213. How to Get Your First 10 Painting Clients Fast with Simple Local Marketing

0:00Picture this. You're 13 years old, too young to legally work, but you've already figured out how to make money. You're stocking chills at a grocery store, slicing meat at the deli, and flipping canyons at school for a profit. That was Richard Gould, a kid from New Jersey who didn't love school, but loved the hustle. Fast forward a few years, he's running warehouse jobs, no college degree, no safety net. Then one random day, a friend asks if he wants to help out at a painting company. That simple, sure, why not, turned into a career. Within a few years, Richard buys the company from his boss, builds it up, and then sells everything to start over from scratch.

0:35new city, no connections, and just a few hundred bucks to his name. I'm Ryan Atkinson, and this is the Upflip Podcast, where we uncover the secrets of building and running successful businesses. Today, that leap turned into Richard's Painting at Franchise with over 20 locations and big plans to hit 100. So how do you go from scraping paint off walls to running a national brand? And how can you start your own painting business with less than$1 ,000? We're going to cover that all in today's episode. So Richard, thank you so, so much for being here. So, so excited to have you on. Thank you for having me.

1:04I've been looking forward to this for a while. Yeah, it's gonna be good. You're a great guest on the YouTube channel. So I'm happy we get on the podcast. So I really want to start out with your origin story. Let's really rewind the clock because you've been hustling really like since you were a kid here, you're walking dogs, selling candy, shoveling snow. What do you think like drove you so early on to have that drive to make money? Have you ever been broke, Ryan? A little bit. It'll make you do things that you never thought you'd do, right? Like, you know, my family didn't have a lot of money, you know, so in order, if I wanted something, I was going to have to go out and earn it.

1:37And, uh, I didn't sit around waiting for somebody to offer me something. I figured I'll go out and do it and if it don't work out, I'll try something else. What was like that very first job you did where like, it was truly like entrepreneurial for you. Like how old were you and like, what exactly were you doing? Yeah, I was eight or nine years old and I lived in an apartment building and, uh, you know, somebody asked me to walk their dog. Next thing I know, I was walking five or six dogs and, you know, it turned into almost having 10 dogs to walk. And I had to, you know, it was, it was hectic, but I did that for a little while and realized maybe dog walking wasn't my thing.

2:15You know, I didn't really see a future in that and went on to something else. What I love about that though, is like, it truly like, is that entrepreneurial energy from like such like a young age? I mean, were you like parents entrepreneurs at all? Or like, was it like really from a place of like, Hey, we're broke. If I want something like I'm going to have to work myself, like talk to us more about that. Yeah, no, my parents definitely weren't entrepreneurs by any stretch of the imagination. This is a deep situation, but, you know, thinking back to my parents, you know, I used to think a long time ago that maybe they weren't the greatest parents.

2:45I figured out maybe they were because they taught me everything not to do. And so when you kind of take that perspective and say, you know what, I'm going to do something different than what they've been doing and try to have a different outcome. I think it's worked out pretty good. But yeah, no, it's worked out great for you because you are scaling 20 locations. You're going to get to 100 here very, very soon. So we're going to talk about that growth here. An important part of your story, though, is you actually ended up dropping out of school. Talk to us about like that decision. Did you like school?

3:12And you're just like, ah, screw this. Like, I know I'm going to be an entrepreneur someday. Talk about that decision and like the weight of that decision it had on you. I wish it was that much thought that went into it. But truthfully, it was more about like, you know, I just didn't enjoy school. I did stuff and I did well in classes. I enjoyed others. I didn't. And I never anticipated going to college. I always would say to myself, I didn't like doing it for free. I couldn't imagine paying for it. So why would I torture myself with that? So, yeah, so I dropped out of high school and went to go work.

3:42You know, that was the first step. So a big step in your journey then is you got into painting through like a friend's like invitation, essentially. Talked about this moment. Talked to us like, what was that conversation like? And like, we're going to talk about the whole Richards painting and everything. But talk to us about that moment in particular, because that's really how this journey got started here. Yeah, no, it's definitely the beginning of something big where at the moment you don't know it. Right. And so it's like what I talk to a lot of people about. You never know where the next opportunity is going to come from.

4:07But this is one of them where, yeah, a friend of mine who was working in painting with the person, Don, who ends up being my mentor for a long time, still friends of this day. Yeah. He said, hey, you want to go paint? And I was in between a couple of warehouse jobs. So I said, sure. and went and did it and never looked back. So what were you doing? Were you actually like outside like painting and stuff? Like what were you actually doing? Were you doing like the accounting for this company? Like what were you actually doing for this? I dropped out of high school here, but yeah, no, but literally had the worst job you can have as a painter.

4:38You know, first started out for the first two weeks on this old house that was probably 250 years old and paint was peeling everywhere. I was the head scraper in charge. I scraped and scraped and scraped until I had a callus on my hand. And, uh, you know, once that job got done, you know, Don, who, and you know, who I ended up taking that business over from, he says, well, if you made it past this job, you're probably going to be okay. So, um, you know, I kind of took that as like, okay, a challenge, like, all right, I, you know, I finally found something that gave me a little bit more than just a job, right?

5:09It was like something I could pour myself into and see how I can, where I could take it. Well, speaking of taking it, Don actually ends up retiring here. and this is important part of your story because you actually ended up like buying the company from if I'm not mistaken here. So it talks about like that moment of like, you know, acquiring like a small business at this point and like running it yourself. Talks about like the decision that went into that. Yeah, so I worked for Don for about six or seven years and truthfully, probably by year five, I felt personally ready to go and do my own thing.

5:37And we had many conversations about him retiring and this, that, and the other thing. And it was like, okay, I had to make a choice. was it worth it for me to go out on my own and try to do that from nothing? Or what is it going to be better to take over a business that's been established for 40 years, start out at the top of the pricing structure and be able to go from there. So I was patient and I waited an extra two years and took the business over from him and it really worked out well. I got asked, what was like the price on that acquisition? Like, did you throw your life savings into this?

6:08Did you have to take out like a loan? What was the asking price? Were you nervous when you did this? Actually, no, I wasn't really nervous. I was, I believed in myself, but, um, yeah, it was$25 ,000. I made$500 a month payments for, you know, whatever ended up being about five years. It worked out really, I was really lucky that, you know, he wanted to help me as much as I was trying to help him. And so it kind of just all worked out. You sell the company talks with that moment of like selling the company. Tell us more about that. Yeah. So I actually ended up after being in business, uh, you know, uh, quadrupling the sales from where we were to that point, you know, I was ready to make a change and I was going to, you know, move for my two family house that I owned and I was going to build a house in New Jersey or buy a house.

6:48And it was really at that point, it was pretty expensive. And I was thinking, oh man, maybe I need to move further South Jersey. Maybe that would be better. And then all of a sudden, like my brother moved to North Carolina and I was like, you know, maybe, maybe I can move down there. If I'm going to move an hour away, I might as well move eight hours away. And so my wife didn't agree with that statement, but it was at the point before my kids started school. And I was like, well, if we're ever going to do it, it's going to be now. So luckily one of the kids working for me was in a position where his grandparents had left him some money and he actually bought my house and my business, you know, when I moved to North Carolina.

7:24So luckily that worked out really well for me. And so that that was the next chapter in the Richard's painting story. Listener, stay tuned, cause we're gonna get really actionable here. So you moved down to like North Carolina and you mean you're restarting from zero again talk to us about deciding to do painting one again and like two like what did you do to like land your first customer I want to get actual here for our listeners that are also interested in a business like this of course damn I mean honestly when I moved to North Carolina I didn't even know if I was going to paint anymore I wasn't a hundred percent sure because the way I ran the business in New Jersey wasn't what I wanted to do moving forward I was very much involved in the business working in the business and you start to feel like, man, this is just a lot of work.

8:05Right. And so I thought if I was going to run a, start a business over again, it was going to be run differently. And so my first got here, I moved to North Carolina without a plan. I just moved and I thought it was a good area where we were and it was going to work. But truthfully, when you start a business without any sort of knowing anybody, even having experience in painting, it's still really hard to get a business up and running with no connections. So that was where my mindset really changed how this was going to work. Most people spend months, sometimes years, just thinking about starting a business.

8:38But what if you could do it in just 10 days? That's exactly what the 10-day business launch plan is designed for. It's a step-by-step roadmap that takes you from idea to real operational business in just 10 days. Click the link in the description below and get ready with your business. So let's just say, I mean, you have no customers and stuff. I want to get actual for people here. Like what you know now, like you've been in the painting industry, like you've grown two brands, essentially. Like if someone has less than like a thousand dollars right now, what's like the bare minimum they need to like actually get started?

9:08Talk to about like those startup costs someone would need to like replicate a painting company like what you built. Well, first thing is you need to have a customer, right? And that's pretty easy to find. The thing that I would do now is if I'm a younger, even older, like I would, you know, go to Vistaprint, any sort of service like that. And you get some business cards, some door hangers, you spend 300 bucks and you've got a thousand door hangers and 500 business cards, right? That's all you need, right? You go out and start knocking on people's doors, especially ones that look like they need painting.

9:38That'd be a good start. But pressure washing, believe it or not, even though we're not, we do pressure washing and painting. It's a really good way to lead in because it's a low price point, right? You can walk in and you can say, you know, Hey, I can pressure wash your house for 300 bucks, right? Not a huge amount of money, but it gets you in the door, get your sign out front, you know, gets a connection made and you can literally get started just by doing that. And then that pressure washing turns into, Hey, can you come paint our bedroom? Hey, can you paint our kitchen cabinets? Hey, we need our deck stained.

10:07Right. And it's a snowball effect. Talk to us more about that. Cause that's a really a new concept for like what we talked about here on Uplift. So have like a low ticket item, lower ticket item entry point. And that's like really the door to get into like more expanded business, what it sounds like. Yeah. I mean, we got a phrase, you know, that we use all the time, small jobs turn into big jobs. Right. So, you know, you can go to somebody's house, like I said, pressure washer house for 300 bucks. And next thing you know, next year you're painting the whole exterior of the house and that's$5 ,000.

10:36Right. So it's always about, you know, something young people especially need to learn, especially somebody wants to start a business, especially painting under a thousand dollars is putting yourself in position to be successful, right? If you put yourself there, the opportunities will come. If you don't want to actually do the work, well, I don't care if you started with$50 ,000, it's still not going to work, right? We can teach you how you can do it for less than a thousand dollars and be successful and become a millionaire, you know, years from now. But it all just starts with making that effort to start with.

11:09Talk to us more about putting yourself in position to be successful. I'm hearing like, you know, obviously you like need the effort. Like you're not just going to be able to do this without effort. What are some other things someone can do that's listening right now to put themselves in a position to be successful? It's about meeting people, making relationships, making connections, right? If you're in a smaller town or even a bigger town, you know, the people in your area that maybe have some influence, right? You want to kind of, you know, get in front of them, put yourself where, Hey, I'm going to go talk to that person who owns the local bank.

11:40Hey, I'm going to go, you know, go join the chamber of commerce and try to meet other people in business. You got to network yourself into something. You could open up a restaurant and have the best food in the world. But if nobody knows you're there, doesn't make a difference. Nobody's going to come. So you've got to really be your own promoter, right? You know, back in the day, you know, jobs, I didn't talk about much, but I was a DJ, right? And I would be DJ. I know. Right. And so, but that part also helped me learn how to promote because we were also promoting our own club, our own nights, and you had to get out and make flyers and you had to go get people to show up.

12:13If you spend all this money and nobody shows up to your event, well, you're screwed, right? So you had to do a really good job of getting people to create some excitement and some buzz about, you know, you being there. So it's the same thing in painting, right? Like you can see behind me, the Richard's painting logo, you know, it says painting, like, you know, as soon as you see it, you know what it is and that's purposeful. So if you're going to start a business, you want to create an identity as much as starting a business, right? You want to let people know, who am I? What am I here to do just by looking at your son?

12:44Can you then walk us through? Okay, I'm hearing some great stuff here. Like you got to put an effort, put yourself in a position to be successful, create an identity. That's all sounds like all brand stuff. But it's like really carry out like your first like painting job. Like what are some tools or materials you would recommend to someone just to get started? Is it really just as simple as a bucket of paint and a brush and go at it? Or like, what would you recommend starting off. Yeah, it can't be any simpler than that, right? You get a paintbrush, a drop cloth, a roller frame, roller cover, and you're ready to go, right?

13:14I mean, it's not much more complicated than that. You know, sure, the first couple jobs and you take on jobs you can handle, right? A lot of people make a mistake where they're like, oh, I'm going to, I got a job to paint a warehouse. Well, what the hell are you going to do? How are you going to do that? Right? Like you don't even have the tools. You don't have the resources. It's just impossible. I think a lot of people want to be here before they start here, right? So I think being realistic and saying, hey, let me build these steps up to get to that warehouse so that when I do get that job, I can actually perform.

13:44I mean, because, yeah, build the identity, build the brand, do all those things. But if you show up and fall on your face, well, then all that work was for nothing. You know, you want to work your way into relationships that are going to help you be successful. Make sure these jobs that you take on, you can actually accomplish. don't take on a job that's just out of your wheelhouse and the chances of you succeeding are so low it's going to make you look bad right and so i think that's the number one thing you got to really consider in my own entrepreneurial journey a lot of it has like really come down to like doing something and saying yes about even like really knowing how to fulfill and i 100 % agree like there's building blocks to get to like those warehouse jobs but like how do you balance that for a first time entrepreneur of you know start small but also like be big be outside your comfort zone, but also make sure you can fulfill like what's your like approach there?

14:32Well, first establish what your pain threshold is. Can you handle something going wrong? Can you handle the challenge of, Hey, I got a deadline by Friday, right? What do I need to do to accomplish that? Right. And if I feel confident that I can do that, then push forward. If you know, you cannot do that, then be upfront with the person say, look, I'm going to do my best to get done by Friday, but it might be Saturday. Is that going to be okay? Right. And I think setting an expectation from the beginning keeps you both on the same page and that this way you're not going to oversell and under deliver.

15:07I love that. One of the hardest parts of like dealing with customers is level setting expectations. You don't want them to be expecting something like crazy, crazy cool that like you definitely can't do. I feel like customer expectations are some of like the hardest things to actually manage here. So we talked a little bit more about that operations piece, but I do want to talk about marketing and like sales and how you do this. You mentioned door hangers, business cards. What do you put on a good door hanger to make sure you're like actually getting business here? Is it just totally pitching yourself?

15:34What do you do on a good door hanger? Well, I think on a good door hanger is a good call to action, right? You need something that you can, you know, give them a reason to call you, give them the reason to reach out. Like, yeah, anybody could put a door hanger out there and say, hey, this is Joe's painting. Call me. Okay, why? Like, what's the reason? Hey, if you say, hey, I'm going to give you 20 % off. If you mentioned this door hanger, you know, the incentive to reach out is way higher than just no incentive at all. So I think that's what it comes down to point out, you know, obviously the things that you do.

16:03And at the end of the day in painting, somebody has a problem. You have to have a solution, right? So figure out, you know, something in your messaging that's going to give them a solution to whatever their problem is at the moment. Even selling like some of my own stuff, everyone's looking for a deal. So if it's like a 20 % off to like really stand out, why are they going to call you? Like, why should they call you? Have a 20 % off discount there. But I'd love to talk more like what are some ones that have worked really well for you? Is it discounting? Have you offered like two for one? I don't know if that applies, but what's like another good offer people can consider?

16:33Well, in our business, it's not like you know what the price is anyway, right? It's arbitrary. So the 20 % discount is just a phantom discount anyway, right? It's 20 % off of what? Like, okay, it's what I feel like my worth is, right? So it's not like you're at a gas station and you see everybody's prices and you know what you're competing against. So it's really just more psychological. But definitely the discount has been our number one. It's the simplest way to say, OK, they have all different ways to say the same thing. You'll say$500 off a job,$5 ,000, or$250 off a job that's$2 ,500. It's still a discount.

17:08It's just the way the wording is. I mean, I think you just have to do trial and error. but you know i think keeping it simple is the easiest way when you over complicate it and put a list of oh well this discount applies to this minus this you're just confusing the consumer and why would they want to move forward if they don't even understand what you're saying i 100 agree with that we run offers of four and like we'll put like it's like legit like seven things in the offer and they don't convert but when you make it like a dead simple offer where there's one thing it always converts better it goes back to like not overwhelming the potential customer there just because it is such a dead simple offer where people can understand it then like run with it so we have door hangers we established that we just talked about offers what's another vertical if you're just getting started early on let's do some door hangers but what about like facebook groups do you do any like craigslist what are some other like grass bootstrap ways to get customers early on as well well the next steps are establish yourself online right was what we used to say but now it's you know got to create a google page right claim your your google business page right Google my business.

18:12You start with that. Start getting some Google reviews, right? Because if you want to show up anywhere, even if you don't spend money, if you just want to organically show up, the more reviews you have, the more content you put out there, the better, right? Create a Facebook, create Instagram, create TikTok. Nowadays, I wouldn't have said this five years ago, but I'm going to tell you right now, you see this thing right here, right? You stand there like this and you start talking to yourself into the screen and you start telling people what you do and how you do it, it starts to build trust right away, right?

18:43Because they know you. It's like you're talking to them every day. And so that's something that's newer. And even our franchisees right now, we're trying to get everybody on board to start to really use that tool to give them an advantage over people who are not doing it. Have a Facebook, have those things. And you can create ads on Facebook, on Google, and all those types of things. And you can do it for minimal cost. You know, you don't have to spend$5 ,000 a month. You literally can spend 150 bucks a month on a Facebook campaign, 150 bucks on a Google campaign and actually generate quality leads that you don't need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on.

19:19So that's the next step in the evolution. When should they take that step into like actually like doing that? Is it like when they get 20 customers or could you theoretically do this from like day one? Because some people are going to come in here and like, okay, I have Facebook ad like experience. Like I can just kind of throw a dollar, I'm going to get$3 out. Like, is there a line where it's like too soon to do it? Well, I think you've got to, you know, you got to look at your finances. I think that's the easiest way to look at it, right? If you have$5 in your account, you can't run$150 ad, right?

19:48So you have to say to yourself, okay, if I'm going to run an ad, I have to make it worth it, right? But you don't want to do is go out and do a, you spend 20 bucks on an ad said, oh shoot, that didn't work, right? Because a 20 bucks isn't going to get you enough to even make a difference, right? So you're better off getting some money saved up. If you got$500 extra in your account that doesn't go towards anything else, okay, I'm going to take half of that money and now I'm going to start investing in the business back to me, right? Just like equipment, you know, same kind of thing. Like you don't need to go out and buy a paint sprayer the first day.

20:20You know, you wait until you have a job where it's necessary to go buy it. So I think there's definitely steps, but I think again, with marketing, with getting equipment, getting social media, doing ads, you know keep it simple keep it simple keep it simple don't over complicate it and you know it'll naturally just kind of come to you really good stuff there keep it simple listeners rewind that and hit that on the head if you didn't get that keep it simple that's right okay cool so we've talked about like operations marketing like how to get some customers in and stuff a super important part of like any home service-based company truly is the reviews do you have a strategy for reviews how are you getting five-star reviews and what's the importance of them persistence right most people give up, you know, say, hey, can give me a Google review and never ask again.

21:05And usually only 10 % of those people are actually going to follow through with it. Not because they didn't like your service, not because you didn't do a good job, just something happened. Next thing, you know, next day they forgot and it's over with. Right. And so what you got to be is persistent. And a lot of times the best strategy is literally when you're closing out the job at the end, just say, hey, do you mind leaving me a Google review? And they'll say, oh, we'll do. I say, hey, I got the link right here. I can send it to you. And they can do it right there in front of you. That's the best way to get them to do it fast.

21:34Now, if that doesn't work, then you just three or four days later, you follow up with a text, an email saying, hey, here's a link. I know you forgot, but it's really important. And you just you keep doing it until they say, you know what? Leave me the hell alone. Nobody ever says that, but that's the kind of the spirit you have to have. You just have to have the persistence and not give up. That is really good. Careers are like so important in like any business, but home services, like if someone Googles you and you've got 10 reviews and you're a two star, it deters people. But if you got 500 reviews and you're a 4.8 star, people are absolutely going to love it.