The Punch That Changed Everything With Brian Young

Owner and founder of Home Painters Toronto – Brian Young

How could a great salesman such a Brian still struggle in business and have negative sales. The one big “light-bulb’ moment Brian had while studying the concept of ROI that changed his business forever. Why Brian kept changing coaches believing that none of them were helpful. The ingenious way Brian uses to train all his new sales hires (because he “sucks” as a teacher).

Check out HomePaintersToronto.com and PaintingMarketer.comfor more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

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Jaime Masters:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Masters and today on the show we have Brian Young. Now, he owns two companies, one is PaintingMarketer.com and the other one is Home Painters Toronto, which is awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Brian Young:	Thanks so much for having me.

Jaime Masters:	So, it's funny, we were just talking about this beforehand because you know Matt Shoup, who's a guy that I also interviewed from the painting area, industries and we were talking about how, in general, painters aren't the guys that are making a ridiculous amount of money and yet I've had quite a few come on the show. So, why do you think that is?

Brian Young:	Well, I think there's a lot of - well, a lot of people think of painting, especially - some of my customers even, they say why you guys making so much money because we're, we're charging all this money, but there's actually a ton of money to be made in the trades and a lot of people are underestimated, and so, if you run your business properly, definitely you can make tons of money in it.

Jaime Masters:	So, I think that's the issue, though, right? If you run your business properly -

Brian Young:	Absolutely -

Jaime Masters:	I used to do - deal with landscapers and plumbing companies and, and most of the time it's not run very well, but this is sort of your expertise. So, tell me how you started going from regular old painting company to fantastic internet marketer that has been insane.

Brian Young:	Actually, I went through a lot of years of painting before I got to the marketing point. I went through roughly ten years plus of negative sales, of really struggling sales, and the reason why is because I was good at doing what I could do and I was a pretty good, I was a pretty good salesman. I could close people on the spot when I got in front of them. I could run the crews properly. I just wasn't good at marketing the business. So, unfortunately I had ten years of a lot of pain and that's what really kind of built up a lot of character from my point of view, and then once I figured out how to play the marketing game, then it was just like everything just went through the roof.

Jaime Masters:	Okay, people love hearing those stories, but ten years is a ridiculously long time. Did you try a lot of marketing things and then -

Brian Young:	Oh, yeah, yeah.

Jaime Masters:	Tell me about that.

Brian Young:	Alright, well, first of all, I'm not a tech guy, I mean I'm - I barely - like I didn't even own a smart phone until about four years ago. So, I was really new to this internet world and I resisted it for so many years, and because of that, basically my marketing - my market share was declining whereas all my competitors were - had websites going and had all this automation going and they're doing a lot better than me, and I saw it happening, but I didn't want to change because I was thinking, well - because I was a good cold caller, like I said, door to door guy. I was the door to door guy. I could knock on a door and within 45 minutes walk out with over a thousand bucks, and - but I just - my market share was going down and down and down and down and so that was the biggest hurdle was getting over that, you know, the fact that I wasn't marketing properly.

Jaime Masters:	So, it's interesting though because you did have one tactic that worked really, really well -

Brian Young:	Yeah.

Jaime Masters:	And why didn't just leveling that one thing up or hiring somebody else to do door to door actually work for you?

Brian Young:	I tried. I tried that, I tried working with other window installers because we do - we primarily focused on exterior, and direct mail. All these things were working a little, but not enough to keep my market share going, and they were diminishing and I could feel it diminishing every day. The fact that I was going door to door, people weren't answering as many, as many doors. They weren't answering phones, they wouldn't give me their information. They were looking at me as kind of like the low guy on the list in terms of who - how much to charge. So, I could feel it going down every day and that's, and that's when I knew I had to change at some point.

Jaime Masters:	Okay, so how did you, a -

Brian Young:	How did I -

Jaime Masters:	- non tech guy, right?

Brian Young:	Yeah, okay, well, the first thing I did was - actually the thing that kind of defined it was when I got - I was cold calling a house and I remember it was 2011 of September actually and it was in New Market and customer was really upset for me cold calling his house and he basically shoved me and punched me in the face. So, at that point I realized I had to change because everything I was doing wasn't working and I was really down - that was like my, my drop dead downright thing I had to change.

Jaime Masters:	Somebody hit you in the face?

Brian Young:	Yeah, hit me in the face. We - few profanities went back and forth and so that's when I kind of just sat down, I said I realized I had to change and so what I did was I just - I didn't know what to do. I, I didn't know any painters that were doing what I was doing, at least at the level I was doing. So, I just started googling coaches, how to run your painting business, and one thing lead to another. I hired a coach, and then as soon as I hired a coach - actually I hired a couple coaches and a couple of them didn't quite work with me. So, it took me a while before I got the right coach, and then once I got a coach, he got me focused. He - we obviously got a website, got some automation going with Infusionsoft, figured out marketing plan, pay per click. Did all the stuff that normal companies should be doing and then from there I just went through the roof. We were - I think I got 300 - no, the first year I doubled sales and then from then on I was going up about 30 to 40 percent a year after that.

Jaime Masters:	This is amazing. Before we dive into the marketing side, I want to ask you about the coaching side because -

Brian Young:	Sure

Jaime Masters:	- the hard thing is, is finding somebody that actually works with you and actually is good. So -

Brian Young:	Yeah

Jaime Masters:	- what did you learn in the trajectory and why'd you keep hiring coaches if a couple of them sucked for you-

Brian Young:	Well, yeah, the problem was is they would give me good ideas, the coaches, don't get me wrong, they were actually helpful, but my mindset was wrong. So like they would be giving me all these cool ideas, but I would say, you know what, that, that won't work. So, my belief system was all off. So, anything they were giving me, I was telling them, no, that won't work or I'd try it for maybe a week and then I'd say give up on it. So, what this guy did was for like three months solid, he would just pound stuff into my head and get me to change my belief system, then he says, yes, Brian it can work. I said, no, it can't work, trust me, I've been doing this 20 - 22 years, it can't work, and he was saying - and he - so, he eventually worked on my belief system. He's a big Tony Robbins guy and once we got my belief system in and I think it took about three to four months, I was like - I was just - I just started building things piece by piece and the next thing I know, we were doubling sales.

Jaime Masters:	Okay, that's huge, and amazing for you to admit to because sometimes people are like, oh, well, I hired a coach and it didn't freaking work and it's them, but at the time I'm sure you didn't realize that it was your belief system, you just kept going, oh, it's not working, it's not working, it's not working.

Brian Young:	Right, exactly.

Jaime Masters:	When you had that light bulb turn on and you actually started doing the work and then saw some results -

Brian Young:	Yeah -

Jaime Masters:	- when did your mindset actually shift?

Brian Young:	What happened was - it wasn't like one just huge boom, I remember there was a couple weeks where it did actually escalate to a huge amount, but there was just building blocks, like little things he said. Like the first thing I remember was, no one can match paint colors like I can. So, and then I couldn't - like the belief that no one could do it as good as me, and he said, Brian, okay, I understand no one can do it as good as you, but if someone can even do it like 80 percent as good as you, save you two hours a day of, of having to mix paint colors and make sure they're perfect, could you do that - could someone do that. I said probably someone could do that. So, once they got started on it and then I got some guy, like $13.00 an hour, some high school guy, and he got him to do it. I said, holy crap, well, if he can do that, well maybe I can get someone to do this that's 80 percent as good as me because I, I just believed that no one could ever do anything as good as me.

Jaime Masters:	Because we're entrepreneurs and we're the best at everything, come on, right -

Brian Young:	Absolutely -

Jaime Masters:	- but what's so important is you can't multiply you being the best at the things that you're only the best at right?

Brian Young:	Yeah.

Jaime Masters:	So, you're being able to put those in place. So, not only was it the marketing side, but it was also getting delegation and the right people on the team?

Brian Young:	Absolutely. Like I said, delegation is something that I had to work on because I was a bit of a control freak. So, I started small with something like paint chips and eventually I got someone to be delivering orders to the customers and then I got painters collecting money and then - like this was all little things in my day that were eating away at my time, and then eventually I could - I actually realized that okay - because I was really cheap, I didn't want to spend money on marketing or anything, I used to do it all myself. So, I realized that, okay, well ROI, I never really understood the concept of ROI, return on investment. If I could pay whatever it is, Google ad words two hundred bucks a lead and I could close whatever it is, maybe one in four of them, then that's like the average sale is $4,000.00 for painting, so, I was like, wow, that's a huge return on investment. 

	So, I started looking at my business in terms of what I could do exponentially, investments and marketing versus doing it all myself, and then, of course, delegating because one thing you'll find when you start getting the ball rolling is you can't do everything yourself, you're gonna have to start to delegate something. So, the delegating was a muscle that I had to definitely improve on and, and build up, and to this point, I'm still working on certain parts of it, like my sales part is, is the part I'm really working on now is getting guys to sell exactly the, the brand that I want to sell, so that's cool.

Jaime Masters:	Ever evolving process, right, but when you start marketing and you start getting more clients, there's nothing else you can do, so you have to delegate, and then you sell more and you delegate and that's sort of the cycle.

Brian Young:	Yeah -

Jaime Masters:	What did you learn on the marketing side, though, that actually started going out - because I'm sure that the people that are listening right now are, I want that, what did you do, how do I make my marketing go crazy.

Brian Young:	Yeah, the first thing I did was I got a website and for anyone of you that have a website now, you're miles ahead of where I was back four or five years ago, so, it's, it's great. We got a pay per click campaign, we invested in Infusionsoft which is our CRM which organizes the customers that come in and helps us close at a, at a better close rate as well - yes, testimonials, as well as on site review sites which is great for us. HomeStars in Canada is huge for, for any painter or any trade. If you're a trade and you want to improve your business, you gotta get on these review sites because that's what people are using nowadays is review sites.

Jaime Masters:	Awesome, so Infusionsoft is a beast. I use it also. How does the non-tech guy start using that because I know I'm a geek and I still am like, okay, my mind gets blown.

Brian Young:	Yeah, that's a tough one. I actually was - I'm still a little bit confused on it, but what I do is - this is where I actually got to the point where I can't figure this out, I gotta delegate this thing out. So, I'm still not a tech guy, but I got my guy, Kelsey Racher who's from Argon Solutions and he does all my, all my Infusionsoft. All I - I'm really good at telling him what to do though in terms of what I want from my customers. I'm saying, okay, I'm having trouble in this stage of the process, I can't get them from this stage to this stage to close. They're all in, let's say appointment set and I can't get them to, to get them to set up the appointment. So, what we do is we come up with content based on our stages in the business. So, what we did was we broke down our sales process, our whole marketing process from the time a new lead comes in to the time it closes, and then even our follow up system after that. So, that's what we did, we broke up our system and then - and with respect to Kelsey, he actually does all the work, so I don't actually even do anything, I just tell him what I want and what I need from it, where I'm getting stuck and where I need help on.

Jaime Masters:	I have somebody that does that too. I'm like, okay, fix this for me because I don't know how to actually go in there and do it because it's not worth our time to, to really learn the whole system especially when you can delegate it to someone that actually knows, right?

Brian Young:	Absolutely, I tried for three or four months and I got nowhere with it and I was even about to quit Infusionsoft because it just wasn't, wasn't getting there and I even got set up, spent two thousand bucks getting set up and I still wasn't there. I was like, okay, teach me how to do it. They tried to teach me a bit, but they can only learn - teach you so much in seven to eight hours at two hundred bucks a pop. So, so unfortunately I didn't get anywhere with that way, so I just eventually delegated it out, and again, ROI I was thinking, okay, if I could spend, let's say, $5,000.00 a year spending on this - on a guy to implement this and if I can even get one sale from that, the average sale is $4,000.00, it pays itself off, and for that matter I've been able, as I said, double sales and increase sales between 20 and 30 percent each year from then, so that's the way I'm looking at my business now.

Jaime Masters:	Tell me about some of these systems because I think that's the thing a lot of people don't understand. Can you walk me through creating one of those also -

Brian Young:	Sure -

Jaime Masters:	- because it seems a little daunting to people that have never done that?

Brian Young:	Sure. We started really simply. He said, how do you get your customer. I said, I either cold call a customer or they call me from a lawn sign, and at the time I didn't have my, my website even going. So, we started with that, and then we - I would say, and what do you next, and I'd say, well, I set up an appointment, I tell them I'm gonna come by at 7:00, and okay, cool. So, then he set a stage for that, and then he said, what do you do. I said, well, I go to them, I give them a quote in about an hour and then he says, okay, what are the outcomes, and I said, well, I either close it on the spot, they tell me they're getting other quotes or whatever. There are certain scenarios and then from there what do you do, and I says, well, sometimes they call me back or sometimes I call them back and then they'll say, yeah, I think we're interested. So, that we call verbal yes, that's a stage called verbal yes, and then from there they either close or they turn into a dead lead. So, we just broke it down stage by stage by stage, and that was the - I think there were six stages we started with, okay. Then what happens is you start with that and then you realize, okay, in one of these stages, like, you know, Kelsey, I'm having trouble, I'm getting these customers, this customer is doing this, this customer is doing that. So, then from there we broke it down to three more stages in that stage. So, start off small, I would say start off simple like buy them a quote, you either close or you don't, and then, of course, after that and you start marketing your business, you realize that okay, we're getting stuck here, give me other - like you can segment your customers down and - so, they can close, you can get a better return, like sort of a closing ratio on that.

Jaime Masters:	So, what did you do before you had Infusionsoft, were you using spreadsheets or how did you keep track of all the people you were -

Brian Young:	No, just on paper, it was strictly on paper, and I would - which I have the paper somewhere. Basically, I would list them and I would highlight them if they, if they were a customer and then I would just leave them in a call back date. So, it was very simple, wasn't even on a spreadsheet. I used computer, but it was mainly for emails and Facebook, that was it.

Jaime Masters:	That's insane, the upgrade that you had from before, but it's insane also how important that is for something. So, that way things aren't getting lost, I mean a piece of paper gets lost and you're like, there goes all my phone numbers with all my people, that's insane.

Brian Young:	Yeah, whenever you're building your business like at the rate I was. I think I was at about 350k before - not even that, 300,000 before I got Infusionsoft and then from there we were I think 1.3 million to 2014 and then we went to 1.9 last year and this year we're closing - we're trying for about three million. So, we almost ten folded our sales in four to five years. So - and - so, the bottom line is if you're growing your business, absolutely crucial you gotta, you gotta keep tracking these things and you wanna be - if you want to scale your business, you have to automate it, the bottom line, and keep track -

Jaime Masters:	A thousand, a thousand percent, but the hard thing is that when people are in their business, right, and you're the guy doing the $300,000.00 worth of work and trying to do everything -

Brian Young:	Yeah -

Jaime Masters:	- having the time to be able to implement some of the stuff, even if you delegate like Infusionsoft, is rough. How did you make that transition to work on the business for a long time instead of in it?

Brian Young:	The first thing you do - well, I also subscribe to Strategic Coach and the good thing about Strategic Coach, they teach you the psychology behind what you actually should be doing. So, what I did was I took an inventory of all the things I was doing. Like I said I was pretty stubborn, I wanted to do everything myself, and what I did was I started to chip away and the things that ate up my day that I could delegate right away. For example, paint chips, picking up money from customers. I didn't want anyone to touch my customers, I was like I want to get that review myself so I didn't believe anyone could get a positive - a ten out of ten review. So, all these things, so I took an inventory and I started chipping away at those things that were eating up my time and then even, even now when I'm going to the grocery store, I'm thinking, do I need to be grocery shopping. So I start - I'm delegating it to my nanny or to one of my assistants. So, I really try to get myself zoned in on what I'm good at and what's making the business the most amount of money at this point in time which I call my unique ability.

Jaime Masters:	Heck yeah. Okay, so tell me what were those pivotal pieces, those little things that you changed that made a huge difference? Infusionsoft was definitely one of them -

Brian Young:	Yeah -

Jaime Masters:	- it sounds like and the automation, but give me another one that really made a big difference?

Brian Young:	For painting, the thing that was taking up my time - well, the two things that were taking up my time was - three things actually, was getting back to customers, setting up appointments; the other one was follow ups throughout the job, like trying to close these customers. So, getting sales reps to, to actually go out and give the quotes as well as following up, and the third was production. So, those were three really, really high level things in terms of what I got people to do and now they're doing it for me better than me, okay, which is amazing, but - so, those were the three things and so, I started out with little things, like I started delegating small like - okay, well, if you can call the customer back and find out where they are in the buying process, and you don't have to sell them, just find out where they are, and if they're ready to buy or if they're close to buying, give them to me and then I'll close them. 

	So, I just started out with little things, like I said, it's a muscle, and then as soon as you can trust - let's say, build that trust level like anything, then you can delegate more and more and more. It's just kind of like a muscle that you have to build, and in each one of the functions of my business, like production, appointment setting, bid - I call it bid provided, call backs following it up, and sales, if you can kind of break each one of those processes down and then kind of nip away at all those little tasks and then try to break that job down even more, then you can start delegating little bits and pieces of it rather than saying, no one can do it as good as me, I don't trust anyone, I'm gonna do everything.

Jaime Masters:	So, tell me about - so 300,000, who was your first hire and how many people have you hired all the way to where you are now?

Brian Young:	Oh, God. My first - the first tough one like I said, was the field stuff, just the general duties delivering ladders. The second interesting hire because I already had painters. That's the one thing I could delegate was painting because I'm a terrible painter.

Jaime Masters:	Are you really? That's funny.

Brian Young:	I'm good at selling it, I'm good at knowing where to - like what to tell the customer, what to do obviously, but in terms of the actual physical, I'm below average at best.

Jaime Masters:	That's why it's easy to give that away because you're, like, alright, someone else can do that part.

Brian Young:	Exactly. So, what was the question? I got sidetracked.

Jaime Masters:	So, who's your first hire and how -

Brian Young:	Oh, okay, this was the biggy because I've never worked with appointment setters or let's say, executive assistants, and that was, that was a huge thing because I was getting bogged down in administration, phone calls, leads coming in, lead qualifying, so I got someone to do that, and once I got that off my plate, I could spend more time on production, which I'm good at, and sales, which I'm even better at. So, that was the big thing. If you can get someone - I don't know if an entrepreneur, I don't know if they're good at doing administration, probably not if you're an entrepreneur. Get someone to do that and you just - you don't have to get them to do everything. Start off slow, start off small, get them to do little things that you - that anyone can pretty much do, and then start delegating more and more, build that muscle up.

Jaime Masters:	Awesome, I agree with that a thousand percent too. It's funny, us as entrepreneurs, we're a little ADD, a little all over the place. Usually details are not our main strong suit for the profile type entrepreneur. I don't know why we have such a hard time giving it up, but it is an interaction because you want to make sure that your people are getting the interaction that you really, really want, like you said, the brand to make sure that they trust you. How have you done that and getting that to stay the same the whole way through?

Brian Young:	Like I said, it's a matter of delegating little pieces, breaking each job down, and the other thing is when I delegate, I'm real - I'm still a little bit of a control freak, I like to watch them do it, make sure they're, make sure they're doing the scripts that I like to say in terms of how I like to said it done and I then I like to shot of them for a least a few times and then I like to also drop by every now and again, two to four weeks - for my sales people, every week I like to drop in every - randomly every one, every two weeks just to see how they're doing and make sure that we're, we're still doing the brand and the way that I like to do it. So, that's something you can delegate too, but I haven't quite delegated that part, the management part of the - we call it the operations manager part of the business, but definitely that's something that's on the agenda as well.

Jaime Masters:	Yes, little things at a time like you said. So, you have scripts, you have very specific things -

Brian Young:	Yeah.

Jaime Masters:	So, you spend a lot of time systematizing absolutely everything. Where do you keep those scripts? So, let's say you hire somebody new, do you have a whole system on onboarding new people, employees, that sort of thing?

Brian Young:	For sales I do because I'm - that's the part that I'm in really, really knee deep in. So, what I do is I have a PowerPoint presentation and I record myself, I have this little pen here I'll show you. This little pen and what I do, when I go on sales calls, certain ones, I'll actually record myself. I'll say, do you mind if I record this, and they don't mind. So, I just stick the pen in my pocket and then I record it and then I'll have someone - I'm not a great teacher, actually, I'm not a great teacher, so what I'll do is I'll just record certain appointments and then I'll get my sales people to watch this. If they're not out with me, I'll tell them to watch it on a regular basis, and even things like quoting, I don't really have a great system for that either, but what I do is I at least try to tell them what I'm thinking and I do that in our ring central meetings, I record it, and then we have Dropbox, which - where I put all the files in and they just watch it as necessary. I just say, I did a couple sales, I think you should watch it and eventually people get it.

Jaime Masters:	How long does that take because I remember my mentor taught me sales way back when and I had like a gray scale script that I was trying not to stare at and look at to be able to talk to them especially because I was horrible at sales -

Brian Young:	Yeah.

Jaime Masters:	It took me a really long time to actually get better at it. How long do you think it really takes to get an employee from brand new to really understanding?

Brian Young:	For sales, actually what I was doing was I was trying to get sales people to sell painting which didn't quite work, and I'll tell you why, because they would know the sales scripts in terms of all the smooth and start part but they wouldn't get the actual technical part, which takes years to learn. So, now I'm getting painters that are just have really good personalities to sell, and they're a lot cheaper than sales people, they're not as commission based, but the brand actually sells part of itself. So, to answer your question, how long, I would say two - anywhere from two to four weeks. If they're not getting it after two to four weeks, then I make changes.

Jaime Masters:	That's a genius approach though. Usually you'd be like I want to hire the guy that's really good at closing, but for you, especially in the industry you're in, I didn't realize that it takes years and years and years to learn painting.

Brian Young:	It does. There's so many, there's so many different variables and my target market customers they really want to know the technical knowledge, they don't want to be sold whatever on some, some people they sell you like stock markets or anything. So, actually the brand actually sells itself and the reviews, like our online reviews, our testimonials, our before and after pictures, our website, if you go to the website homepainterstoronto.com you'll see how we market it. That actual sells itself, and at least versus our competition, anyway, they buy from us, one out of - more than 33 percent. So, that sells itself, so I don't really need a killer sales person, I just need someone that has a really good personality, friendly, connects with people and gives them the technical information that they need to know that we're gonna solve their problem.

Jaime Masters:	I love it. So, we can see your trajectory of learning and testing new things and seeing how things go. Let me ask you this though, too, because I'm just curious because Matt Shoup is a good friend of mine and I'm going, okay, so how long are we gonna be painting houses now that we have vinyl and all sorts of other stuff, what's the - I mean, things change, especially tech wise, what's your plan for the future on that?

Brian Young:	Good question. I actually started as an exterior painter, only exterior up to about 2007. So, I didn't even start painting interior regularly until 2007. So, exterior was being phased out everyday because vinyl, aluminum in Toronto, I mean, they don't build wood anymore. Yeah, so, just through need, and in fact our product line is changing every year because I get calls on brick staining and I'm like, who the heck would want to do brick staining, but I mean there's more and more calls for that. So, as the calls come in for different things, I actually come up with different products and we're coming out with different products all the time and we just came out with a second website, pro - what's the name of it, painter pro dossier and it focuses on handyman stuff because I'm, I'm not good at handyman stuff, I barely know how to quote it, but, so what I do now I hire carpenters to do the stuff that my customers want to do, and the reason my customers need it done is because there's not enough trades that are willing to do certain types of jobs, and, and for - they'll call me for painting, but they need this door fixed or else we can't paint the rest of their room. So, I'll get my carpenter now to come in there and we'll mark it up, of course, appropriately and we'll make money off of that as well.

Jaime Masters:	I love it when you're in a position to see all the opportunities absolutely everywhere else and you're like now that I know the business side, all I do is create the system for that and we move forward and we grow that way too.

Brian Young:	Yeah, once I learned - once you learn the marketing template on how to market painting, you could market it to almost anything, any trade at least for that matter because we're expanding to Oakville now, which is a part of Toronto, we're expanding to Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary. We're doing all these different things and we're basically taking the template that I did for Home Painters Toronto and duplicating it in other cities and different products as well.

Jaime Masters:	Let me ask you about that because I have a lot of clients and they're, do I franchise, do I expand and that takes you away from the core business, so what does that look like. How did you make those decisions and did you even think about franchising?

Brian Young:	Yeah, I did think about franchising and I started from a franchise, I started with student painters back in 1987, and not to put all franchising down, but I've never, at least in my lifetime, in my 28 years of being in painting, seen painting as a franchise really succeed, and what I mean by really succeed is I'm saying like making $250,000.00 a year or more like net profit after, after all your expenses and everything, and to be giving you the freedom that you want. I've seen some painting companies do anywhere from 25 to 75,0000, which is okay, but my painters are making more than that. So, you know, to me to take all that risk on and be making 50, 60, 70,000 to me isn't a good deal. So, I just have the belief, or at least so far I have the belief that I don't think it works in franchising. 

	So, my, my goal is to actually take the people that I have in Toronto, build that team up and eventually sub it - not sub it out, but to branch it off and have them work in different parts of the country and the city just because I've personally trained them and I've worked with them for years and they're - and basically I'm having a meeting tomorrow and I'm gonna have a meeting with over 45 guys. I'm gonna say, guys, I want to grow my business, so if you guys really want to make more money and, and not just be a painter all your life, I'm giving you a ticket to do that. So, hopefully we'll see what happens.

Jaime Masters:	I look forward to hearing about that. Tell me, tell me about how we can get those guys to be with you for so long. Like when I was chatting with Matt or any of the guys that work in this trade industry, you get people not showing up to work because they were drunk the night before or -

Brian Young:	Yeah -

Jaime Masters:	You know what I mean, how do you mitigate that and hire right?

Brian Young:	That's a tough thing. We got a - I have a full time recruiter now, and what she does is she filters through emails, does all the dirty work that I don't want to be doing, and then she puts me in front of the top people on a regular basis. So, we have ads going all the time in Indeed, Kijiji and we're - I'd say on average we get anywhere from 10 to 20 a week, and we - if we're lucky, we get maybe two and we're just always getting those - you can find those nuggets, but they are there, it's a matter of finding them, and then, of course, once - painters, the great thing about painters that I love is the fact that they're so low maintenance, and what I mean by that is all they need is a - they want work every day, they want to be - they want work every day, they want to be paid on time and this is the minor thing, they just want to be respected a little bit. So, they don't all this coddling and these quarterly reviews and everything. They just need be like, good job, good job, keep it up man, keep going and they're happy. So, yeah, you pay them on time, you give them work all the time, then you respect them, like give them positive feedback, then yeah, they're good.

Jaime Masters:	So, it's not about them going, okay, I want more money or I want advancement or anything because they sort of know there's not a lot of advancement besides your expansion, right?

Brian Young:		Sometimes they do want advancement and that's great, but then what you do is say, okay, so great you want this money, so what are you willing to do for that, and they'll say, well, I want to work a little bit extra or some of them don't want to work extra and I say, if you're not gonna work extra, if you're not gonna do anything more, why should I pay you more, and I say, would you pay me more if I wasn't doing anything extra for you, and then they say, of course not. So, it's a matter of figuring out where their goals are and what they're willing to do, and like I said, we're expanding at a crazy thing - crazy amount. So, for example, Rick's my production manager and I'm saying, Rick is gonna be going to Vancouver in about a year and a half, so we're gonna need someone for his position in about six months to a year, so step up someone.

Jaime Masters:	That's awesome. How are you - how did you get good, especially the guy that wasn't good at delegating, how did you get good at managing managers and figuring out who's a good manager for the teams that you have for painting?

Brian Young:	Yeah, that's something as a entrepreneur I'm not a great manager still and what I'm doing - like I said, the fact that they're low maintenance guys, these productions guys, most of them just want to be, be - a little bit of appreciation and give them a little bit, like a little bit more compensation, give them incentives. I'm in a program right now called the Elite Foreman, they actually work out quarterly reviews, measurable - called the big three, where you have three goals each quarter and you just focus on those three big - those big three and then based on the metrics on those big three, you can compensate them accordingly.

Jaime Masters:	Nice, okay. So, I love how much you get information from other people that know what they're doing. You're like, okay, so I hired a coach for this, I hired an Infusionsoft guy for this, I didn't know about this so I went there and did that. How do you put so much investment into it, especially when at the beginning maybe you didn't have it?

Brian Young:	Yeah, basically, like I said, my budget was $5,000.00 I think back in 2012, so it wasn't very much. Now my budget's over 50,000 just on personal development alone, okay, and that's - I'll tell you what I spend it on. Basically, I spend 25,000 on Strategic Coach and about 22,000 on the Elite Forum and the Momentum Group that I'm in and 5,000 on those miscellaneous things here and there. So, it's roughly $50,000.00 that we spend now, and so I've committed to that and the only reason why, I look at it this way okay, like last year our sales was around 1.9 million and I'm thinking, okay, how am I gonna get to 2.9 million or 3 million, that was our goal, 3 million. So, I'm - I had no idea because I've never done this before, so I figure I need someone's help. I either need someone that's done it before or I need a group or someone to help me, yeah, because I wasn't gonna do it, basically doing the same thing that I was doing. So, that's what I've done is I've surrounded myself with some really, really cool people in terms of helping us with some great educational material that's gotten me there.

Jaime Masters:	I have heard amazing things about Strategic Coach, so give me like one or two takeaways that you've implemented that they suggested, besides writing down everything that you've done, but that really made a big difference because I have friends that are in it too and they rave about it?

Brian Young:	Yeah, I would say unique ability, I spoke about that already. Figure out what you love doing and what you're great at doing. Okay, let's say if it's sales, for me it was sales. So, then you make an inventory, sales I love doing, I would love to do that 60 percent of my day, and then figure out what's taking up your time and production was taking up my time. I don't hate production, but I'm not the best at it. I'm decent at it, but I'm not like a ten out of ten at it. So, I said I want to get production off my plate, I can't stand dealing with customers that haven't been qualified yet, so I don't want to be dealing with tire kickers, dealing with day to day issues, grocery shopping, dealing with kids when they're crying in the morning, I don't want to be dealing with that. 

	So, what I did was I took an inventory of all the things and then I had the list and then I figured out what I wanted to be doing and then the parts that I didn't want to be doing, I started chipping away at those, those delegations and then I - like I said, sales, my average sale's about 5,0000, 4 to $5,000.00 and if I can make one sale in an hour, that pays for pretty much any amount of hourly pay I would pay for someone to do that other stuff. So, I was looking at it, if I can do maybe three more or four more sales a week, that would turn into $16,000.00 in revenue easily. So, that would easily pay for that, the nanny, the administrator, the production assistant, the foreman to do the things that I hated doing.

Jaime Masters:	So, I don't have to do the stuff I hate, I only do the stuff I like and, yeah, it just sort of flows that way. I'm sure it wasn't all sunshine and roses when you were trying to make that transition though?

Brian Young:	Yeah, and you can even start - in fact, I - if you're not sure about how am I gonna do this. I started with ex-girlfriends, ex-wives because I could only trust some of them when it came to my finances. So, I actually got my ex-wife to do my, my bookkeeping and, and my bank account because she pretty much had her hand in that anyway. So, I was, well, I'll pay you a little bit more, can you do this for me, can you do that for me and now she does all my payroll and everything, so, yeah. So, start with someone you know if you're really stuck on it and you're a little bit not sure, give them like ten bucks an hour, get someone that you trust and so that you don't have to go outside and make the leap into trying to hire someone that you don't know.

Jaime Masters:	Advice for control freaks, right, I absolutely get it, awesome. I know we have to start wrapping up right now, so what's one action out of everything that you've done, what's one action that you suggest for everybody listening to move them forward towards their goal of a million?

Brian Young:	I would say when you're stuck - I find a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck and the key to getting unstuck to me is try not to look at your business as I got to do all this stuff. So, instead of saying, okay, I want to get to a million dollars by next August, okay, so let's break this down. What's stopping you right now from taking any action that needs to be done? So, it'll be usually like, oh, I don't really want to sell, I don't wanna sell or I don't wanna - so, get something - do something to get in that direction, whether it be hire a coach - for me it was Google, I just started googling things and then I'd hire a coach. So, that - something as simple as that. Calling someone, calling your competition for Christ's sake, just do anything. I would actually - am I allowed to say that? 

\Jaime Masters:	Yeah, totally.

Brian Young:	I actually went - when I was so cheap I didn't want to hire a coach, I would call my competition, but I would call them outside Toronto, so they knew I wasn't competing with them. I didn't want to hire a coach, so I would say, hey listen, listen, I'm having some trouble, can you help me out here, and it'd be a painter from, whatever, California, and they'd say, yeah, sure, I'll help you, but you call your competition, that's what I used to do if you're stuck.

Jaime Masters:	I've told people to do that too because in trades when it's local, you can totally talk to people that are farther away that may have solved that problem beforehand, create a mastermind group, so you don't - if you can't afford a coach, create a mastermind group of people that aren't direct competition and do that same thing, that's amazing, awesome. So, I highly, highly recommend anybody, if there's something specific, go get uncomfortable, go try and get that spot that gets you unstuck. Even if it's wrong, you're still making forward momentum because then you know what didn't work.

Brian Young:	Yeah, give me a call, I don't care, I'm good.

Jaime Masters:	Oh, watch out. You ask for that, they'll all call you. You're gonna be, I have to delegate somebody else taking these phone calls because this is just too -

Brian Young:	I find them fun.

Jaime Masters:	And this is what I thought was amazing about you, you're like, you know what, I do this because I find this ridiculously fun. So, where can we find out more about you online and all the websites and everything that you've got?

Brian Young:	Well, our website is homepainterstoronto.com and you can email me directly at marketer@homepainterstoronto.com, and the website that I'm actually building, which I'm eventually gonna hopefully be able to teach other painters what to do is paintingmarketer.com.

Jaime Masters:	See -

Brian Young:	And by the way, if you're a painter and you're looking to - you're not great at marketing, but you want to really expand your business, go to the paintingmarketer.com, then I'll make sure you're in the right hands.

Jaime Masters:	I think that's amazing, especially the guy who says he's not the marketer and his email address is marketer@, I think that's great. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, I really appreciate it.

Brian Young:	Alright, thanks for having me Jaime.


[End of Audio]

Duration: 42 minutes

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services

Tags: Brian Young, Human Resources, Mentor, Mentoring, Mentorship, millionaire interview, Mindset, ROI, Service Industry, Team Culture, Team Dynamics, Work Delegation

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Millionaire Interviews

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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