Starting a $500K/Month Epoxy Flooring Business

How inspiring is Brandon Vaughn? He started an epoxy flooring business just over a year ago, and today he's already got eight franchises, generating more than $500,000 a month. And all that is a result of bold choices and creative and unique marketing approaches. When we first got started, we did not have the cash to be able to buy these grinders that are like $20,000. Our break-even was within like the first 45 days. So we try to have a system for absolutely everything we do. But within like month two, we almost went bankrupt. Oh no. I mean, honestly, it's all marketing. That's why we get those higher closing ratios and higher average tickets. How did he do it? Well, today you're about to find out. All right, you guys, we are here in Vancouver, Washington at a job site with Brandon, the owner of Weiss Coatings. Brandon, why don't you tell us a little bit about this job site, how many guys we have here, the cost of the clients paying, just so their audience know what we're doing. So very rainy job site today. Very rainy. This is like really awesome, which is really fun. But this job, we're doing the garage floor coating. We're also doing the patio floor coating as well. And this is about 4,100 bucks to get this one done. Is it a one-day job or? Yep, all of our jobs usually for a two-car garage is typically about one single day. Sometimes we can do three car garages in one day. It's a little bit longer today. But we have normally two guys out on the job site. We have three out here today because we wanna make sure that we get this done. Obviously with the rain and everything, sometimes it can cause some delays. So that gives us a little bit of buffer. And we're holding you up a little bit with the cameras and stuff, but it's fun. It's a welcome interruption. Yes, tell us about your background. Did you have any other companies besides Wise Coating? And when and why you started this particular company? Yeah, I have. I've been in home services pretty much my whole life. My dad was an owner-operator window cleaner for 33 years. So I started my own window cleaning, exterior cleaning company too. Honestly, the reason why I started Wise Coatings, I wanted something new. I wanted kind of a challenge of starting a business. I wanted to show the whole process of building it from zero to a million dollar company and really kind of peel back the hood on growing this type of a business. It's super satisfying to take like a really gross looking floor and then like turn it into a beautiful floor and see the customer light up. And the margins are great. It just was really, really appealing. And I like focusing on the marketing stuff and being able to have fun with the brand. I was like, oh, we can have a lot of fun. We're doing something different with this type of a business. Nice, and you're well-branded. We'll talk more about that. Later in the video, your vans, your cars. Thanks, thank you. I haven't seen anything as sharp and crisp as that. Let's talk about what were the biggest challenges for you as a business owner. There's pretty much like three big challenges that we knew we had to solve. One was having a good recruiting and training system. You know, getting employees in up to speed because that's a big problem for a lot of business owners right now. Another one is marketing, how to actually get the leads coming in in a consistent basis. This is not recurring repeat work. So like you always need to kind of hunt what you kill on like a daily basis. And then the third thing honestly was cashflow. You know, we almost went bankrupt at one time. And so, you know, being able to manage buying equipment, buying supplies, paying the guys and still having enough cashflow coming in was another big challenge. Absolutely, I wanna touch base on all those three things. What can you elaborate like when it comes to finding people? Can you give us a tip, trick, hack sort of for all those three? I mean, honestly, it's all marketing. You know, what's a harder sell? Convincing a customer to coat their garage floor or convincing another human being to spend more time with you and your business than they spend at home with their families during their waking hours. For sure. That's a tough sell. And a lot of business owners, a lot of business owners, you know, they don't think about the marketing that's required to get people to apply. Like there's people out there that would love to work at a job like this. It's 100% marketing. So, you know, when you do your job ads, it's like, you know, must lift 80 pounds, must have clean driving record. Like, you know, is it lame or do you have like compelling hooks that really draws someone in and captures their attention? Are you tracking the links that they're clicking on and looking at literally as a marketing exercise? And then the last one, how, when it comes to cashflow tricks, especially when you're starting out. You know, when we started out with a very small budget, that grinder there cost $20,000. So we didn't have that cash at the start. And we also didn't have very good business credit at the very beginning, because they're like, oh, you started last week. Yeah, we're not going to give you this loan. Oh, no, no, no, no way. So we rented some of our first equipment, we actually spent the marketing money to Facebook, got the leads, went out, sold the jobs, had the jobs on the schedule, then went to the rental shop to actually rent the equipment to do the jobs until we could build up enough cash to be able to finance and get the bank to see, okay, this business is going to be around. By the way, speaking of equipment, we're going to take you guys to the store where you guys buy some supplies, rent it to your first stuff. So come with us. Sweet, let's go. All right. All right, this is it. Here we go. John Don, here we go. Yeah, so this is John Don. This is where we kind of got our start with renting some of our equipment when we first jumped up the business and got it going. So tell us why we're here and what you can highlight about maybe the importance of having partners like this. So this is John Don. They're a national supplier of janitorial equipment, floor coatings equipment, floor care equipment, et cetera. And when we first got started, we did not have the cash to be able to buy these grinders that are like $20,000. So they were really gracious at letting us rent some of the equipment. And we've continued to rent equipment with them on some specialized projects and jobs, but being able to have the option to be able to take one of these pieces of equipment that's $20,000 for this and to be able to rent it out for the day to just get you through that job helped out a lot on like the cashflow side of it. Had we spent that 20 grand that we had in the bank account and just bought a piece of equipment cash, like we would have been in a position where like, okay, what do we got to sell to be able to make payroll this week? So those first few months, especially with the aggressive growth that we planned, we had to be able to rent and lease equipment and kind of like get that cashflow figured out. Yeah, I mean, we talked to Corey Edmonds and he was a big proponent of the fact that, hey, finance, lease if you can, just like you, be heavy on the cash. So Corey, thanks for that tip as well. You guys, if you haven't seen the episode, check it out, it was our previous episode. Same business as well. Yeah, man, let's do it. Weiss Gordon's headquarters. All right. Hey guys, we're where? Brandon, where is this place? This is our Portland headquarters and shop office location. Nice. This is where it all started, man. The origin story. Tell us about your sales process. You mentioned it early in the interview. I want to dive into it a little bit more. So we try to have a system for absolutely everything we do. And you know, systems are just about consistency. What do you say to the customer every single time on every single quote that you give? That's how you can start kind of dialing in your closing ratio by trying out different stuff and seeing like, what's the feedback? What's the response? What if I say this? Well, my numbers go up a little bit. So we kind of break down a four-part system that's connect, discover, show, and close. And Apple actually uses this in their Apple stores. This is like, not my invention. This is like a real process. So somebody else came up with it. Yeah, you connect with the customer first, you know? And when you go into the Genius store and you know, the Genius bar, you talk to someone, that's typically what they do. They try to connect with you somehow. And then discover, you ask lots of questions about, have you ever shopped this in the past? You know, if we did one thing on the job that would totally make you frustrated, what would that be? You know, agitate, pain, and then- More questions. And then you go to the show part where you actually answer and take each one of their pains that they listed one at a time and address them. And then you ask for the close. So even those types of systems in the sales process is really important. You know, we talk about our criminal background screen technicians, and we really try to educate the customer on what to expect. When you layer all those things together, that's why we get those higher closing ratios and higher average tickets. Because every employee of yours follows those steps. Yes. No deviation allowed. Yeah, and we created training videos. So it's not just me training new hires in the sales process. We have it documented step-by-step in video format. So they sit down in front of a computer and watch it and actually take tests to make sure that it, you know, they retained it. What was the budget? And can you break it down for us in a nutshell? Yeah, so we started this with a $15,000 budget. That's it? 15 grand, yeah, 15 grand. And the big investment that we made was in the branding and the marketing. So we hired a company, Prolific Brand Design. They did the wraps for us, all of our brand manuals, the website stuff. And that was about 5K of that budget was kind of getting some of the branding and marketing stuff dialed in. We also had no clue how to do the floor coatings when we started this business. I've never done this before. You start this company, you have no idea how to do it. So we budgeted two grand to travel down to a manufacturer and like learn how to do this. And then another $3,000, pretty much another miscellaneous expenses and kind of getting things going. And then five grand of that was dedicated towards marketing spend. So literally month one, we're like all in on the marketing side. So we spent $5,000 in Facebook ads and running Facebook ads and getting that going. And that's what generated our first 50K worth of work the very first month. As long as I could focus on getting that kind of work coming in, then we could really grow, you know, very quickly. That's amazing. So I understand that Weiss Coatings is a franchise, right? For our viewers that don't fully understand what a franchise is, can you give us the definition? Yeah, a franchise is the ability to be able to own your own location. So you literally own your own business, but you have a full corporate support structure. You know, we help out with the systems, we help out with all the other backend resources, we help do your marketing. And I'll be honest with you, I've always hated franchises. It's kind of ironic because I genuinely thought that I'd never actually start a franchise. So I was like, if I'm gonna create a franchise, I wanna do things that other franchise companies don't do. So like we pay for the bookkeeping, the CRM systems, we do all the Facebook marketing, Google ad marketing, SEO, website work, you know, we pay for everything on the backend, as well as give all of our partners, you know, exclusive discounts to products and things. And we have a partnership arrangement where we're incentivized to help them grow their business. So, you know, a franchise is definitely an opportunity to be able to start your own business, but not have to worry about doing it on your own. That's incredible. When you got started, where was your break-even point time-wise? When we got going, pretty much our break-even was within like the first 45 days. It's not bad. Yeah, we started cash flowing pretty quickly, pretty much in month one to where we could pay all the guys, pay our marketing, and had enough revenue to kind of like really break-even. But within like month two, we almost went bankrupt. Oh no. It was the kind of thing where- Second month and you're already in trouble. I was like, ah, you know, this whole experiment is a failure, literally month two. We got down to 50 bucks in our bank accounts. One job went so south that we literally almost completely had to like not pay our guys and go bankrupt. So it was close to try to cash flow this thing. But you came out on top and- We did, yeah. Why don't we share that with our audience later? Because I think that that's an extreme challenge that every business faces, right? Yeah, it's a fun story. So I'd love to hear that. Get your popcorn out. Keep watching, guys. Yes, please get your popcorn out. So why would somebody join a franchise and what would you offer them as their partner, essentially? The big reason why we decided to kind of franchise this is there's something really unique when you have a whole bunch of business owners all over the country, all unified under one brand, one system structure, is because you can focus on one business and it literally benefits everyone across the country, which is kind of cool. So I didn't really understand that concept until we really started kind of working on this. We create all of our training videos. So we have videos for a technician. As soon as they get hired onto the team, they sit down and they watch exactly how to do the process. Even if I don't know anything about anything? If you know nothing about it whatsoever. And scripts on what to talk to customers, how to talk to them on the sales side of things, how to connect, discover, show clothes, and how to read body language of a potential customer, how to offer packages, how to schedule the jobs. So the training library is massive because normally you start in your own business, you have to create those systems for your employees in order to extract yourself out of the business. So to be able to start off from day one, having all of that done is really huge. How long did it take you to complete those or build those out? I mean, I would imagine it takes time, or did the previous businesses help you accomplish that quicker? Definitely, yeah, good point. Yeah, the previous businesses that I had, I had the systems pretty much really well dialed in. My exterior cleaning business, we were doing $400,000, $500,000 a month in that business. So when I started this business, I was able to take a lot of those systems and kind of show the proof of concept of, hey, you could start a business from zero and get it up to $100,000 a month in four months. But pretty much using the same steps. Following the same steps. So there's a bunch of other stuff that we do, as well, on the franchise side. That's incredible. I wanna take a look at your branding here. Anything you wanna share or highlight on why this could be a real game changer for any business? Do you buy, do you lease? For me, branding is everything. When you have the beat-up truck with the magnet signs on the side, and they come up and they get the quote on a napkin and they leave it with the customer, that's not gonna get you those high average tickets. They're only gonna compare that person's quote to someone else that's kind of similar in their ballpark. And then it becomes just all about the cost. But when we show up in this, they're like, okay, this is a professional company. We have the presentation folders. We have the videos. We have the branding locked down. We have the AI power visualizer tool. We adopt a baby elephant in their name. Then you literally have a picture of the baby elephant, and I give them a certificate at the end of the job. All that's all automated. That's a good selling point. So all those things go into an emotional experience where they're like, okay, I can trust this company. And we decide to lease all of our vehicles. Even this, because I know you said you leased the vans. Yep, even this too. So there's great leasing programs out there for vehicles. Like our van, we have a Ford track lease on that, and we pay about 800 to 1,000 bucks a month. And that includes brand new vehicle. That includes all the upfit inside, all the shelving. They take care of all that and the wrap. So the wrap is all packaged into it. And it's 100,000 miles bumper to bumper warranty. All the maintenance, oil changes, any of that stuff is all included in it. So if anything goes wrong with it, they'll give you a loaner vehicle while that's in the shop. And if you think that, okay, we're doing about three to $4,000 a day in one of these vehicles. 60 plus a month, just one van. Yes. So if that's down for one day, three grand, the payment becomes nothing. Tell us how many franchises you have, right? Are some of them just in the starting stage or already in operation and producing serious revenue? Can you share a little bit about that? Yeah, so the first one that we did was in Portland, Oregon, and that was the location that we started, you know, here locally. And then from there, last year, we onboarded about four or five, and then we had three more that hopped in this year. So we're at about eight locations total right now. And growing. A year and a half into it. Yes, and we have about 140 applicants to apply to be a partner location right now. How are they spread out across the states? They're pretty much all over the US, but there's tons of open territories that are still left over. Lots of markets that we're excited to find partners to be able to join forces with in some of those markets. And they're all in like newer stage. So all of the locations are less than a year in their growth stage. And some of them are already putting their second trucks on the road and kind of getting going with, you know, growing the business. So anywhere from just getting started to get a little more established. That's amazing. Started with one location here in Portland, and now you've got eight all across the United States. I want to take a second and talk to our viewers and audience. If you're someone that's always wanted to own your own business, consider Wise Coatings. I mean, they're giving Upflip viewers an exclusive franchise fee discount that is unheard of in this industry, right? We at Upflip, we go through due diligence to make sure that we offer our viewers the best opportunity out there. And I really think your company is that. So as we continue the interview, you guys will get a firsthand look into what it would be like for you to be an owner and partner with yourself. So should we continue? Yeah, man. Love it. And they're right about the diligence. You asked me about a billion questions before we started that. Yes, we do. Thanks for confirming that, but before we- It's true. Before we go on, make sure you click the link in the description below. So you guys get more information about how you can become a partner with Brandon and get more details on the incredible discount that they're offering the Upflip viewers. So let's keep going. All right. I'm curious what the profit margins look like for you in this particular market. Like what's a good month? What's a bad month? When we first kind of got going, we were pretty much breaking even the first few months that we kind of, you know, we're hitting things going. Month four, when we did $100,000, we had about close to a 30% net profit in that month. And, you know, really it can be anywhere from, you know, 5% to 30%, 20 to 25% is kind of like what we target and what we teach all of our partners to be able to kind of like strive for. We have a, what's called a pro forma, and that shows exactly what percentages towards marketing, towards supplies, towards labor, towards rents, towards, you know, all the fixed expenses and variable expenses with a kind of that target and that profit that we shoot for. That's amazing. Is this a grinder? This is a vacuum. Oh, okay. This is a vacuum, so this is going to collect all the dust because these guys manufacture some serious amount of dust. They have these huge concrete grinder bits, diamond bits. Is it actually diamonds in there? The actual diamonds. Can I pluck them out? Real diamonds. This is why they're so expensive. Why they're not cheap. To blade themselves? Yeah, these little bits, they're like embedded with diamonds, so as they go into the concrete, they grind it away. It's the only thing that can last. Yeah. It makes a ton of dust, so you have to have a system like this. Let's look around. Are these all grinders? Because we've got vacuum, and then we've got three grinders here. So we have different sizes, right? So like a small grinder like this, it can do the job. It just takes a lot longer, and there's different types of grinders. This one runs off of electricity. Oh, yeah. The grinder that we bought runs off of propane. The big advantage is you don't have to lug around these massive generators that have to power these 240 volts high amp. Can't you just, oh, it's a 240. Yes. You can't just plug in. You cannot just plug into a customer's house. So we've tried to really kind of spec out our equipment to say propane's easy to fill up. You know, all these different gas stations around that you can just fill up really easily, and you know, you can carry on extra fuel with you. So a little more of an investment, but it also helps us do the jobs faster. What tools and software do you use to manage the financial side of the business? How do you manage the franchises all synchronized together? I'm excited to find out. We've got a lot of software, a lot of software programs. I can show you a few of them. Let's fly through them. Yeah, so the main one managing all the crews and getting that all done, that's our big CRM called Housecall Pro. Housecall Pro, all right. Yeah. I've heard about them. It's amazing because everything is ran online. We have technician tracking. So we do fleet tracking. You can see where all the technicians are, where they're at. This is down in Tigard. Yep. These technicians are still on the job site. We have, you know, Chris out there. They clicked on my way when they traveled out there. The customer got a text notification with like a real Uber style tracking the technician to actually get there. So the client can actually see exactly where the technician is. Yep, they get a little link on their phone. They click on it and they can literally see a map of the technician, just like Uber shows. And then when they start, they hit the start button. When they hit finish, it tracks everything. We can see information about the house that pulls from Zillow. We can see the invoice, all the services that we're offering, pictures of the job. Before and after? Well, befores. And then when the guys are done, they'll take afters and they'll attach it to this as well. And then this is the financing button. So when we send an application for financing, we click one button and they get a little text message that they can click on and they can apply to get the entire job completely financed. And it's fulfillment, that's the financing part. So as soon as we're done, we get paid instantly. But the financing company takes over the actual financing part with the customer. That's pretty cool. Well, let's talk about what we mentioned earlier in the video, and that is the $50 month, month two, when you started the business, right? Like you almost crashed. And then something happened, and month four, you hit 100K. What can our audience learn from that as well? Because some people can quit at that point. Yeah, and you know, I'll be honest with you, there is definitely those moments. For me, the definition of being an entrepreneur is you take on a greater-than-average risk for a greater-than-average reward. Absolutely. And that risk is real. And in month two, we had a job that we figured would only take us like three, four days. It ended up taking us almost two weeks, and it hurt. It was, we just, we kind of didn't know what we were doing a little bit. There's a little bit of that. As you say, how can you get it so wrong, like three days to two weeks? The coating that was on the floor that we were supposed to remove just was stubborn as everything. And we called up, you know, experienced floor coatings, installers and removers, and they, oh yeah, rent this piece of equipment. Didn't do it. Rent this piece of equipment. Wouldn't touch it. Rent this piece. Meanwhile, we were paying the guys the entire time that we were trying to get this floor done. And that labor costs, along with the material costs, along with the rental costs, the cushion that we had in our bank account in month two just like disappeared. And we literally had 50 bucks in the bank account. We had payroll that was coming out that very week. And we got like one job in right squeaked in before we actually had payroll to where we were okay on our cash flow side. I'd say that the biggest lesson for me in kind of that whole experience was all types of issues like that comes from a lack of education and comes from being able to kind of like anticipate what to do next and being involved with a community that kind of has learned those lessons. So now that we have all these partners that have these kinds of experiences, we know what to look out for and we can kind of help all of each other out as franchise partners to say like, hey, don't do this. This is an experience that we found, stay away from that. And when we first started, we didn't have that support system. We got a couple of our lumps and bumps and bruises. So now our partners know what to look out for. Yeah, if you don't know something, right? Yeah. It's okay to ask somebody else. A hundred percent. Yeah, for sure. What tools, software are you using for what other purposes? So we use Dunzo. So Dunzo is our marketing and software platform. Basically this handles all of our automations. So the second that we give a customer an estimate, they get a 12 month automated followup sequence with mail that comes in, text messages, ringless voicemails, emails, all that's completely automated. That's if they didn't accept the job, right? If they don't accept the job. So that the followup can continue on. Yeah, when the job is actually accepted and we finished the job, the second we mark the job as being done, the homeowner gets a thank you card in the mail along with brownies that say, hey Paul, we're trying to earn some brownie points. And then there's like a thank you card with a little QR code for them to do their review. And also a hundred dollar gift card that they can give to a neighbor or a friend. That's through Dunzo, not the CRM that handles the technicians. Got it. And then all the neighbors, the software will take all the surrounding neighbors and we'll automatically send them out a postcard that says, hey, we're working in the area. That's pretty. And they get a sequence of three different postcards to all the neighbors automatically without anyone on the team having to do anything. That's crazy. You're touching everything, everyone. Yeah. And this is the big part, you know, about actually working on the business that makes such a huge impact. These are those thousand dollar an hour tasks of setting up these types of systems that provide such a bigger impact to the business as opposed to just being out in the field, doing the thing. And that's what my responsibility is, is setting up all the backend systems. What are we doing right now, Brandy? All right, so we're going to mix up the product right now and get this all set up. The guys are pretty much ready to get going with that. So we're going to just kind of get this set up. So, you know, what I've noticed this last interview, by the way, we did with Corey. You guys seen the episode. The stuff that they're using is so potent. I couldn't smell it within six feet. I mean, it's just potent. You'll have a job that maybe doesn't, you know, pay out a ton. Stuff is strong. He got weak lungs, Paul. I don't smell anything from here. What is the difference between the products you use and epoxy? So, epoxy products, they have different cure speeds. Sometimes the smell is a little bit different. We actually custom formulated our polyaspartic product to have zero VOC. So there's like almost no odor. Nothing. Yeah, so you don't have customers complaining about like, man, this reeks, this smells terrible. This is a very, very unique polyaspartic. It has a really good adhesion to the concrete. The abrasion resistance on it is super high and it really locks into the concrete itself and it has a lifetime adhesion bond on it. And we actually warranty it with a lifetime warranty. Wow. So then this is going to be applied to the garage floor, sprayed around, and then you're going to put flakes on? Yep, exactly. I'm learning. Let's do it. I'm learning. What's one thing you wish you would have known earlier in the game that you think would have changed where you are today? I wish I would have known how difficult it is to put down floor coatings. It surprised me. Part of the hell week that we talked about was that first job where we didn't know what we didn't know about removing existing floor coatings. Even your $2,000 training trip? Even my training did not cover all of it. That was the hardest learning curve was we had some floor replacements we had to do because we just didn't really know what too much we were doing. And of course, in the last year and a half, we've learned way more. And I wish I would have done a little bit more research on that front side to be more prepared on what to expect that side. So more research. How did everything end up? Big thing, we paid our employees. We had enough cash in the bank that we got from that previous job to be able to cover payroll. And you finished the job, right? And we finished the job. Even that job that took you two weeks, it's done, everybody's happy? Yes, it is, yep. Well, it's time with Brandon. Let's dive into it. Let's do it. And thank you to our audience for submitting these questions. We greatly appreciate your involvement and support. What percentage of revenue do you pay yourself today? I typically like to look for two different kinds of pay. One is salary. So typically I recommend about 10% of whatever your gross revenue is for salary and then take the rest out in profit distributions. Gotcha. You know how to tell us what those are? Profit distributions? Yeah. What's the last one? Usually profit distributions, if we're looking for like a target, like a 25% net profit, there's about 15% available, but it really kind of depends on what your next phase of growth is. If we're gonna be reinvesting into the next month a little bit more on marketing, I may pay myself a little bit less out of the business. So it kind of depends on what the business needs as to what the profit is. Makes sense. What are you paying for marketing today? 10%. So- Give us a number. Right now, if we're shooting to do $150,000 worth of revenue for next month in our Portland location, we'll spend $15,000 that month. What is the current marketing strategy for you right now? Mostly it's digital marketing. We spend a lot on Facebook. We also do Google ads and we invest in SEO work to try to get more organic traffic coming in. Which one are you spending most on? Facebook for sure. Yeah, it's a great channel. It's interruption marketing. So people aren't necessarily searching for it. So your hooks and your ads have to really like capture their attention and hook them in. What is the system that you've implemented in your business that's been most impactful? Thanks to Brian for asking that question. Ooh, that's a good question. I'd say probably our automation systems that we have. So every time we give a quote, we have like a year long followup sequence for the customer. We send text messages, ringless voicemails, emails, actual physical thank you cards in the mail. And then when the job's done, we send thank you brownies and a thank you card. And that just generates tons of referrals for us. Last but not least, in this more competitive market, how do you demand higher prices compared to your competitors? Definitely value. So, you know, perceived value is a big thing. So our brands, our presentation folders, the education of the customers, we've partnered up with different charity organizations to be able to show that we care more about just the floor. And customers can see that. And it's really hard to compare us to a competitor that's a lot cheaper because there's so many things that we do differently that they're like, yeah, we're going to Weiss coatings. Awesome. Well, I can't wait to dive into what those things are. Yeah, for sure. Let's keep going. Cool. Maybe just give us a quick tour. What's what and what's where? Sure. Yeah, so we have two offices. We have one downstairs, one upstairs. We have all of our sample board setups for creating sample boards for customers. We have all of our supplies and stock and inventory. We have an iPad that has all of our inventory supply systems so the guys will scan QR codes. So you can see like here. It's on Xbox? QR codes on all the different things so they can scan it and they can check out materials and move it from the shop to one of the vehicles to just kind of, and we have like automatic like ordering replenishing and that's all based off of our inventory systems. Check out their brand. That's right. Polywise premium coatings with our deer elephant there. So the franchisees are required to buy this from you. Obviously that's how it works, right? Across the board. Yeah, when everyone orders through one, that's how we leverage that big national buying power and why we can, you know, literally charge less than what they would get it if they went to a store on their own. So that's a big advantage. Yep. And this stuff don't stink either. No way, man. Is it just boxes full of- Environmentally friendly. Yeah, we have- I love that. All of our different products. We have, we do have some epoxy products here. We have our pigments and then our flakes. Flakes right here. This is the money. These are the chips. How many variations, Brandon, do you have of flakes? Or is it unlimited? It's literally unlimited. So we have an app where you can go on and you can pick whatever colors you want. That's cool. And then you can get custom blends. We stock about 12 different variations because you don't want to overwhelm a customer with choice. People don't do well when you give them too many options. Yeah, it's decision fatigue. Yeah. What else do you think makes Weiss Coating different from the competitors in this market and other markets? One of the biggest things that we do is, you know, we really focus on giving back. So as you saw, we have the yellow pin on the side of our vehicles. So we actually focus like on conservation stuff. So it should be ready to go, guys. Hand this over to the guys. Thank you, guys. So, you know, we actually partnered up with the World Wildlife Fund. And so we actually will adopt a baby elephant in the name of our customers. That's so cool. Literally on the conservation because, you know, elephants, they're on the endangered species list. And we wanted to, you know, our products are, you know, environmentally friendly. And we also wanted to make sure that we're like investing back in to the elephants that we have on the side of our vehicles. And they're gorgeous. I mean, especially baby elephants. And is that every deal or every transaction? Every floor that we do. Yeah, every floor that we do. Part of the reason why we came up with the Weiss Coatings brand and why we use the elephant for our mascot is, you know, elephants are known for their memory and known for being, you know, wise. And they're very, very loyal and they're tough. Like their skin is bulletproof, right? So it's like a big part of that is wanting to kind of like embrace the whole brand story into it. And that's, it resounds well with the customers. When we talk about that, they love it. And that does make a difference. You know. Aren't they scared of little mice? The tough, big elephants? That's a good question. I knew you'd find some kind of hole to poke in it. I think they do actually. There's one of those guys, they test everything out. Mythbusters. Yeah, yeah, they did that. Yeah, they did. So maybe check it out. Anyway, off topic here, but. So another thing I want to touch on, and maybe we've touched on it here and there a little bit, but it's creating the best customer experience, right? From A to Z. You get that lead. You have all these systems that you've mentioned. What do you want to highlight? Like ultimately, what does it come down to? So, I mean, one of the cool things that we did is we actually found this app developer that makes this AI powered floor visualizer tool. So literally when we come out to a job site, we'll take a picture of their own garage, and then we will use the tool to show them exactly what the floor is going to look like when the project's done. You know, that customer experience. And then we print out the color that they want, and we put it in a presentation folder. And, you know, as soon as we get that lead and give them that estimate, we have, you know, that month-long follow-up sequence where they're getting, you know, thank you cards in the mail, and text messages, and ringless voicemails, and automated, like, you know, home maintenance checklists, and all these other things that they get. So the education component, the hands-on component, while we're actually talking to the customers coming out to their house and giving them a full consultation, those things make a big difference, not only in closing ratio, but also the size of our average ticket too. Now, what was the app? The app is called Flory. F-L-O-O-R-I. What's the cost? I think it's about $149 a month. That's nothing. $149 a month. And we, you know, have that installed right on our website so customers can come to our website, you know, upload their own picture, or take one of our example scenes that we have, and they can see exactly, like, you know, what would that floor look like on my floor? It's pretty compelling. When the customer can future-proof and see, like, wow, this is what it's going to look like when it's done, they get emotional about it, you know? And that emotion causes them to buy. Enjoying listening to you, but I'm also feeling- I feel like we're being watched. We're being creeped on by these two creatures. Question is, are they nice, or are they the biting kind? I don't know, I'll try to give them an apple, see what they do. Yeah, go do it, Paul. Later on. You're not an elephant, right? Which is the brand for Wisecoating, but we still love you, and we're going to give you this carrot. How many employees do you have, since we're on that note? In Portland, we're right about, like, nine. Nine total. Nationally, we have probably close to about 45 or so. But how do you find wonderful employees? Which places, which platforms give you the best return? How does that work? So, one of the big channels that we look at is Facebook. Because if you think about, who would you rather hire from? The pool of people that are unemployed, or find people that already have an existing job, and maybe they love that job, and they're pretty loyal to that company, but if the right opportunity popped up in front of them, and they're like, wow, this place looks pretty cool. It's recruiting. I like that. It's recruiting. It's not employee theft. It's marketing. So, we just design our ads to really speak to the people that we want to work with. You know, we talk about our personality, about our core values, and we want to capture their attention as they're scanning through their feed, they stop in their tracks, and, you know, oh, wow, this looks interesting. You know, he's talking to me. Oh, wow, I can really see myself working there. Is this a $100 gift card? Yeah. Look at this, you guys. 800 bucks sitting on the counter. Hey, that's for you. I know that's for you, man. Let us come to your floor, 800 bucks off, on house. That's awesome. Yeah, so actually what's kind of cool about these gift cards is it looks like a QR code. That's what I thought. Yeah, but that's fake. So, it's not preloaded. There's no cash on this thing. Correct. So, this is a fake magnetic strip on here, but we designed it to look like a credit card so that people would hold it with a little bit more value. So, this little code right here is dynamic, and so every time we give out one of these, we track that five-digit code to know what customer actually gave this to somebody else. So, when they give this gift card, they can give it to someone else, and that gives them $100 off their floor, and then we send- It tells you who gave it? The giver a $100 Amazon card of value. Very generous. So, they get a $100 discount, and they also get a $100 Amazon gift card in the mail as well. How often does this come into play? Like, at which instances do you send out 100 bucks? Oh, every job that we do. Every job? So, the one that we finished today, they're gonna get a $100 gift card. Yep, so we send out automated, you know, thank you cards and brownies, and it'll have, like, the $100 off cards embedded into it, QR code to be able to scan. Yeah, take a look, you guys. There's a lot of detail here, a lot of value. Yeah, we wanna thank you for your business. We're a small family-owned company. Referrals and reviews mean a lot to us, so here's, like, our QR codes, our $100 off card, and they give this to someone else, they get a $100 Amazon gift card, and you can see the name, HiBrandon. This automatically pulls from our software and pops out in the mail with their name on it without us having to do anything. Who's managing this for you? This design, you know, again, sending out and everything. Is it back to the software we just talked about, or is it? It is, yeah, so Dunzo. Dunzo's that software program. This is their product? Yep, they did all the design of all the cards and everything that we have here. Is there anything else that we should share with our audience when it comes to leasing versus buying, and sort of how to make those decisions, right? We've talked about it a number of times, but I just want to make sure we've hit every point when it comes to making those two choices. You know, when you're talking about leasing versus buying equipment, I do look at the cash flow side of things. There's different ways to categorize those transactions, so if you're leasing a piece of equipment, that might hit your profit loss as, like, an expense, whereas if you buy an asset, now that lives on your balance sheet, and sometimes bankers look at those ratios like, hey, what's your debt to asset ratio? And if you have a lot of things that you're, you know, buying on financing versus, like, leasing it or buying it cash, sometimes those things make a difference on tax implications and make a difference in, you know, the health of your business that bankers may want to look at. So when I buy stuff, I'm always thinking, like, okay, I'm going to need to fund future growth. I want to make sure that my business looks healthy. It looks good on paper. Yes. It's not everyone's approach, right? Yeah, and so, you know, when I go buy brand new vehicles, rather than getting a loan on those, I lease them instead, because that loan is going to show up as a debt on my balance sheet on that side, whereas if I have those lease payments that are hitting every month, those can just go right as an expense of the business. You know, we're doing 60 grand worth of work in one month, and the lease payments, you know, $800. It's, like, hardly anything. Right. And then your guys are using new equipment. Guys, don't forget to click the link in the description below to learn about the incredible franchising opportunity with Wise Coatings. Let's talk about your role. As a business owner, you're in it day-to-day, you're showing up to job sites. Yeah. It seems like that's not the case for you now. Yeah, you know, in this business, I wanted to do something very unique from day one, which is not do any of the sales myself, not do any of the work myself. Hey, buddy. What's up, dude? He's like, hey, what you guys talking about? Talking about business. Business. He's a business donkey. All right. You know, I didn't want to do any of the work out in the field, and most business owners, they kind of get stuck in the field doing the thing. And the second they get out of the field is when their business starts taking off and growing. So from day one, you know, I hired three people. It can be really scary because that thought comes into your mind, like, how am I going to be able to afford to pay them and get this stuff going? So our salesperson we brought on, you know, was commission-based at the beginning. So he's also incentivized to sell the jobs. And then we hired Spencer and got technicians in that could actually go out and do the work. So if I just focused on the marketing engine to drive in leads and jobs, and then they went out and did all the work, then we could, you know, kind of be off to the races and just, you know, start- It's a riskier path to take, but then it scales your company this way. Yes, and- That's pretty cool. Makes it to where the razor's edge is pretty thin and why we almost went bankrupt in month two was because, you know, it came close. So the safer path, of course, is to get out in the field and kind of, you know, participate in either the sales side of it or the actual installation side of it as well. But for me, I wanted to kind of show like, hey, this can be done this way. Of course, my previous business experience made that risk feel a lot less scary. Made it possible. Yep. So when do these get applied? Like how do you put them on every job site? Do you ask for permission? It stands there for a week, you take it down, or? So these are our yard signs. Every single job, we put them out front. While you're doing it. While we're doing it, and then we leave it. And we just tell them like, hey, the longer you have it out there, the better it is for us. We appreciate the referrals. If you get tired of it, you can just fold it up and recycle it. You know, whenever you feel done with it. You have the option, no pressure. We don't go back and pick them up because they're only like $3, $4 a piece. With gas, it just doesn't make sense. And we put these literally everywhere. We may put out a hundred of these a month. Wow. Door hangers, every single job that we do, we put these door hangers on all the neighbors. Same Intel, basically, just before and after. Yeah, so if you think about it, the neighbor seeing the vehicle, the yard sign, they have this on their door. They're getting these postcards in the mail a few days later. So they're just getting inundated with this and it causes them to, you know, give us a call. Right. Let's go look at the blades. And I think we're on the diamond bits. Yeah, I want to take a look at those. Here we go. Oh, wow. So these diamond bit kits that they have with these diamond bonds. Oh, wow. How much would this cost? This is several hundred dollars. What? Several hundred dollars for a set. For the whole box? Yeah, usually three to 400 bucks. You know, lots of different bits. You can see the little spine sticking out there. There's a little diamond. How long would this last? Honestly, it depends on the type of concrete that you're doing. Every job that you do, you have a little scratch test and you scratch the concrete to see how hard it is. And depending on the hardness of the concrete, you use different diamond bond. So you will use, yeah, softer bond for harder concrete and you kind of pick exactly what type of tool you want. And some projects, it goes down very quick if you have a lot of, you know, existing floor coatings to peel up, or, you know, you got a lot of stuff that you have to kind of, you know, flatten out, even out. This looks kind of cool. When you think about, you know, the hand grinder. So these ones get in close to the edges, but then you need to have a hand grinder to actually get really close up against the edge and go around water heaters and posts and sand. You know, the porches, you're not gonna be running a big 800-pound grinder on top of a little patio. You're gonna hand grind it. So is it all diamond-based or is there other tools that are less expensive and can still do the job? Pretty much all diamond-based. Assuming. Yeah, if you think about the concrete and how hard it is and, you know, steel and anything else is just not gonna get aggressive down in and actually remove it. So whenever they have blades that you use to cut concrete blocks, they're always diamond-embedded. So you need that hardness in there. This is the cost of doing business, man, you know, which is part of the- Get the right tools. A little bit higher barrier to entry with, you know, with some of this stuff because you want to start out with the right tools. You also have a coaching company that you're a part of, right, where you bless people with your knowledge, you help them grow. Can you just touch on that real quick? I think it's really cool what you do in there as well. Oh, thanks, man. Yeah, so I have a company called Conquer that's a business coaching company and we coach home service business owners all over North America how to grow and scale their business. And honestly, part of the reason why I started Weiss Coatings was kind of a experiment to show, hey, I want to show you how quickly you can grow a business, not doing any of the calls, not doing any of the sales, not doing even any of the work in the field, just focusing on systems and the marketing and sales and how to attract and retain and recruit employees onto your team. So the coaching business actually is what inspired me to go start another company and kind of document it. And of course, you know, it's really grown very well and we found lots of pretty killer partners across the US that want to kind of join us in the crazy journey. So that part's really helped out as well. I noticed you've got some funky looking socks. Are you a socks man? We are. We bonded on being a socks man. I mean, look at, not as funky as you today, but you got the, I believe, I believe socks. Big foot writing and unicorn socks. That is awesome. Now everyone just knows that I'm the weird sock guy, so that's the present that I get all the time. I got nothing special. Just some, you know, polka dots. Respectable. Respectable, I like it. Thanks to my wife for the subscription. I believe your core values are right there. Walk us through briefly kind of how you developed that. Sure. Everything seems to have a powerful message to it just by looking at it. Yeah, so when we, anytime we've established core values in my previous companies, we like to have an acronym, something that's easy to remember. Because when people go through the exercise of creating core values, they're like quickly forgotten. Right. Yeah, it's integrity and customer service and like lame stuff, honestly. So we have base. Everything starts with a strong base coat, right? Base foundation, everything's like foundational. So we have the buffalo. Buffaloes and cows. You know, have you ever heard of the differences of buffaloes and cows? No, never. So like out in the plains of Utah, when cows see a storm approaching, they run away from the storm. And now the storm catches up to them, pelts them for longer. The pain, the hail, the wind. They're tired. Yeah, it eventually catches up with them and they endure that pain for longer. Buffaloes, this is true. They charge the storm. I didn't know that. When they sense it coming, they run towards it. And so they still endure it, but they break through it faster. So with this, our core value of a buffalo, we tell all of our employees that story. And we say, you're going to be the buffalo. You're going to run towards problems. We're not cows. We don't run away from problems. The second you notice there's some damage on the floor, there's a rattle in the truck. Don't be a cow and run away from it. Be a buffalo. We're going to charge the storm. We're going to run towards it. Ascending, we want everyone to always be leveling up with whatever they do personally, professionally. Not down. Not down, not descending. So we set six-month goals for ourselves, six-week goals for ourselves, all of our team members, so that they have natural progression of leveling up in the business and personally, professionally. Serve others first. And then efficiency. We deal with products that cure in five minutes. So you have to make every movement count. Run very lean. So efficiency, everything that we do, don't use two motions when one motion will suffice. So when we interview employees, we talk about these and ask them how they feel about this and share stories on what this means to you. And if people are like, I'm not a servant. I'm not going to serve people. I hate that word. It has to resonate with them, each one. Yeah, it's not a good fit. Right, exactly. What's one or two pieces of advice that you can tell our audience about the floor coating business? I think the biggest thing is, you know, make sure that you're doing something different than everybody else. You know, anytime you get into a situation where you're going to go up against competitors, you're going to be in a market with someone else. You don't want a customer to just think like, oh, well, your price is this much and this person's this much. Apples to apples, the low price is going to win, right? You really have to think about, you know, what's truly going to set you apart from your competitors to where you can close those higher tickets and not have to just be in this race to the bottom on price. It's not fun to do this type of business unless you're getting a good profit. This business, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Well, it's been a pleasure, Brandon. Yeah, thank you, man. Thank you, appreciate it. Appreciate it. Well, that's a wrap with Brandon, the owner of Wise Coatings. I hope you guys really enjoyed it. What an incredible business he's running, incredible team, and just the way he's approaching things. I've learned a ton. I hope you did as well. 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