From Surviving to Thriving: How to Build a Customer-Centric and Profitable Painting Business w/ Mark DeFrancesco

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Contractor Freedom Podcast. I'm your host, Jason Phillips. This show exists to help small business owners like you escape the tyranny of Contractor Freedom and enter the bliss of Contractor Freedom so you can have the Time, Money, and Freedom to Live Your Life With Purpose Beyond Your Business.As a certified human behavior consultant in DISC personality styles and motivators, I'll be sharing with you skills for life, love, leadership, and business. I'll also be connecting you with experts that can help you scale your business and your life. So if you want to build the business and life of your dreams, then you are in the right place.Let's go. Jason Phillips: Hey friends jason phillips here i'm excited to be with you today live For our contractor freedom podcast. I have a special treat for you today. I have my friend Mark DeFrancisco, all the way from Connecticut, down here in Texas, in Allen, Texas with us here live today, [00:01:00] and we spent the whole day yesterday together, and I want you to get to know him, and think he's got some great things you're gonna love, you're gonna love hearing from Mark.So Mark, I just want to say, welcome. Thank you very much. I'm glad you're here. We got to send, spend the whole day today, excuse me, the whole day yesterday and and today together. Man, tell us where where are you from? Tell us your name, your business Mark DeFrancesco: and such. So I'm from Connecticut.Name of my business is MDF Painting and Power Washing. So we've been at it up there for a while. We do primarily high end residential painting and we do some commercial repaint painting as well. Jason Phillips: When did you start? How long have you been in business? Mark DeFrancesco: I've been in business since 95 but really in business since 03, so I had been painting when I was younger and even through college and all that and and then launched out for real in 03. Jason Phillips: Your clients are residential builders or homeowners? Mark DeFrancesco: Primarily homeowners. Jason Phillips: Primarily homeowners. Mark DeFrancesco: Most of our work is direct to owners and even in commercial, we prefer to be direct to owners where we're doing work for the [00:02:00] university or the assisted living complex or whatever building we're painting.Jason Phillips: I see. Got it. Tell us tell us a little bit, Mark, about just the basic structure of your company. Who does? Who does the painting? Who does the sales? Who does the marketing and such? Mark DeFrancesco: Yeah, so good question. Start with the direct labor of our painters. This has changed over the years.We've talked about it. I went from being a completely employee based company to a completely subcontractor based company back to a completely employee based company. And so it's been a bit of a Germany, a journey for us. And but now we're all employees and that's the way I prefer it. Is that typical for your state?It's a mix. It's a big mix. I would say it's probably very similar to 50 50. There's a lot of, a lot more subcontractors in the last 15 years are being used by more and more companies. Jason Phillips: And the employee model, I love hearing from that. Because us, my company, we're 100%, or I'm going to say 99%.Subcontractor model and you're the employee model and [00:03:00] it's they're both great. They both have challenges at the same time There's a little bit different. What Mark DeFrancesco: soThere's certainly pros and cons of both I think what's been beneficial to me is being able to live and see and work in both like I had subcontractors for a full decade, so it's not like I was new to that or I just tried it out.The things I loved about it in many cases the subcontractors were, just really qualified. They had their shit together, they could get things done efficiently, they cared about finishing a job and going to the next job. That was the positive of it. The negative that I found was I didn't always have the control that I felt that I needed in terms of just getting things done right now as I need them done.And in many cases, those subs that I had were like family, they were, they worked with us all the time and they were great, but especially in carpentry. So I had always subcontracted carpentry out as well. And after a while, I was just like, I can't, I needed to work more in unison. And I felt like I wasn't doing enough [00:04:00] of building a team.And I feel like when I went all employee, The second time in I decided I was going to really build culture and build team. I see. Big way. Nice. So like we, I mean we do an employee event every single month and I know a lot of people do these events, but we pull our people on what they want to do, we invite the families like it's almost what am I marketing people?Part of what she does is just like promo the events. So we're using like direct mail and phone calls and text to Jason Phillips: your own people, Mark DeFrancesco: to my own people, to get as much of a turnout as I can to go to the minor league baseball game, to the bowling night, to the crew leaders for billiards with the owner type thing.And so we do a lot of things like that are awesome and then our weekly meetings. So I was never able to have the type of weekly production meetings when I had subs in, in just in my world that I'm able to have now with these guys. [00:05:00] So that's our path now. But I've taken a lot of things from the sub world like bonus structures, like how I, I call it my payout system.That's the number one most important thing to make money in this business. Net, net money, in my opinion. And I think I've been able to transfer it in a way into the employee model. Which I think is the key thing for us. I love that you've done that. Yeah, so there's a lot to learn from both.Jason Phillips: The culture element, also, that you were mentioning. I think you've got something really special going on. It's cooking. We've got a long way to go. But it's cooking and it's awesome. It's, yeah. What brings you to Dallas? Mark DeFrancesco: You. I just, I admire you, and I totally respect what you've done in the business for such a long time.And in getting to know you in the last few years, just casually at different events, whenever we would chat, I always left the conversation thinking. That's really smart, or I like how he thinks about this because I think we think alike in a lot [00:06:00] of ways. And I always see a person who's constantly growing and learning and trying to improve.I think it's Tony Robbins is like constant and never ending improvement. I'm a big Tony Robbins guy. And I just see that in how you handle your business, and even just knowing you casually, how you would handle your faith, and your family, and your physical workouts, and your business. It's just not one thing, it's your whole life.And I think as business owners I'm the bottleneck for my business now. And I was 20 years ago, and I will still be 10 years down the road from now. However, when you make a conscious decision to say, how do I get better every day? I think that's when things change. And for you, I just see it as Hey, that guy's trying to get better all the time.And that's just we were in Florida or someplace and we, I'm out at the treadmill, it was early morning and you're already on the darn treadmill doing something, and I'm just, so it's not just about painting houses or whatever we're doing as contractors. It's [00:07:00] about life and how you're trying to grow and learn and get better in life is going to have a direct.I admire that in you and I appreciate you and you've been so open and just, thank you very Jason Phillips: well. I'm honored to have you here and I feel I talk to contractors all the time and you've, after us spending a whole day together and really just diving in talking about your business and my business, you've got some really awesome stuff going in your, your Your business acumen is on point.Oh, I appreciate that. And of course we're, I think, we both know a lot and we're both students. And I think that's one of the things that I really, that really struck me when I met you is I'm like, okay, this guy's smart. He's hungry and he's asking great questions, and you can tell by the questions people ask.And of course, I'm look, I'm growing. I'm, I want to grow my company as well. And we've got, people that are listening or tuning into this podcast. They're like, man, how do I, how do I get to that point where, I [00:08:00] can do these things that Mark's doing, would you mind sharing, would it be okay to ask like what type of top line type revenue you guys are just, or how many painters or something?Mark DeFrancesco: This year we're looking to hit five and a half million. Nice. So it's primarily paint. We do paint, we do some pressure washing. Carpentry obviously has to be part of it.I'm up in New England. So you really don't paint an exterior paint job without having some carpentry in place. So we do have carpentry teams. So that's where we are for revenue. Jason Phillips: Okay, that's absolutely beautiful, which that's not a lot of guys in that realm. And Mark DeFrancesco: no, but there's a lot more...