Starting a Painting Business in 2025 [What You Need to Know]

Jon Bryant: All right, Michael, take me back to when… actually let's start this again. All right, Michael, today what I want to talk about is what I think is an interesting subject — and that’s where we've gotten to today. There are a bunch of things we've learned, and I always think about what I would’ve told the version of myself when I first started in this industry. What are the insights — the wisdom — I would’ve shared with that person? So are you up for chatting about that today?

Michael Murray: Great. Yeah. No — yeah, I like that a lot. I think that’s a great topic.

Jon Bryant: Great. Well, let’s maybe talk about where we're at today just to give people some context, and then we can go back to the start. So tell me a little… I mean, obviously I know about your business, but for everyone watching: who is Michael Murray and what is Textbook Painting these days?

Michael Murray: Yeah, sure. So I guess the real brief: I started the company in 2006 after graduating from college. When I was in college, I ran a painting business for one of the painting franchise-type companies. We basically specialize in residential repaints — I’d say middle to upper-middle-class target customers. We do very little commercial work. We do a ton of kitchen cabinet refinishing — it's actually the biggest part of our business. But interior, exterior… and we have an employee model. So we don't use subcontractors for anything, especially painting work.

Generally, depending on the year and the season — you know, we get a lot of winter weather here in Cleveland — exterior season is about six months. During busy season, we're between 35 and 40-ish painters, and this time of year it's usually around 25-ish. Again, give or take — anyone in the industry knows those numbers are never exact.

Yeah, so this year we're going to do a little over $3 million, about $3.25. Pretty similar to last year — we’re kind of flat year-over-year. Less than we were hoping for when we wrapped up 2023. Definitely a “learning year.” Now heading into 2024, we’re optimistic for renewed growth. We’d grown quite a bit over the previous four or five years leading into 2023. So yeah — that kind of help?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I think that gives people some context around what we're talking about. Strangely enough, my story is fairly similar, although I didn’t do a student painting company. I just wanted to start a business I could go bankrupt at by the time I was 20. That was my goal. And you know what? A painting business isn’t too hard to do that in.

If I wasn’t living at home when I first started, I definitely would have achieved that goal because I knew nothing. No support. Absolutely nothing. I remember buying my first power washer and ladder off an ex–College Pro guy and him saying, “Good luck — you’re never going to make it.” And I’m thinking, That’s the point, thank you.

From there, it’s been a meandering path. For a long time I struggled with the industry itself. I did it to learn — and ultimately found it was hard to get out. It can be a very nice cash-flow business if done right.

I started around 2006–2007, officially 2008. It was seasonal at first, then became full-time. So it’s been ten years operating full-time. It’s a family business with a staff model. This last year we were around 65 staff total. The motto of that company is “Keep Calgary Colourful.” And it’s been fun watching it grow.

At the end of the day, that journey is where PaintScout came from — trying to understand how to price and how to sell. We’ll get into this, but that’s one of the big things I wish I’d been exposed to earlier — especially the pricing model, which was where I had the most opportunity to actually go bankrupt.

So that’s my story — a 15-year journey. Not every day fun, but overall a pretty cool industry to be a part of.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I hear you. So basically what I hear you asking from the beginning is: what do we wish we knew in years one, two, three… maybe through ten as we were getting going and building something? Is that right?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. I've heard you say before that you wish you knew early on what a good company looks like — and what a great one looks like. Maybe talk about that.

Michael Murray: Yeah. Part of the challenge for me — really until I got involved with Nolan Consulting in 2018 — was that I didn’t know what was going on in the painting industry at a professional level. Until that point, I’d say I even had some… I don’t want to say shame, but almost shame over “I’m just a painter” or “I just own a painting company.”

It felt less significant. Less respected. And that’s “just the industry.” And then I got involved with Nolan and the Summit Group and realized: wait a minute, that’s not true. There are painting business owners who are extremely successful, talented, profitable, financially smart — truly great operators.

That opened my eyes. And then I could narrow it down: if it’s possible to run a $5–10 million business with a sales team and staff and systems, then it’s possible to charge more than $50–60 an hour. It's possible to aim higher.

And because I'm competitive, once I knew what could be done, I wanted to see if I could do it.

Before that, a million dollars seemed like “the biggest business ever.” Then your eyes get opened and you realize what’s actually possible.

Jon Bryant: Totally. I remember the first conversation I had with a Nolan coach. Our business was doing $250,000 at the time, and he asked what my goal was. I said “a million.” He said, “Yeah, interesting — that’s kind of when the fun starts.”

And he was right. Human nature makes us look at what we have, triple it, and think that’s huge — whether it's salary, house value, business size. Even today, if you asked me what “big” means, I’d probably triple our current number.

And yeah, echoing your story — I had a real ego problem being in the painting industry. I didn’t want to be a part of it. I had a finance degree. My friends were in investment banking. I felt inferior. I got into painting randomly — essentially because I needed to start a business in three days.

I remember telling someone at a conference how unhappy I was with the industry. And he said, “John, you’ve got it all wrong.” He told me about the freedom that comes with people underestimating you. No expectations. No pressure to keep up appearances. Behind the scenes, he had a great life.

He said: “You get to fly below the radar — it’s amazing.”

To this day, I believe that. If you run the business correctly, painting is one of the best-kept secrets for financial freedom. I wish I knew that earlier instead of trying to escape the industry for years.

Michael Murray: Yeah. Same here. And now I fully embrace it. I drive a branded Textbook Painting truck that looks exactly like our crew trucks, and I'm proud of it. No expectations. And if someone judges it — that’s a them problem.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, it’s weird. So going back to the start: I wish I’d felt comfortable knowing this was a valuable industry with valuable work. Color changes people’s lives. We provide real outcomes for real humans.

But let’s talk about this idea of good vs great. You said earlier your idea of “good" was a business that doesn’t rely solely on you. What else did you think back then?

Michael Murray: In what way are you asking? Like the size of a business or more specific?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I mean, you said a million, but like, did you feel like now, if you could go back and give the playbook, what does the playbook look like?

Michael Murray: Yeah. I would have said, even from the very beginning, you know, I was blessed with the idea that… so my dad had a marketing agency when I was growing up. He took me to a lot of professional speakers like Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins when I was in high school. So I was reading Robert Kiyosaki and E-Myth in high school and college.

And so I was exposed—

Jon Bryant: Wow, you must've been so cool. Ha ha ha.

Michael Murray: So cool. You’re done.

And I was exposed to a lot of these important ideas. And so I would have said, even early on, that my goal was to run a business that doesn’t rely on me. Right from the beginning. I never started as a painter. I don’t pretend to be a great technical painter. I think I can paint pretty well — part of it is because I care a lot about doing good work, and I think that’s a big part of most professions.

But anyways, I would have said that what “good” looks like is a business that doesn’t necessarily rely on me — especially for getting the painting work done. That I’m going to be working in the business in the capacity of probably marketing and sales and administration and back office. But that was just kind of acceptable, I guess — and not realizing, “Wait a minute, you could actually build out a whole sales team and office team and all these different things.”

I probably wouldn’t have thought that, but I think at the very beginning I would’ve thought, “Okay, I’m going to hire really good people that run the operations side at least.”

Jon Bryant: And it sounds like it took a while to kind of get that in place or to understand it fully. You had the concept, but how long did it take you to actually get there?

Michael Murray: Yeah. I mean, I think… yeah, I mean, for sure. One: we had a different business model when the whole thing first started, for the first 10 or 11 years. Whatever — we don’t need to bore anyone with the details of that right now, but the timelines are a little weird.

Even if we go to when we made a complete pivot to this new business model — like 2017–18 — it still took a few years. Mostly because we didn’t really look inside the industry to hire. A lot of it was learning from others in the industry, outside of our market, and then hiring people from outside the industry to try to train on some of these best practices.

So yeah, I’d say it took at least a few years to get a team built to some extent. Still building. Still working on it.

Jon Bryant: Still building, yeah. Totally. So do you think you could have delivered the concept of what you have now to yourself 20 years ago, 15 years ago? Would that have been possible?

Michael Murray: I don’t think I would’ve been able to envision an org chart like I can now — the size and the depth of it. Mostly because the numbers wouldn’t have made sense.

If you’re going to run like a million-dollar business, you’re going to be able to afford a few non–revenue producing people — call it overhead, management, whatever — people that aren’t painting, essentially. So it’s like, okay, if you can only have like two of them, where are you going to put them?

And my answers were: somebody in charge of the painters and somebody to answer the phone. And that probably would’ve been the extent of it — an office manager (the term for “person who kind of does everything in the office”) and somebody running around checking on the paint. Those are some good job descriptions there.

Jon Bryant: Right. Great job descriptions. I hope you still write them out that way.

Yeah, okay. So it takes some time to expand your thinking and your mentality about it. But I think for somebody who’s just tuning in, who’s just starting — just getting into this business — the words you used like “org chart,” thinking about what your company looks like when you grow, are kind of the big things.

I wasn’t really of that mentality. I was just like, “The more work I get, I’ll figure it out.” And so the planning for me… I didn’t realize how much you could plan this business. What great companies do is they plan quite far in advance.

Understanding that you can plan for growth and build things for growth is important to building that great company we talked about. But overall, it’s just that great companies exist. You can do it too. There are methods — do your research.

I mean, the Nolan Consulting Group — we mentioned that. Definitely check that out if that’s something of interest. There’s education available that can get you there faster.

And I probably — leading into the next point — I wish I would have paid for education a whole lot sooner. Maybe even day one. My journey was such that I got in the industry, tried to get out for a couple of years. I was working in marketing, actually. And I came to an end — the company I was with was going under and it was obvious.

So I flipped a coin. Heads was “go into web development,” tails was “go into the painting industry.” It came up tails and I cussed. I was not happy with how that turned out.

And the first thing I did was search “painting company consultant.” I knew I couldn’t do it the way I’d done it before without somebody to give me that critical knowledge. So I would suggest, if you’re at that point: get the education, pay for it, because it comes back to you tenfold.

Now, I will say this: not every coach is created equal. So make sure you do your research on what you need. There’s going to be a value equation for everyone — how much you pay versus the result — but look into it.

Any comments there?

Michael Murray: And not every coach is good. I’ll just leave it at that.

I think it’s interesting though, the way I came across Nolan is interesting. I never realized something like that was even an option. Like you said, you Googled “painting company consultant.” In my mind, I never thought there was such a thing as successful painting company owners. I thought there were franchises — like SertaPro or whatever — as one option.

And then there was “Chuck in a Truck,” the local painting company: very unsophisticated, no technology, very blue-collar, hardworking, nothing wrong with it, but not the most professional business. That would’ve been my only two options: either SertaPro or small, tiny local contractor.

So the idea that there was such a thing as the Summit Group never crossed my mind. I only heard of it because I was trying to solve a marketing problem. I searched for marketing companies for painters or something like that and was on a sales call with somebody, just learning about them. He asked if I heard about them from the Summit Group.

I said, “No, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What is that?” And he explained what it was. And again, it was like this moment of light beaming down on me: “Oh, there’s something out there.”

And immediately — a month later or something — I was giving them money and asking for help. Thank God that I did. It was a good thing. And yeah, we met years ago through that.

But again, it goes to that idea that it really helped shape my mind on what was even possible — like you could afford to pay somebody to help you with this stuff.

Jon Bryant: Totally. Right. And that they had information that’s valuable to you.

I remember thinking to myself, “Man, if I could just write a job ad to hire a painter, that would be sweet.” And then to find out that people have done this before — that’s amazing.

I’ll also put a plug in here for the PCA too — there’s a lot of good information and a lot of good people in that network. In addition to coaching, there’s tons of education about sales, estimating, pricing, and systems that tie into tools like CRM and integrations when you’re ready for that.

I think in addition to education, I wish I knew there was a network of people willing to share information. I remember trying to price a deck a long time ago and you know what I did? I called companies in other areas pretending I wanted a quote. “Hey, I need a quote on this — can I send you a picture?”

And I’d get a picture back and the guy would be like, “Well, it’s between a thousand and twenty thousand.” I’m like, “Sweet, I got some info. We’re getting closer. All right, so at least not more than 20.”

So in addition to education, having that network effect — building contacts outside your competitive area, or even groups of four competitors that help make each other better — I think these are great.

I wish I felt more comfortable. I was kind of shy to get involved in that stuff, so I tried to do my phone calls and get someone on the line who could help me. But I would highly, highly suggest to my 15-years-ago self: find a coach, build a network, make some friends, have discussions. These things are so valuable.

Michael Murray: Yeah. I mean, yeah. Right. I mean, even PCA — we were able to grow a friendship just from getting together at PCA Expo a few years in a row.

And yeah, it’s amazing. There are Facebook groups, too. There are a lot more resources and other coaching organizations that are good.

Now there’s more structured content out there — including stuff on pricing your work properly, handling price objections, and even generating leads in the slow season — that just didn’t exist when we were starting.

So yeah, I think there are many more opportunities today for someone in a similar situation than there were when we first started.

Jon Bryant: Totally. Let’s move on to the thing that was actually the biggest problem for me, and kind of spurred so much of my interest in pricing. Ultimately PaintScout was driven by this need to price jobs.

When I started, I had no idea how to price. I wish I could go back to that individual — John in 2006, 2008 — and say, “Here’s how to understand your price.”

Did you know your pricing from the start, Michael? How did that work for you guys?

Michael Murray: So I would say the one thing we learned pretty well at the company I worked at in college — Student Painters — was production rate estimating. I’ve talked about it a little before, but it wasn’t sophisticated. It was literally, “Count the number of steps you took and multiply by three to figure out the width of the house.”

But to be honest, it gets the job done. We now use measuring wheels and it’s like, we’re not cutting wood here. We’re close enough. Got it.

And then we had a laminated sheet that said how long things should take. I don’t remember all the original production rates, but I remember the standard to paint 4" wood lap siding was 85 square feet an hour. That is memorized — forever.

We’ve certainly adjusted a lot of the standards over the years, but I’ll say we learned production rate estimating.

What we didn’t learn was how to price — and those are two different things. I could probably have a good idea of how long something should take, but I had no idea how to maybe get it done in that time or how to charge accordingly.

I remember a funny story. My first year I was a freshman in college — just finished my freshman year — literally going door to door asking people if they wanted their house painted by little 18-year-old Michael. I don’t know why anyone said yes, but they did.

In my mind as a freshman, $200 was a million dollars. I never once booked a job more than $3,000. And I remember many times, if I was close to $3,000, I would lower the price to be under $3,000 for no other reason than: “No one can spend more than $3,000 on painting a house. That’s insane.”

We painted old Victorian houses that needed a bunch of prep work for $2,775 or whatever — because it was less than $3,000 — even if the calculated price was $3,800.

And if you’re wondering: no, I did not make any money. I literally lost money. I worked 12–15 hours a day knocking on doors and painting with my friends, and because I didn’t charge enough, I didn’t make money. Don’t recommend it.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. It’s funny you tell that story because the first year I was painting, same story. You just have no perspective on money — which is the craziest thing, right?

The sheet tells you $3,800, you’re like, “Oh, that’s too much. Nobody that owns a Victorian can afford that.”

I remember getting to the end of the year, meeting with my accountant: “So how did we do?” She said, “Well, you managed to lose $3,000.” And I said, “On one job?” She said, “No, for the whole time — you lost $3,000.”

It was a sobering experience. “Oh wow, I don’t know how this works.” And every time I felt this uneasiness of, “What am I doing? I don’t know the price.” I wish I’d had something like a pricing framework or even a guide on how to estimate exterior painting jobs to anchor me.

Michael Murray: I thought you were going to say the accountant said, “Hey, good news — you’re not going to owe a lot in taxes this year.”

Jon Bryant: She did say that. “In fact, based on how you’re working this, you might actually hit your goal of going bankrupt. Good for you.”

So yeah, I wish that when I… I guess the thing I’d tell myself is: there is a method, you need to trust the method, and the price you think is enough probably isn’t. Go up a bit more.

That brings me to the next point, which is that pricing aside, I didn’t understand… so you said you knew how to production estimate but didn’t know how to price. I didn’t really know how to sell. I didn’t understand what a sales process was.

Going back, I try to think what I was doing: I’d walk around the house, itemize it, someone probably told me “it’s $2 a square foot,” so I’m looking dazed and confused being like, “I’ve counted seven windows and it’s $2 a square foot… how do I do this?”

“Okay, 400… and then work that back — I get $15 an hour, which is what I’d make working somewhere else. That’s a lot of hours. I should be able to do that.” Then I’d get to the door and be like, “Here’s your price,” and I wouldn’t even ask if they wanted to do it. Or I’d email it. I was pretty scared.

I wish I’d been aware that there are actual sales processes to follow that are good for you and good for the customer. They help people buy and see if there’s a fit.

Some of the ones I really enjoy — like the Sandler system, which you know too, Mike — give me comfort that I’m helping people buy. Our sales teams are helping people buy. Our heart is in the right place. We’re asking lots of questions and trying to figure it out. Man, that would have been so helpful.

Michael Murray: I think one thing I’d expand on is that, now that I’m at this point, looking back, one thought that really helped was understanding that it’s okay if I don’t sell the job.

If the only way I’m going to sell it is to lower the price to where I don’t make money — like in my first year — then I shouldn’t sell the job. I should go do something else. That’s better than doing what I did that first year: losing money and working my butt off.

I wish I could say I learned that after the first year. No — it took like ten, because I’m a slow learner.

But eventually I accepted that maybe we’re not going to be a million-dollar business, and that’s okay, because I’m going to price at a point that makes sense. Sure, there’s wiggle room for a small discount if we need to book a job, but I’m not going to slash my price in half because my competitor is half of mine.

Maybe that’s what the price is for their work — and that’s okay. But then I’m going to opt out and not participate. Or, more to the point, I’m going to go find a customer who wants to pay for what we’re providing. Not everyone is the right customer — that’s another lesson I’ve learned, especially when you’re dealing with price objections and learning to offer options instead of just discounting.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. Yeah. That idea of “What is the right customer?” And that you want lots of people to say no — because you want the wrong customers to weed themselves out — is so valuable.

Because going back to that feeling of pressure: the root problem was that we didn’t have enough leads. We didn’t understand our market. So every single time we got a lead, it felt like, “Oh my goodness, I have a lead. I got one this week; I better make it work.”

And the pressure of that one lead led to really bad behavior. “Okay, let me call you ten times, I’ll lower my price, just work with me.”

In reality, you don’t even know why the person’s not working with you, because you never asked. You’re just like, “It must be price, it must be price.”

Michael Murray: And sometimes it is — and it’s just that they’re not the right customer. Again, you’ve got to finish that thought.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. But you know, more leads equals a happier business, right?

Michael Murray: Oh yeah. I’ve said before, you can solve almost every problem a painting company has in terms of growing and making profit by just having max leads and max applicants for painters.

Because then you can hold a high standard for your crews. You’re not putting up with the person who shows up late and doesn’t want to work, because it’s okay — you’ve got 20 really good applicants coming through the door.

That’s how the best sports programs operate, right? At Alabama football, part of why they’re so good is their first-stringers are amazing, but their third-stringers are really good too — and there’s another kid coming in next year who’s going to be amazing.

It’s this constant flow of talented people pushing up the standard of what’s acceptable.

And we can do the same thing in our painting companies by having constant flow of really good applicants — and constant flow of leads. Especially when you know how to generate leads in the slow season, not just during the busy summer.

Similarly to your point on leads: if we have constant leads coming in, I feel comfortable saying to a customer, “This is my price. I’d love to work with you. I’d love to earn your business — but I’m okay if not. We’re not going to starve. In the next few days, I’m confident I’ll find customers who do want to pay for what we’re doing.”

Jon Bryant: Right. So both of those things are, in my mind, marketing — they’re fairly equivalent in the approach.

Now, going back to Michael in 2006, what’s the advice you’re going to tell that person to tackle this? More applicants, more leads?

Michael Murray: To the problem of more applicants and more leads — yeah.

I’d say: don’t overcomplicate it. You can just get out there and work hard, and that solves a lot of the early problems. You can get to a million through just working harder. Network. Go out and meet people. Join some BNI groups or community organizations. You can get to that million through that — go door to door.

At that level, what you’re doing matters less than the fact that you’re doing enough activity.

Similarly with recruiting: it’s somewhat similar at that level because you don’t need to hire 40 employees a year — you need to hire a few. So you can just do all the basics: ask for referrals, constantly let people know you’re hiring, post on online job boards. Any of those things work. It’s a matter of doing more of them.

Jon Bryant: And there’s a lot of free advertising available, but you’ve got to do more of it, right? Just network, be present.

One thing that really helped me — and I don’t talk about this nearly enough — is the concept of small market domination. I learned this a long time ago when I was struggling with this exact problem.

I used to think the whole city was my customer — that everyone was my customer. And I quickly… well, I had no budget for anything. So when you don’t have budget, what’s the best way to use it?

We know customers have to see your brand seven times to build enough trust to buy. So I learned this strategy: go after a very small number of people at a very high frequency.

What I did was start on very specific communities — even smaller, like a postal code or ZIP code — and work that one area. That was going to be my area.

I’d make sure that I didn’t care about anybody else. If stuff came in, great — but that person in that little zone was going to see my postcard, signs, trucks, everything over a three-month period.

We started to notice we got lots of work in that community because they trusted us and their neighbors trusted us.

I wish I started that sooner, because then we took that and moved it to multiple areas, and we still follow a very similar strategy, to be honest. It’s just much bigger now.

Michael Murray: I think that’s gold. I’d say we’re still not great at that, but I agree 100% it’s a lot easier.

And I’d say too: it’s shocking how much painting work is done in, say, a 300-home neighborhood in a given year. It’s mind-blowing how much painting work is done in something as small as a couple-mile radius in one ZIP code or one city.

You don’t need an hour-drive territory to do a million dollars in painting work — or even five million, to be honest.

Jon Bryant: Not at all. No, not at all.

Changing your perspective on that really helps when you’re small. You can actually be big in an area.

Also, a saying I learned long ago — I don’t know who said it — but: everything always has to be painted.

Even in my own home, we just painted a wall three weeks ago and my kid has already put marker on it. It’s already got to be repainted.

Michael Murray: You should be using dry erase paint or something so your kid could write on the walls and then you’d have no problem.

Jon Bryant: Where were you a month ago, Mike? Come on, man. I need these tips.

Michael Murray: Well, this is… I’ve gotten better at sales. You can — I mean that’s what I’m here for now.

Jon Bryant: Exactly.

So anyway, that’s kind of a fun one — not fun, but super tangible in marketing: go back to basics, realize you can be small and big at the same time, spend your resources efficiently, spend your time efficiently. It was so much easier when we did that.

Looks like I just hit the surface of the sun — okay, my lighting is just weird today.

All right, let’s talk about one more thing here. I’ve got one more thing, which is: why do customers buy?

I know it’s a big question, but when I started, I thought it was price. I thought we’d win jobs by figuring out what the customer wanted to pay. I’ve since realized there’s a lot more that goes into this. People have more baggage than they’re willing to admit, a lot more trust issues than they’re willing to admit.

I wish I knew that. But again, I didn’t have perspective — I was 20. I didn’t understand what adults at that point were going through.

So, any thoughts there?

Michael Murray: Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, I would have thought — I wouldn’t have used these words, but in my mind — what we do is a commodity. It’s simply a basic transaction: we’re going to put paint on the house, wall, whatever, and you’re going to pay as little as possible, and there’s no other value being provided.

There’s no “one person does it better than the other.” Maybe somebody can do it faster. But “providing a better experience” wasn’t part of my thought process early on — not to say we provided a bad experience. It was meant to be: we were friendly and kind and pleasant, and certainly wanted to do right by people. We wanted people to refer us.

But all those things just seemed like a given — like that’s what everybody would do. That was a commodity: having a pleasant experience was a commodity. So why would you pay more for it?

I quickly realized that’s not true. People out there — in our industry and a lot of industries — will take your money and not provide a good experience. Or just take your money and not provide anything.

And I quickly realized that if we could understand how to explain that and give someone peace of mind — which isn’t as easy as saying it, you do have to back it up — that’s a lot more valuable. It’s even better if your past customers are saying it for you in reviews and referrals, or when you present different options at different price points.

People are willing to pay more for that.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely, yeah. And understanding that, right? It took me many years to understand what people value.

Initially, because of pricing conversations, I thought it was a commodity — just find that price that’s acceptable. And it wasn’t even acceptable to the customer, it was “acceptable to the industry.” I was always trying to guess what the industry charges and hope the person picked me — with very little thought about the customer at all.

Now we’ve moved to a system — a sales process — where everything we do is trying to figure out value and fit and understand that we’re not the cheapest, nor do I want to be. If I am, I’ve done something wrong. And customers need to be aware that if you go with “cheapest,” something’s off.

Michael Murray: Something’s not being provided. At the end of the day, I could make my price cheaper by not having health insurance and retirement benefits for employees. That’s expensive. We could save a lot of money there.

Or by not having office staff to answer the phone when someone needs help. Those things aren’t mandatory in our industry. We believe they ultimately give the customer a better experience too — and they’re backed by systems in things like our CRM and processes.

We give our employees a better experience. We believe that if we have happy employees, they give our clients a great experience. That’s our whole business philosophy — my business philosophy.

But not everybody believes that, and that’s okay. But my original mindset was: when someone told me my price was higher than someone else’s, I thought, “Oh my gosh, I screwed up. I did something wrong. I’m a failure. I did the math wrong. The calculator made a mistake — impossible.”

Now I realize: yeah, my price is higher and their price is lower — let’s figure out why. What’s missing from their price that’s included in my price?

It doesn’t mean my price is better, nor that their price is better. But I think that’s such a concrete way of saying it.

I thought lower price = better. Now I realize that’s not true — and often the opposite — for many people. And my job as a sales professional, especially when handling price objections, is helping them understand that.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. Yeah, price is an indicator, but nothing more than that, right?

So yeah, couldn’t agree more. There’s been a lot of learning over the years. I love chatting with people who are starting out. There’s a lot of experience you have to have to get here, but you can shorten that by having the things we talked about earlier — coaching, community, better systems for sales and pricing, even better tools like PaintScout CRM that keep everything connected through your integrations.

And just the mentality that the information is out there — go looking for it.

So anyway, that’s my last thought. You have a last thought at all?

Michael Murray: Yeah, I mean, just dream big. What’s possible in this industry is pretty cool.

Once I allowed myself to dream big and opened my eyes to what was possible, it’s way bigger than what I’m doing. It’s bigger than what you’re doing. Someday I’m going to be as big as you. And someday we’re both going to be as big as a lot of the companies we look up to.

And it’s incredible what this industry can do when it’s done well — not just for the business owner, but for the employees, the communities, the customers. There are a lot of people running really good businesses that are taking care of all of those stakeholders.

And yeah, I’d encourage — like we said before — get involved and ask for help. So many people in our industry are willing and able to provide a lot of wisdom and experience.

Jon Bryant: Cool. Let’s end it there.

If anybody has any comments, feel free to leave them, send us an email, leave some comments, follow along with us if you feel like what we’re chatting about — and yeah, have a great day and talk to you soon.