Peter Barber on How to Professionalize a Commodity Business

0:01Entrepreneur, founder, author, and financial advisor, Marc Bernstein helps high-performing business owners turn their visions into reality. At March Forward, Marc and his partners and associates think out of the box to partner with their clients in regards to their visions for their lives, their businesses, and their legacies. And through his innovative work with the Forward Focus Forums, Marc connects entrepreneurs to resources that help to fuel their success. Founders Forum is a radio show and podcast where entrepreneurs share their journeys, reveal the stories behind their successes and the lessons they've learned.

0:37Join Mark and his guests for a mix of inspiration, valuable insights, and a bit of fun. Now let's dive in.

0:48Good morning, America. How are you? It's a beautiful day here in Philadelphia. I have in the studio with me Peter, who I'll introduce you to formally in a minute. and how are you doing today? I'm doing great. Beautiful day. Great to have you here. We are going to start with our topic of the day today. There's an expression that I really like is to spend some time thinking about your thinking and I don't think he made it up but a guy named Dan Sullivan who I've mentioned on the show before who started a program called the Strategic Coach for entrepreneurs, great coaching program. He talks about that.

1:28There's a section of every session you would do with his organization called Thinking About Your Thinking. So I have a quote from him that we're going to start out with as a thought for the day because I've been thinking about this type of thinking, which is the problem is never the problem. The problem is that you don't know how to think about the problem. So there's a lot of thought about thinking here today. So Peter, so I'll just tell you from my perspective, I like to do that. I like to like when you're in the middle of something, step out of it and say, hey, am I going about this the right way?

2:03You know, does this really make sense the way I'm handling this? So I'm going to read it again and then ask your impressions of it. The problem is never the problem. The problem is you don't know how to think about the problem. How does that occur to you? Yeah, that's I think he's spot on with that. That's an issue that lots of us struggle with. You have a problem that seems really obvious right in front of you. We were just talking about this this morning in a staff meeting that we had. We had an employee causing us some challenges. And, you know, it's a name that keeps coming up, keeps coming up.

2:33And I'm like, what the heck's going on here? Why are we having the same problem with this person? And, you know, and it's usually the person that's managing them is the one that's expressing this problem. And stepped back and said, well, you know, what's – is this a structural issue on our end? You know, what's the real problem behind the problem? And do we have to manage him differently? Do we have to think about this problem differently? Is it somebody's attitude that's wrong or is it our perception of the attitude or is it our perception of how we're interacting with him that's causing the problems?

3:03We're not seeing the real opportunities presenting to us because we're so caught up in how we want things done. And so it's just reframing what this problem is, what a problem is, reframing ourselves. We talk a lot about this is, you know, what, you know, it's different terminology of the same. What's the question behind the question? You know, there's some issue and, you know, somebody's coming in late for work, not given 100 percent of their effort. But have we really articulated exactly what that means, what it means to give 100 percent of your effort? How do we do these things most effectively?

3:35So. So often magic happens on the show. And to me, this is a little example of that because I picked that out of the sky and I couldn't have picked a better person to talk about that quote with. So thank you for that. Sure thing. That great answer. So today I have with me Peter Barber. And Peter is founder and CEO of Two Dudes Painting Company and out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And I say that for a reason. And this is part of a series that we're doing on Lancaster, Lancaster City, Pennsylvania, which is one of the best places to live in America. Absolutely. Absolutely one of the best places to work.

4:11Lifelong resident here. And I have no shame in saying I'm a total homer. And a cheerleader for the city. And we met in person for the first time a couple weeks ago at a big celebration for the 20th anniversary of FIG, which is the city magazine. magazine, Deb Brandt, who's been on the show and has co-hosted the show. And I've just discovered, I mean, I went to Lancaster as a kid and I knew about the Amish and I knew about the Host Farm and I knew about Dutch Wonderland, which was great. Much much more to Lancaster than that. Right. I had no idea. So now I have a really good idea. It's a really great place to hang out and everybody should visit there.

4:50So Peter Barber, as I mentioned, is the co-founder and owner of Two Dudes painting company, which has been the driving force behind the company, and he's been the driving force behind the company's success for over 38 years. You must be older than you look. Starting with just two dudes and an iconic orange VW bus, which I know is known all around Lancaster, Peter has strategically grown the company to include a team of over 90 employees, all while maintaining a commitment to positively impacting the community. And that, I got a little from his media person, some of his community involvement, and it is amazing.

5:29It's like I don't know how he does it all. I think I'm a pretty involved person, but that's, your resume is incredible. So, welcome, Peter. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me down here. And let's talk about your story, and let's make sure we get to some of your community involvement as well. but tell us about you know your humble beginnings and how you started and got into this business that you're in today sure so you know it's not not a new story for lots of folks particularly um in a simple trade like this you know as a student franklin and marshall college never left lancaster you know franklin marshall college is five blocks from my house happened to be a great school awesome unbelievable school and still have some really great connections there you know and started the painting business as a way to pay for college.

6:15I came from a pretty humble family. My dad's a schoolteacher. Mom's a part-time nurse, four kids. I didn't know that when I said humble beginnings. It really was humble beginnings. You know, and actually all four kids wound up with phenomenal educations just based on the work that everyone did. Actually, my older brother and I both went to Franklin and Marshall. His sister went to NYU, another brother at Duquesne University. All great schools. And this is all on, you know, very humble things that my family had just based on the hard work that everybody did in their lives. Hard work educationally, strategically, and just financially to really make things work.

6:51So started the business then. Where were you in the birth order? I was number two. Number two. Number two. All successful today, your siblings? Just incredibly. It's crazy. Somebody said that to me once. Is this your brother? And I'm like, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Man, it's like, how do you guys all do these things that are really successful? Your parents must be proud. They are. My parents are extremely proud. That's nice. So, you know, ran this painting business through my career at F &M and didn't – certainly had no anticipation of continuing to do this. But I graduated from F &M. I took a short-term job.

7:22I was actually teaching history and economics. Loved it. And I thought I was going to get – wind up with a teaching career. My father was a teacher as I spoke about and just really found a lot of satisfaction. I ended up going back to school to get my teaching certification. And there just weren't a whole lot of jobs available. And I remember applying for one job locally. There were 400 applicants for one position. And by this point, we started having kids. I had two kids by this point. All this is going on. Do I sense adjunct professor Franklin Marshall down the road maybe? Could happen. That would be a lot of fun.

7:55It would be quite an honor to be teaching at that school. And so this business had always been a part-time piece, either going to school full-time, teaching, raising family. and so made this decision of like, well, let's just, let's focus on it and run it for real. And so by then, he was my partner, Brian McCaskey, who's a high school buddy. We were good friends through all this. And we hired our friend, actually usually it ended up being his roommates that needed rent money. We would hire them or, you know, my brothers, they all worked for us, family worked for us. Kind of very typical, you know, small town-y kind of stuff.

8:33And so decided to focus on the business for a year. And I was like, holy smokes, you did that for a year. And we doubled our business. And we actually were profitable. And we had things happen. It's like, this is amazing how this can actually work like this. So then kind of knuckled down to, OK, what's it going to take to really make this thing run? And so really started focusing on things, started driving our business, putting some strategic planning around what was going on. So we've grown and grown and grown. Like you said, we've got about 90 people working for us right now. work all throughout central Pennsylvania, even down towards this way into Philly.

9:06We've done some jobs downtown in Philly, out in Chester County, lots of stuff in that area. And just looking around how we can continue to grow, how we continue to build success, and how we can continue to thrive in what we're doing. The one foundational piece of this, and I think I've mentioned this to you before, I never envisioned myself as a painting contractor. I do love – so as a history major, we do a lot of historic restoration work. That's phenomenal and that's very fulfilling for us. I was an art minor, so we do a lot of – we have a specialty fine arts division that does public murals, specialty things around our business.

9:48You're not just a painting contractor. We are not just a painting contractor. We have all these like fun special things that we do. I mean those are – but the foundation of it still is just putting paint on walls. Right. Right. But that's not the most fulfilling thing. And what's really fulfilling. By the way, I might want to get a retirement job with you. Yeah. Well, listen, I'm very unhandy. But the one thing I've always liked, because for me, it's like meditation is painting, painting walls. Well, I was an artist too as a kid, but I like the idea of just, it's very relaxing to me to paint a room.

10:21Well, one of the things that, I mean, one of the things that is very rewarding about it is it's a transformative experience, right? Any paint job is usually some transformative experience. And I've seen that even with our employees. It's like, what motivates you as an employee to do stuff? It's like, well, I just like to see things change. I like to be part of that change process. And so that's what we do. That's how we help to motivate our people. It's like immediate self-gratification painting something. It really is. And there's a tremendous amount of pride in the work that you do. I mean, And sure, you can take tremendous pride in building a great spreadsheet or selling you some new health insurance or life insurance policies.

10:59But this is like – Tangible. Visceral kind of pride in the work that you do. And so that certainly drives me to a certain point to see that and to see the kind of pleasure that we bring to people and the fulfillment that we bring to people. But even more than that is understanding how we can take our business and leverage the power of our business into doing other things within the community and leveraging that into making real impact in the people around us. And whether that's impact with our employees, impact with other organizations, impact with just folks in the community and seeing that manage and happen and do something different.

11:40Gotcha. I was just – sorry about that. Just checking the time to see where we are because I lost track of what time we actually started. This is a timed show for radio. So, okay, we've got two minutes to break. There you go. Thank you, Eric. We're talking too much here, Mark. No, no, no. It's great. I'm having too much fun. I told you it goes quickly. It's unbelievable. So let's talk about, we always like to talk about, you know, entrepreneurship. So it sounds easy. You got to start in college, you know, immediately making a profit. So it's been like a smooth ride all the way. Oh, perfect. You know, no challenges along the way.

12:12You know, we've just been rolling in the dough forever. And it's all the good stuff. So tell us about some of the challenges and then we'll talk about how you handle those after the break. Sure. So, I mean, any business goes through this period of challenges. And one of the things we – again, we were just talking about this this morning is we got into this. It's like a therapy session. This is a little therapeutic for me. But, you know, I was talking with my management team. It's like, well, you know, it's not my fault that we wound up in this profession that has kind of low perceived value to a lot of folks.

12:48And so, you know, everybody's got their like, you know, crazy uncle or cousin that needs some help or their buddy that's going into therapy that tells you that they'll paint your house for you. And so it just creates this cycle of perceived low, you know, it's like, oh, anybody can do this role. Right. And but we're professionalizing it. We're trying to make it a professional service to people and get them to understand, yeah, there's – and there's professionalism around the craftsmanship of the work is one piece of it. But it's also just about the whole process of doing the work. And that took some time to get to and to really understand it because frankly, we started the job.

13:25We started painting because it was such a low barrier to entry that anybody could do it. and we were a couple of college kids that we didn't really know what we were doing, but we had, you know, I talk about this a lot of having pure and honest intent behind what we did. That, you know, we're just, you know, Brian and I, we're good, you know, lifelong Catholic school kids that just like are here to deliver the best that we can. And the best that we could do, you know, people saw that and saw that, you know, we're trying to deliver something valuable to them and just continue that move forward.

13:58So really what you're doing, and we're going through a similar journey in our business all the time too. 40 years I've been in my business and I'm doing this. And it's, you know, we do something also that can be perceived as a commodity, but we want to do something much more special than that. And how do you communicate that? And how do you get your employees to understand that and build a culture around that? And ultimately your customers to understand that as well. Yeah, and that was easy to do when I was out on the job every day. But getting our guys and our field staff to have that same level of pride in our work, which they do.

14:36But that starts at the top, get them to understand and value that. That gets to company culture too, which we'll talk about right after the break. All right. More than 30 years ago, Two Dudes Painting was founded in Lancaster, PA, by two college students with a simple mission. to deliver an amazing experience with every paint job. From those early beginnings, we've grown into a trusted team of professionals. However, our original promise remains the core of our business. Quality work on time with zero hassle. Today, Two Dudes Painting is known not just for painting excellence and providing quality service for over three decades, but also for our strong commitment to our team and community.

15:22A commitment symbolized by the iconic VW bus we still drive. Our success is a direct reflection of the dedicated people we hire and the strong relationships we build. We don't just paint. We raise the bar across the industry. Ready to transform your home or business? Contact us today for a free no-obligation estimate and experience the difference with your dudes for life. Find us online at twodudespainting.com or call us at 717-396-1207.

16:01We're back on Founders Forum with my guest today, Peter Barber. And so what you just talked about brings up a lot of things I want to ask you, but I'll start with company culture because it sounds like that's something you've worked hard at. How would you describe the culture? Well, you talked a little bit about the challenge of building it, but how that's turned out and where you stand today with your culture. And how would you describe the culture itself? Yeah. So the foundation of our culture is really around service, service to our employees. It extends a broader spectrum to service to our community.

16:38And, you know, even in our mission statements, we talk about, you know, kind of having this obligation to our employees, our customers, and our community. And that's kind of the basis of where we start from and realizing that that culture, if we think about service to our employees, and that's inter-employee too. So it's not just from a top only, but it's like amongst each other. So we have crews, you know, we have 80 people. So they're all over the place. And they're all remote. you know, it's a completely remote workforce. We have to depend on the leadership of those teams to make sure that they're treating their employees, their fellow employees in great ways, providing that level of service to our customers and getting them there, and then understanding our commitment and obligation that we've made to the community as well.

17:25So, you know, really culture is, is, starts with that service, starts, you know, it goes on, extends into the pride that we have in the work. And, you know, the culture has always been, you know, come on, let's face it, we're driving around in old Volkswagen buses. So you got to have some fun while you're doing this stuff, right? You know, and it seems, you know, it's kind of trite to just, you know, talk about, oh, you know, work hard, play hard kind of stuff. And it's not, you know, yeah, that's part of it. But it's like, you know, we want to have fun with what we're doing. We want to enjoy ourselves.

17:52We want to enjoy each other. And that's, you know, somebody stands out really quickly when they don't enjoy the work that they're doing and doesn't enjoy being around other people. I mean, their frontline customer service, you know, they're walking into your house. They're seeing you. They're petting the dog when they first get there. They're doing all the things. And if they don't know how to do that right, we've kind of lost it. And so we train very specifically on those things. One of our first days of training is how to give a handshake, how to look somebody in the eye, how to smile. It seems so fundamental.

18:26But I would guess there's not that many painting contractors that spend time on that. Right. Right. They don't. It's the little things. Yeah, it really is. And so from little things like that, just having that eye-to-eye contact, having a pleasant hello in the morning, that just starts the day. And it is foundational to how they interact with our customers. But it goes beyond that because I know two dudes. I know you're very involved in the community, literally in community. So service in terms of your business, but then there's also the direct community service that you do. And do you get your employees involved in that as well?

19:02So we have different ways that we get people involved. I mean, our leadership staff, I mean, we have expectations around their commitment and involvement in the community. I mean, Lancaster has a wonderful program. Like a lot of communities, they have a leadership Lancaster program that is all around how to engage people. We've had people go through that program. But we want to make sure that that's not just kind of an elite opportunity for the office staff to do things. But we want to make sure that our field staff has opportunities to be engaged in the community as well. So one of the things that we have is every employee has three days, 24 hours a year for them to do community, you know, it's paid community volunteer work.

19:41And so when we first put that in, we're like, this is awesome. You know, everybody's going to have this opportunity to take time off. They can go volunteer, do different things. And one of the things we realize is there's a lot of people that don't know how to volunteer, which sounds really goofy. You know, it's like, oh, but they just – either they weren't brought up in a mindset of how to volunteer or even where to volunteer. So what we found now is that, you know, we have to structure and organize volunteer days for them and organize events that they can specifically go to volunteer. So we work with the Lancaster County Conservancy.

20:18You know, we spent a day last year with 24 of our employees pulling invasive weeds from one of their conservation areas. and everybody, it was great. It was good work for everybody. It was team building because we were all working together, pulling thorny weeds and doing horrible things. But everybody found a purpose behind it. And again, much like we talked about how the paint jobs can be very rewarding because there's an immediate visceral response to the transformation. And we took an acre of land and pulled out and cleared all this land in the forest out of all the invasive species. So it's just doing things like that.

20:56And as a result, I got to think that you're – first of all, painting contracting business, I would assume, has a lot of turnover in general. And I'm assuming that you have a lot less of that because of the culture you've built and because of the way you're engaging your employees. Yeah. And we – painting contractors in general, they're a transient lot of people. Right, right. There's lots of musicians, artists, people that just are looking – I've had clients that are painting contractors too, so I've had some experience with that. Yeah. And, um, but yeah, we try to give people a reason to stay.

21:30We're always going to deal with some level of churn within, you know, with 80, 80 people, there's always going to be some level of churn, but the foundation and like our leadership, even our field leadership, I mean, that's a really solid base of like 25, 30 people that have been here, have been here for a long time, have been part of the things. They, they understand our culture and really believe in what our culture is all about. So turnover is not a big issue for you. It doesn't sound like. Not. I mean, it used to be, but it's, you know, since we've been able to really define what our expectations are, it's changed.

22:01So much I want to ask you in so little time. But let's talk about for a second your future vision. It's one of the big things about this show, and this will lead back to some of my other questions, I think. But if this were December of 2028, three years from now, and you and I are speaking, which I hope we will be, and we're looking back on the last three years, what would have to happen in your life and your business for you to feel that that was a successful period of progress in your life? So three years from now, what we're really looking to do is continue to grow and expand the business, both within the service offerings that we provide and the geography that we're covering.

22:44You know, we're based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. And so that central Pennsylvania is pretty much well-defined in terms of our service area. But in fact, we just hired somebody this past year up in Carlisle area, just outside of Harrisburg. We do work up there now, but it's kind of an ancillary thing. It's like, no, we need to establish home base up there. So trying to do that and make sure that we have business development work that's happening there and workforce that's established there. And so that's, again, topic of conversation. How are we targeting specifically development of workforce in that space?

23:24How are we developing business models up there looking to do the same thing in Chester County? Interesting. We have – we do work down here now, but it's just the occasional thing pops up here and there. And how do we get – it's probably – our business was built on relationships. I mean I – and that's been my role. I mean I've been the biggest business development person that we could possibly imagine. And so this guy that we have up in Harrisburg, he's doing a great job doing business development work and really driving that. And so seeing the need to do that in different areas. You need to start cloning yourself in different areas.

24:03That's too easy. Interesting. Interesting. So, um, so that's business, anything on the personal side in your three-year vision? So by that point, I mean, part of this plan of growth is, um, to look to see how do I get myself out of this business? Um, I love it, but I think that there's probably something more for me somewhere, somehow. Uh, by that point I will have been running this painting business for 41 years. And I enjoy it. I mean, don't get me wrong. I really love what I'm doing, but I'm not sure if that's the end purpose of what I'm doing. We have grandkids now. Running a business takes a lot of your time.

24:47And we've got a really great executive team. And so what that transformation looks like, it may just be that my role steps back, that I'm still involved in the business. But I don't, you know, I'm hoping that it's at a different spot than what it is right now and continues to evolve and continues to see the success that we've had over the years.

25:09So with, I'm just thinking about that. So how large is your leadership team? So right now there's four of us. Okay. So myself, COO, director of HR, and a director of operations. Is Brian still in the business with you? Brian is not. and he retired about two and a half years ago. I thought you'd said that. Gotcha, gotcha. So it's you now and you and your team. Yep. Gotcha. What challenges do you see in terms of the three-year vision ahead? You know, foundationally, it's about how do we replicate this stuff and how do we replicate what we've done in Lancaster in other areas. It's really like a scaling issue, scaling the business to a certain extent.

25:51And again, you know, I talked about how so much of this was just like personal involvement. And it doesn't even need to be personal involvement of Pete, but it needs to be personal involvement of somebody. It's relationship-based. So much of the stuff is foundational there. And a lot of those relationships have been built through community service work that we've done and community service work that I've been involved with. I volunteer a tremendous amount of my time to a lot of organizations throughout Lancaster. Again, you should see his resume. But it's everything from, you know, our Chamber of Commerce, which Lancaster has an incredibly strong Chamber of Commerce and was involved with that, chaired the board of the Chamber of Commerce for years, down to the neighborhood group where our office is located.

26:36I sit on the board of that little neighborhood group, which is like the most incredible. You know, so many boards that I've sat on over the years. They're, you know, people really know what they're doing. They're experienced in board service. being in this neighborhood board, I mean, it is the most pure, like, feet on the street kind of things. They're just neighbors that want to help out. And we're trying to create structure around how we make that and how we make that really effective. That's really cool. I know you're a reader, right? What do you like to read? What books are you reading at the moment?

27:07So like any good reader, I've got a bunch of different books going on right now. Right. Do you not finish them all like me? Well, it depends. Some of them I don't. Some of them I do. Me too. I don't get to read a lot of fiction. I wish I could read more. I just don't find I have the time for it. But I'm a huge John Irving fan and he just has a new book out. So I'm reading that right now. Oh, good. So that's a lot of fun. But then actually relative to even to what our future kind of future vision is, I'm also reading a book, Second Mountain. I don't know if you've heard that. Someone else mentioned it.

27:46I've not read it. And it's really interesting. And really, at its foundation, it's all about the first mountain of your life is establishing yourself, your business, your career, your family, all these kinds of things. And that might be the high point of your life or it might not be. But there's probably some other second mountain in your life. What comes next? What's the next thing? Nice. And I read it about five years ago, and I'm rereading it now because I'm actually going to get involved with a group of folks that are, you know, that are pondering this issue very deeply. And so rereading it now with a different mindset, it's really fascinating how – just approach what that next phase of my life might be.

28:33Well, believe it or not, the time has come. We're out of time. I have so many more questions and so little time. Do part two. We could talk about that. Thank you, Peter, for being here today. It's been great. Thank all of you for listening. And we'll see you next week on Founders Forum.

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