Scaling a Painting Business to $10M w/ Matt Kuyper

Jon Bryant: Hey everybody, welcome back to Price Sell Paint. Today we are with Matt Kuyper and Matt's the co-owner of Harpeth Painting. He's taken a business from zero to 10 million in just six years. I think that's right. We're going to find out more though. And not just that, but sharing his expertise with Elite Business Advisors. So Matt is an expert on selling commercial jobs and we're excited to chat with him about that today. Matt has a secret name on Paint Scout, on the leaderboards. Matt, what is that name for all the people listening?

Matt Kuyper: Mocha Orca? Am I saying that right?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I think so. I don't know. Those are English words.

Matt Kuyper: Yeah, it's I'm sure it's randomly generated. I did not choose that name if anyone finds me.

Jon Bryant: What if you think it was randomly generated, but maybe I had something to do with it. I don't know. It's hard to know. But the reality is...

Matt Kuyper: Yeah, maybe it wouldn't surprise me. That's the level of service you get when you work with Paint Scout.

Jon Bryant: Exactly. Those little touches that matter, right? What's up, Michael?

Michael Murray: I just said there's some good names on the leaderboard there. Number nine right now is Butter Manatee. That's a good one. Good job, Butter Manatee. Good start to the month.

Matt Kuyper: I want that one.

Jon Bryant: Hey, before we jump in, is there anybody else from Harpeth Painting on the top 20 leaderboard other than me?

Jon Bryant: Oh man, I haven't looked at that. If you looked at your leaderboard, Matt, and clicked on your team, you'd see how your team's doing. And for those listening, or actually watching, Matt currently has Paint Scout open on his computer, which is the right approach. If you're using Paint Scout, keep it open.

Michael Murray: Always.

Matt Kuyper: I guess I would have to figure out what their player names are. And I don't know that.

Jon Bryant: If you click on team, it'll show you the rankings.

Michael Murray: On the left there. Which about five minutes ago we introduced Matt to the leaderboards. Just for those that are following along.

Jon Bryant: You're welcome, Matt.

Michael Murray: Top sales. What was it last year? Top sales overall, Jon Bryant? What's Matt?

Jon Bryant: Top commercial sales, 5.7 million, I think was your number, Matt. And quite frankly, I think a lot of people here have a lot of things to learn from you. I'm sure you would say it's just what you do and it's just normal. But the fact is, that's not normal. As shown by the leaderboard. Michael and I both have a bunch of questions about how you do that because that's a significant undertaking when you're also running the business and working with your wife, Maggie on all of this. That's hard to do. Michael and I know that firsthand how difficult it is to wear both those hats. So we're excited to ask you a few questions.

Before we get into it though, I did draw a picture of you, but from memory. And I wanted to show you that. So this is the picture I drew of you from memory, Matt.

Matt Kuyper: Wait, do I have hair?

Jon Bryant: I know, I know. This is how I always think of you. And I just wanted to let you know that...

Michael Murray: I was going to say, what is that?

Matt Kuyper: Dude, that is sick. I'm going to frame that. Keep it next time I see you.

Jon Bryant: I'll send it down. I can't wait for you to draw a picture of me and send that back.

Matt Kuyper: Is that a picture of me with my sauna hat on? Is that what that is?

Jon Bryant: It might be, yeah, that's right.

Michael Murray: Matt, are you a sauna guy? Do you have a sauna?

Matt Kuyper: Big sauna guy. I do not have one at home. I just got a cold plunge though, like a legit cold plunge, one that stays cold 24/7. You don't have to put ice in it. So sauna is the next step.

Michael Murray: There you go. Yeah, in my basement we have a sauna and cold plunge. So we could talk about that too. I could connect you with a sauna company.

Matt Kuyper: Yeah. That's apparently the secret to these numbers. Cold plunge.

Michael Murray: I can promise you I don't sell $5 whatever million and I have a sauna and cold plunge so it's not, but I do enjoy it. Oh man that's good. I like the sauna hat.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, so let's get into a couple of questions. I think the big thing that we're curious about when we see these kind of numbers is how you process from start to finish. I think that is something interesting that we can dig into—how you get to manage that number. I know a lot of that is a large average job size, but you gotta be able to find these jobs. For a lot of people, they seem like unicorns. They're harder to actually source. So I think the place Michael and I wanted to start was just, where do you go and what is your process for generating those types of leads?

Matt Kuyper: So yeah, let me start back a couple of steps. You noted something in the beginning about the challenge of being a business owner and running a business and having time to do these sorts of sales and things like that. And I want to give a lot of credit to Maggie, both my business partner and partner in life. She is really running the business. So I have strategic input and a lot of coaching input, but I am not bogged down by a lot of the normal day to day things that a typical business owner would be burdened with.

That does then in turn free me up to what my company wants me to do, not just me, but the rest of the team, which is to get these woolly mammoths, as we call it. So I'm specifically going after these larger jobs that have a longer life cycle. And since I'm less worried about hitting my commission so I can put dinner on the table for my family like a typical salesperson might, I have that advantage of being the business owner, but also can focus on these larger projects and not have to really get down in the weeds of too many small things. So that is a huge help that might give some perspective on where those numbers come from.

Michael Murray: Matt, give us some idea. You just mentioned long sales cycle. What does that typically look like? How long are we talking?

Matt Kuyper: So last year may have been a little bit—well, maybe not. Last year could be an anomaly as far as that sales number, because a lot of that stuff had been on my radar and in my pipeline for close to three years. Any of these jobs that are in the million dollar plus range, whether that's a repaint or a new construction, don't just come up and get produced in two months. That's building the relationship. The project takes a long time. There's typically multiple budgeting phases involved. So you're with this process for years potentially. And that can be a new and frustrating situation for a lot of people where you're not making money on something that you've sold for potentially three years. So there's the downside to that larger job, but it also creates a really exciting backlog where I'm not necessarily worried about what we're gonna be doing in six months, because I know we've got a backlog that stretched out a year or two years.

Michael Murray: Cool. Yeah, that's incredible. Obviously a long time. How do you keep—when you're working on a deal that's going to take maybe two to three years to actually from start to sold—how do you keep in touch with that person or those decision makers? What does that process look like in terms of follow-up and just staying in touch?

Matt Kuyper: Yeah. So it's a little more clear and there's set expectations on the new construction side because typically you're working on maybe submittals, which are requirements they have to turn in before a job starts. Some of the pre-mobilization, some of the safety requirements. There's typically addendum pricing that you're always having to work through before the job even gets built, things that are changing.

So those are a little easier when it comes to the larger commercial repaint projects. A lot of times it's just sitting and waiting and letting them know that you're ready whenever they're ready. It may be that they're working with the city on permitting or something like that. I don't know that I really have a set communication schedule on those. It's kind of project dependent.

Jon Bryant: When you've got lead time for a project, how many leads are you generating in order to keep that pipeline full? Are you actively talking to people, contacts every week or maybe walk through a bit of that?

Matt Kuyper: So with projects that large, you got to be really careful going after things that are projects you don't have a relationship with people because that's a lot of risk to put in one relationship. These aren't one-off type relationships on projects this large. So it's dependent on how big you want your network to be. I'm probably on average only doing maybe one to two of these a month of projects at that scope and size. Now for your $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, $30,000 average job size, there's more of those, but there's really very few opportunities.

My close rate is probably higher than an industry average for the kind of work we do because I'm pretty selective in who I'm building relationships with. It's people that are doing things, people that are making decisions, people that are actually going to produce projects. So rather than casting a broad net, it's very targeted. I could go into a really nerdy fishing joke, but I won't. It'll go over everybody's head probably.

What I'm trying to say there is focusing very narrowly on who you want to work with. In any market, you kind of know who those people are, both from the property manager perspective on commercial repaints and the general contractor side on new construction. There may be a hundred good GCs in your market, but reputation gets around. And if there's really only three to five of them that you relate well to, only focus on those three to five. And that's what I do.

Jon Bryant: How did you figure out who those were? It seems like a small percentage to narrow it down to.

Michael Murray: Especially if you're just getting started in that line of work or something.

Matt Kuyper: Yeah, it does take time, but it's more of a—their culture needs to fit with our culture. So one of, probably our number one client revenue wise, is a commercial general contractor and their whole office is full of people that are just like our people. They think like us, they talk like us. We do the same things. We see each other on the same golf courses. We're in the same hunting clubs. That's the kind of people I want to work with who value that long-term relationship, who we see eye to eye on how we're going to address problems.

And on the flip side, there's people who have a great reputation in Nashville doing great projects, but just don't fit our culture and don't mesh with us. And there just seems to be a headbutting every time we do a project with them. It's like, well, we don't want to keep doing that, especially when you're tied up with these people for multiple year projects. So you only make that mistake once.

Michael Murray: Do you guys do work outside of Nashville or just in the Nashville area?

Matt Kuyper: We do, but it's typically with people from Nashville that are doing projects out of town who want us to go with them. So we've been everywhere from Florida to, let's see how far north, Ohio. But we don't want to travel, but we will if we have to.

Jon Bryant: One of the questions I have about commercial—and it's been an ongoing debate with other people in my life—is I imagine for you guys to hit those numbers, you're not the only person selling that. You guys have a sales team, is that right? And when you bring people on in this space, what are indicators that they have what it takes to generate those types of relationships and jobs? And then how long do you give them to see whether they can do it?

Matt Kuyper: I think the biggest indicator for that is resilience because you are going to get a lot of rejection for the first year. People don't know you and the life cycle on these projects is long. Even if you start doing well in that first year, you may not close any significant deals well into your second year. And you just have to keep an open positive mindset and not get frustrated by that because you're not going to have those quick hit wins like you do in the smaller job size repaint world.

Jon Bryant: Is there any other indicator—so you give them time, they're resilient—but is there any indicator in the first 90 days that they might be able to get a job in two years?

Matt Kuyper: That's a really good question. I have three people on my team that do commercial work, this large job size work, and all three of them are very different in their approach. I really don't know. I don't know that I can give an answer that works for everybody because this is such a relationship type business. I know that's cliche and that's not the answer that really gives people something to act on.

But Reese in my office is very personal and goes and talks to people, walks the job sites way longer than he needs to, and just builds really good personal relationships with people and people that are like him. And he was able to turn jobs quicker than somebody else in my office who's more of a technical numbers kind of guy who's trying to figure out where do I need to be to get this job? Where do I need to be to get low? He's more focused on the numbers part of it than the relationship side. And there's just different trajectories there, but they both work. And that's their personalities. But I don't know how you can see if that's working or not. I don't have good data on that, unfortunately.

Jon Bryant: Let me rephrase it just quickly. In the first 90 days, why would you let someone go? Have you had anybody on your team that you're like, first three months, this isn't working, I let you go?

Matt Kuyper: We haven't had that happen to us. I think that what would do that is just inaction. I think as long as you're doing something, you're going to have success because at some point, it's just a numbers game too. If you can bid enough work, you're going to get a certain percentage of it. So you just got to work harder if you don't want to build the relationships.

Jon Bryant: I think you said it though right there, which is that you got to bid work. Our trouble has been in this area specifically, that we bring people on and we kind of expect in three months you can generate a couple of bids. Like if nothing else, let's just be the third bid on a job and we're gonna lose it. Let's just help you out with another number. And maybe our timeframe is too short. Sometimes I do think, is 90 days enough time to get a bid on a commercial job? But then I kind of step back and I'm like, bids are kind of free. We can do that if we need to. Am I crazy to think that, or is there any validity?

Matt Kuyper: So with my newest commercial estimator, he came from the project management world and now is about 20, 25% of his time selling. And he's the newest at it, very still kind of unsure. And it's like, dude, you just need to get these reps. I don't care if you're going to get these jobs, you need to bid the job so you can get the feedback that's going to help you sharpen for the next time and the next time. So we're just trying to—I'm giving him easy opportunities right now to just get those reps under his belt because it's going to get him the confidence and the market knowledge to know where he needs to be.

And you can do that in 90 days, and that's kind of an indicator of doing the right things. But I do think on some of these larger jobs, you're not gonna see—you gotta have the financial stability to wait a year before you really start having wins. But actions set you up for what you're gonna see in a year.

Michael Murray: Matt, you guys do both commercial and residential, or just commercial?

Matt Kuyper: Yeah, we're about 50-50 split. We'll do 12 plus million this year and it's roughly split down the middle.

Michael Murray: Residential side, is it mostly repaints or do you guys do new construction there as well?

Matt Kuyper: It's also split about half and half there. Yeah. A lot of super high end custom residential work. It's just a strange market that I never thought we'd get into, just keeps growing here in Nashville.

Michael Murray: Nashville is a booming market. It seems like, for sure. Do your reps or your estimators, whatever we're calling them, do they specialize though? Like only selling commercial work or only residential? I would imagine there's probably a lot of people listening or around the country that are kind of doing both, doing some residential, doing some commercial. What do you think the advantage of specializing in that way might be in terms of performing well?

Matt Kuyper: I think when you're a certain size, you can generalize a little bit more. We did that when we were a little bit smaller. As you grow, you have the opportunity to let your team specialize. I don't think it's necessary or even a requirement, but it does make things a little bit easier when you get to a certain level, size revenue-wise. But I think there's a lot of benefit in somebody that can do both. Now, not everybody can, but if you got a killer player that can straddle both those worlds, that's a huge asset.

Michael Murray: How would you describe the difference between the skill set it takes to do commercial versus residential? You said kind of straddling both is difficult. Why is that? I would think there's maybe more overlap than not.

Matt Kuyper: Yeah, from a sales perspective, it's—your typical residential guy is somebody that just they need to have that hit of the next sale. They need to sell a job every day or two or they're going to go crazy. And a commercial guy, our commercial people sell and produce their own work—their estimators and project managers. So they have a different mindset of, if they're not selling, they're probably managing. So they're always doing something that's driving a result.

Whereas on our residential side, our people are only selling that work and then it turns over to a project manager. So if they're not constantly in that sales mode, they're like, "This sucks. I'm not doing anything." So the salespeople are more on the residential side, more specialized, and on the commercial side, they're more of a generalist. They can do a lot of other things. So those are the two kinds of personality types that work for us.

Michael Murray: Yeah, that makes sense. As a commercial estimator sales rep project manager, like you just described, how do they balance their time in terms of, alright, we're working on this big project. I obviously need to check in, make sure things are going well, you know, that production management hat. While at the same time, I've got to start working on some stuff so that one, two years from now, the sales that I'm going to have, I'm getting started. I'm starting to plant those seeds, build those relationships. How do they balance the immediate with that long-term important on a day-to-day basis?

Matt Kuyper: It's tough. And I don't know that we have that a hundred percent figured out. I think what we've leaned into is letting me do more of a business development role with some of that stuff. So when an early stage of a project comes in, I'll get involved and kind of stay in the loop until it gets to a certain point where then they can take it over. And I kind of become that buffer zone in between when they're too overloaded on project management. And I can get the project down the line far enough that then they can take it over kind of to the final sale.

And that's why I think you'll see some of my numbers start to drop off on Paint Scout over the next year is my team is now to the point where I'm really handing these leads off when it's a "Hey, we're probably going to get this job, run with it." So they're going to be attributed that sale and I'm not anymore.

Michael Murray: I like it. That's good. It's good for everybody else. I was going to say there's some room at the top. What's that, Jon Bryant?

Jon Bryant: I just said, I just see you hanging out your cold plunge all day, taking calls and doing business development.

Matt Kuyper: Yeah. Well, and ultimately I'm getting my team now to the point where they're doing their own business development with their own clients because we want that depth of relationship beyond just me for long-term stability of the company. And different people in my company have different skills in relating to different people. And it's better to have that broad reach in the community rather than just being one person.

Jon Bryant: Matt, did you guys get involved in stuff like BOMA or other associations in your area?

Matt Kuyper: Yeah. So everybody on our team from admins to project managers, sales, doesn't matter what your title is, is required to be in some sort of industry association or networking group. So that could be BOMA or ABC for the general contractors. There's designer deals, there's homeowners association, there's all kinds of different things. That's a really easy way to have boots on the ground, networking sales. When you got a team of 14 in the office, that starts spreading pretty quickly.

Jon Bryant: If you're a project coordinator, is there room to go to an association? Which one do you recommend?

Matt Kuyper: Yeah. So we don't have a true project coordinator position. We've got a little bit of a hybrid with Eliza and Melanie doing stuff. So Melanie is involved with a—there's like a construction financial management association, something like that. I forget what it's called. That's for financial admins for the construction industry. So it's very specific to what she does. And then I think Eliza, who is our coordinator, she does some women's networking group thing that—it's not really specific to her job. That one's more general, but it's another way that everybody's out in the community at some point.

Jon Bryant: Do you guys count a book club as an association?

Matt Kuyper: We should. We were very diligent about—we always had a book study going that we would kind of talk about during our Monday all hands meeting. And we got away from doing that about six months ago, but we did that for years.

Jon Bryant: That's a fun thing to do. Hard to keep going though. It's an effort. Books have so many words, so it's a lot of work.

Matt Kuyper: Reading is hard.

Michael Murray: Just have ChatGPT read it for you and tell you what it's all about. Come on, Jon Bryant. Get with the times.

Matt Kuyper: Yeah, yeah, I think there were some people doing that.

Jon Bryant: Exactly. Yeah, so I think it's a great idea. That's something that we don't do. Associations for me have been such a great place to learn. The one thing for me personally, when I got involved with some of these networking groups, I just didn't like when it was required, like required meetings. BNI, great for learning how to network, but having to be there every week was hard. And so I think it's been interesting to kind of learn about some of these other avenues to get involved with the industry like BOMA, ABC.

Matt Kuyper: Yeah. Well, even if it's not industry things, there's community organizations. The more you're providing value in your community genuinely—you're not doing these things just to be seen and be popular—but Maggie and I are heavily involved with the Harpeth River Conservancy, which is an environmental group that protects the river that our company is named after. And that's important to us. And they do big events a couple of times a year and do sponsorships with those. And that's a fun community thing that is also kind of a networking event as well.

Michael Murray: Yeah. I think most people, whether it's residentially or commercial, you meet enough people, somebody's got something that needs painted pretty soon. And I think even at the beginning, you talked about that—your best commercial relationships are the ones that have similar core values where they're in the same golf clubs or hunting clubs and things like that. It sounds like you're not joining the hunting club because you don't like hunting, but "Hey, there might be some good people over here to network with." It's like, no, this is where I want to be because then I'm going to go associate with people I want to associate with and by the way, we ended up doing work together. Yeah. I appreciate that. I like that approach. Plus then it doesn't feel like work. We've all been to these networking events where it's super forced and it's uncomfortable and it sucks versus you go to your hunting club and it's like, yeah, this is sweet. And by the way, I'd probably get a lot of work out of it too, but I'd be here even if I didn't.

Matt Kuyper: Yeah. Yeah. It has to be authentic for sure. And we have a very non-traditional model. Our traditional paid marketing costs are very low. As a company wide, less than 2%. That number's skewed a little bit, but we just do those other things so well—the old school boots on the ground, bootstrap methods of networking. That's what's worked for us. It's a little bit less predictable. I don't know that it's the perfect way to do things. And it takes a certain level of staff to be able to do that as well. You need people who are capable of doing that sort of thing. But it's been a great success for us.

Jon Bryant: It's also nice, I imagine to have a painting company in a group like a networking group, because even for myself, I sometimes get overwhelmed with how many real estate agents are everywhere that I go. So it's a nice little diversification of the pool. Even last night I played tennis on a team. It's my one bougie activity in my life. And after the event, we always have a social. And everybody at the table, I was like, "Hey, what's your name? And what do you do?" "I'm a realtor." "What's your name? What do you do?" "Oh, I'm a realtor." I was like, "Oh no, you guys are all going to try to sell me a house and I already have one." So really sorry, but I'm here for the tennis.

Another interesting point here is that my brother, Dave, who is one of the top residential sales reps on Paint Scout, his tactic is to not take leads. He just doesn't want leads off of our company website or phone number. He's just like, "I'm going to make my own network." He has a little visual that he uses. We call it the referral tree and he's just constantly trying to grow that tree and make sure that all of his work is coming from in that network because it's better work built on trust with people he likes at a price that is fair and you're not going in bidding against seven other people for a low bid.

So there's so much value in this for everybody listening. And it's hard. We're just scratching the surface here, but as a general principle, we've gone with sales reps need to generate their own leads, not because we're mean, but because actually it's just a better way of doing business. So that's my two cents.

Matt Kuyper: I agree. I agree.

Jon Bryant: Matt, let's talk a little bit about your involvement with Elite Business Advisors. Maybe let's shift a little bit. Obviously, that's something new for you.

Matt Kuyper: Yeah, it's been maybe about a year. I've known Chris for several years and I've just really liked what he—obviously he himself is just an outstanding individual, but he kind of built this really common sense coaching platform organization for the companies in that transitional stage, like the $800,000 to million and a half dollar type company where they just need that little extra help to get to the next level.

And Chris and I talked forever about, if people have commercial questions, can they come to me? And it's like, yes, start sending them my way. And I did a lot of informal coaching for these people kind of project by project basis. And it got to the point where we're able to have a little bit more specific agreement with me coming onto his team and really just being the commercial advisor, whether that's clients that Chris has, or some of his other coaches have that just need a kind of a specific tune up on some commercial stuff.

Or I have a handful of my own clients that we talk about everything. Doesn't even have to be commercial, but that's kind of where my niche is in the Elite Business Advisors platform is commercial advisor. So those residential guys that are trying to get into commercial or the small commercial guys that are trying to grow.

Jon Bryant: What are your top 21 tips? Go.

Matt Kuyper: What am I—oh, 21 tips.

Michael Murray: What do you think are the big challenges that you mentioned—residential contractors trying to get into commercial? I would imagine there's probably some common themes that you see there. What are some of those challenges?

Matt Kuyper: Yeah. Most of it is, honestly, just how do I price this? Which to me, those are the easiest ones to solve, but I think that's more head trash than anything. This last event two weeks ago in St. Louis, I did a quick little presentation on just breaking down traditional estimating practices. It was nothing groundbreaking, nothing new, but sometimes people just need to be reminded that just because a project is bigger doesn't necessarily mean it's harder to estimate or even produce. It's just bigger. So that's kind of the first step a lot of times, and then just making sure they're in a financial capacity to be able to do some larger work.

Michael Murray: Because of the time it takes to get paid.

Matt Kuyper: Yep, yep. Just having those conversations and preparing for that. Nothing insurmountable. I think people just get in a headspace where it's like, "I can't do this. It's new. It's different. It's big." Not necessarily. You probably can do it.

Jon Bryant: Okay, Matt, really specific estimating question. You're painting a bare drywall. You gotta do a prime coat and one top coat. What's your production rate?

Matt Kuyper: Prime coat and one top coat, residential, commercial?

Jon Bryant: Commercial.

Matt Kuyper: So I'll go 350 square feet on primer and 300 on that first coat of finish. But I would give another coat of finish.

Jon Bryant: For sure, yeah, I wanted to just get real specific so that you could have to think for a second. So for everyone listening, if you have that problem, there's your answer.

Michael Murray: Helpful.

Matt Kuyper: Did I pass the test?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, flying colors, man, that was great. You just estimated the job for me, thank you.

Michael Murray: Sold.

Matt Kuyper: I'm always impressed with the people that can talk in unit rates really quickly. Like they have unit rates memorized for everything. One of my estimators has that and he—you say, "Hey, what's a 10 by 10 overhead garage door frame cost?" He's like, "$175 a unit" or whatever. And then he backs into the—he just remembers every single unit price for everything.

Jon Bryant: And then you go change your hourly rate and he's just so screwed every year.

Matt Kuyper: Jacked on. Yep, every year.

Michael Murray: By November he's got it all memorized again though, right before it changes.

Matt Kuyper: Yeah, yeah.

Jon Bryant: But yeah, in all seriousness though, Matt, the estimating portion—it's funny that that's really core as a challenge in our industry. And before this call, Michael and I were talking about just how bad this industry is at pricing stuff. It was the number one challenge for me when I first got going. No one talks about it. No one's clear. And then what ends up happening a lot of the time is that someone just gives a price, it gets accepted. They go to a sub and say, "I'll give you half" or whatever. And it's messed up. People are getting kind of used and abused all over the place.

Matt Kuyper: Yeah. Yep. That's definitely one of my biggest pet peeves too, is the "What percentage do you pay your sub?" conversation. A percentage of what? Are you able to translate to them how many hours that is or how many gallons of material they'll need? That's easy—material, at least start there. But if you can't in good conscience tell them, "Hey, this should be three painters for five days" or whatever, because I've got 160 hours in it, I don't know that you should be giving them any percentage of a job.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, couldn't agree more.

Michael Murray: Matt, where do you guys come out on subcontractors versus employees doing the work for you? Is that 100% one side or other or split or?

Matt Kuyper: We are right now 100% sub. We have tried to grow our W2 staff and every time we have success with that, they end up wanting to start their own companies and become subcontractors.

Michael Murray: Yeah. Gotcha. So how do you find—what are some tips you have for finding more subcontractors? That could be a limiting factor in your growth. Obviously you guys are doing big numbers. We talked about at the beginning, 12 million this year. How do you find the subs to keep up with the sales volume?

Matt Kuyper: We have done an excellent job at this somehow, and I think it's a lot like our sales process we talked about earlier with the big relationship side of it. We're always looking for subs, whether we need them or not. And most, if not all of the good ones come from a referral from somebody else that's already working with us. We've had maybe two of our current subcontractors were straight out of—at some point we posted on Facebook or we have a link on our website, stuff like that. But nine times out of 10, those ones are not the right fit for us. They've come from a referral from somebody that's already working for us.

And we always do a really good job of starting them small and onboarding correctly and providing them the right opportunities where they can win. We're not just going to throw them a shit job right off the bat. You got to work them into your system and it takes a little while. And we treat them very well as far as pay schedule and pay percentage because we know what we're bidding these jobs at. We can provide them the right opportunity to make money, consistent schedule. Don't knock on wood, we have not been constrained that much by labor. I think it takes time to develop the right people, but we've got a really good pipeline as well.

Michael Murray: I know Jon Bryant and I both use a little bit of a hybrid method. For us, it's mostly employees. Jon Bryant, I think you guys are kind of similar. Where is it coming out now?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, for the most part. It's newish for us.

Matt Kuyper: New being employee based?

Jon Bryant: No, no, I mean, for the longest time, our painting business was just employee. And so it's newish to us to have kind of a hybrid, of course.

Michael Murray: Yeah, we're the same way. We have one subcontractor crew that we work with, but 90% of our work is employees. Matt, I'm curious to your thoughts on this. There's a lot of people have very strong, passionate beliefs around employees, subcontractors. When I talk with business owners or sales reps that have an employee only model, they'll talk about how they love selling against a subcontractor model. And bashing that. I think they're typically maybe talking about the big franchises, but we're using that as placeholder. What do you say to that as a sales professional? You're obviously very successful selling with the fact that you have subcontractors doing the work. How do you find that conversation going in a commercial sense or in a residential sense?

Matt Kuyper: So good thing on the commercial side is it's pretty much an industry standard to use subcontractors. Pretty much all the trades are doing that to some extent. So that's a non-issue there. On the residential side, our work just speaks for itself. It rarely comes up the question of "You use subcontractors?" And if it does, we tell them the truth. It's like, "Yeah, we absolutely do. It's done really well for us. Here's how long they've been working for us. And this is the kind of work they do." Ultimately it's Harpeth Painting that is performing this work, whether it's a W2 or a 1099. There's really no difference there. And when we can produce what the customer wants, we have very little pushback on that. I think it's more of painting contractor head trash than customers actually care about it.

Michael Murray: I agree with that. I think most people, most homeowners or building owners or whatever, they want kind of the same things. It's like, I need this done in an efficient, timely manner, good quality work. I don't want a big headache. I want you to show up, do the work, all the same things. And at the end of the day, they really don't care as to how the tech structure works.

Matt Kuyper: Well, there's also some sales plays you can make to the advantage of having subcontractors, especially if you're bidding against a smaller—I won't call him a chuck in a truck because he's probably actually a good company—but a guy who's got three or four employees with him. Say one of those guys gets sick or has a family emergency, your project's not going to happen. If one of our sub crews has something happen to them or one of their guys gets sick or whatever, we've got more that we just—your project is not going to be affected the same way it would with a smaller employee based company.

Michael Murray: You've got a lot more flexibility. Makes a lot of sense.

Matt Kuyper: Yep. Yeah, we have what we call depth of field. Depth in the field.

Jon Bryant: All right, well, I think we've covered everything now. So for those listening, you can go start a commercial painting business. That's perfect. Thank you, Matt, for everything.

Michael Murray: Wait, I got one more question I want to get to before it sounds like you're wrapping up. So Matt, running a business with your spouse. I need some tips and tricks and all the things. My wife joined the company about two years ago. So she had a pretty successful corporate finance job and is well overqualified to work with me. But she does get a little bit of flexibility with her time now.

Matt Kuyper: What was she thinking?

Michael Murray: But it was certainly a challenge. The first, I would say at least six months of figuring that out. And I know I screwed that up quite a bit. So yeah, what kind of tips and tricks do you have for those out there that are married, running a business together?

Matt Kuyper: I have a new favorite phrase in this world that kind of sums it up. And it actually came up in a husband and wife panel at Chris's event at the Elite Business Advisors event a couple of weeks ago. And it was: disagreement does not equal distrust.

And that's something very important to remember when working with your spouse, because you are going to disagree on things. That's valuable. That's how you get to the right answer. But your immediate mode that you go to when you're just talking about family and life stuff is if you disagree with me, it's because you don't trust me. That's not the case in business. So being open to those disagreements that they come from a place of trying to make the business better and being open to having disagreements in a constructive way is great. Focusing on that is one kind of nutshell that I can put it all into in a minute or less.

Michael Murray: I love it. Some good advice.

Jon Bryant: The question I was going to ask Matt is when was the last time you were wrong?

Matt Kuyper: I think I'm going to be wrong today, but it hasn't—up until today, I think it's the first one. Yeah. I might, it might be coming.

Jon Bryant: Growth mindset—you might be wrong sometime. That question was from our super fan, Maggie.

Michael Murray: He's a confident sales rep. You have to fake it till you make it.

Matt Kuyper: Actually, what's funny is I have an email from her from this morning. Let me see if I can grab it real quick. The spirit of it was, I said a few things in an email back to her about some new staffing decisions. And she's like, "I'm going to disagree with you here." And then listed out why she disagreed with me. And just stating that in itself, you got to have that healthy level of conversation. Not "you're wrong," but "I'm going to disagree with you on these things. Let's discuss."

Jon Bryant: And then you just throw it all in a ChatGPT with a prompt, like "Counterpoint everything so that I'm right." Yeah, that's the healthy way to have a marriage. Yeah, it's a green checkmark emoji. Make sure it's really obvious why I'm right. Yeah. I'm no expert with relationships, but I think that's the right way to do it. So that's what my wife says she appreciates.

Michael Murray: Jon Bryant sleeps on the couch a lot though.

Matt Kuyper: It's more comfortable.

Jon Bryant: That's more comfortable. I've got my perfect groove going.

Michael Murray: All right. Mocha Orca, Matt Kuyper. This is pretty awesome. I did look it up officially—number two in overall sales last year, top in the commercial space.

Matt Kuyper: I'm waiting on one big one that might put me over that for this year. Hopefully I can click that button before the end of the year.

Michael Murray: I love it. Well, thank you. This has been awesome. Got a lot of good tips and tricks. We covered everything from sauna and cold plunge, commercial sales, a little bit of residential, hiring commercial sales reps and working with your spouse. I feel like this is a pretty well-rounded episode.

Matt Kuyper: Somehow we didn't talk about CrossFit, what the heck?

Michael Murray: There you go. Next time.

Jon Bryant: We purposely tried to avoid that topic, actually.

Matt Kuyper: Or veganism, I don't know.

Michael Murray: We gotta leave a lot more.

Jon Bryant: On the next episode.

Matt Kuyper: Episode two, veganism and CrossFit.

Michael Murray: Come back, stay tuned, subscribe, like, share it with your friends, do all the things. Awesome. Thanks, Matt. Appreciate you being here.

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