chris Kiefer (32:29.358)

Yeah, I mean, I think that the, at the end of the day, the Google reviews speak way louder than, oh, fancy website, you know? How many customers said they worked with you and validated you? I don't care how fancy it is. The website, yeah, I think it's, even Google has just been doing more and more to like allow people to make the decision based on what's in their Google business profile, you know? And they just call or message you directly. But that's awesome.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (32:53.314)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (32:59.164)

Yeah, any other topics or things to hit on before we wrap up?

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (33:05.39)

I mean, we're like specifically talking about, you know, like the art of growing painting companies right now. And the cool thing about a painting business is that it's a really a proven path, right? There's really not a lot of innovation. So if you want to be successful and you're motivated, but you just like, you don't know which way to turn, you don't know what to do. You don't know what you should be spending your time on. The path is proven. It's been, it's been gone down a lot of times and it's a very clear step by step, like.

You need to do this and then you do this and then this is how you get off the tools and this is how you get a sales and this is how you get out of marketing. And as you continue to grow and go down this path, revenue grows considerably and then of course profit grows and then the last thing to come is free time. So depending on what clients and goals are, that will determine kind of like the path that we build for them. So some clients just want to get up to like 40k a month, have like three, four painters working for them and just be off the tools and just run production. And that's totally fine.

pretty low stress way to make 120 grand a year profit. Other guys want to scale to the moon. They want five crews of three painters each and they want production managers and sales and that's cool too. It's just a lot harder. There's just more moving parts and you need great people and you need to be a really good leader and you need to be good at interviewing. And so depending on your path, you know, there's different requirements that you need to do step by step, but

It's all possible. I mean, you don't need to be college educated to grow a seven figure painting business. Like anyone, if you know how to paint, you can grow a seven figure painting business. It's just about to start. It's not even about working harder. It's just about changing the things that you're doing on a daily basis to being higher leverage.

Chris Kiefer (34:46.348)

Hmm. What is your overarching purpose or motivation in all this?

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (34:52.642)

That's a good question. Initially, when I got started, it was like, it was, you know, quite like an extrinsic goal. Like I wanted, I wanted to have a business that I could, you know, provide for my family and make money and cover the bills and stuff like that. But as we've kind of grown and we're not even that old of a company like this year 2024 is our really third full year in business.

And like the financial piece is important, but I've realized how big of an impact we are actually having on painting contractors and on other people's families. Because someone can come in like struggling to buy groceries and struggling to pay their painters at the end of every week. And then they can come in and completely change our financial situation within like 60 days. And to have that kind of power, people always ask me like, why did you get out of painting if you had such a big painting business?

It's like, well, the impact that I'm having in other people's lives is so much greater now doing this than I could possibly have painting. And I'm in this, like I said, I'm in this unique situation with my journey that I have the skillset now. So right now my mission is just to help as many painting contractors as I can, like just really not even like live the lives of their dreams, but like be comfortable and be happy and be confident with their businesses and just.

just get into better situations. Cause we have the skillset, we have the system set up and we're really, really good at it, but painted are skeptical motherfuckers. So I gotta do things like this. I gotta go long form. I gotta be completely transparent. We have hundreds of thousands of testimonials before someone will trust us or get on the phone with a sales rep of mine. But like we wanna help as many people as we can. And so far it's been great. And we're just, we're just getting started.

Chris Kiefer (36:41.89)

That's awesome. Let's dive into the book recommendations.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (36:46.998)

So my number one book that I've ever read that had the most impact on my life, bar none, is $100 million offers by Alex Hormozi. So I read that book in October, 2021, and that book sparked my business. That gave me the idea to go away from agency, to create a training program, because it just helped me get clear on everything. So I went through that book with a fine tooth comb for about a month.

And then I launched, um, what now became the painter growth blueprint, uh, in November or end of October, start November, 2021. And, um, and just kind of went from there, proved the concept, started to scale it and grow it in 2022. And then, um, 2023 was great growth and looking to, you know, take over, take over the painting industry. So that's number one book for sure. Um, if anyone wants one, everyone wants to get good at sales, Hunter, or sorry, offer, uh, marketing.

$100 million leads is also really good. Alex Hormozi's newest book. And then a third book recommendation. I mean, if people are listening to this and they're not big readers and they wanna get into something and like become a better, like a entry point for like reading, feel like you're not a big reader and you're like, I wanna get into it, but like, I don't want a really hard book to start with. The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard.

There's a few different types of them, like one minute manager for entrepreneurs, one minute manager for whatever, like doesn't matter which one. It's like a very quick read. It's like 80 pages. Great story to lit, to listen to her, to read, but one minute manager by Ken Blanchard, you're going to learn about situational leadership and how to be a better manager and how to get people to do what you want them to do. So super impactful book for me.

Chris Kiefer (38:34.986)

Love it, and favorite movie.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (38:38.798)

I thought a lot about this because I could say something basic like The Wolf of Wall Street or something. It's a great movie, but I like that. It's not my favorite because I don't like the ethics that Jordan Belfort portrays and all that, but it's a fun watch. I think my favorite movie just in general is The Departed. I don't think I need to say anything else.

Chris Kiefer (39:03.658)

Leonardo DiCaprio, yeah.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (39:04.854)

Yeah, it's just like a wonderful movie. It's like long, all those twists and stuff like that. But then if you like for like, if it went business movie, actually a really good a really good movie with like business topics in it as the founder. Is like that the Ray Kroc story. And so he is really interesting, really interesting. I don't think I'd call it my one of my favorite movies, but

Chris Kiefer (39:22.522)

Hmm. Then about a McDonald's. Yeah.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (39:33.538)

Just in terms of like business and the nature of this podcast, I thought that would give that a honorable mention because it is a good, it is a good movie and it's got a lot of pretty cool business concepts in it.

Chris Kiefer (39:43.89)

Yeah, I mean the Ray Kroc story, I didn't know. Well actually, so we live in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and there's a Kroc Center. Have you heard of Kroc Centers? There's only like 15 of them I think in the country. There's not very many, but there was the Ray and Joan, I think it's the Joan and Ray Kroc Foundation, like one of the initiatives. I don't know if this was Ray's idea before he died, but they basically did a...

not a case study, a study to see which communities were gonna be best for these things. But it's basically a gigantic community center with an auditorium, there's a coffee shop inside, there's kids' daycare, there's a gym, weights, swimming pool, water park. It's just like a, it's not a family fun center, but like basically a really fancy gym, right? And anyways.

the Kroc Center is that's when I was like, Oh, I didn't realize that McDonald's was started by a guy named Ray Kroc had no idea. Um, and yeah, and then the founder movie is just an amazing story of seeing opportunity. He's just a sales guy. He's hustling and he's just like, man, these, this McDonald's brothers, they keep buying my milkshake machines. You know, I gotta go see what's going on over there. And then I feel like, I don't know about you, but I've said to many people, there's so many

million dollar business ideas presented to all of us all the time. Like there's all around just like open your eyes and pay attention. And one of the things I love about his story was just like, you're on a path and you got to get, you got to get started somewhere. Just like take a job that you can get better and learn and everything, and then pay attention to who you're encountering along the way. And then he had the courage to, to go like, we're going to do this.

And then the brilliance of everything else they did, the real estate company and it's just like, it's nuts. But yeah, I'm glad I haven't watched that probably since it came out. All right, and what is your preferred method of contact if someone wants to get in touch with you?

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (41:49.277)

another watch. It's a good one.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (41:56.374)

You can check out the website, paintergrowth.com, tons of videos, testimonials, resources, stuff like that. One of the things I learned from Alex Hormozzi is that when you give away free stuff, you need to give away your best stuff. Because if you give away your bad stuff and you keep your best stuff behind the paywall, every people are gonna think all your stuff sucks. So we give away all our best stuff in our free resources. You can check them out on the website. If you wanna get a hold of me personally, mike at paintergrowth.com.

I reply to every email, so if you have a question, then hit me up.

Chris Kiefer (42:27.882)

Awesome, well actually, this is a side note. Do you guys, or do you teach painters about using virtual assistants? You do? I was gonna say, that is something that my friend of mine who's a home inspector, actually just texted me a second ago, I saw that. He had told us about virtual assistants two years ago, maybe three years ago, and it took me a while to jump on board, but it's just another one of those opportunities of leveraging technology and the global economy.

to get stuff done that you need done in your business, you know, for a lot less.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (43:01.914)

Yeah. Um, I mean, we have like, we have an SOP on like all the things that a virtual assistant can do for a painting business. And we even actually have a few recruiters that I like in good really good contact with that I just I get many of my clients virtual assistants who need them and I don't charge anything more than the recruiter pays like 250 bucks or something. And then we're actually going to be this year sometime.

I'm creating like a little training program for the virtual assistant on how a painting company works so that when someone gets placed, they're already trained up. So we're not like going to make this like a revenue stream or anything, but just like a value add service because virtual assistants are just so they can, they can be so valuable if trained properly. So we're just going to put together like a little five or 10 video training series on like what, what a painting industry, what the painting industry is, how it works, what the different things are, what you're going to be doing.

so that when that VA gets placed, they're like 80% trained. And then the painting contractor doesn't have to go through and like, this is what a paintbrush is, this is what rolling means, this is what interior is. And just like, that's done. We can just get going to work.

Chris Kiefer (44:09.802)

Yeah, yeah. Brilliant, I love that. Awesome. Well, Mike, thanks so much again. This was fun. Hope this was valuable to the listeners and we will see you around, Mike.

Mike Gore-Hickman - PainterGrowth.com (44:21.058)

Thanks, Chris.