Brandon Lewis, Increasing Profit During Challenging Times

Have you had a chance to hear our recent podcast with Brandon Lewis? Check it out here, or enjoy the transcript below of our conversation!

Kathy Droste 00:00 

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Estimate Rocket radio. My name is Kathleen, I'm the director of sales. And I am joined by my very dynamic co-host, Chris shank. Chris is the leader of Education and Engagement here at Estimate Rocket. You know, I just really love our next guest. And first of all, he's a longtime friend of Estimate Rocket. But he's also one of the top national contracting coaches for all you tradesmen. And his name is Brandon Lewis. Brandon is the founder of the Academy for Professional Painting and Contractors. And he's celebrating his ninth year in business as a coach, because before that, he actually owned his own painting company, so he knows exactly what you're going through. Brandon is also the publisher of painters weekly, which you should get a subscription to and read. It's filled with lots of hints and tips and tricks. 

Chris Shank 01:35 

We talk with Brandon about the economy. We always love picking his brain to find out what people should be doing in difficult times. And he has a way of turning everything on its head. So you see things from a different perspective. You know what tools and resources you have that you didn't know of before he helps us find a way forward. Listen closely, there are so many helpful hints here, he's giving some of his stuff away for free. So lap it up, put it to use and check out Brandon, what he's doing over there at the painters Academy. 

Kathy Droste 02:06 

Brandon, welcome to Estimate Rocket radio, it is truly a pleasure to have you as a guest today, 

Brandon Lewis 02:13 

I'm pleased as punch to be back. The fact that you would even have me back must mean that you are running out of talent. This is the bottom of the barrel. 

Chris Shank 02:23 

We are excited to have you, always! We love our conversations with you. And this topic is really near and dear to us. As we see a lot of contractors who are always trying to navigate economic situations, and especially trying to grow their business. They're not just hopefully sitting static and just, you know, hoping the best comes they're trying to make the best out of their situation. But to be aggressive like that, you sometimes get a little fearful you look around at what's happening in the world, you know, are we going to make it or we're going to be able to make the next level of growth, or are we gonna have to drop back a little bit?. So we were talking to you a little bit and we thought this would be a great podcast to talk about, you know, what, what comes next? What do we do next, when we see the economy? What seems to be a tough economy, and depending on what your perspective is, but so let's talk about real quick what we mean by economic downturn? What are your thoughts about their frequency and severity? 

Brandon Lewis 03:20 

So I launched my painting business in 2008, at the very beginning of 2008, and lots of Painting Contractors were going out of business while I was launching. And I never knew a good economic environment. Even when I sold my business in 2013, the economy was rather soft, it was a long downturn. And the issue that I have, are my basic fundamental opinion is that economic downturns do not put good painting businesses out of business.

But they do put weak painting businesses out of business. For example, if you are going to be in gale force winds on a hot sea, if you have a sturdy ship that is equipped, you go out to sea to actually ride the storm out. But if you're in a leaky dinghy, and this thing is just barely floating in calm seas, then you will capsize. And so economic downturns are really a way to kind of clean out off the bottom 1020 15% of companies that do not have sound business practices. So if you do different things, there will always be work there even if there's less of it. And and the value to some of these companies going out of business is you could potentially take if they have any A players on their teams, you could potentially reach out to them and instantly be able to increase your business. Certainly, I mean, there was a glut of labor when I launched my painting business. So you've got two fundamental components.

You've got demand, and then you've got capacity. And so the capacity was super easy to reach when I ran my painting business and the inverse of that for a while after the pandemic was true, in that we had, we had very little labor, because it, you know, we had subsidized people to sit at home for a great period of time. And that, you know, once that habit was established, it was very difficult to get those people back into the labor market, many of them never returned. And so we've kind of had a weird situation. And then we had a glut of demand come on top of that reduction in labor. And so prices skyrocketed, for a while for painting services. And people were booked way out, and they were charging amazing prices. But now, we have seen that the labor market has stabilized somewhat some of those people that were sitting at home if come back to the market, demand has dropped. And so we have seen a large fluctuation in what is going on in the home services market in general, in a very short period of time. 

Kathy Droste 06:08 

Almost a flip, right? 

Brandon Lewis

It was Yeah. And I think just for people to think about this properly, to actually answer Chris's question is, you know, there are a few things happening right now, number one is inflation means your customers are poorer now than they were two years ago. So if they made $100,000, they still make $100,000. But it only has maybe $85,000 worth of purchasing power. And Painting Services and a lot of home services, our discretionary income. Painting in particular is very decorative, it is primarily decorative, it is protective to a small degree, other companies HVAC, plumbing, electrical, those tend to be less affected because they are often essential services were painting remodeling and a handful of other things aren't. Also we've seen an increase in interest rates. And that means the the purchasing of anything financed, and Americans in particular love to finance their lifestyle costs more, and that is cars, homes, credit card interest rates. And then finally, the third big thing that we have going on is uncertainty in the market.

People are afraid to spin because they have no idea, especially in the United States, what's going to happen with tax policies, energy policies, are all the things that are driving the inflation that seemed to be moving us in the wrong direction, we have no idea if that's going to continue to stay like it is or if it's going to get worse. And uncertainty is always going to put the market into a negative a negative situation. And Tim, we tend to deal with this every every four years when we head into an election cycle. And so those are all the things that you really need to think about as a contractor so that you can put yourself in the shoes of your potential clients. 

Kathy Droste 07:57  

Yeah. Yeah. And I we even see it in the Boston area. You know, we, I think the whole country feels this, the high interest rates, it has really made people think, two three times do they? Do they really need to do a certain task. So I, we're all in this together. That's for sure. Brandon, I'm so happy that you're on the podcast today. Because I want to share with you I was recently going through an exercise, we don't have too many single man shops, because Estimate Rocket is really a growth system. So but we have enough of them that I've done this exercise of calling them. And when I do get a hold of them, first of all, first of all, most of them don't even have answering machines.

When I tell you one man band there if they're not there to answer the phone, it's going into messages, and God only knows if they have the time to actually get back to everyone that's calling. But they're performing the task. They're doing all the billing, they're they're doing all the callbacks, they're doing everything, and they're depressed, and they're overworked. And I was telling Chris, you know, the feeling that I get from them when I call is it's almost like if you had to lose 50 pounds, or you had to stop drinking and you love drinking it it's it's how do you how do you eat an elephant, you know, one bite at a time. So how would you encourage people that are a one man band to and they really do want to get another person on board? How do they even begin to strategize to overcome all the obstacles that they face on a daily basis to get to the point where they could have hire their first team member. So 

Brandon Lewis 10:04 

this is a long answer, but I'm going to, at the, at the risk of going long, I'm going to answer it thoroughly for those that are out there that really do have this problem. So if this describes you, and you're in this situation, here are a few things you need to know. Number one, you make money by buying labor, wholesale and selling it retail by buying materials wholesale and selling them retail. If you are painting by yourself, and you paint 2000 labor hours, that's 40 hours a week with a two week vacation, and you charge $50 an hour you should be making around $100,000 as an individual, if you are charging 60, it shouldn't be 120. And typically, the games on your materials were covered overhead if you're doing job costing. And if you use a program like Estimate Rocket that helps you have production rates so that your estimates are accurate. If that's not how much money you made last year, if that's not where you are year to date, then there's a problem there that you need to address first, to make sure that cash flow is there, we don't want to add being broke on top of being stressed and overworked. So that's the first thing you need to make sure that your financial understanding is good, so that you are at least making money even if you're super busy and stressed.

The second step is to free up some time. As an owner, you have to free up time and how do you do that? First things first, if you aren't making that much money, it is not any great expense to hire an answering service to at least get to your phone calls and schedule appointments that cost very little money. I think I ran the math one time it cost the average owner somewhere around 400 or $500 in personal income every time the phone rings. And it's not answered if it's an estimate request. So typically, if you can just get one estimate request phone call answered every two months, it pays for the service. And it frees up time. And they're very few things you can spend money on where you make more money spending it and it frees up time and answering service is one of those the second stop is getting a bookkeeper. The third thing I would recommend that owners do is to realize that you have control of your time owners just really think that their time is exclusively controlled by the client. And if they do have any painters to painter, if you tell your clients very simply, I work Monday through Thursday, I work 10 hour days on Fridays, I work on my businesses, is that okay? They will all say yes. Say yes, they're just glad you're there. And they will do the work and they can trust you. So that still gets you to however many hours you want to work. But it gives you the option of having a day that's free. So you can focus on putting systems in place so that you do not have to kill yourself.

The second thing I would recommend, if you're running a W two shop and not a sub shop, is to hire a crew leader. And that is very, I guess what would you call it is counterintuitive. Everybody wants to hire a helper, you don't want to help her as an owner operator, you want to hire someone who is of equal skill to you. Who if you decide to leave for a day, if you're working at 50% gross profit, instead of in earning $60 an hour, you're at least earning 30 From the time that they work on the day that you can't be there. And so that is the first step to kind of getting out of I wouldn't say getting out of the bucket because you know, you still want to preserve your personal income of $60 an hour.

Plus, if you have a crew leader working with you, that would get you up to around 90, which is a darn good hourly pay rate. And so you can get there so that those are the first few steps. And then you have to start looking at all the fundamental systems, from things like the ultimate crew leader packet are the tools that you give a crew leader to do a job properly, with written instructions and tools so they can do a job properly. without you being there, too. Job Costing too incentivizing as crew leader some of these things we'll talk about later. But that's really the kind of the pathway that I take owner operators out of and the first is we have to secure your income. And the second is we have to get you some outsource services to free up a little bit more time and then we have to structure your time.

The last thing I would mention that I failed to at the beginning is you need to time block all of your like tasks. So you do not need to be writing estimates. Anytime someone asked you to whenever in the week because that stopping and starting is very inefficient. Pick a day pick a time that you write estimates and then you have to be comfortable enough to understand that you may lose a job or two because of this new structure. But if you go back to the old ways of simply allowing everyone to run your calendar, you're going to be in trouble. People that are very wealthy use their calendar as a shield, and people that are very poor use their calendar as a sponge. And you cannot do that it leads to it leads to poverty. And so your time is your most valuable asset. And you have to learn how to structure it and use it efficiently. 

Chris Shank 15:24 

Well, I've never heard that about the calendar. I love that. Yeah. Oh, good. 

Kathy Droste 15:28 

Tthat was beautiful. I really appreciate this. Because I've written every bullet point you sit down. And I'm going to use this over and over again, with our Estimate Rocket community, because I think these tips are super, super helpful. And, Brandon, I want to ask you, if we can get some of our Estimate Rocket community to come over to you and being coached by you. Can you also provide them with any, any materials and outlines they need to follow when they do hire their first person? Do you help them with that? 

Brandon Lewis 16:15 

Yeah, so you've really got three fundamental things that you do in in hiring, and this would be good for people listening, that are bringing on their first hire. And again, I would strongly recommend that you bring on a crew leader and not a helper. And the other reason I recommend that, that I failed to mention is when if you bring on a helper, and someone, quote unquote, helps you or painter, and then you have to bring on a crew leader as your next hire, well, that individual often feels slighted, you don't know who's gonna be right. But when you bring on a crew leader with anticipation that they will ultimately have someone working with them, that's not just you, it's a completely different transition. And it is so easy, it's so much easier to scale, most people do it in the reverse order, which is very difficult. So that having been said, the first thing that you have to do if you're going to hire that first person is you have to have recruitment strategies. And those are the markets you go after the messages you use, and the mediums that you use to reach those individuals to offer them not employment, better employment, everybody has employment, right now you must offer better employment. And that often means recruiting away painters that work at existing painting companies.

Now, that's that's the first thing you got to generate the lead. And then you have two big aspects. And that is technical assessment, and non technical skills assessments. And those need to be conducted so that you can determine, especially with hiring, your first hires a crew leader, if they can read a written scope of work, follow the directions if they have the technical skills necessary. And we have a thing called the circle test that can be conducted in about 35 to 45 minutes, that gives a benchmark for all of that. But it doesn't require you to risk putting that painter in the home of a client without really knowing who they are, what their background is, and if they are productive. And then you've got non technical skills assessments, which are a series of questions that you rank, so that you can consistently score people for that position without bias and see if they are a fit for your culture. And of course, then you proceed from there to background checks, screening, references, you know, reference checks, and then and then onboarding, and teaching them how to use your systems in the field, which don't have to be 

overly complex. Right. So I mean, those are the kinds of steps you take. And for each one of those we have standalone, what we call toolkits or modules with video training and checklist or manuals and templates, because most painters simply can't invent things from scratch, because it's not their expertise. And so I never expect them to do that in our program, because if I did, they wouldn't ever implement. It's hard enough to get people to implement when you give them everything they need, just because it's new and different. But if you don't give them everything they need, it's virtually impossible to get them to implement. 

Kathy Droste 19:06 

Right? Right, we even find that it Estimate Rocket, you know, our onboarding, is always evolving, because we try to make it fun and exciting and rewarding to do some pretty big aha moments, and big wins so that they get really excited to be spending time learning a new product. And it's difficult because who wants to spend time learning a new product? You know, a lot of the times you just don't have the physical time in your day or week to devote to that. 

Brandon Lewis 19:46 

Well, it leads to other than one other thing regarding calendaring and time blocking and the reason I'm so passionate about this is because the proper management of time and specifically time blocking is the only commonality The I have really found in any of our most fluent clients or members in it is that they set aside four to eight hours and often 16 hours or more a week to specifically work on their business, they anchor that on the calendar first and everything else must rotate around it. And if you try to put things that are important, but not urgent in on your calendar, only when the time is available, it will never happen. So you must learn to anchor it first. And then all the routine things get done around that, without that component, you'll never really be able to scale or improve your business. 

Kathy Droste 20:38 

And that's why I admire you so much. Because, you know, time blocking, at the Estimate Rocket office, we call it your ideal day, your ideal week. And if you're not working on your business, no one else is. So you have to make the time. And it isn't always fun. And sometimes you'd rather be doing other things. But you really have to make the time to do it. Because it's so important. 

Brandon Lewis 21:09 

B

It is it is always the analogy that I use is, you know, in paint, you have three components, you have the body, you have the pigment, and you have the binder. And the binder is a very small amount of the paint, it is the most expensive element that goes into paint, but it is what holds the pigment to the body. And your time management. In your painting business or home service businesses almost exactly the same thing it is it is the essential catalyst or element for everything else to happen is how the owner manages his time. And you can typically point back to that being very robust or very anemic for every problem or opportunity that you've been able to manufacture in your company. 

Kathy Droste 22:04 

And you know, it's not talked about that much, Brandon. You know, you people get into other things like job costing and profitability, you know, we do that in Estimate Rocket. And we're always always focusing on that, because then you have your profitability instantly, when you have a crew. And when you have more than just yourself, it's easier to be able to focus on those things. But when you're a one man band, it's just so difficult to make a living for yourself and work on your business to grow it. 

Brandon Lewis 22:43 

That's true, very difficult, but it's got to be done. And everything else. While life and business is a series of uncomfortable and difficult anxiety, inducing projects, and next action items. And the sooner you get comfortable with, you know, with doing uncomfortable tasks, the quicker you will be on your way. Something's just you're gonna have to do it. And so the just need the earlier you can get it out of the way. And the quicker you can get it implemented, the better. 

Chris Shank 23:17 

So Brandon, let me ask you if if people are doing the right thing, okay, and we work with some larger companies with, or most of the companies we work with are 10 employees to 50 employees. That's kind of the core customer that we have. If people are hopefully at that level, they're doing what they need to be doing. They're using the right tools. There. They got some processes, they're protecting the calendar. They're protecting some of their time, it's good time management. Let's say let's suppose that people are moving into a tough economic time with the right tools. And maybe there's some slowing a little bit there. Maybe there's some adjustments, but how do people get back to full momentum? As you know, things improve in the in the economy? What's your thoughts about that? 

Brandon Lewis 24:03 

Well, so the generally speaking, when things get tough economically, there are two things that I hear I need more leads, I need more painters and I'm not need to lower my process. That more more leads and more painters tends to be the only thing that owners come up with when it relates to increasing their income, and even writing out economic downturns. And those are rarely the easiest places to find income in your painting business, especially as economics. As you have an economic downturn. What is an economic downturn really translates into a fewer requests for estimates in the marketplace, and a reluctance to pay a premium price. When those estimate requests are made, that's really what it represents. And so you have to look at pay look across the landscape. If that is the case, what can I do in my business to make sure that I still maintain or grow my income. And so I'll give you a few. Quickly, I'll try to run through these as quickly as I can, number one, is you need. So the better approach is this, in my opinion, when when things get tough in the economy, number one, you need to make money on every project through better operations, you would not believe how many times I've worked with clients, and they just don't give this any thought like they it's long as they are busy.

They do not really care about busyness. Even if they have problems, even if they are broke. Busyness kind of distracts from that it's like a panacea. It's something that masks big problems in businesses. So number one, you need to use production rates Estimate Rocket is a fantastic tool for that. Because if you do not have accurate estimates, and if you have a variance of 20%. In your estimates, because you're guessing or more, well, 20%, or 50% is almost half of your gross profits can just evaporate because of inaccurate estimates. The second thing is is real time job costing. And that means on a daily basis, the operations manager and or the owner and the crew leader need to know where they are on the labor hour and the material budget. If you don't check in with your crews daily, if they don't feel the heat daily, if they aren't keeping it up with it personally in a way that actually impacts them, they will not hit the budget. And then finally, you need to equip your crew leaders with the tools, they need to track it in a way that they feel it it doesn't need to just be tracked digitally in a way that they don't see or feel or interact with. Even if you see it, if they don't feel it, it doesn't work as well. And you need to manage the projects better from the office with scheduling and crew assignment. And finally, I would say 90 some odd percent of the people listening to this podcast, only pay their crew leaders and their painters hourly. And there is no incentive whatsoever for them to be more productive. And so you need a saved labor or material bonus program, you need some structure that really rewards profit or rewards productivity and reaching goals. If you don't, you're gonna be in trouble, one of our biggest members is around 26 $27 million and painting services. And he says if you give a man a raise, he will be happy for a few days.

But if you if you give him a bonus, he's happy every day, he works hard every day because each paycheck is contingent upon his performance. And so you need to have some kind of process by which to do that. Switching gears to sales, you need to improve the persuasiveness of your sales process, not just how you produce the estimate, not just how you give them a scope of work and a price. But it's everything you do before, during and after the job to make certain that you are convincing clients that you reduce risks that you add value. Because when you do that, it increases your closing rates, which is typically the only thing that people focus on. But, but an improved sales process this persuasive also increases the transaction size of every project. And that reduces your marketing expense per project. And then you need to institute upselling processes when you write an estimate, so that you can present those things in a way that does not impact your core offering, but allows either the estimator or the office or the crew leader. And you really need to attack this from both directions. About halfway through any project for you simply ask the client by the way, we put your deck we put pressure washing your driveway and whatever. As an add on to the proposal on a separate piece of paper or digital document.

Do you want us to do that while we're still here as people are buying, they tend to buy more and they don't if they want to do it and people don't like having tradespeople out of their house.  And if they're already there, if you ask them about 20% of the time, they will say yes. And so Kathy luck going back, most people say I need more leads. And that's really not what you need in a painting business. You need more profitable work to process. Yep, exactly. It's not the same as I need more leads. You need more profitable work process and a lot of that happens in your operational selling and you're selling. Another thing in an economic downturn that you need to do is what I refer to as operational marketing. And that means when you go out to paint a house, you need to have some kind of radius marketing or door hanging process, we call it a 40 door steady work program, you could do more doors than that in a way where the marketing materials actually effective so many door hangers people use aren't. But you need to use that because in you need to get online reviews, you need to have a process whereby your guests do that and you incentivize them for that it's covered in the crew meeting. And then you also need to collect video testimonials for both SEO persuasion things of that nature.

If you do those things, and if you can get a lead for a job, every other job. And if you close half of those what that what that does in the end is it gives you a quarter of a job for every job you produce. And that is what we call a marketing tailwind. And if you know that you've got a quarter of a job every time you do a job if you do 100 jobs a year, that means you get 25 additional jobs and a very low rate. And it just gives you a diversified lead flow, so that you don't have to spend money exclusively and only on net new marketing. And most of those jobs close in a similar fashion to referrals because it is a referral of sorts. Two last things, you need to increase the quality of your leads by shifting your spin to past clients and unconverted leads, because the transaction sizes on average are 60%. Larger, the close rates tend to be somewhere around 65 to 55% for past clients somewhere around 50 to 55% for referrals versus 25 to maybe 32% for net new leads off the internet or wherever you're generating them. And so the quality of your diet or the quality of your lead consumption has a ripple effect through your business. And then finally, you need to get b2b referral sources cranked up from realtors, other trade sources, gutter installers, roofers, 

Kathy Droste 31:53 

bankers, local bankers are happy to give your name out 

Brandon Lewis 31:57 

exactly anybody you can you can develop a relationship with by consistently being in touch with them that can send you leads at a fraction of the price. And then going after commercial prospects is important because as the economy dips, not all sectors of the home service or commercial service industry are affected the same, for example, assisted living facilities, they have to maintain the appearance of their facilities, especially the higher end ones, private schools, if they when they still have enrollment, those of your super affluent clients that have higher discretionary income that typically aren't impacted the same way as middle income earners. And that is a market you need to go after. And you need to also target with your marketing more affluent, older people in neighborhoods that live in homes that have more paintable substrates, because again, they have the money, they can't do the painting, they don't want to do it. And then the last thing is holding your net new marketing accountable. And one thing I love about Estimate Rocket is that it has the ability to track things by lead source.

And those lead sources, you need to know if you're spending any money on generating leads, what the closing rates are, what the average transaction size is, what the cost of lead is, and the cost per sale. And what percentage of that average transaction is being spent on marketing. And you rank those, right? Okay, we spend a lot of money on x, the leads don't close the transaction sizes are small, and it's expensive. Well, once you rank those, that you may discover that the bottom three or four sources are just absolute garbage. And those need to be cut off immediately because they're poorly performing. And that money needs to be reinvested in the sources that are performing or just stuck right back in your pocket. And so those are some things that you can do during an economic downturn that are very helpful. And they aren't necessarily just spending more money trying to get leads. 

Kathy Droste 34:02 

Yeah, and that's exactly why we put those fields in the software is so that those leads can be analyzed. And you can quickly pivot. When you see that you're paying too much money for a lead source, and you're getting nothing out of it. 

Brandon Lewis 34:19 

There's a lot of that going on. And one other thing just for you to think about out there if you're listening. When you say to yourself, my phone has stopped ringing, which most people do not market to their past clients, they do not consistently stay in touch with their unconverted leads or referral sources. And so they're your phone ringing is almost locked. It's almost like having a temperature gauge outside of your house. Right? It has nothing to do with what you do. It's just measuring the temperature or in the case of your phone ringing most of the time. You're just hoping the market reaches out to you. If that phone stops ringing what that means, especially if you've been in business a long time is that there is truly less demand. Well, if your solution to less demand is to go find more leads, you're not the only person that thinks that. And so what you end up with a situation where there are more painters spending more money on fewer leads.

And so that's why you really want to build your own audience that you have a relationship with. So that when the times are tough that personal relationship, direct access, and the the economy have very low cost per sale transactions and larger transactions can keep you afloat. Most of our members, as we have our mentor and q&a calls are saying, Thank God for my repeat and referral work in the fact that I've built a relationship with two or 3000 people over the last six or seven years because that is what is keeping our painters working because their online leads and everything else that's net new, are really down. Yeah. So you safeguard yourself against these economic downturns by investing in people in relationships long before you ever need them. 

Kathy Droste 36:08 

You know, Brandon, as we wrap up this podcast, I really want you I want to promote you, and your event painting profit Summit, that usually happens every January. Estimate Rocket has always love being a proud sponsor, and we continue to be and I want you to tell people a little bit about it, and how the Estimate Rocket community can reach out to you. 

Brandon Lewis 36:33 

So the painting profit Summit, and I appreciate that Kathy will be in Chattanooga, Tennessee at the historic Reed house, it is just a beautiful turn of the century hotel that I love my wife and Dawn there quite a lot in Bridgman ins, which is one of the higher end restaurants here in Chattanooga. And we're going to start off with a pre day where we're going to walk through the sales process, we may have a an alternative, pre day route that people can take and I'm putting that together up now there's someone that may or may not be coming on to our team, that will be big news. And if that happens, that individual be teaching a different track. And then we spend two days really in general sessions where you hear from very successful, fluent painters on strategies and tactics that work for them.

It's just straight from the painter's mouth, it's all peer driven. And then we break individuals up into their peer groups based upon sales volume in the evening. And we explore a variety of topics where peers can help you solve your biggest problems. And of course, we recognize Economic and Business achievements at the Academy Awards Dinner. It's not me, it's the the guys and everybody is so warm and so welcoming and so nice to one another. And yet, the business acumen in the room is so impressive. 

Kathy Droste 38:03 

We love to hear that because that's our goal at Estimate Rocket R R m, users grow at a 

We love to hear that because that's our goal at Estimate Rocket R R m, users grow at a minimum by 34% in sales and profitability year over year over year so it makes our heart smile it makes us realize we're doing something right. 

Brandon Lewis 38:32 

Our members love your service they really do and it is it is fantastic and it has helped so many people it produce a more professional estimate quicker with all kinds of suites for estimating accurately and also follow up and tracking you know the sending out a word document or a PDF is all well and good and it gets the job done but we are in a different era now.

And if there are tools out there that can help you make more money more efficiently and give you information that helps you make decisions that can improve your business you really need to take advantage of it and I'm a big fan of Estimate Rocket not because I use it because I coach but because our our painters tell me they love it. And I always rely upon the recommendations of our membership to give people advice on what I would use and so we're very thankful to have you all at our event and in our guys appreciate it as well. 

Kathy Droste 39:33 

We're so happy to So Brandon before we close out tell people how they can reach you and sign up for the painting profits summit. 

Brandon Lewis 39:43 

The summer is the such the summer doldrums. Our guys are so busy. I hear from them very little up until about September, but you can go to painters academy.com We have a wonderful resource was there and it's called Five Keys to growing your business in any economy. It's a video training and a PDF tool in conjunction and if you sign up for that, not only do you get that free information, but you'll also be on our list for any updates about the event.

And I would encourage people to follow us on YouTube and Facebook we've got a tremendous catalog of videos going all the way back to 2014. And I'm always amazed when I get on the phone. And people are like, I've listened to your redneck voice for about 200 hours and I realized that I need help can you help me and I'm happy to help you. And so I'm sorry you had to suffer through all that but here we are. But I appreciate you I appreciate Chris and everybody over in the Estimate Rocket family and I can't wait to see you all in person and should your travels take you through the scenic city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, please do let me know I would love to have you. 

Kathy Droste 40:52 

Oh thank you. Well, we wouldn't come to Chattanooga without reaching out to you so you can count on. 

Chris Shank 40:58 

Thank you so much, Brandon. 

Brandon Lewis 40:59 

Thank you guys be good take care.