Audio Transcript

Mark Lamberth:
Hello and welcome to another episode of The Contractor Grows Show. My name is Mark, and today we have Andy Cruse at Andrew k crude painting in Gulf Breeze, Florida, way over on the west side on the far left side of Florida. Pensacola, the end of the panhandle there. Andy, thank you for being with us today.

Andy Cruse:
Oh, you’re welcome. Yeah, whenever on the west side, it’s kind of like I live in la, lower Alabama. Right, right. Yeah, you’re

Mark Lamberth:
Right there at the edge, huh?

Andy Cruse:
Yeah.

Mark Lamberth:
Awesome. Well great to have you with us today, Andy. You guys have been at this looks like since around 2018 or so. You talked a little bit, you’ve got a crew around 10 or 12 folks right now. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about just the history of the business and where you guys are at right now.

Andy Cruse:
Alright, well I’ve been in and out of painting since 2002. I got out of the military and didn’t know what I wanted to do and so I got hooked up with a painter and started painting and then I painted for a few years. I absolutely hated it and so I tried to do everything else, but I’ve been a teacher, I’ve been a pastor, I’ve done environmental surveys after the oil spill. I mean, I’ve just done a lot of different things, but I always came back to painting.

Andy Cruse:
Even whenever I resigned from my job in ministry, they asked me, what are you going to do? I said, I don’t know. I might paint, but I’m going to try to find anything else. So I ended up getting back into painting because I had more important things driving me than what I wanted to do. I had a wife and two children whose life I threw into chaos whenever I quit my ministry job. And so I went, fell back into painting and I struggled for the first couple years getting people to anyone to help work with me just because I find most people in the construction field, a lot of ’em, if they’re not already entrenched somewhere, the majority of ’em are not dependable. Oh is okay. I’ve been able to over the past couple years, over the last two, three years to really find, develop and train a crew of about 12 people or so. So we got about three or four crews running depending on how I divide ’em up and what we have going on.

Mark Lamberth:
Interesting. Yeah, I know that’s been a big sticking point for a lot of the folks we work with and just the trades in general. Why do you think that is? Why is there such a shortage of guys? I mean is it because coming out of 2008 housing crisis and just housing has never really caught up. I mean why is there such a shortage of labor out in the trades right now?

Andy Cruse:
I mean I think that there’s several reasons, and again these are just opinions of mine. One is I think that there was such a push to go to college that a lot of people are like, we don’t need to go into the trades. We’re going to go to college and then get a good job.

Andy Cruse:
And so I think a lot of people did that route and I myself as well, went to college, got a degree, I’m not using it. And also I find what I have found, this isn’t everywhere. Most of the contractors, painters that I’ve ran into one are not dependable or two, they couldn’t really get jobs doing anything else. They’re like, well, lemme go into the trades or I need something. And so they show up to do general labor one day. And I mean this isn’t all the trades, but I find around here a lot of people in the trades, a lot of people in campaigning especially just unreliable, they just gig work. They don’t want anything. They just want to be able to make enough money to get by for now to support whatever habit they’re stuck in the middle of.

Mark Lamberth:
Oh, interesting. Right. Okay, got it. Well, looking at your site, I saw that the services that you guys offer include interior cabinet and exterior painting, but also fireplace doors, shutters, lime washing, curious about that,

Mark Lamberth:
House power washing, concrete power washing, you guys offer a whole set of services there. I mean they’re different. The cabinet paintings can be different than exterior painting. How have you been able to build a crew of 12 people that are interested enough in learning the different aspects? Because I mean there are a lot of different things that you guys are doing here for your community. I mean, what has worked for you to actually find and sort of recruit trained and especially retain the crew that you do have now the 12 people that are on your crew?

Andy Cruse:
Well, I think a lot of it came out of whenever I finally did find a couple people that were reliable, that were decent people because that’s what I’m looking for. Decent people first and then I can teach you how to paint, I can teach you what we need to do, but if you’re a good person, decent person, I can trust you. Let’s begin that relationship. And so when I found a pair of brothers and they were working with me day in and day out side by side, all of our hands are in the brushes. We’re getting dirty together, we’re learning together. I am training them as we’re going along. And really through that process I’ve just kind of replaced myself in the field a lot of it. The other day one of my guys, he came up to me and we’re going out of town for Thanksgiving and I said, is there anyone on the team who you would trust to stay at my house while we’re gone to watch my animals? And he said, yeah, I would trust this person. And I said, alright, that’s fantastic. And he goes, and I’ve told everyone, do not lie to him. Always be honest with him because he’s a good boss. And so that’s something I try to maintain. I show up, I see everybody every day. I make sure I pay him on time every Monday morning, I’m there, I’m there paying everybody. And I find that’s huge because a lot of people I find have been burned by contractors just

Mark Lamberth:
Not getting paid comes payday time and the money’s not there, their check bounces, whatever.

Andy Cruse:
Yeah, exactly. And so I think that goes a lot of it. And then whenever I show up on a job site, I try to keep it fun and lighthearted because I remember being on a job site worrying about the job is going to show up and I’m on pins and needles and I don’t want people to feel like that. I want ’em to enjoy what they’re doing. I give them a lot of anonymity. I have my lead in place, we brief each other on the jobs and then I just let ’em go about it, whatever they, I’ll speak into, Hey, I feel this is the best process for this, but what are you and your team comfortable doing? And so I’m not there micromanaging and I find that that helps with employee satisfaction. They have a sense of ownership because they were involved in that decision process of how to go about doing the project.

Mark Lamberth:
Okay, great. And maybe I can just dig in and ask you a couple more questions about taking notes here regarding sort of how to trust folks. I mean it seems like that’s really what this comes down to, especially when you’re giving this autonomy on the job site and you don’t want a bat apple on your crew that’s going to bring everybody else down. So I mean regarding sort of finding people that you can trust, I mean your man of faith, ministry background, what are the different places that work for you? Just some ideas here for our listeners of where to actually find people that you can trust. Where did that come from?

Andy Cruse:
I don’t really know how to answer that question. I think I was very fortunate with meeting the brothers that I met before then I was working with different people who burned me and then I met one guy who knew the brothers and he introduced me to them. And so I think relationships really that networking someone who knows someone. And so pretty much all the employees I have now have come referrals from other employees. They call me, Hey boss, I got this guy needs a job. Are you hiring?

Mark Lamberth:
Interesting. So sort of started with some folks that you really just felt great about. Maybe those were referral and then you’ve grown the team actually by a referral from the people that are already on the team?

Andy Cruse:
Yes.

Mark Lamberth:
Great. I

Andy Cruse:
Love it. Yeah, everyone who works for me has been a referral from someone else on the team.

Mark Lamberth:
Interesting. And that’s just an interesting strategy. I mean I’ve heard of folks recruiting, I dunno from within, promoting people up from within and then asking folks, the first way of recruiting new team is to literally ask everybody on your team, Hey, who do you know that would fit in here well, and then you’ve got that, there’s kind of a trust piece and there’s also a piece where the current people that are on your team get to have their friends there and they get to have this kind of built in social scene that works really well for them as well.

Andy Cruse:
I think, or three or four of them. The two brothers are still there and they had two buddies and they’re all roommates. Just enjoy being around each other, enjoy working together. So I think I’ve been very fortunate to find the people that I have and I put a lot of trust and faith into them and also I try to treat them very well and pay them more than anyone else would because I’ve told ’em, I said, when you guys, I will pay you more than what someone else will because what that does, it gets me out of the field and I get to spend more time with my wife and children

Speaker 3:
And

Andy Cruse:
That is more valuable to me than they’ll ever know is being able to free up that time, being able to, whenever I was in the brush, I was working 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I remember one day my wife, she came to me, she goes, Andy, it’s not fair that you’re working on the weekends. It’s not fair to me. It’s not fair to the kids. And that really hit me hard. Now it’s like I just overpay him. Sometimes if there’s a little extra, I’ll be like, I’ll overpay him. I had one guy come me and go, you need to stop paying overpaying us because you’re going to underbid a job and then what you’re overpaying us could cover that. I’m like, no, you guys are freeing me up to spend time with my family and that means more to me than this money that I’m paying you.

Mark Lamberth:
Amazing, amazing. I looked at your moving on to some of your strategies, curious to learn a little bit more about your sales process and how folks find you guys. We did some research and looked and I noticed that you’ve got more or less are maybe 100% perfect Google reviews, perfect Facebook reviews and as I’ve talked about with some other guests, it’s not only five stars or your Google reviews, but it’s the content of the reviews as well. I mean folks going in and just really clearly going out of their way to talk about what a great team you guys have sharing photos of the jobs of their houses or interior cabinets and whatnot. It sounds like that’s a lot of word of mouth that happens for you guys. Do you have any other channels for how you reach out to bring strangers into your world here for your company?

Andy Cruse:
I mean primarily it’s word of mouth. I know that’s not the best advertising and as a marketing guy, I know, I think it was one of your episodes I listed talked about how word of mouth isn’t necessarily the best advertising, but it has worked for me and I’ll do a Facebook campaign here or there every now and then. I don’t really know if, I mean this would be marketing a little bit, but I have a mother-in-Law who volunteers with a nonprofit and they hosted a golf tournament, and so I took three of our clients on me to the golf tournament and we spent today playing golf in this golf tournament. That was a lot of fun just being able to rewards the right word, but just thank a few of our customers for that. I try to maintain, I think it’s really about relationship. I typically build a relationship with our clients and then it just kind of takes care of itself from there.

Mark Lamberth:
Fantastic. Something I noticed about your website is that it’s simple, but I mean I look at a lot of websites and I love when a site is simple, but it’s got all of the right kind of components to it and taking a look here, I mean it’s Andrew Cruse painting.com, but it’s really great. I mean I imagine you get kind of an outsized amount of traction from the website for actually how simple it is and how direct and clump clean it is, right? It’s got great photos of your work, simple navigation. I was curious, the chat now button at the top, if someone clicks on that, does that go to someone that actually answers that chat live or is that something may get back to them in a few hours or the next day?

Andy Cruse:
To be absolutely honest with you, I have no idea. Okay.

Andy Cruse:
I got onto our website a little bit before this and I saw that chat now button. I was like, I don’t know if anyone’s ever actually pressed that or what it does. Got it. All I know is we paid Ghost site to make a website and it has generated traction for us at a customer of mine who we’ve built relationship, and that’s how he found us was our website and the fact that I answered the phone. A lot of times people just, they don’t answer the phone or they don’t call back, and so the website has been a good source of leads for us as well. Now I do receive, maybe it’s from the chat now button. I will, every now and then I’ll receive a notification, an email saying, so-and-so wants to talk to you about a project, but if it’s instant or chatow, I really don’t know. I know that’s not the best answer.

Mark Lamberth:
Sure. Otherwise mean the phone number that’s on the site, that’s the top right there, which is great. Where it should be, I mean that goes directly maybe ports through directly to your cell phone. I mean,

Speaker 3:
Just

Mark Lamberth:
Curious about how that process goes if someone gets in touch on the site that goes directly to your phone?

Andy Cruse:
Yeah, it goes directly to my phone. It is actually a Google business number, but I have an app on the phone and my phone just rings. It would like if it was someone calling my personal cell phone.

Mark Lamberth:
Okay, sure. Great. So I imagine it’s got your hours right there, open today, eight to 5:00 PM So during those hours, and again, just curious, we’re always curious about how strangers find businesses that we’re talking to because I mean that’s really what this is about, right? How do folks find you and how does the sales process kind of work? And you’ve definitely got some things figured out. Well, so it sounds like during business hours you’re pretty committed to picking up the phone and so whether it’s new customers who have not really heard of you guys or just starting the relationship or even any kind of service call or an existing customer’s got a question or job’s going on, they’re going to reach you and be able to connect with you there,

Andy Cruse:
Right? Yes. Yeah, I mean, and just probably most people in this world, I have my phone in my pocket pretty twenty four seven. Even if it’s after five, I receive a text message or something, I’ll respond or I’ll answer the phone. You just never know who’s calling. I like that may be a potential customer. I need to answer this

Mark Lamberth:
Regarding your Google reviews and how robust those all are. I mean, did you have a campaign of getting in touch with your customers and say, would you guys be willing to review us or do you have a system of building reviews or has this just kind of happened completely organically from the work that you guys have done out in the marketplace?

Andy Cruse:
I’d say it’s 90% of it’s just been organic. I’ve had a few people where they’ve said, Hey, this is amazing. I’m like, would you mind leaving me a review and I’ll send them the link to leave a review, but 90% of ’em are pretty much organic and I know I should, but I typically don’t ask for reviews either.

Mark Lamberth:
Sure. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean that says all the great things because I think you’ve got 15 reviews there. We talked to companies that got a lot of guys out in the field and they just have got very few reviews. They’ve got say four or five reviews and they’ve never really, people haven’t gone on and giving them that review cred, so to speak. And so it really says a lot about the quality of the work that you guys do to have that number out there in the market.

Andy Cruse:
One review on there, this is a review I asked for and I was this, this is going to sound ungrateful and bad, but I was disappointed with the review because I think it was very bland and generic when he was anything, but when earlier that day when I was at his house, looked at, we painted a staircase, we painted the swindles white, the stairs black. I mean, this was my passion piece of his project. It was the whole wow. Inside and out. I did the stairs and we’re standing there looking at the stairs. He goes, man, that looks like a piece of art. And he just goes on. I’m like, that’s the review I want. And then it was review I got

Mark Lamberth:
Was

Andy Cruse:
Generic. Oh no. I was very disappointed, but I ended up taking ’em golfing anyway.

Mark Lamberth:
Yeah, yeah. Right, right. Hilarious. It’s hard to ask ’em to go back and rewrite. Could you go back and make it a little more interesting, that review you made?

Andy Cruse:
Yeah.

Mark Lamberth:
That we’re too excited by your staircase another, yeah, funny. So you guys are in kind a, I don’t know if it’s an extreme environment, but I mean there in Pensacola, you’re right on the ocean, there’s a lot of humidity. It’s hot. Yes. Do you guys have to take special, do you approach the work differently of painting, exterior painting or even interior with all the salt in the ear and everything else?

Andy Cruse:
Absolutely. It goes into the different products we use and it goes in also, it can get very hot and if you’re painting outside the wall surface, your painting can be well over a hundred degrees and as soon as you put the paint on, it’s drying and that is not good. Paint takes time to dry properly to cure properly, and if it’s flash drying, it’s not one, it’s not going to adhere correctly and it’s going to look terrible. And so we have to schedule around the sun as well, work in the chase, the sun around the house, so to

Mark Lamberth:
Speak. Oh, no kidding. Okay.

Andy Cruse:
Interesting. Because it’s too hot. We have started earlier and just take precautions when it comes to hydration, that’s very important. You can be out there and be a hundred some degrees and it just plenty of breaks and not necessarily environmentally, but even yesterday we’re working on another staircase, a different staircase. We’re painting it black like the other one, and we’re priming with oil. And I walked into the house and I could smell the oil fumes as soon as I walked in and I got onto them about, Hey, you guys need to be taking breaks. Do not. I said, I’m not going to push you get done fast. I’m going to push you to be safe, and so take breaks. I opened up doors and windows. They were just sitting there breathing these fumes in.

Mark Lamberth:
Oh

Andy Cruse:
Man. Whether it’s interior, exterior, there’s always factors that need to be considered into every project, even if it’s raining, if it’s raining hard, and even inside, if they don’t have good humidity control, your paint can sag and run and just not have a good end product.

Mark Lamberth:
Okay. Do you guys have to deal at all with the salt? I mean, does the salt and the breezes and stuff, I mean, does that affect things or We wash, peel or shorter amount of life

Andy Cruse:
Of the paint coat. We wash all of our exteriors before we paint ’em because of that salt, because of the salt air, the salt that dries on and dirt whatnot. But yeah, I’d say the life of the paint out on the beach, it’s not very long. A couple years at the most because that sun will just destroy paint that goes into it. I use higher end products because of that so that they’ll last longer.

Mark Lamberth:
Okay. Yeah. I noticed you had talked a little bit about, let’s see here, urban bronze SW 70 48. Is this a color or is this sort of a type of paint work with,

Andy Cruse:
It’s a color with, it’s a Sherwin Williams color. It’s like a dark charcoal type of a color I believe, if I remember

Mark Lamberth:
Correctly. Okay. Okay, cool. I saw on some of your posting, you talked about a tiny house village going up on Pensacola’s West side.

Andy Cruse:
Yeah.

Mark Lamberth:
You guys were involved in, tell me about that project and why that is exciting for you.

Andy Cruse:
Well, the church I used to work at was really big into foster care, and so we had a bunch of families who, they would foster children that were in the foster system. And so independent of that, one of the contractors, general contractors I do a lot of work for, he builds a lot of custom homes in Pensacola. He called me up and said, Hey, we have this seven, I think it was seven or eight tiny houses that we’re building, and it’s all for foster kids who are too old for foster care to give them a transition period somewhere to live while they figure out their next step. And it was just a neat, rewarding project knowing that we were contributing to something to where people who are in the foster system, when they get too old for the foster system, they had a place to transition, a place to go to transition. And it was, I want to say the contractor who I did it for, he was like the president of that board. And they do a lot of things around Pensacola to help the community. Unfortunately, we’re their painter, and so we get to partner alongside them with it.

Mark Lamberth:
Awesome. So is that exterior, interior, the whole thing? It was both,

Andy Cruse:
Yeah. All the houses were brand new construction, and so the inside the outside, we did it

Mark Lamberth:
All. That is amazing. It’s not every day that we as business people get to do something that feels just really good for the community, and it’s really neat to just be able to have people call you up and say, Hey, listen, we’re working on this project. It really fits in line with your values and the work that you’ve done in the past and stuff, and can you come over and help us with this? And then you have the resources and the ability to come in and say, we’re going to help you with this and make this happen.

Andy Cruse:
Right. Yeah, it was rewarding. And then just seeing, knowing that they’re full of people who need that resource, and we were able to help with that.

Mark Lamberth:
That’s fantastic. Well, fantastic. Andy, our listeners are contractors at different stages, some mid six figures, some seven figures, most trying to grow the business in one way or another. Do you have any thoughts or any tips around folks wherever they’re at with their business journey, one or two secrets or tips that you figured out in your journey of business so far that’s been helpful for you to get to where you’ve gotten to so far?

Andy Cruse:
I’d say people, finding those people that you can trust to basically carry the company, so to speak. I mean, yeah, I started it, I run it. I do all the bidding, but without the employees, with their hands in the brush doing a great job, we wouldn’t survive day to day. There was one general contractor, they contracted us, they do custom homes, and they asked me to give them some bids on some homes, and I gave ’em some bids and they came back. They said, Andy, you’re a little high for us. Maybe we will look at a relationship down the road. And I pushed back a little bit and I said, well, what’s your budget to begin with? And they told me a budget, and I said, we will do it for your budget because I want to show you our value. We’ve been in relationship with them for almost two years now.

Mark Lamberth:
No kidding.

Andy Cruse:
So I’d say it’s really relationships and treating your people well and ensuring that they are equipped to properly do the job and if not being there to support them because no one wants to be frustrated and feel like they’re doing terrible job.

Mark Lamberth:
Interesting. And in the story you just told, so you guys came in a little bit higher price, which we actually love to see that contractors charging what they’re worth, and they got a little pushback about that, and they said, we didn’t know the price is high. And you said, hold on. I want you to see the value. And so you brought your people, your team, and those folks came in and started working with this other company, and they were able to see just the quality of your people and that conveyance of trust having trustworthy people really conveys. And so because of that, once they got exposed to the way you do it and the folks that are working on your team, then you’ve established this longer term relationship and it sounds like it feels great these days with those guys.

Andy Cruse:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s fantastic. We’re wrapping up two projects for ’em today. It’s been a great relationship. Fantastic.

Mark Lamberth:
Great. So Andy, if folks want to get in touch, want to learn a little bit more about what you guys are doing, if they’re down in Gulf Breeze in Pensacola area, need an interior painter, what’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Andy Cruse:
Email Andrew Cruse painting.com or my cell phone.

Mark Lamberth:
Okay. Fantastic. Cell phone’s on the site and the website is Andrew Cruse painting.com, so Andrew, and then Cruse is C-R-U-S-E painting.com.

Andy Cruse:
Even our Facebook page as well.

Mark Lamberth:
Okay. Facebook page as well, which has got a lot of great, really current photos of great work that you guys have done also.

Andy Cruse:
Great.

Mark Lamberth:
Thank you. Perfect. Well, fantastic. Andy, thank you for being on today, teaching our listeners some different things about retention and how to grow the business by focusing on people and just doing great work in your community, getting great reviews and growing the business by word of mouth.

Andy Cruse:
It’s been really

Mark Lamberth:
Helpful.

Andy Cruse:
Yeah, thanks.

Mark Lamberth:
Okay. Well, Linda there man. Thank you. And have a good rest of your day. You too. Thanks. Okay.