Why Networking and Learning from Peers Are Essential for Contractors w/ Will Reyes

[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: Hello Contractors, Jason Phillips here, and I have a special guest with us today, Mr. Will Reyes from Battle Born Painting in Reno, Nevada, and welcome Will. Will Reyes: Hey buddy, it's good to be here. Jason Phillips: I'm glad you're here. So I guess you're not currently in Reno, right? Looks [00:01:00] like you're remote. Will Reyes: I am. I'm actually in Guadalajara, Mexico, hanging out with some friends and having a good time and just taking a little R & R, if you will.Jason Phillips: Oh, so I see you're, you're, you're hanging out for a living these days, huh? Will Reyes: Well, I mean, I'm trying to be like Jason Phillips. You might know the guy. Jason Phillips: Oh, no, no, no. Well, well, hey, man, I'm, I'm so glad we're getting, we're getting to connect. This is a, this is long overdue, you and I, and, uh, I'm, I'm super excited to have you on today.And, and hey, by the way, you're going to be speaking at the upcoming Contractor Freedom Summit. And we can touch on that. Yeah. Excited for that. Hey Will, for those that don't know you, tell just a little bit about your company and give us, give us the high level, you know, the 30, 000 foot overview.Will Reyes: Yeah, my name is Will Reyes. Like Jason said, I am more in painting, but we don't just paint, you know, we do a narrative things, you know, a lot of things we learn the hard way, but we do interior, exterior painting, which a lot of you probably do. We do, we have a concrete coatings division where we coat concrete with things like rough floors, [00:02:00] polishes, epoxies, polyureas, things of that nature.We have a cabinet division that's separated from the painting division, so they just do cabinets all day long. And we have a gutter division that's going into year two that we really like, that's been doing well for us. And then we started, a nano coatings business last year that we had to put on hold, but this year we're actually taking off with it, and it's actually yielding some pretty good results.We're really happy with it. Jason Phillips: Wow, man. Congratulations. It sounds like you've got a lot of irons in the fire. Will Reyes: Three years ago, that would have been a mess. Fast forward to today, it's not as hard as, not as hard as I was making it to be, if you will. Jason Phillips: Not yet. I get it. You know, sometimes we've got to just jump in and figure it out.Take a leap of faith, right? Will Reyes: I am the absolute epitome of learning the hard way.Jason Phillips: I get it. Yeah, me too. You know, for so if you guys haven't met Will in person, I, gosh, I met Will a number of years ago and we've just really developed a, uh, a great friendship. And, uh, you know, at first glance, Will's this huge, ominous, bearded, tattooed, rough, curly [00:03:00] guy.But, you know, one of the things I've learned about Will, and I really appreciate about you, Will, is, man, you, you have a huge heart. You absolutely have a huge heart, and, you're a good friend, and you're running a good business out there. You know, interesting, interesting story, for our viewers and listeners here.You know, Wills and Reno. I'm from Dallas. Well, I was, I was, out in Northern California bringing my son home from a Bible school out there and so we've got his Jeep and we picked up some, you know, some mountain bikes and we've got those strapped to the back of the Jeep. And we're going to head back through Colorado and Utah and Colorado and hit a bunch of famous mountain biking trails.Well, the time of year we got to checking the snow hadn't melted on certain ones. So we went our, our, our secondary route. We had two routes. We were going to go, depending on what the snow was like. So we make a decision. We start going the secondary route. And all of a sudden I'm like, you know, I'm down here. Not too far from Will. Then my phone rings while I'm out in the middle of nowhere in California. And Will's like, Hey, buddy. What's [00:04:00] up? And I'm like, not, not too much, man. We're just headed up on such and such. He's like, dude, that's like 20 miles from my house or my business. So, so we popped on into Reno there and got to see your shop, which, you know, honestly, yours, uh, your shop is the first shop that I've ever visited.Will Reyes: Oh, well, I didn't know that. I'm honored. I'm honored and a little embarrassed because it was messy. It's a lot better now. Jason Phillips: No, I tell you, I was, you know, I was, I was, uh, I was super impressed because, I mean, you guys have all these different stages. You have, you have a place for the craftsmen to work there, uh, and, and prep the cabinets, do the cabinets offside and all that.And I was, I was just really impressed with, with the operation that you've got going there. Will Reyes: Thanks. Thanks. It's a work in progress. When you got it, it was really rough. But since then, we've cleaned it up a bunch. We've decorated, made it look a little more hospitable.You know, it's like a little piece at a time, you know. Fast forward to today, it looks great compared to what it was then. But thank you for not judging too harshly [00:05:00] because it was a really rough... Jason Phillips: Well, you've been to our old place too, you know, one of the, right as I walked in the front door, I'm greeted with a right in the floor coating, the Battle Born logo.And I'm like, I was so jealous at that moment. That was super cool. Will Reyes: Yeah. That was the guy that worked for us that put that down there. It says Battle Born painting and it's a huge American flag on the ground. That's done in, uh, A mixture of polyurea, epoxies, and, um, you know, a little acid to disperse. And it was just like this whole wash.It looks pretty cool. That took 48 hours. A guy named Chris Knott did that for us. He was a great kid. You know how long he works with right now. He lives in Vegas. But, it was a fun project, man. It really was. And it, it, it gets so many head turns. You know, we're really proud to be, you know, part of the area.And, you know, born and raised in Nevada. And obviously we're proud Patriots as well to have the American flag sitting on the ground.Jason Phillips: Nice. Nice. Well, you know, one of the things that a lot of, a lot of, I say a lot of, pretty much [00:06:00] every contractor deals with when, when they start growing, they've, they've got a team of people and it's hard to boil things down to simplicity.And, I think a while back, didn't you implement the, the EOS system?Will Reyes: Right. So unbeknownst to me, we were kind of doing it in a very rudimentary style. But then we went to the PCA, which if you're not a member, I highly suggest you go. Now, you could be like me in the beginning, where it was like, nah, what am I going to learn?Who are these people? You know, I'm going to go for a trip, that sounds fun, and maybe I'll meet somebody cool. You know, or I want to go for the free drinks, or whatever, like I was in the beginning. And then you meet some people, and you develop some relationships, and you're like, wow, these people really care.So we went to the PCA, this last February. Chris Elliott with Onnit Painting. Shout out to him. He's a good dude. He put on a class. That explain traction at EOS and, you know, we, Kristen and I were there and we looked at each other. We're like, well, we're doing a [00:07:00] lot of that. We should probably get into that.And so, since then, we've implemented it. It's only taking things a lot faster, to where we want to be in our end goal. So, it really put things in perspective for us. So, highly recommended, you know, if you, haven't done it, look into traction at EOS. You know, reach out, you can reach out to me. You know, Chris Elliott's class is on the PCA website.You should definitely check it out. If you're interested about a highly and anybody else that, you know, say like our host here, you is a good person to reach out and say, Hey, do you think this would be a good fit for me and mines? You know, along with that, you know, we got a really great recommendation to be doing, personally personality profiles, which I think is key in a running a business because this isn't.The 70s. This isn't the 80s. It's not the 90s anymore. You just can't have one rule for everybody, you know. Rule with an iron fist and be like, this is it. This is how it's gonna run. The days are gone. So it's really key to understand how each person works and how to talk to that person and communicate to that person.It doesn't make you less of a boss. It actually makes you a better boss. [00:08:00] That way you can understand...