How a 26-Year-Old Turned Painting Into Premium Hospitality with Cedric Merrills of WOW Painting

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:36hey there welcome to this week's episode of epic entrepreneurs i am super pumped up about our guest today my name is bill gilliland i am the owner and principal at action coach business growth partners and also one of the founders and principals of the ashville business summit but today we're not here to talk about me we're here to talk about and spotlight wild Painting. So I've got Cedric Merrills on the line here today. Cedric, tell us a little bit about you and Wow Painting. Yeah, thanks for having me on, Bill. So my name is Cedric Merrills. I started Wow One Day Painting a little over three years ago.

1:20And the reason I started it is, well, to give you some background on me, I'm 26 years old. I came from the wedding photography industry. I was a way of photographer for several years you know shooting 100 plus weddings and i loved it and um the thing i loved about it is that it's like the point in someone's life where you have an ability to have a really big impact and it really makes a difference for people um what i did like about it is that typically people want to hire you specifically right people wanted to hire cedric marlowe's and so i was looking at different opportunities and i heard about the the franchise wow one day painting and um i was considering opening up my own painting business without a franchise or i was considering going through a franchise but the reason i ultimately chose wow one day painting is because every single person i met whether it was like brian scudamore who started the company or cj nashville or john kalamazoo they all had a laser focus on the customer experience and customer experience is one of those things where everyone says they care about it but if you look at the reviews or their customer experience ultimately usually it's not very good but every single person very very much cared about it had amazing reviews and put the work into making an amazing experience and that was my philosophy with wave photography and so that's why i joined ultimately wow one day painting and started in nashville to kind of make contracting a really easy and really enjoyable experience.

2:54Because I think everyone has either had a bad experience or knows someone who's had a bad experience with contractors. And my goal is to kind of change that perception and kind of elevate what contracting can be through painting. Love that. Love that. So let's talk a little business here. Like, you've done this for three years. You were in, I guess, technically the wedding photography business is a business too. But if you had to start from square one, what would you do differently? Yeah, that's a great question. The things that made a really big difference for us when we were starting on was getting really good at understanding the customer and what they needed and wanted from our services.

3:42That was a really big piece of it. and the second piece was delivering it. And when we started, we were always going to have that same ethos, but we weren't very good at it, relatively speaking. And so I think I would spend even more time figuring out what are the really good questions to ask on the front end so that we can deliver a really great experience on the back end of Painty. Because ultimately, if you do that, it's going to work out great. But if you don't ask those questions, you might never know some of the things that are important to your customers. Love that. Hey, Cedric, give us an example of one or two of those questions.

4:18Yeah. Well, it's very simple. So for us, our process starts at the – someone will either go online to book an estimate or their call center are calling me. And I'll ask them something like, when you think about this project, what comes to mind as important for you? Or I might ask them, have you worked with a professional painter before or contractors? What did you like about that experience? What did you dislike about that experience? it's just kind of really dive in to understand what's driving them, right? Are they selling their home and they just need it sold as soon as possible so time is going to be really important?

4:49Is this their forever home where they want to raise grandchildren and they want this to be the – they want this paint job for the last 15 years? Are they – everyone has something different that's important to them. Do the last painters leave a mess? And so making sure we're really clear about exactly how we protect their home, how we're going to protect their furniture, how we're going to protect their floors, um you know is that going to be one of the most important things to them everyone's a little bit different but you know i probably spend about 20 of my my talks when i'm talking with customers talking about the actual scope of what they want you know walls baseboards whatever the other 80 is really diving into about what what matters to them yeah so you're after more about the person than the job's important, obviously, in getting it done.

5:41But, you know, it's got to be a fit personality-wise as well in figuring out what they want so that you can provide that service. I love that. Yeah, exactly. If you don't get that information up front, if their timing was the most important thing for them and we don't go through the project with that in mind, we may do a perfect paint job and they're still going to be unhappy because it delayed their moving date. You know, maybe, for example, you know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a great example. That's a great example. So time is more important. Yeah, that's great. So what have been some of your bigger learnings as an owner and an employer since you started?

6:17Yeah, great question. The hardest part for me when I started was in late photography, I did everything. I could guarantee a perfect experience because I was the one doing everything. In painting, I can't paint every single project. It's impossible, right? And so I'm working through people where when waiting photography, I was just doing it all myself. And so it's become really important to us to not only find really, really good people, but also have the training and other pieces in place to make those people thrive. Because you can take someone who really, really cares about customer experience and really, really cares about doing a good product.

6:54But if they don't have the tools or the training to do a good job, they're not going to do a good job. And so I think it's getting really clear on the recruiting piece when we're hiring painters of knowing exactly what the type of person we're looking for is. We call them in our business Pat, so professional, trustworthy, ambitious, and then making sure we have that training piece to make sure that they can succeed. Yeah, I think getting clear ahead is one of the keys so that you don't just get anybody off the street. Love that. But, hey, so what are some common misconceptions about running a business?

7:31Yeah, well, the biggest one, I have some friends who are thinking about starting businesses or starting small businesses. They all think if you own your own business, you get to work less, you get to make your own schedule, and it's going to be easy. And there's pieces of that. That's true. You get to make your own schedule. But the reality is if you talk to anyone who's started a business or any entrepreneur, you're going to work 10 times harder than you'll ever work for anyone else. And it's just kind of a fact of life, especially in the beginning. And so I think a lot of people think entrepreneurship means you're going to be working less.

8:09But the vast majority of the time, you're working way, way longer, way harder. And it's going to be way more stressful. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but you should go into it with your eyes wide open. yeah no that's 100 right i mean what's the old saying you leave a 40 hour job to work 80 hours and make half the money in the beginning so uh yeah it's a it's a yeah it's an interesting one so what do you attribute your growth to yeah honestly uh for most experiences people have with contractors it's just terrible um and so i think it's just true the bar is off Yeah, the bar is low. Right.

8:51Yeah. And so I think just by simply because, I mean, we are almost the name of our business as well, One Day Painting. And that's part of it. But I think the thing that separates us is just doing the basics really well. You know, we're going to start the job. When we say we're going to start the job, we're going to finish the job. When we say we're going to finish the job, we're going to have really good communication throughout the whole process. So, you know, for what that looks like for us is you've got to have the estimate before we ever leave the consultation. Right. You're not going to be chasing us for weeks just to get the estimate.

9:18We're going to have it before I leave. On the start of the project, we're going to walk through everything with you again to make sure we're all on the same page. It's also in the estimate. It's also in the notes for the crew, but we always confirm it one more time. If you're not there while we're working, we're going to be sending you photos throughout the day so you can see exactly how progress is going and be updated throughout the day. And then when we finish, we're going to walk through everything with you again. And so it's just making sure those pieces of, you know, the client knows exactly what to expect.

9:44We know everything that's important to them. We're delivering that, and we're making sure they love it before we leave. If you do that, you're going to have super happy customers, and they're going to recommend you to their neighbors and their friends. The majority of our growth has just come from recommendations from our past customers. Love that. Yeah, it's not just do what you say you're going to do. Yep, exactly. I mean, it's – yeah. It's so simple. It's not easy, but it's – No, no, no. Yeah, it should be. easy, but it's an interesting one. I had a plumber. They had it on the side of his trucks.

10:22We show up. Essentially, when they said they were going to be there, that was their deal. That was their whole business. He had 50 trucks. This guy was done well. How do you balance personal life and demands of running a business? That's a great question. I don't. I'm just kidding. Honestly, I'm someone who I'm like ADXV. I've always been kind of hyperactive. And for me, I hate nothing else more than being bored. And I really enjoy business. I really enjoy running a painting company. And so I end up working a lot, not because I necessarily have to, especially as we've grown, but I really, really enjoy it.

11:05So I love talking to customers and I love trying to tweak your processes to make them a little bit better, a little bit better. Just kind of like, you know, if we get 1 % better a day, the improvement is going to be massive. And I just love doing it. And so the majority of my time, when I moved to Asheville, I moved to Asheville to start the business. I didn't know anyone here. The only person I knew was my sister, who's introverted, and also didn't know anyone. And so all of my time and effort, most of my friends have come from this business, whether it's realtors that we work with or flooring companies or roofing companies we work with.

11:43A lot of my social life and personal life is intertwined with the business. And I love that because I love what I do and I love the people we work with. But it's not really like balance in the way that is like, oh, I stopped working at five. And, you know, I ignore business from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. or something. It's all intermingled and I love it because I love what I do. Yeah, the balance is an interesting word, right? I mean, if you love it, I mean, it's just, yeah, it's not, it's still work. I don't believe that, you know, you never work a day in your life. You work every day. But if you love it, then it's fun.

12:23And you just keep doing more. So I love that. I love that. So what I find is like when I go on vacation, for example, like I enjoy it. And after like three or four days, I get restless. And I start thinking about the business and like, oh, what if we could do this? And, you know, my mind's always thinking about it, even if I don't have to be. Yeah, well, you get a lot of your great ideas in downtime anyway. So that's one of the reasons to have downtime, just to recharge and get great ideas. So, I mean, you fired a fair number of employees. What do you look for? Like, what qualities do you look for in employees?

13:00And how do you foster that positive and productive work environment? Yeah, great question. the biggest quality I look for is someone who's like professional, someone who's trustworthy, and someone who's ambitious, you know, they want to grow, they want to learn they have to be coachable some of our best painters, take Alex for example, he's one of our painters he's amazing at what he does and before this, he worked in the restaurant industry, and it was great with customers he really cared about his work, he had never painted a day in his life, and we've turned him into one of our best painters and it's because in the grand scheme of things painting is very much teachable we can teach someone how to paint it's much much harder to teach someone to care about the work they do or try to teach someone to be trustworthy or teach someone to be professional you know you you can't do it but we try to find really good people and then teach them how to paint and if they already know how to paint great but we kind of start with the culture fit making sure they you know they're coachable they care about the work they do and then and then we worry about whether they can paint or not.

14:06Oftentimes, we're teaching people how to paint. That way, we know they're going to do a great job, and they're doing it exactly the way we want them to do it because we know it delivers great results. Kendrick, another example. He moved here when I started the business about six months in. He was in Seattle at the time. He drove across the country in this 1992, literally the car was falling apart. It's horrible. He moved across the country to work with me, and now he's one of our project managers. he helps interview and hire a lot of painters and he is extremely good at what he does and he had zero painting experience before starting and if you look at our reviews one of the proudest things for me is occasionally they'll mention me but the vast majority of them they're like oh Kendrick was amazing Alex was amazing Mike and Davin and the rest of the team they do a great job they mention the painters by name and they do do a great job I love it I love it So I'm going to give you, so BEPIC is an acronym that we use.

15:08I'm going to give you the definition, and I want like a quick, it's sort of a quick fire round, just your quick anyway. But we'll give you a couple of sentences on each one. So it's BEPIC. So the first B is bring the energy. So what are your thoughts around that? Bring the energy? Yeah, bring an energy, yeah. yeah no it's it's everything ultimately i think i'm someone who i work really hard just naturally like it doesn't matter what i'm doing we're working really hard and that permeates through all of our people and i think it affects the people we hire and so if i go to a job site you know kendrick for example i'll tell you a great story uh he's one of our most trusted longest time painters and he'll he'll if a job needs to get done he'll he'll stay late just to get the job done or he'll go above and beyond even when i would even consider asking because i would never ask him to do a lot of these things and he'll just do it because he knows it really matters to the customer or it's really really important one time we had a customer who she was having a it was her birthday and the painters found out halfway through the day and at lunch they went and got some balloons and a birthday card and they like surprise the customer at the end of the day um it was like a little birthday celebration which i thought was so cool i had never even heard about they just did it on their own and uh you know it's those kind of like little touches that you only get when everyone in the organization right kendrick every single painter every single person on our team is hyper aligned around customer service and what matters to the customer and has the autonomy to to do it and so um we really try to grow through people because at the end of the day this is a people business right it's customers it's employees and we try to find really good people and then treat them really well and pay them really well and keep them for a long long time um because you know it's it's everything people are the most important thing in this business and frankly in life yeah and i like it i like it a lot so the e and b epic stands for education give me your thoughts on education uh it's everything right we have so much more flexibility than most painting companies because we can take someone in who's never painted before and turn them into an amazing painter and so the applicants that we can hire is much larger we can find someone who has that passion who is professional who is trustworthy and turn them into a painter.

17:39Whereas if you're limited to only painters, you can find all those same attributes in painters. But it's much, much more difficult because the pool is so much smaller. And so it allows us to have a really amazing team that most painting companies don't have access to because we're able to take someone, train them, teach them everything they need to know how to be a successful painter, and then plug them into our system. Yeah, love it. Having a great system there. So that brings me to the P in B Epic, which is planning. Mm-hmm. For planning, it's really interesting. Honestly, we don't plan a whole lot, probably as much as we should.

18:18I'm very focused on the numbers. I know exactly where our, let's say, lead costs need to be for a channel to be profitable. I know exactly where we need to sell a job at. I know exactly how many hours we need to have on the job. And so if I'm evaluating a new marketing channel, for example, Well, you know, I know if I can get qualified appointments at a certain price, I will spend as much money as I want to on that or can at that price. It's going to be profitable with everything else. And so I don't really look at it as like, oh, we're going to spend$10 ,000 this month on marketing or whatever it is.

18:57I look at, you know, what are going to be the most effective channels for us? And we're going to spend the money on those. And we're going to spend as much money as we can. And the same thing with the painters. We know how many jobs we have. We know how many leads we're getting. We need this many painters. And we bring on enough painters so that we can get all our projects done. And we're no more than, let's say, ideally, a week or two booked out so that we can make it really easy for our clients to get their projects done. Same thing with when we're selling projects. We know exactly where it needs to be priced at so that we can deliver a great service and be profitable and pay for the marketing and the insurance and everything else.

19:33And so we probably should do more planning, but we kind of just focus on the numbers. And as long as the numbers in each area of the business is where they need to be, then we're kind of on track. And we just try to grow and help us make customers as possible. Love it. Love it. So how about I, inspiration? Yeah, great question. I get a lot of inspiration from luxury brands and luxury services outside of painting. One of the best books I've read is Unreasonable Hospitality. It was a book written by Will Gallardo. And the whole premise of the book is 11 Madison Park. He took this restaurant and made it the world's number one restaurant through a focus on amazing hospitality.

20:21and so i look at that and ask myself how can we implement that into what we do for painting and we have you know when we finish a job we'll bring customers flowers or we'll bring them a box of local cookies from mini batch bakery and we'll have a handwritten card for them um we like at the anniversary of their job we'll often send them like a nice handwritten no we we dive in and try to figure out what pieces can we steal from like restaurants for example Like, how do they introduce customers? How do they welcome customers? You know, can we have that same thing when we're introducing ourselves at the door for painting?

20:56You know, like, what works really well in those industries? Same thing for, like, jewelry, right? You know, the way they talk about their services and what they do. You know, what can we learn from that? How can we be more polished in the home? Or, like, high-end hotels, for example. if I look at Ritz Carlton or any of these four seasons, all of their employees have an ability to solve customers' problems without having to go ask their boss, right? I think it was the four seasons, but I could be wrong. If it's under$100, they can just solve it on their own. They don't need to go ask anyone. We have the same thing for our payments, right?

21:36If there's a problem that they see that they can solve or a thing that they can make the customer's life better, they don't need to ask what they know already. like to go ahead, go solid, go make it a good customer experience moment. And so we try to steal from as many industries as possible, the best practices and implement that. Like, what does that look like in a painting company? And it's made a huge difference. Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. It's sort of like, I was thinking while you were saying, hey, we do it looks like a restaurant. Do you do, I mean, do you introduce, they'll say, hey, you know, knock on the door.

22:08Hey, I'm Cedric. I'll be your painter today. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I love that. Yeah. Well, and like before we, and we're kind of implementing this right now, everyone has name tags. Before we even get to the job site, the customer has a text and they see everyone who's been on the project, a photo of each of them, a mini bio about each of them. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. And the customer's not there. We're going to have kind of like Domino's as a pizza tracker. We're going to have the same thing for painting. So they can see exactly what step the painting process is in. They can see the latest photos.

22:38You know, they can know exactly what's going on, even if they're not there. You know, those like small touches, but just a little bit better experience, a little bit more transparent, a little bit better communication, you know, every single step of the process. Yeah, I love that. I love that. So the last one, MB Epic, is C, commitment. And I know you're committed because you love it, but tell us a little bit of your thoughts on commitment. Yeah, that's a great question. Commitment is one of those things where it's always easier to say you're committed than to be committed. but I always try to measure in, in actions.

23:16Um, for example, every company says they're committed to good customer service. I don't think you'll find a single company that says they're not. And then you go read their reviews and it's just like, there's a small problem. And the company tried to charge me$500 to fix it. And even though it was their fault, you know, whatever it is, you know, and, uh, they, you read the day reviews and it just doesn't seem like they really care. about the customer service experience, right? And my opinion on customer service has always been, is like, even if I'm convinced I'm right, like I know 100 % I'm in the right around a situation.

23:53If I think the customer believes their own story, like if the customer genuinely believes they're not being malicious, if they genuinely believe we did something wrong, I'm going to just go ahead and treat it as if we did. And we're going to do everything we can to make it right, even if we're not actually wrong. Because ultimately, you know, we charge a premium price. We're not the cheapest paying company. And the reason we do that is so that we can fix these situations when they come up. You know, if we were barely profitable and we scratched someone's floor, it's going to be really hard to go ahead and fix that floor.

24:21You know, but the reason we charge a lot is so that when we scratch their floor, it's not a big headache. And that actually happened. We scratched someone's floor. We had to refinish, completely redone before they moved in three days later. And we were only able to do that because we're profitable enough. And obviously we made zero dollars on that job. but overall we're profitable enough to fix things when they come up because we try really, really hard to give a customer a great customer, great experience, but mistakes do happen. And we need to be able to fix it and make it a great experience, even in those cases.

24:53And I think too many people get caught up on being right. It's like, Oh, I'm right. It's not my fault. This happened. And then they use that as an excuse to not deliver a good experience. And we, we try to do the opposite. We try really hard to deliver a great experience, even in the cases where something happened that's beyond our control. There's another contractor or the customer was misunderstood, something or whatever it is. We're going to try to do everything we can, even in those situations where it's not our fault, to still deliver a great experience. Love it. Love it. Hey, what advice would you give others, business owners who are looking to grow?

25:32yeah i'd say the most important thing is to focus on improving your product on one side um because especially in in contracting at least for painters and frankly most small businesses there's no advantage you get in being the cheapest you're not walmart you'll never have the volume or whatever to be the cheapest price and so you shouldn't you shouldn't try to be you You should try to be clearly the best product, solve the problem most effectively, make it as easy as possible compared to everyone else. That should be one piece of it. And you should constantly be putting a lot of your time and effort into improving your product in every way.

26:15And the other part of it is you need to make sure you're charging enough for that product. If you're not charging enough, you're not going to be able to deliver. Even if you want to, you can't deliver great customer experience if you're not charging enough. If you're not charging enough, for example, and don't have the right insurance and something catastrophic happens, right? There's nothing you can do. If you're not charging enough and you want to surprise the customer, bring them cookies at the end of the job, you can't do that, right? And so you need to charge enough so that you're able to deliver an amazing experience and deliver a better product.

26:54And I think that's the formula you have to work with. Don't worry about people being cheaper. there's always someone cheaper there's also always someone more expensive figure out how you can be that more expensive person and deliver a product that's 10 times better than that person's delivery i think that's the much better path to growth um than trying to be cheaper and kind of shrink your product i think it's much better to make your products so much better than everyone else that it's a new brand to go with you even though you're more expensive and for the people who can't afford you they wish they could go with you and they just can't afford it i think that's kind of the position you want to be in yeah i know i love yeah that's position we've always taken i love that hey so what's the next big thing for cedric and well painting yeah really just doubling down the basics you know we've grown every single year including this year and um the more we grow we can do bigger and bigger projects in one day kind of the the three-pronged things we focus on is making it really easy um guaranteed quality and if we can do those things um i'm happy so something we're rolling out right now is a lifetime touch-up guarantee um which is different than a warranty but essentially it says uh if we uh paint a space in your home your entire home for as long as you live in that home we'll come back once a year forever to touch up anything you want during our slow season so in painting there's kind of seasons and the slowest period is between december and january because everyone's spending time with the holidays it's cold you can't do exteriors so we typically have extra capacity during that time and so what we're doing is we're taking that and using it as a time where we can do touch-ups completely for free for our customers um for for any project that we completed for them and so it's something that i don't think any other painting company offers and it's just a you know making the experience a little bit better.

28:48You had a kid and they sprayed, they marked the walls with a marker. We'll come in and touch that for you completely for free. There's no cost associated with it. Just about making the experience that much better in a way that no one else can do it. I like it, Cedric. I like it a lot. What's the best way for somebody to find you? It's pretty easy to find you, but let's tell them anyway. Yeah, absolutely. You can follow us on Instagram at wild1daypaintingashville. Um, you can see our reviews. If you're typing in Wow One Day Painting, you'll actually see all our five star reviews. Um, and we may have a YouTube channel, but type in Wow One Day Painting, you'll, you'll find us everywhere we're at.

29:30Yeah. I love it. I love it. I love it. Listen, fantastic. Thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you for all you're doing in our community. Thank you for sharing your learnings and your knowledge. Um, I know that you're going to continue to be a massive success in the marketplace. Thank you, Ben. Thanks for having me on. And until next time, all the best.