How to Get Out of a Business Rut

Transcript

Do you feel stuck in your business? Have you hit a plateau and you feel like you just can’t turn things around?

Hi, Iím Carmen Sognonvi. Keep watching because in this video because Iím going to interview Brian Young. Brian Young is a home painter who experienced 15 consecutive years of declining sales.

He finally turned things around and in the last three years heís tripled hi revenues.And what did it take for all that to happen? Getting punched in the face by a customer.

Thatís right. Keep watching to find out his story.

By the way, if you would like to get a list of all the marketing tools I use to run all the marketing in my business head over to carmensognonvi.com/tools. Iíll share with you everything from who we use to graphic design and printing, and Iíll also tell you about a mobile app you can use to track flier distribution.

So let me tell you a little about Brian Young. Iím gonna read to you his bio: ìHe owns Home Painters Toronto, which is one of the most successful residential and commercial full service painting companies in the Greater Toronto Area. Since 2012 Brian has grown his companyís revenue by 350%.

Heís expanded his team to include 8 full-time employees, 25 sub-contractors, and heís reduced his work week from 80 hours to 65 hours. Heís frequently featured on Breakfast Television TV 44 24hr Makeover Show in Toronto and is an active volunteer and supporter of many local charities.

So I actually met Brian at Icon, which is the user conference of InfusionSoft and Brian at the conference won the ìSmall Business Icon of the Year Awardî , which is basically the highest award you could win at Icon, and I was so inspired and moved by his story that I really wanted to share it with all of you. So without further ado, here is my interview with Brian Young.

CS: Alright Brian, thank you so much for joining me today.

BY: Thank you very much. Great to have you.

CS:So, Brian, I was lucky enough to see your awesome presentation at Icon, which is the InfusionSoft user conference. You really shared the story of what your business was like before and this big transformation you made and the amazing results youíre seeing now.

So could you share with our viewers what was your before story? What did your business look like in the old days?

BY:Sure. Well, I started back in the University student back in 1987 and then I basically went out on my own after I graduated, which was 1991, and back then there was no internet, no cellphones, we used pagers pretty much as a way of communicating, and pretty much my main means of marketing was cold calling, flyer distribution, hung signs; so it was kind of old school that way. Absolutely no technology involved. And then thingsíve taken off since then and pretty much things were pretty much marketing wise the same right about ëtil 2000, 1998-2000, and thatís when the internet took over my business in terms of how clients started finding their painters and my old school marketing was slowly being phased out over time, and that was kind of the beginning of how things eventually had to change for me.

CS: And can you talk about what the business results were like? So, kind of like sales-wise, what does numbers look like.

BY: Yeah, so before, like back in 1987. Well, pretty much going up to 1997 things were going pretty strong, steadily increasing my business and then as I said, from 1997 to 2011 things were going down slowly. Itís hard to say. I canít even remember the sales back then, they were somewhere around the 3 to 5 hundred thousand dollar range [$300,000-$500,000], but things were staggering.

Like I had to work twice as hard to get my business and I could just feel the market not cooperating with me, even though I was trying every way to make it cooperate with me, it was not. And then right about up to 2012 things were, I think, around $375,000 in revenue, and then in the past 3 years since, of course, adapting internet and getting a website, and adopting these new marketing methods, technology related mostly, weíve been able to triple, more than 350% increase in revenue in the last few years.

CS: Wow, thatís amazing. So, just to kind of put it in perspective for people you essentially had for 15 years a steady decline. Is that safe to say?

BY: Exactly. Very safe to say. In fact, it was steady decline and what was even worse was: I had to work two to three times harder to maintain what was I was even having.

CS: So what was your work week like?

BY: I was always a workaholic, since being a kid, but I mean what would happen was: Iíd have to work a lot harder in that time to and then even longer. Pretty much, 60 would be a really slow week, and 90 would be a busy week.

CS: Weíre talking about hours per week?

BY: Hours, yes. So 60 to 90 hours a week. So yeah, a slow season would be 60 hours a week and our busy season I could work as many as 90. So, it was pretty crazy, yeah. And the bad thing about it was the harder I was working to maintain those sales, or even like keep, even though they were going down, it was just more and more work done to get that one sale, so I knew something wasnít working and the problem was I was just too stubborn to change and I didnít like the idea of adopting new methods of marketing, it was just all foreign to me so.

You know Iím a technology guy to the point where I would call people or text people, but I would never want to use it for my business.

CS: Yeah. And so tell us what changed. I know that there was one pivotal moment that made you rethink everything. So tell us that story.

BY: Yeah. I was always under the assumption growing up that the harder you work the more luck you would get and the better things would happen and that was kind of, I was still working super hard to get those sales, and then right up 2011 even though things were going down, a customer, basically I was canvasing a neighborhood and the client was upset ëcause I knocked on his door around dinner time and he shoved me and punched me in the face ëcause he was really offended that I was interrupting his dinner, and that was pretty much the time in my life were I said: ìYou know what? I canít keep doing this, this is just crazyî, and I had to change things.

CS: Wow, so you got punched in the face?

BY: Yes, exactly. And Iím a hockey player, so Iíd take it but it was like: ìCímon man, Iím just trying to paint your house here.î

CS: Yeah, youíre not on the rink. So tell us about what are some of the changes that you implemented then and was it kind of in one swoop or did you take little steps? Because I just really wanted to share your story with my audience because I know that there are so many business owners that can relate.

Theyíve been either stuck at this plateau or theyíve been experiencing the steady decline, and itís not that theyíre not working, theyíre working harder than ever before like you talked about, youíre working twice as much just to maintain that same level or lower level of sales, and they are trying different things. I know a lot of business owners, they are open minded, theyíre trying different things, theyíre trying a little bit of social media, theyíre trying some paper click stuff, but it still isnít quite coming together.

So what, after that night or that evening when you got punched in the face, what happened after that?

BY: Well, the first thing with change is like, you can have all the different methods in the world, but really itís more of a psychological change so you have to like just accept that : ìOk, Iím definitely wrong, doing something wrong here and I have to find it mentally before I start all these changes. Just adopt the idea, have an open mind and say: ìOK, now I have to be open to all these new things, even though Iím scared of them and Iíve never used any of them.î So, thatís the first thing: getting over the mental challenge of just realizing that youíre doing something wrong, admitting it and then changing.

So what was your second question?

CS: Yeah, what were the steps that you took?

BY: Yeah, specifically, I got a business coach, because like I said I was completely foreign to technology and, in terms of how I would use it for my business, and I knew other people were doing it but I had no idea. Like, I heard of like, obviously, websites I heard, but I had no idea of how Iíd market it, of how to implement this into something that would be revenue increasing.
Paper-Click, I kind of heard of it, but again, all this stuff was foreign to me, so I got a coach, which was the first thing I did and that really helped a lot. Although, when youíre first changing all these things thereís like I said a big mental hurdle: ìwhy do I have to do that? Why do I have to this? Why do I have to do that?

So, there was a huge mental change to get over the belief that these things can be done and these things can change my business. So, that was huge and it took me pretty much almost six months before I could start accepting that these things can work.

But once it started working, like the littlest thing, I started getting leads, I didnít have to call anymore, I was like: ìHoly Smokes! This is like unbelievableî I got these leads and I didnít have to ÖOK, so these little winds were what changed things and it kind of changed my belief system as to what was possible and what could happen, what could Internet do for me, what a website could do for me, what Paper Click could do for me, for all these different things and I started believing that it could work.

And as soon as I started believing it could work, thatís when I started going head in and say: ìOK, now letís go.î

CS: And, Iím curious: what were you getting any resources from within your industry? I know a lot of industries will have their own Trade Associations, or you know, sort of like industry specific consultants or publications. Were you kind of plugged into that, and if so were they talking about any of this stuff? Iím just kind of curious about what that landscape looked like.

BY: No, the painting industry is actually a little bit of a dinosaur, somewhat of a dinosaur industry, weíre still a little behind the times. Which actually worked to my advantage ëcause a lot of the industries like the info marketing, itís like obviously leading the way, but if we can apply some of those things that theyíre successful within painting businesses then, I mean, you could go from zero to ten in that much faster.

So, depending on the industry in my case most of the painters in my industry were pretty archaic. You could really likeÖ I pretty much in less than 6 months to 9 months, I rose to page one and one of the top, I would say top five to ten painters in Toronto in less than a year.

Yeah, and thatís just from those little winds, building on those little winds and then realizing what it could do for me, and then of course having systems like InfusionSoft, Paper Click, having a good SEO organic person working on your SEO, online/offline marketing as well, my on page marketing, as well as joining some amazing review sites such as HomeStars, for me Homestars is our number one lead source.

I also had to change the way I was looking at my business, and how I was running my business, because before I was running it not terribly but I wasnít as organized and when youíre online you tend to be exposed to letís say the bigger players, so you have to kind of range your game that way. Which was actually a good thing, I mean, itís good for the customer, good for me and my business and good for the industry in general.

CS: Oh thatís interesting. I want to talk a little bit more about that. So, when you said you were online you kind of have to compete a little bit against some of the bigger players so, what did that look like for your market where there are sort of these big chains, corporate companies that were already using some of these marketing methods that you kind of had to go up against, like what did that look like?

BY: Yeah. It wasnít too bad. Strauss, like I said was one of the big ones and Iím sure you know for many businesses, some people can be reasonable, some people can be not reasonable, so itís just a matter of upping your game, customer service wise, upping your system so youíd be delivering a better overall experience for the client, like even the smallest little thing, weíre always making little adjustments to make the client experience better.

So that was the main thing for painters is the better players in the industry were like, you know, they had a pretty good system and they were like, whereas before I was running a complete nightmare of a system for business. So that was the main thing: customer service was huge, production, pricing, just everything we were just in terms of increasing how our system were for that.

CS: Wow, so what Iím kind of hearing from you is that this whole journey started out with frustrations, specifically surrounding marketing, but in reality once you started going down this path it wasnít just about making over the marketing, it was making over the whole business.

BY: Yeah, absolutely. Because when youíre offline, when I was offline, you know, I mean, you could almost anything an no oneís going to really: ìWhat are you gonna do? Not use us againî, but when youíre online, everyone know everything and so you have to, everything from the type of pants you wear to the shirt, the logos, how you greet a customer, how you finish a job, the tiniest little thing, you know, people will nitpick at.

So you have to find ways to, how do I want to say, to you know, channel every potential problem there is; and which is a good thing because like I said, it ups your game, it makes the customerís experience better, it means you can charge more because youíre doing all these things that other companies arenít and now when, like for my business thereís very few painting companies that can compete with us, the only way they can compete with us is by coming significantly lower than us in price.

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