Scale Your Painting Business: Strategy, Tech, & Mindset

Chris Kiefer (00:00.474)

Olive, olive management.

Jason Paris (00:03.35)

Yeah, for what? Or for my email?

Chris Kiefer (00:05.493)

If I were to say, hey, this is Jason Paris, what do you like your title?

Jason Paris (00:09.226)

Yeah. So my title is Synergy and Memes. This is on my business card. Title would be Partner, Founder. What is the context of the intro though? Oh, okay. Yep, you can say it, yeah. Founder of Paris Painting, Partner at All Foldings.

Chris Kiefer (00:15.893)

Okay.

Chris Kiefer (00:24.185)

So I'm going to say, yeah, I'm going to say, hey, welcome back to Pursuit Purpose. Today I've got Jason Paris, who is blank. And then I'll let you describe who you are.

Jason Paris (00:38.562)

volunteer.

Chris Kiefer (00:38.897)

and also an expert in synergy and memes. Sweet.

Jason Paris (00:42.07)

Synergy and memes. Yep.

Chris Kiefer (00:48.657)

And I realize I have like 65 tabs open, which never goes well with Riverside.

Jason Paris (00:53.622)

It's choppy. Especially if they're chrome, then you're really gonna have a tough day.

Chris Kiefer (00:58.495)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (01:06.513)

I'm like, I just do command T all day long. It's new tab, new tab, new tab, new tab. And then I'm like, Oh,

Jason Paris (01:14.898)

Yeah. Clean this up.

Chris Kiefer (01:16.127)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (01:20.201)

All right, I just closed all the distractions. All right.

Chris Kiefer (01:30.377)

Welcome back to another episode of the Pursuit of Purpose. My name is Chris Keefer and today I am joined by Jason Paris, who is the founder of Paris Painting and the partner in Aleph Holdings, as well as a self, no, actually not self-proclaimed. I think this was verified by multiple countries, an expert in synergy and memes. So Jason, tell us, well first of all, thanks for coming on. This is fun, I'm looking forward to this.

Jason Paris (01:56.642)

Yeah. My pleasure.

Chris Kiefer (01:59.933)

and tell us so like who's Jason Paris besides the title.

Jason Paris (02:03.878)

Oh, okay. Who am I? I am but a moment in a changing river. You know, just kind of always never step in the same river twice. A lot of people know me, found a repairs painting like you introduced, which essentially birthed out all of Holdings. I'm 36 years old, so kind of getting into that midlife crisis stage. I have five kids, a beautiful wife.

Activities and hobbies. I like ultra running. I like playing video games quite a bit I've gotten into aviation. It's been a recent hobby of mine and I like volunteering with the PCA which is painting contractors Association. I do quite a bit of Kind of board-level volunteer work with them

Chris Kiefer (02:52.465)

Interesting. So I love, I love, uh, entrepreneurs that have big families. So tell me about, uh, did you come from a big family? What was the, uh, the inspiration or desire? Because I'm sure this happens to you. We have four kids and we plan on having, um, some more. I don't know how many, but, um, yeah, I just, I think families are great. I come from a family of five. Um, my dad was from a family of five. My mom was from a family of five. We have some friends that have like,

Jason Paris (02:58.594)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (03:22.257)

a lot more kids, but most people are like, oh wow, you have four. Like, yeah, we do. And it's fantastic. I love every minute of it. Um, but anyways, yeah, tell me, tell me about the, uh, why is that important to you or why, what do you, uh, what do you tell people when you tell them about your family?

Jason Paris (03:29.782)

Yeah, it's like two per adult. Yeah.

Jason Paris (03:44.49)

Yeah, I'd say we have been very fortunate. Not everybody is able to have a big family or able to have kids and it's kind of, we don't take that for granted. So it's certainly, that's been helpful for us is whenever there is a desire, I feel like we've just been immediately blessed, granted the request, however you want to spin it. Our first kid was born in June. My wife said she didn't want to be pregnant in the summer ever again. And so then we were born April, April.

Uh, so we're pretty like on the money when it comes to timing these things out. Um, but I think you kind of title this is even funny, uh, or interesting. The pursuit of purpose, you know, sometimes giving is like what we're meant to do. We're meant to contribute. We're meant to, uh, add to a great something that's greater than ourselves. I think having kids is one of the most selfless things you can do. And you learn very quickly, uh, the joy that comes from.

Chris Kiefer (04:14.507)

Ah, love it.

Chris Kiefer (04:38.153)

Mmm.

Jason Paris (04:43.722)

have like a self-sacrificial hobby, activity, purpose that you're leaning into. And I would just say, you know, once we had three kids, there was a big decision around the fourth, which was I'm not gonna do this to be more comfortable. We're not gonna have a fourth kid so I can have more free time. We're not having a fourth kid so I'm gonna be more, you know, yeah, me time. If you want more free time, if you want to serve yourself more, do not have a big family.

Chris Kiefer (04:49.024)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (04:59.817)

Yeah.

Jason Paris (05:14.006)

But there's also, it's harder to find anything more fulfilling and more serving with and from a purpose standpoint than having a big family. So it's kind of like a paradoxical cycle of you're doing this knowing that I would never do that if I wanted more free time, more money, less stress, cleaner house, right? All these things I think would give me fulfillment, but it is in that self-sacrificial pursuit that you're finding kind of the ultimate.

Chris Kiefer (05:33.887)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (05:42.793)

Fulfillment. Yep.

Jason Paris (05:43.394)

fulfillment and these are all tastes of things and my mental paradigm they operate is more of a Judeo-Christian paradigm So I think of these as somewhat metaphors But you get a little bit of a taste when you first get married It's like I'm here to serve somebody and if you get married because you want more free time You want a cleaner house you want to serve yourself more is the wrong decision, right? And then you start having kids and you kind of get any selfishness beaten out of you All right, you lose a lot of your selfishness when you get married

Chris Kiefer (06:03.689)

Yeah, yeah.

Jason Paris (06:11.694)

If there's anything less left, once you have kids, it's just beaten out of you. So that's kind of, we talk about big family, I think we're extremely blessed and yeah, we love real big families too.

Chris Kiefer (06:18.245)

Yeah, I love that. I think I love that you just, yeah, I resonate on with a lot of the things you're saying that, um, my wife is a, um, what she doesn't take on, um, clients or patients, I guess. Um, she's a, uh, women's health pelvic floor, physical therapist. So she specifically is working with pre and postpartum women all the time.

Um, and she also is a practitioner of a fertility awareness based method, um, called Creighton. I don't know if you've heard of that, but, um, it's a like NFP, but like more modern and more reliable than, uh, some other models. But anyways, the reason I bring that up is that she's constantly working with people that are struggling to have kids. And I, I do think that it's cool that you brought up. Yes, it's like not everyone can like her sister, um, and brother, our brother-in-law

they're not able to have kids, you know? And so they're looking in adoption or whatever, but yeah, it is easy. It's like the number of things in life that we take for granted until you can't have that or you it's taken away or whatever. And I think that's a great place to come from. Net. The one thing I wanted to also say is that, well, this is just like, so we have younger kids. Um, and our four year old just this couple of days ago was Valentine's day. And, uh,

You know, he's, he's kind of a punk. He, you know, sometimes he's not a great listener and we're still working on all that stuff. But he came into my room and this is like, how, tell me anything else in the world that compares to this, what I'm about to tell you. He comes into my room and he had made a Valentine's card for me and he made a heart for the first time ever. Apparently that's what he said. Um, and it was like, like a rectangular shaped like thing that kind of, I mean, it,

definitely resembled a heart, but if he hadn't told me, I wouldn't have known, you know? So he was like, Hey dad, um, I made you a Valentine's card. Um, just so like, you know, in case I, you, I'm ever not here, I go to Nana's house. You just remember that I love you. And I was just like, thanks buddy. Like I appreciate that. And he's like, I think I'm just going to go put this by your nightstand so that you always see it. And I was like, that's awesome. And it's like, that's, you know,

Jason Paris (08:36.983)

Mm. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (08:40.449)

the, then you go back to like how many times I'm up in the middle of the night, cleaning up puke and poopy diapers and all the stuff, you know, it's like, it's a fate. There's a season of the, of the really, really hard work. Um, when they're, when they're little, and then it gets, um, in my experience and your kids are a little bit older, but it just keeps getting better, you know? And then I can't wait for the day that they're teaching me stuff and being like, Oh dad, you're such a

Grandpa like you don't know anything, you know, it's like yes bring it on. Yeah, bring it on So anyways, that's fantastic Yeah, any other thoughts to wrap up that topic?

Jason Paris (09:09.578)

Yeah, such a millennial.

Jason Paris (09:21.154)

No, I'm right with you there, man. I love buying expensive Apple products and I would say kids are like way better than iPads or iPhones or even the Vision Pro that I saw you playing around with.

Chris Kiefer (09:33.309)

Oh, did you just, did you just get it?

Jason Paris (09:35.762)

No, I saw you playing or I saw the video of you playing around with it. I thought that was great. That was pretty catchy.

Chris Kiefer (09:38.449)

Uh, um, yeah, no, I, uh, yeah, I, I have an Apple addiction as well, but, uh, it would be, uh, yeah, the good thing is that because I'm in tech and we, everything's a business write-off because I'm

Jason Paris (09:44.915)

Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Jason Paris (09:51.274)

Yeah, I was gonna say it's a lot easier when you're on a business because then you can kind of squint and say, this is overhead. Yeah, R&D.

Chris Kiefer (09:55.697)

Yeah, I'm, it's research. It's research. I got market research. Yeah. And I can tell you that in a couple of years, I think there's going to be some pretty insane apps and stuff that are better.

Jason Paris (10:07.286)

Well, you remember when the Apple watch first came out, it was super laggy and super weird. And now that the Apple watch is super crisp. And that's, it's like, I do love how they just branded it tomorrow's technology today because it is just like, I can kind of squint and see how this is useful. But you know, with a few iterations, it's going to be all that friction starts to go away.

Chris Kiefer (10:15.388)

Oh yeah.

Chris Kiefer (10:20.864)

Mm.

Chris Kiefer (10:28.329)

Oh yeah, or like once estimating software actually makes a dedicated app for the Apple vision, and you can like right now they have apps already that you can like in my office, if I put it on, I could immediately, it detects all the surfaces and tells you the square footage of every single surface that's in the area that you're looking at. And you just go like, I wanna paint that wall, that wall, that wall, that wall, and it just like import into your estimating tool or whatever. And just like,

Jason Paris (10:37.994)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (10:58.273)

Uh, I mean, potentially I would think you wouldn't even need to, this is eventually who knows how far away this is, but you literally like walk around a house and then it's going to, you still would want someone to verify everything, but it'd count your windows and get the square footage of the siding and the heights and all that stuff. But yeah, I'm, I'm the nerdy guy. That's like, uh,

Jason Paris (10:59.21)

measuring.

Jason Paris (11:19.114)

It's super exciting. And then I start to think through what is that solving and it's solving maybe human error and it's solving like maybe five, 10, 15, 20 minutes of time. So it solves it, but it's also not like, let's not get lost in. Or like what is the actual change and like 20 minutes is meaningful, right? You can probably squeeze out a few more estimates, you know, per estimator per week. Uh, and then.

Chris Kiefer (11:33.725)

Yeah, like how long does it actually take to estimate a house?

Chris Kiefer (11:42.483)

Yeah, yeah. I love how tech, like that's fantastic that you immediately go to like, okay, let's play this out, best case scenario.

Jason Paris (11:47.754)

Yeah. But what it's not, it's not like, it's not like tripling my sales. It's not like the ability to sell a paint job is fundamentally transformed because the act of measuring becomes lower friction. Right. So just starting to think through now, that's not to say it's not, there isn't juice in that squeeze, but it's not like, uh, I squeeze and it's like a fountain of juice just poured out and now I don't have to run a business anymore. Right.

Chris Kiefer (12:00.38)

Mmm. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (12:06.867)

Yeah, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (12:14.021)

Yeah. I mean, the funny, I love that you said run a business because so we, my company works specifically with automating painting businesses. That's what we do. Eliminate as much data entry as possible, get rid of paper, all that stuff. But people will comment, like frequently come to me. And I like, depending on the size, like if you're running a four to $7 million painting company, certainly you have gotten some management stuff figured out. You're a decent leader.

You've gotten some right people in place. Um, maybe you get to that size and you've like tricked a bunch of people to work for you or who knows what, but when you're, uh, I mean, I guess at any size, it's true, it's true for any, but smaller companies that are struggling to break past a million or 2 million in revenue, it's not a technology problem. It's not like it's, it's management, it's systems processes, like

has setting a vision for your company and telling people how they fit into that and getting people excited. Like giving you the right software isn't going to help you break through the ceiling of the next revenue mark.

Jason Paris (13:19.758)

Kind of like someone training for a marathon, like spending all their time trying to figure out how cold should the cold tub be? Well, that might get you like 0.1% better. You should probably start with like running, weightlifting, sleeping, and eating. That would be where I'd spend most of your time.

Chris Kiefer (13:27.424)

Yeah, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (13:31.321)

Yeah, there's a lot of work you gotta put in.

Chris Kiefer (13:37.573)

Yeah. And that's what's 90 that's what's the hardest that prevents most people from doing it

Jason Paris (13:43.786)

Now, right now, yeah, just like automation, the more you reduce the friction of the actual work of running a business, right? The less bandwidth has to get lost into these slippery, you know, leaky items, right? So someone's like, yeah, I'd love to run my business. I'm spending all of my time transferring paper to paper to paper. And I'm just like, there's like a leaky faucet of my bandwidth. If I had that bandwidth, I could focus more on the business, right? And that's where you'd kind of maybe say like, yeah, I'd love to.

Chris Kiefer (14:10.025)

I love that.

Jason Paris (14:12.734)

exercise more. I'm just so sore and I have a low tolerance for pain that I can't build up. So I want to get my cold tub perfect, right? That's not that's obviously a broken metaphor.

Chris Kiefer (14:23.041)

Yeah, no, but I think it's the same thing of like, at the end of the day, you have to think percentage, I think in percentages, like let's say tech makes you 10% more efficient or something, right? Pick a number, doesn't matter. Even if it's 2%, 2% of a $1 million company is a far different number than 2% of a seven, eight, 10, $15 million company, right? The little tiny cracks that you're like, ah.

And you should be like, eh, when you're a million dollars, cause you got bigger fish to fry at a big company. It's like, there's a lot of money just flooding out of your, um, or flooding into your boat. I don't even know what analogy I'm using anymore. That's just that there's a lot of money that's just rolling away because you don't have tight systems and processes. But that again, goes back to every single time you can implement and build the coolest tech and the best systems and

Jason Paris (15:02.882)

I'm getting lost.

Chris Kiefer (15:17.833)

businesses will fail implementing it because they don't, they're, they lack compliance and they've never been able to follow any process, you know, and everything requires a process.

Jason Paris (15:25.558)

which yeah, like in Europe, the way that you'd, I would position your company is you probably have a really high impact. This is you have many different positions you can take, but you're gonna have a really high impact on those companies that are, you know, $2 million and north of 3 million, 4 million, 5 million, because to get to that point, here's what they needed to have a very high tolerance for pain and a willingness to win, sorry, to lose the battles to win the war. So it's like, yeah, I could

Chris Kiefer (15:36.233)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (15:48.254)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (15:53.013)

Ooh, I love that.

Jason Paris (15:55.234)

tighten everything up, but I wouldn't be a fast growing entrepreneurial off the ground company. Now that I've gotten to $3 million, I need to begin the journey of professionalizing and tightening things up. And that's actually the opposite of what has gotten me here. If someone's like a micromanager worried about making sure that the ship has no leaks, that's usually not a founder. That's like a mid-level manager. And mid-level managers don't get companies from zero to one or zero to something. Right. And so you kind of have like, Hey, this is.

Chris Kiefer (16:22.631)

Yeah.

Jason Paris (16:24.45)

This is no shame. This is actually pretty normal. Uh, if you didn't have leaks, you wouldn't be here, but now guess what? We don't need to continue to scale and you can't grow with like the week. If you, if we continue to scale, these leaks are going to put you under. So now is the time to tighten this up. Not to say there's no shame. Like you kind of had to be there in a sense of your own, unless you're like, that's just how painting companies run. I'm just thinking like, how would you. Or like, I was thinking, what is the opposite of that? I mean, unless you take on a ton of debt.

Chris Kiefer (16:47.521)

I mean, that's how any business runs. It's like.

Jason Paris (16:52.822)

You hire a bunch of mid-level managers. You tell them, grow this thing slowly and perfectly, and I don't need a return for the next five years. That's how you would do it.

Chris Kiefer (17:00.977)

Yeah, I don't even know if that works, but I know what you're saying, you know, because.

Jason Paris (17:04.702)

In theory, like that's how you would say like they build me a big ship that doesn't leak Starting from nothing

Chris Kiefer (17:09.413)

Yeah. I like to think of, uh, it's like, um, I just was talking to someone else about this. It's kind of like when you got married, I don't know about you guys, but my wife and I, we lived in an apartment and it was a two bedroom apartment. It was fantastic. It was close to where she went to grad school. We were close to downtown. We wanted to go out to restaurants and stuff, go on dates. And then you, we moved to a three bedroom house that was, you know, in a little development and we had some kids.

And then we moved to a different place and now we have like, uh, acre lot, big yard. We have chickens. We wouldn't have wanted or needed that. And it would have been a distraction when we were newlyweds and just getting our life started. And I feel like to me, it's that like the idea, it's not like, it's crazy. You don't even, not only is it crazy, you don't even know what your dream house is when you get married or you're starting out your life, right? Same thing in the business. It's like,

Why don't you see if you can like do this for a while and if you love it, you know, if you don't love what you're doing, then find a different job, you know, or make a different job for yourself. But yeah, I completely agree that it's it all for me, it's coming back to the like know where you're at and uh, what like phase of life you're in or what phase of life your business is in and where you should be focusing your priorities. And cause it's just, it's like the analogies we were talking to the beginning with having kids and stuff like

There are different, uh, very distinct phases in everyone's life and a business is no different.

Jason Paris (18:42.462)

Yeah, you never step in the same river twice. This dream is always flowing. People change businesses change.

Chris Kiefer (18:46.721)

Hmm. I thought when you said that earlier, I thought you were saying like it's a it's like a Chinese proverb to like It's bad luck or something. Yeah, but I see what you're saying. It's totally it's always it's a different It's a completely different river every time. Yeah

Jason Paris (18:57.17)

Yeah. Right. So you ask like, who is Jason Paris? It's like, well, you never step in the same river twice.

Chris Kiefer (19:04.445)

Yeah. You're different today than you were yesterday. Yeah. Love that. So the other thing that I want to talk about is, uh, which we have been doing is the family meeting agenda. What's the, uh, first of all, like I can't even remember when we got married. And when I started getting into like business strategy and stuff, I was like, man, we need to have a mission for our family.

Jason Paris (19:06.774)

Yep, different, yep, evolving, changing, developing, human.

Jason Paris (19:16.15)

Yeah, that's awesome, man.

Chris Kiefer (19:32.193)

And we still have, we've gotten clear on our personal mission. My wife and I, like each of us have our own and then our business mission is to free you up to do what you love. That's what Boolean exists for, but we haven't done one for the family and now we're getting closer to, um, to doing this. And it was through seeing your posts on social media of like, hey, number, I don't know what number you guys are on a hundred or 200 and something. Right. How many family meetings have you done?

Jason Paris (19:59.406)

Yeah, hundreds and hundreds.

Chris Kiefer (20:02.429)

Yeah. And I was like, Natalie, check this out. And then you texted me the agenda and stuff. And I was like, this is fantastic. And so the first meeting that we had, we're like explaining to our kids. And again, they're all under six. So it's like, we're, we had to adapt quite a bit, but it was cool because we got to the part of like the homestead, like, Hey, what, what needs to be improved? What are we doing? What not? And, uh, one of our kids was like, you know, this swing in our basement,

when it is moving, it goes, and I was like, we can teach you about WD 40. So anyways, it's like, uh, yeah, like, that's right. Uh, so anyways, I was like, it's so, it was, uh, just intentionality around everything. I, you, we used to think, uh, and I, I want to say my wife used to think more than I did that like structure was annoying. Like I don't want to have a budget.

Jason Paris (20:39.262)

Yeah.

It's like 50% of life. The other half is duct tape.

Jason Paris (21:01.634)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (21:01.725)

Why do we have to plan our date nights? Let's just be spontaneous. And it's like, when you put in the big rocks in your life and you say, this is when we're doing this and this and this, and then you let whatever else wants to, it's a classic big rock, medium rock sand, right? Do that first and you're going to enjoy and have much more freedom to do what you actually wanna do and it's another counterintuitive thing where people think that I just wanna be free. And it's like, what does that even mean? You know, like.

Jason Paris (21:16.442)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (21:30.849)

I feel very free and I have a very strict routine. I block out when I'm sleeping on my calendar and my workouts and everything, which is maybe more than you need for some people, but I also feel like it opens you up to do more stuff and extract more out of the day than if you're just kind of wondering what's gonna happen next.

Jason Paris (21:52.462)

For sure. Yeah. I think it starts with that vision statement too, as you were talking through, right? Without a compelling vision that people will cast off their restraint. Right? So why would you maintain discipline unless you knew where you were going? And that's like an underrated part of it, but I love what you're doing at the family meetings. That is a super cool thing. And it's kind of people fall into the trap, I think of while we're living together. I see you every day.

Chris Kiefer (22:01.929)

Totally. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (22:18.119)

Yeah.

Jason Paris (22:20.926)

And so the ethos of it is intentional time set aside once a week to just talk about things that may not come up day to day. And like, so you get a purpose statement. I like the idea of open and frequent communication, help all members of the family, family realize their potential. You're showing the kids how to perform in a meeting. You're showing them what it's like for mom and dad to talk about finances every single week. Right. Talk about like encouraging one another, you know, what was challenging. Let's remember the past week. Let's not let.

Chris Kiefer (22:28.309)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (22:43.229)

Yes, I love that too. Yeah.

Jason Paris (22:50.122)

life just pass us by, let's take a moment to reflect. Right? And then you get to bribe them with treats at the end. And so then, so then when you're tired on a Friday and the last thing you want to do is have another meeting in the day, your kids are the ones that are driving and saying it's family meeting night, it's family meeting night. And it's just a fun expectation that who knows, where it'll go. I'm not the first, I'm not, I never, I did not come up with the idea of a family meeting, but I like the hold that it's taken in this little

Chris Kiefer (22:57.077)

That's right.

Jason Paris (23:19.87)

niche community of house painters where it's gotten visibility. And I like this, encourage people. I think that's super cool.

Chris Kiefer (23:25.381)

Yeah, no, it's fantastic. I want to pivot into your, so Aleph Holdings, what is that and what was the like origin story of why that was created?

Jason Paris (23:42.794)

Yeah. So what it is, is a holdings company. We make minority investments in house beating companies, and then come in as a fractional partner to help them scale and stabilize their business. So we're not like, uh, like a, not so we take, we, there's like multiple tiers. So there's consulting, there's coaching, uh, there's partnering. We take active roles in the business to help scale and stabilize. That's kind of the differentiator or the, or the rubble that, that we position ourselves at, uh, the origin, man, this started back in 2018.

2019 more as a concept of what is the next stage after Paris painting gets stabilized and mature. How will we do this in other trades based businesses? And over the years, that's gotten more and more refined to house painting companies with an emphasis of the why of being how do we build assets together? It's like how do you beyond just enriching ourselves? How do we

Chris Kiefer (24:29.825)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (24:35.329)

Hmm.

Jason Paris (24:40.418)

help teach others how to build assets. Right, so it's how do you teach others how to fish? The purpose statement, the why statement is conquering the fear of mammon. Right, mammon is that old funny word that's oftentimes used as finances, right, the fear of money. I view mammon as the systems and structures that man creates and architects to enslave itself. The most common one being money. This could also be fear, greed, lust, pride, envy.

Chris Kiefer (24:57.866)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (25:09.405)

Mmm.

Jason Paris (25:10.286)

The things that you are enslaving yourself with, only you can enslave yourself with. But if you live in America, if you live in capitalism, how do you conquer mammon? Foundationally, and I come from, this is going to be my spiritual paradigm, you got to have the shalom, the peace of God, right? Without that, that's the foundation. Then you need to understand your mago day, what is your true identity spiritually from a creator.

And then it also doesn't hurt if your assets outweigh your liabilities in life. Right? And so you can't conquer the fear of mammon by earning a lot of money. Right? You need to be understand the peace of God, understand your true identity. And then, you know, having the assets outweigh your liabilities in life, that helps you kind of shake off some of those shackles. It's the opposite of that would be, Hey, I'm in tune with God. I'm in tune with who I am. I did take out 400K in student loans.

And this sucks. I feel mammoned right now, right? That would be the opposite of that equation. So it kind of takes all of it going in the right direction, but that's a big part of the why, going through some of those thought experiments of, a lot of this is driven by my team. Not everybody wants to just grow a pair of painting for the rest of their life and enrich the owners of pairs of painting, but you start doing the thought experiment of, let's fast forward 10, 20 years. Great, we've got tens of million dollars in our bank account. What do we want to do with our lives?

Chris Kiefer (26:13.425)

Mmm.

Jason Paris (26:36.014)

It's like, well, I'd like to help others conquer the fear of man. How would you do that? Well, ultimately I'd like to teach them how to be asset-minded, so it would have a ripple effect beyond just them, but possibly through their lineage, like through the generations that they would have. Well, how would you do that? You'd want to build an asset with them and walk through that and teach them how to fish. And so that's kind of a long-winded answer of what is it? What is the why? Where did it come from? Olaf is an old Hebrew word.

Chris Kiefer (26:36.353)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (26:52.199)

Mmm.

Jason Paris (27:05.11)

means strength of the ox. Well, it's the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, right? The pictogram is an ox. And so we view ourselves as oxen, they're coming shoulder to shoulder and yoking up to plow the fields, right? And build the harvest. Many deep layers to that, right? Oftentimes when you yoke up two oxen, you have one that's more matured and one that's a little more bucking and wild. And those are the two best ones to yoke up. And then once they do yoke up, it's not a one plus one equals two, but it's a one plus one equals three.

Chris Kiefer (27:09.857)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (27:16.201)

Mmm. Love that. That's so cool.

Jason Paris (27:34.606)

and two ox and yoke together don't do double what they typically do alone, they do three times what they can do alone. And then you're plowing the field behind you, which then provides the soil for a plentiful harvest.

Chris Kiefer (27:47.034)

I love that. So many cool analogies. And you guys are specifically buying fractional minority stakes in painting companies.

Jason Paris (27:55.958)

Yeah. So come in typically a 40% purchase in a business. And then we come in and as a co owner, we start to divvy up the roles of who wants to do what. And I'll just tell you, will we kind of talk through this, the founder is usually a visionary. And a good startup integrator may all speak for myself in my journey in Paris painting, right? I was a good visionary, and a good startup integrator. As Paris painting started to professionalize and mature.

Chris Kiefer (28:12.549)

Mm-hmm.

Jason Paris (28:24.894)

I was not going to be the best person to be the president of this organization. The last thing that I should be doing in my life is being the president of a $10 million painting company. That is, uh, those types of people are like super dialed in, like they want to make everything perfect and clean and crisp. They're like good at conflict. Uh, you have specialists in the role as opposed to more of a generalist that has a high tolerance for pain and can get things done. Right. And so that, yeah, I'll just say that's kind of

Chris Kiefer (28:33.237)

Hmm.

Jason Paris (28:53.23)

The general ethos is we come in knowing that we're working with founders. We're kind of good at everything, but they need a team of specialists to come in and yoke up in their business to truly scale it and stabilize. And it is, I would just say it's also for business owners that want to turn their business into an asset. And while that sounds like obvious, like who wouldn't want to do that? I would say most people in the trades actually don't want to get down to it. They want a lifestyle business that they own a hundred percent and they control. To take on a partner is a pretty big ego shift.

Chris Kiefer (29:04.129)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (29:22.71)

Mm-hmm.

Jason Paris (29:23.042)

kind of ego death that comes with that, right? But on the pathway to scaling and stabilizing something, that is, you know, almost all the time, that's how businesses get built, right? It's not by a single charismatic owner. They're usually taking on co-owners, co-founders, executives with stock options, right? This is how you scale and stabilize a business beyond being an extension of yourself, if that's what you desire.

Chris Kiefer (29:25.514)

Yeah, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (29:34.91)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (29:51.409)

Yeah, yeah. Is that I'm curious, the I assume that the company size is like, I'm trying to think like there's the entrepreneurs organization, have you heard of the EO? So like an EO, you can't be an EO unless you're past a million dollars in revenue. Just because it's like, I feel like at first, like, again, this is like high school Chris or college minded Chris is like, what, that's a dumb rule. Like, I want to I work hard. Like, let me show you. It's like, no, that's great.

Jason Paris (30:02.434)

Yep. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (30:21.065)

but there is certain things that the revenue says about the stage, the stage of life, who they might have in the business. And I'm, it's like just like an easy bar. It doesn't mean that you're going to be a healthy run business, but there is generally a revenue implies some stuff and you still got to do some, you know, due diligence and research. But I'm assuming that you guys know that you're like, what's your ideal painting company that you're trying to buy a stake in?

Jason Paris (30:48.278)

Yeah, at least 1.5 million. And I would say we've definitely squinted and gone down to one if it's with the right founder and they have some of that momentum as a team, but kind of the truth of the matter is that you need so much infrastructure, you need to be able to handle and absorb the infrastructure that we're about to plug in and you have to be able to at least have something that can begin to absorb that. I mean, the journey of professionalizing, if you're going to talk about house painting companies, this is broad generalizations based off of an average job size and

Chris Kiefer (30:50.367)

Okay.

Chris Kiefer (30:54.422)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Kiefer (31:04.919)

Yes, yeah.

Jason Paris (31:16.122)

geography you're trying to work in, which will drive the complexity of the org chart that's required, it's probably about three million dollars. At that point, you're trying to now scale through skill, as opposed to just cowboying it up. So that'd be like my preference. Now I'll just tell you, the house painting industry, there's not a ton of three million dollar painting companies out there. They're pretty rare, quite frankly. There's a lot more million dollar painting companies than there were 10 years ago. A big part of that's inflation.

Chris Kiefer (31:20.309)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Kiefer (31:28.896)

Yes.

Chris Kiefer (31:38.205)

Yeah.

Jason Paris (31:45.666)

I'm just kidding. But I would say this industry is on that slow march to professionalizing. And so, yeah, kind of, you know, if we can squint and say in our first year of partnership, we're going to be tracking close to $2 million together. That's about the top line revenue that's required to be able to start absorb some of the infrastructure that we're about to pour in this business.

Chris Kiefer (31:46.462)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (32:05.565)

What does the infrastructure look like?

Jason Paris (32:08.106)

Yeah, so it's kind of all over the place. It's really what is this?

Chris Kiefer (32:10.357)

Cause like, are you, or sorry, one other question to frame it. I'm, these are all assumptions. So you are one of the partners in Aleph Holdings and there's how many partners? Is like everybody become a partner once you buy in or no?

Jason Paris (32:22.318)

It's a great question. So all of Holdings has its own cap table. All of Ventures, I'll kind of give the big messy spiel. So you got all of Holdings, which is funded through all of Capital. All of Capital is where the distributions of all of Holdings ultimately get funneled through. We also build multifamily apartments. We'll buy land, develop the land, participate in the build, and then hold. Also, outside of apartments, we're investing into painting companies and using some of the cash to do down payments, fund the growth, things like that.

Chris Kiefer (32:26.136)

Mm-hmm.

Jason Paris (32:51.562)

So all of ventures is 50% owned by all of holdings, 50% owned by all of capital. At the moment, that's the current cap table. And then there's 15 painting companies currently that are part of that all of ventures ecosystem. Does that make sense? Okay. And then those the infrastructure look like, it really depends on the stage of the business and what the founder wants to do. I'd say some of the most common things are develop, hiring, developing, leading people.

Chris Kiefer (32:56.085)

Hmm

Chris Kiefer (33:08.722)

Got it. Yeah. Tracking.

Jason Paris (33:20.994)

but also having the infrastructure in place to do that well. Right, so obviously there's like playbooks, there's a technology, we have our own software that we've built, an ERP, right? So cradle to grave of a project. And then like an LMS, learning management system. That's all great information to have in life. I'll just tell you, the internet has proven out pretty clearly that information is not what holds people back, right? Someone has to lean into the business and do the work.

Chris Kiefer (33:32.821)

Mm-hmm. Nice.

Chris Kiefer (33:39.112)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (33:46.881)

Mmm

Jason Paris (33:50.762)

with the founder, right? It's been our experience. If it was as easy as give me the information and the painting companies shall grow, this industry would look a lot different because we have this thing called the open internet. And there is a proliferation of coaches who will tell you what you should do. And then private equity would just be buying companies, hiring coaches and the industry would flourish. That has not happened. That will not happen.

Chris Kiefer (34:03.617)

The information is available.

Jason Paris (34:19.314)

It requires the hard work of integration. And that's like the uniqueness of all foldings is we're truly co integrators to scale and stabilize these painting companies into assets. Not because we like getting paid as coaches or consultants, because we are co-owners of this company and we want to own assets. So we have that aligned incentive to say, I'm not interested in owning a painting company that's a job. I'm interested in owning painting companies that are assets. And even if you're, I'm a minority owner in that.

And the founder has the proportional benefit, the majority benefit of that. It's still an aligned incentive. So that's kind of a longer answer of how we lean in through the integration.

Chris Kiefer (34:58.857)

Love that. Yeah, that's super cool. So how many people founded Aleph Holdings?

Jason Paris (35:07.554)

So it was, well, it started with three. Well, it started with two. So it's been a journey. So it started with two, Chet and I. So two people, Chet. So if you go on the PCA expo.

Chris Kiefer (35:15.393)

Chet, did you say? Okay. He also owns a painting company.

Jason Paris (35:21.698)

He does not own a, ah yeah, he's a corner in Paris painting. Yep, yep. So it's Chet and myself, and then Micah came from higher education. So he was like the lead sales person at a local university. Right, so he had like recruiters underneath him that would try and sell students on, come spend 80 grand to get an education, right? That's kind of how that game works. So he left, he's now our VP of sales. Chet is our CEO visionary. Alex.

Chris Kiefer (35:25.186)

Okay.

Chris Kiefer (35:35.957)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (35:42.205)

Right. Yeah.

Jason Paris (35:50.806)

He was working as like a consultant for franchisors. So he would say like the franchise model is dead and dying. Because he's seen some of the underbelly of that. He plays the role of like integrator president. All right, and so that's kind of, and then there's synergy and memes. You can't get anywhere without synergy or memes. That's where I lean in. So there's like five primary shareholders on the all of Holdings Cap table. And then we have a couple other minority investors within.

Chris Kiefer (35:58.814)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (36:04.371)

Mmm.

Jason Paris (36:20.034)

that play key roles in the organization that have had the opportunity to invest along the way. Sometimes through a profit interest, sometimes through.

Chris Kiefer (36:24.965)

And how many, yeah. And how many years ago did it start?

Jason Paris (36:31.822)

I think it was 2019, is when we formed it officially. Yeah. Oh, it turned out to be the best, yeah. I mean, it was scary for about two weeks, but anybody in home services would know it's been, you know, COVID was a big boom.

Chris Kiefer (36:34.645)

nice. Right before COVID. Was that good timing? Yeah, the home service industry blew up. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (36:47.301)

Yeah, that's awesome. Um, super cool. Yeah. I'm curious was the, uh, where does. Like a desire that I have is, um, it's like cap tables and all that stuff. I feel like I'm, so I'm an engineer by education, very technical minded, love spreadsheets and data and analysis, but the, the whole structure and orchestrated like function of, uh, holding companies and stuff like that.

I don't know why I'm just thinking of like, um, uh, what's the guy's name? Rockefeller, you know, just like, or, or Ray Kroc or whatever, just like the architect behind the business model is the, like, there's so much value in the right structure to then serve all like to align all the, um, monetary incentives with the primary goals of the company and all that. And so that's something I'm super interested in.

Jason Paris (37:44.724)

Then you have the operating agreement, right? And kind of how you're.

Chris Kiefer (37:46.653)

Yep. So who's the, uh, the brains behind that or where have, cause you obviously are speaking very fluently in it. Was this you that brought that to the table or where, where has that kind of birthed out of this or who is like the, how did you decide on the structure that you picked?

Jason Paris (37:53.294)

Yeah.

Jason Paris (37:58.434)

All right.

Jason Paris (38:01.819)

I'll be.

Yeah, I would give Chet that credit. I think Chet was the one that brought the, I mean, I brought Chet on, which is kind of a unique thing. The first external role that I hired in Paris Painting was the CEO. And that's how I approached Chet and I said, Chet, what would it take for you to become CEO of Paris Painting? Now I'm a pretty good CEO. I think I can fill that role, but he is world-class, right? And that was something of, like I said, you start with the vision and without a compelling vision,

Chris Kiefer (38:16.17)

Mm.

Jason Paris (38:32.322)

that people will cast off their restraints. It's hard to maintain discipline, focus, determination and sacrifice. We don't know where you're going. And then there's a confidence of are we heading in the right direction. And I'd say Chet has done a good job of architecting things, you know, multiple three, five years in advance of when they need to happen, knowing that that's coming up. Same thing they started doing with all the apartments. He saw, you know, three, four years ago.

Chris Kiefer (38:38.955)

Mm. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Kiefer (38:44.233)

That's awesome.

Jason Paris (38:59.854)

we're going to have a pretty big issue called, what do we do with this cash? And it's like kind of facetious, like, oh, that's your biggest problem in life, who cares? Like, no, this is like, once the painting companies start to spit off profit, what do you do with that? Do you hold it in cash? Do you put your money in stocks? Do you buy a boat? Do you buy a cabin? Right? And does that ultimately keep us going together? Or do you start to invest and then, yeah, there's multiple layers to that.

Chris Kiefer (39:03.348)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (39:12.341)

Yeah, what do you do then? Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (39:19.985)

Yeah. To give it to Uncle Sam. Yeah. I love that.

Chris Kiefer (39:28.305)

I'm realizing I didn't manage time well, so we're going to go rapid fire on my wrap up questions. Three book recommendations.

Jason Paris (39:31.406)

Sure. OK.

Jason Paris (39:36.79)

Um, I would go, so I'm a sci-fi guy. I like, uh, I'll just start to say dune. So I know that's been a popular thing in TV or movie culture now, but dune series by Frank Herbert, big fan of that. Uh, along with that, the foundation series by Isaac Asimov, um, all that has framed quite a bit of the thinking that I give around individual autonomy versus, um, kind of like macro predestination. And then I mean, it's hard to not say Ecclesiastes cause that's where I always go and I say like, what am I, what the.

FMI doing with my life sometimes. So I like the book of Ecclesiastes. It's a good, good grounding book.

Chris Kiefer (40:14.185)

And what was the second one you said?

Jason Paris (40:16.838)

Foundation, is it called the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov? I don't know how you pronounce it, but he's like one of the best science fan fiction writers of all time. So, but it has not translated over well to a visual media. So plus or no.

Chris Kiefer (40:18.229)

Foundation. Okay. The foundation series.

Chris Kiefer (40:28.681)

That's awesome.

Chris Kiefer (40:33.53)

and favorite movie.

Jason Paris (40:35.734)

Flavor movie, gosh, there's a couple of close ones. And you guys still go with Playtime by Jacques Tati.

Chris Kiefer (40:43.649)

Playtime.

Jason Paris (40:46.018)

So fun, I mean, it's got, so I did a critique of this on a silly YouTube show that I post that no one watches. But it's like, yeah, 1967 classic. It.

Chris Kiefer (40:54.394)

1967 drama.

Chris Kiefer (41:00.681)

I'm so, I don't have time to tell you this, but I'm so pumped that you, like this is why I asked this question because I am a big ratings guy and I'll have to send you a different explanation of this, but 7.3 is my cutoff. That's what I've determined is like, if it's below that, it's not worth your time typically, but I will take someone's mulligan recommendation if it's below, but this is a 7.8. It's like a sleeper hit or sleeper movie.

Jason Paris (41:27.062)

It's a saberhead. It wasn't a big hit in its time. It actually went put him to bankruptcy, but it won some awards internationally. And I would say as society has marched forward, I think it was ahead of its time, quite frankly. And I think it's a real fun thing to look at nowadays.

Chris Kiefer (41:30.26)

Yeah.

Hahaha.

Chris Kiefer (41:40.073)

That's awesome. Sweet, and if people wanna reach out to you, what is your preferred method that they do that?

Jason Paris (41:47.918)

DM me on social. So I've got Facebook, Instagram, those are probably the two you can hit me up on. You can also shoot me an email, jason at olif-mgmt.com. So if you figure out how to spell that email, then you pass the bar of being able to talk to me. But social media DMs are probably the easiest way to get a hold of me. Don't ever call me, I'll never answer. I'm a millennial, you can text me.

Chris Kiefer (42:13.109)

That's awesome. Well Jason, this was super fun. Really love what you're doing. As I've gotten deeper into the painting world, like we're going to be at PCA this year. We're a sponsor there. And your name just kept coming up. Just like Jason Parris. He's like, man, he's everywhere. He's on this podcast, he's on that podcast. What's Aleph Holdings? And I was like, I just was, I was excited for the opportunity to get to connect because we're, yeah, we're finding ourselves deeply ingrained.

Jason Paris (42:32.366)

Sure. Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (42:41.949)

And like the, I didn't know how long focusing on automating businesses in the painting world would last. And like, when would we have to go to like electrical or HVAC or the next thing? And we're just like going so deep. It's crazy. It's like, yeah, it's nuts. So anyways,

Jason Paris (42:46.862)

Sure. No. It's the blue ocean, man.

Jason Paris (42:56.514)

This will keep you busy for a good decade or two. Yeah. No, it's nice to meet you too. I love the business name. Obviously, I think it's too clever for the industry right now, but hopefully we can change that, make it so that painters would get it. And then.

Chris Kiefer (43:08.294)

The thing is that it doesn't they don't need to get it because it means nothing to everybody They're like Boolean. Is that a diet plan? what

Jason Paris (43:11.574)

Well, the other side of it, it might scare them. They might scare them because they think it's a ghost. So yeah, be careful.

Chris Kiefer (43:18.009)

Yeah, that's right. A friend of mine said a boo-lean. It's a diet plan for ghosts Yeah, yeah, but it's a Boolean if you are a technical person that knows what a true or false statement is so Anyways, super fun. Jason. Thank you so much for your time and I'm sure we'll see you at PCA and around

Jason Paris (43:22.186)

Whoa, bullying.

Jason Paris (43:30.721)

Done.

Jason Paris (43:39.19)

Thanks, Chris.