Keys to Scaling Your Sales w/ Tara Riley, President of Fresh Coat Painters

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Welcome to She Sells Radio if you live anywhere in North America it is

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extremely likely that you have heard of the brand Fresh Coat Painters and today

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I am so excited to bring you Tara Riley who’s been president of Fresh Coat since 2014.

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And she and I were just starting to talk about background and experience and I said oh my gosh hold on we gotta

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hit record because you are going to be so blown away as you listen to her background and what got her to where she

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is she has over 30 years of executive management and operations experience and

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what I’m really excited to dig into today is how to create profitable growth and scaling at every stage of your

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business and so without further Ado welcome to the show we are so excited to

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have you here today and I know this is going to be an amazing conversation I know I’m gonna get to learn a lot our audience is going to get to learn a lot

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so thank you for being here well thank you so much for inviting me uh like as I mentioned you know I really enjoy your

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podcast and you have just had an amazing group of women on your show in the past

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I hope I can just add just another little smidge to join with that amazing

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group so yeah no I know you will and um and this is fun too because it’s not

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every day you get to speak to the president of a company as large as Fresh Coat and what was when we were talking

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in the chat ahead of time you started to say something and I was like wait stop we’ve got to hit record

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because this is probably someone with some excuse me something that someone would not expect to know about you so I

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think you called yourself an Accidental Tourist of your career I want to hear a

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little bit more about your background what got you here uh sounds like this maybe wasn’t always the plan your whole

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life so give us the back story yeah um I think I mentioned uh when if

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you had asked me when I was in high school like most people do Tara what do you want to do when you grow up I would

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often answer the question I don’t know anything but business no I clearly

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didn’t understand what business was I really thought at that time now I truly did think I wanted to be an engineer or

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a veterinarian wasn’t quite sure um went to school by the way with um now

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I chose a school that had had strength in um both engineering and Veterinary

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thank God they also had a really good business college too so because that’s what I ended up graduating in a few

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years later yeah but um yeah so that’s why I always said you know I didn’t I I didn’t really have a

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strong plan when I was a young person some I always admire people who and I had friends who just knew what they

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wanted to do they were very driven towards that and seemed to accomplish a lot of things in fact it always made me

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feel a little inadequate at the time like you know I wouldn’t give myself the grace of saying you know sometimes you

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just don’t know what you want to do right away but I did so much pressure yeah there’s so much pressure so I get I

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was like you I didn’t know so I’m I’m totally getting what you’re saying right now yeah it was I and you know the pressure

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I I you know I remember looking back and I remember we had to do this career day and to me it was like I had to make this

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huge decision in my life and I had to decide what I wanted to be and I’m thinking you know I love if you you can

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actually if you look at my hobby list I’ll tell you my hot I I don’t necessarily have a single hobby I have my hobby is activity it’s like constant

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like physical activity just constantly being is doing different experiences it’s it’s

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um doing things I certainly if over the years have had some really you know Hobbies I focused on but you know to me

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it’s about being able to experience lots of different things and so yeah the idea of locking yourself into a career in

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college and things when you’re what 16 or 17 years old just is not feasible

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um I don’t think but um for sure you were thinking okay as long as it’s funny

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too you said veterinarian I was literally talking to my husband this morning that I wanted to be a vet for so long and then I

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saw what you had to do as a veterinarian in terms of the medical care and that

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for me was okay I’m ruling that one out not a blood and guts type of person but still didn’t know for a long time so for

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you though it was just anything but business right after that moment yeah yeah

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and what I the funny thing is at that time um I was when I was in high school I

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started working when I was young I my friends but mostly my friends were working at McDonald’s so I went to work

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at McDonald’s um in high school and then when I went off to college I needed a good part-time job that could

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you know get me some you know some spending money and help out and I already knew the McDonald’s world so

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there I I just went down to the closest store and said hey I’ve got experience and kept working for McDonald’s and uh

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certainly at that moment in time the idea of making that a almost 20-year

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career was not on my mind and I wasn’t even in school for business at the time so but I think

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one value that my parents gave me was to always do your best and whatever you do if you’re going to do something just do

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your best you know that was something my parents always asked of me and say if you’re going to do something just give it be willing to give it your best and

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so I just took that into whatever I did you know it and it didn’t matter if I was working the night shift at

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McDonald’s I was going to do my best at it um and it was uh you know it was funny I

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remember they kept promoting me and I wasn’t I wasn’t asking for promotions I’d be like I remember one

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time I got a paycheck now this was a valued lesson in leadership and communication I got a paycheck one time

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with a raise on it and I’m like what was this raised I call it the store manager and I’m like Kathy I got a raise

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oh yeah when we tell you we promoted you oh my gosh okay

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I mean it’s it’s a I guess it’s nice to find out on the paycheck but probably would have been good for you to know a

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little bit ahead of time that’s crazy yeah you know why why I got and what are you expecting of me now that you got me

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this nice promotion thank you it’s like funny so you were so in my in my

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research you were doing at some point you were on the corporate side with McDonald’s is that right so yeah tell us a little bit about that

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and then how that transitioned into uh to what you’re doing with Fresh coat now sure so yeah so I spent the first 10

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years or so working for McDonald’s owner operators uh franchisees so I can actually say now I’ve been enfranchising

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my entire uh career um 15 years old and on but uh when I finished up School uh

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the operator I was working for was selling the business um he was retiring and I had some

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connections and people were saying hey you should you should talk to um you know one of the regions and look

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at moving over to the corporate side uh so I had a really good Mentor at that time and he had a lot of connections and

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so he got me connected to and I literally diverse interviews I did an interview up in Portland I did an

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interview in the Atlanta region and was living in Texas at the time and so I ended up taking uh was offered a really

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nice position in Atlanta and moved to Atlanta worked in the Atlanta region uh what and

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when I went into that was what they call an area McDonald’s called field support which is working with McDonald’s owner

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operators to help them with their business and I was really blessed because right at that moment McDonald’s

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had really shifted from that role being a kind of what we would call an operations police you know just out

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there making sure all the standards to a true business coaching role and they were investing a lot of time and money

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into the idea of of the you know coaches being really working with the The

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Operators on getting out of their business what they wanted to not just are they following the standards and you

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know and are lighting the Arches every day right right and so that was part of the reason they were looking they were

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glad to hire somebody maybe from outside of the you know I wasn’t outside of McDonald’s but as weird as it sounds

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most Folks at corporate had grown up through the company stores so they would

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you know come into it was known as the corporate stores and worked their way up the ladder and and into franchise

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support what was appealing to me was I had worked on the franchise side and had a business degree and you know had

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earned that at that point so you know I had multi-unit experience at by that time

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um and you know that was something that I just brought to the table but I fell in love with it

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if I can just I want to pause you and ask you because I think this is really interesting so McDonald’s is known for

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operational excellence efficiency all of that what are like one or two of the top lessons you took from your time involved

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with that organization well it I mean certainly capacities

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um really understanding how and a couple things one was just knowing like okay

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you if you add another body to a lunch hour you’ll get more sales because if

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you can move cars through the drive-through faster or you can you know it was really understanding uh those

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efficiencies of knowing that you have to have you there’s only so much volume

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that you know that labor can produce right it’s not infinite like you know

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it’s not it that I started to realize is you have the customers trying to come in the door the faster you can serve them the more

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volume you can do in an hour that was one Revelation probably the biggest thing looking back though that and

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probably the most important thing was having the opportunity to hire and develop and lead a lot of people

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um I think that gets underestimated in the restaurant world but it was really

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the fact that you know by the time Honestly by the time I was 20 years old I had been hiring and developing people

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already in you know in a management capacity um and so you know if you ask me now

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looking back what were some of the greatest lessons I had and realizing that is a gift uh the gift of experience

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just and it was also realizing that you know the opportunity to hire so many

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people at you know young people especially in their first job uh you realize you know it’s very aspirational

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nobody comes to work trying to screw up by the way um it’s very few you know I I have yet

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to admit you know I probably employed thousands of people you know at different times and you know I can I can

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honestly tell you that although some people made mistakes and sometimes people would break rules and you know and they would have to be let go but the

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bottom line is I don’t think anybody ever got up in the morning going I’m just going to screw up today you know it’s a really important thing to

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remember right whether someone’s listening and they’re a solopreneur they’re leading a bigger team like it’s so easy to create stories in your mind

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about somebody’s intentions and I think just locking into that one belief system of no one is intentionally trying to

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screw up it doesn’t mean there won’t be mistakes yeah they’re all doing the best they can with what they have I think

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that’s really powerful yeah I also think that you also can recognize that sometimes when you see the mistake made

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it’s you can start to see that maybe it was a mistake in communication you know or understanding I had a young manager

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at work for me and um you know a very sharp guy and I mean he went on to work in the medical field I mean he was a

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student at a m and I remember one day we were he he was a ship manager and he

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just was not I’d come in and his shift would be a little wonky as I’d say you know the drive-through would be wrapped

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and some you know people would be out of position maybe two or three people standing around at the counter and yet the drive-through isn’t you know maybe

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one person over there and finally I was like at first I I told him I said hey move some of those people in the

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drive-through you know that was the first thing and then after it happened a couple times I started thinking he’s either not getting it or he doesn’t

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maybe he has a paradigm problem so I just asked him I said hey let’s think

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this through what percentage of our sales comes through drive-through now I will tell you that at that moment and

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during that hour of the day it was 75 okay maybe closer to 80. and he looked

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at me goes I don’t know maybe 30 percent and my light switch went off

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okay his decision making was based on that Paradigm and it was right if you

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thought that then what he was doing with where he was positioning people totally made sense and once he realized I said

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go go look at the numbers and tell me what you see and then his eyes got really big and he’s like oh I didn’t

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know you know wow but when I say that you know he wasn’t trying to you know he wasn’t like just not caring even he was

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making a decision based on flawed information yeah and you know that was a big lesson you you know I there’s a lot

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of them we could talk for hours about little lessons I picked up just from this era of my life for sure and I want

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to so we’ll we’ll fast forward a bit into Fresh Coat because I you’ve got so many good lessons about scaling and um

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and Entrepreneurship the one thing I want to just pull out that we didn’t talk about from what you said before and

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then we’ll kind of will zip into we’ll fast forward a little bit in the career in your career

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um is the idea of creating the capacity for what you want to create for the

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sales you want to create and I think this has been a big lesson for me and something that

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we work with the clients in our community on too is looking at okay you’ve got the sales goal or you’ve got this Revenue goal

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could you even take it on if you wanted to right now like are you ready and we

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talk about being a match for what you want from a mindset standpoint from an energy from a tactical standpoint and I

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think that’s something to always remember and I love how you said it like there you have to have the right people

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in the right roles in the right capacity to be able to take on even more so it’s just it’s helpful to hear you say that

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because that’s something we teach in just like a slightly different way in the community but I love what you said because it it’s so true that’s so true

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yeah absolutely I mean fast forwarding to our current our Fresh Coat owners yeah

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you know what start with what do you want to you know what do you want to take home from the business I mean

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that’s the way if you’re a business owner and you’re setting your goals the first thing you need to I always tell

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them start with your personal goals this is something I’ve noticed with small business owners especially

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solopreneurs um they it’s very difficult to separate the two it tends to be all you know your

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life and your business and all of your finances just get so intermingled so true and I often will say okay stop step

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back for just a second set the business aside what do you and your family need

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um or what do you want what do you absolutely need first of all you know because sometimes we get nutted up because we’re scared or I can’t even you

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know maybe I’m not earning enough in my mind you know um so start with that you know what’s

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the minimum you need and now forget that what is it you really want because that’s the most important favorite

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question yeah yeah talk to I mean and what’s aspirational I mean you know what

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you know and look out five years where do you want to be and I remember and then using you know I I’m a Believer in

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visual affirmations I had a franchise owner and she and her husband wanted to be retired and living on a boat

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we’ll get a picture of the boat you know yes put it in your office and you know

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what she hit that goal you know it’s like it’s great that that you know those are the kinds of things so then you have

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to say Okay can but can I take it on so what does your business look like so if you want x amount of income right

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then the business has to be able to do you know the the revenue to drive that so let’s work our way backwards so start

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with tell me you know what is the income level you want let’s talk about you know using this business model what are you

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going to need in sales to hit that and then you can really there’s a math formula working your way

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back right you know it’s you know if you’re a salesperson and you want to hit a certain goal you know I’ve got to make

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certain number of calls I’m going to have first of all I have to do a certain number of deals same thing in you know painting right we’re going to have to do

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a certain number of projects for the year at a certain you know dollar amount in order to make the kind of money you

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want to make in this business right and now we know all right well if we’re going to do that many projects we’re

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going to have to have a certain number of painters you know one painter can’t just infinitely do a million dollars in

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painting right you know it could if it was a really good painter and uh you know just uh did works of Fine Art and

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could sell them for a million dollars then right probably one painter but there’s you know there’s sort of a natural capacity for how much you know

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high quality painters can do and Achieve quality levels right so we as we work

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our way back into that you know the idea is now to say okay

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and then how many people can you how many leads are you know how many customers are you going to have to acquire how many sales are you going to

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have to do and there’s a capacity there too because you’re out in homes right so you’re going to be out there visiting

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with the customer understanding what their project is building trust there that takes time right so it turns out

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that one person can’t do all of that I think probably you know going back I

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learned that I had 24-hour stores you know you can’t be there 24 7 you have to rely on other people so it goes back to

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with Fresh Coat, you know there’s it’s really about okay now I need to hire and Empower

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people to run certain you know parts of the business I need sales

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people I need you know obviously we need high quality painters um you know and and how do we help

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improve their how do we improve that talent pool right so there’s all kinds of questions out there but that is

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uh that’s business right so you can’t you know the art of business is really putting together a machine that that has

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all these parts in it that you know can ex basically say hey I I can fulfill the

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need um and then then it’s a question of how much can you do in a period of time and

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you need people which is part of why for somebody listening if they’re an entrepreneur visionary

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they have to sooner than later have someone on their team who can help with

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that structural element it’s so important and we talk a lot on this show about the mindset piece and vision peace

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and expansive thinking and it’s like yes yes yes and you’ve got to have the

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structure and the support underneath that and the infrastructure to grow so I

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want to speak to I want to have a deeper dive conversation Tara into scaling and

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what that looks like along the way and along different Revenue marks before we do so before we go any further there I

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want to just quickly ask about what it was like for you to become president of this company and you know we were

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talking uh before we hit record two about I’m assuming male dominated in many ways now

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you said a lot of your top you know franchise owners and sales reps are women which I love but we have so many

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women listening who are whether they’re in sales or whether they’re entrepreneurs they’re in male dominated Industries it’s a big conversation

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something they’re looking for support around you know how do I like how do I navigate this feeling kind

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of different from a lot of my colleagues so what was that experience like for you and um and how have you kind of how have

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you navigated that um you know certainly we’re in the trades um I think most people would

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would argue that the trades are male dominated like you said but you start looking at residential painting you I

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start thinking about who our customer is uh and you know in our home services

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businesses of any kind in general with customers or women um quite honestly so

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so you know I think the mistake a lot of businesses make whether you know their

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trades franchise business whatever is we get caught up in um the operation of the business when

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when you really need to be focused on your customer ah and who’s your customer and can you think like your customer I am our

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customer I you know I’m probably the exact profile of our customer I’m a busy professional I like I like my stuff to

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be nice and maintained and I’m not doing it myself um now once upon I you know I when I was

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younger I you know I tried to do lots of things myself and realized a couple things one was my time is valuable two

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I’m not as good at it as professionals are um and I started to learn very quickly

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that I you know I learned an appreciation for professional you know how valuable a good professional is

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um and um the um I will tell you that

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but that’s part of it is thinking about who the customer is and if the customer is female or the primary customer is

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female then that makes a big difference now we’re still in a male dominated trade now especially on our business to

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business and the commercial side um there’s a you know working with big General Contractors it is I I think it’s

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about um again you’re focused on solving the problem and providing service

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um I don’t think that’s gender specific um and I think I was I think another

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thing I was blessed in I was a bit of a tomboy growing up and I had a lot of um my neighborhoods just seemed to be

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had a lot of guys in it and I I don’t know it was always very um easy for me to be fluid in that so

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I’ve um I guess and you know and I was blessed again a blessing for McDonald’s

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McDonald’s was very diverse a lot of women executive so I had I think I had

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the blessing of having some really good role models throughout that career when I first went to Atlanta our regional

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manager was a very powerful and successful woman and uh you know and so

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it was nice to have those Role Models so I never I guess I just never felt like

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that um I guess and people would talk about a glass ceiling at McDonald’s and I’m like

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what are you talking about you know um and it I think if you I think we

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create sometimes we create our own mindsets around that I think that’s probably women are probably we’re probably worse about

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creating the mindset um and limiting ourselves I mean I think

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there are some real limitations out there that we have to understand and and um you know overcome I think uh I think

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in fact one of your guests prior guests was talking about confidence in women you know how even as inadvertently as

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children we’re told not to do certain things we’re we’re bossy if we if we try to direct people or lead we’re bossy

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um whereas young young boys my age you know that was what that’s what you’re supposed to do right you know I mean you

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know it’s all those little uh maybe subtle social things that we all but we

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all faced it I mean and there’s yin and yang to everything whether you’re female or male we all have our own baggage to

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carry I think and I always just focus that wanted to focus on you know what are the advantages of what I bring into

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the table I remember one time we shifted teams uh and this was in a you know obviously prior to this role and it just

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randomly I ended up being the only woman on the team so I walked in sat down and said well I’m sorry you guys are outnumbered [Laughter]

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it was kind of my attitude towards it they all they all cracked up and but you know and I was but my dad was a golfer

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so I mean one thing that was a blessing for me my mom and dad both golfed and I learned to go I one of my earliest

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memories was about three years old being on a golf cart with my parents so I play golf and you know in the corporate world

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that was a blessing um you know and you know what the guys invited me to as soon as they found out

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I played golfer like oh great come on out and yet then I’d have women telling me in in the same office like well

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there’s a glass ceiling because the guys play golf I’m like um okay it’s all your perspective like

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one of the biggest and I I agree with you I’m always just so curious to hear different people’s perspective on here

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and because everyone has a different experience right but it’s it is I think very much what are you going to focus on

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um and then so two things I’m taking away from what you said one and this is for specifically our women in finance

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who listen because we have a lot of women in finance yeah and insurance who listen what you said about well who’s

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your customer the buyer there is usually the if it’s a

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um male female couple It’s usually the woman right is the one who’s actually making the decision so that was really big and then two like you just from what

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I’m here you didn’t really see it as a thing you were like I’m gonna go in and I’m gonna be successful no matter what

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so I love that I love that so okay so let’s speak to you talk about how

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there’s different bottlenecks at different levels of Revenue growth

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um and one it sounds like one of your Genius areas is how to be profitable at every level level which again we’ve got

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people all over the map who are listening and so I think whether you’re listening and you’re a sales

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professional you’re still going to get something out of this in terms of mindset so listen um and or if you’re a an aspiring

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entrepreneur or an early stage entrepreneur I know we have women who listen who are in multi seven eight figures

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um as well I’d love if we could just speak to I know we don’t have a ton of time so I want to think about uh think

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about the highlights here let’s speak at a high level to

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what you say about um we talk about scaling capacity in bottlenecks and how they impact overall

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sales and just how we need to be thinking about it at different stages of growth and maybe we break it into like hitting your first seven figures then

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multi-7 then eight I’ll let you take that where you want to but yeah and that’s a good question the

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business every business model is a little different as to where they’re where the inflection points are and how much can one person generate right

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um and how much support do you need I mean even in pure sales you’ve got to have a good operations team or you know

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fulfillment team behind you at some point I think I you know I it depends um but for me it’s starting with the

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understanding that you you know is understanding what’s important to you time and money right so

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what’s the balance of time and money that’s important to you it starts there because

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um you have to um you know if if use all I I guess the

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barriers I’ve seen and I’ve mostly dealt with you know again um emerging entrepreneurs right because we

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have franchises listening yeah and it’s you know I think the first thing is you get to a point and you feel like the

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only way you can do more volume or you can do more profit is to work harder and

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if you’re thinking that you’re likely at a capacity ceiling

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and the bottom right Point okay especially if you’re pretty much a solo entrepreneur you and you have not yet

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um really started to hand off some of the management things I I start I think

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there’s like four I like to look at four stages one is you know the you know when you’re an emerging solo entrepreneur

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you’re basically I I listed as wao you’re working your ass off

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um you’re basically doing just about

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everything you may have like you know in a case of a Fresh Coat owner you’ve got some painters that you may not be doing the painting but you’re you’re going out

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you’re you’re doing the marketing you’re doing the sales calls uh you’re the production manager you’re the hiring and

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training manager and you’re the scheduler right you know so you’re out there uh and there’s only so much volume

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you can do before you really you’re giving up something because you still have to make sales calls somebody’s got

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to answer the phone I mean there’s right so the next step is really that you have to

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and you’re you’re working your butt off and you’re managing people you’re managing some people the next phase is

28:33

you really have to start managing managers right so you have to start getting some people who are going to manage parts of your business for you

28:39

you back yourself out um you know from you know we I I have a

28:46

little business molecuer on it but it’s you know the end is the finance side and the the the head the first hand is the

28:52

thinking side right your planning and strategizing uh then you have business acquisition you have um business

28:59

fulfillment and then your financial and data acquisition kind of uh I sorry

29:04

that’s way too much stuff to talk about here but no good it’s Supple just have a high level yeah but as as the owner of

29:10

the business you’ll never give up the strategy and thinking part of the business you should be farming off the

29:16

other sections of the business you know you know we highly recommend people you know I should I have a finance degree

29:22

but when I own when we owned restaurants I hired bookkeepers and accountants

29:28

right um our number one franchise owner who is a female uh comes from she came from the account she’s a master

29:34

accountant right but she still has other people do her accounting because she said Tara I I bought a painting company

29:39

so I wouldn’t have to do this yeah right because it’s you have to look

29:44

also with the what’s the value of that particular role as a business owner you need to value your time right you know

29:51

you’ve heard it you know you need to value your time at two three four five hundred dollars an hour you know whatever you want to achieve

29:58

um and you need to work at the highest value pieces so you know getting customers getting you know work

30:04

acquiring high quality Assets in your business whether that be people or Machinery whatever you need

30:11

um you know if if you know if I could hire when like I said when we own the restaurants I said if I if I I could

30:19

hire a bookkeeper for a couple hours a day fifteen dollars an hour and and lunch right you know right so if I said

30:26

oh well no I’m not going to hire that person then I was paying myself that to do that role that’s what you have to

30:32

think about right and do you believe Tara do you believe in hiring before you’re ready like okay talk about that

30:39

briefly because I know there’s different philosophies there well and that’s so it’s hard this is the hardest thing when

30:45

you’re and I think for for entrepreneurs and I’ve even had I’ve heard a business coach say well don’t hire them until you

30:51

can afford them and I’m like you can’t do that because you’ll never get there um would you have to realize is that

30:58

this every this is where the risk comes in and you you’ve got to say okay I’m

31:03

trying to achieve I want to get to this level and I can’t do it by myself so I have to invest in that person and that

31:09

capacity at the beginning and I think where the mindset comes in I think sometimes we

31:15

see that like if I’m going to hire you know somebody making whatever you know you know number that I feel like I’m

31:22

writing a check for that amount when you really have to break it down to no how

31:28

much does that person have to incrementally add to the business Weekly right right so if I’m going to hire I’ll

31:33

go out okay now I’ve been doing estimating and sales for my now I’m going to hire sales person to go out and do that and I’m going to focus on lead

31:40

gen or whatever you know and give myself a little more time in the business well then you know okay whatever that person

31:47

is going to earn is not one big lump sum they’re going to pay for themselves and that’s what you really have to look at

31:53

is is being able to understand okay what what incremental Revenue do I have to

31:58

get just to break even on this person okay great and you find and it’s when we do

32:04

the math with our owners you’re stunned it it really isn’t as huge of an amount

32:09

as you’d think and if that person then creates the production that they should

32:15

you’re gonna now your business is making more money and they’re making money you know it’s a

32:21

win-win that person now has a role ideally that they like love they’re making hopefully more money than they

32:28

were expecting to make and now your business is making more money yep and within my side yeah and and that’s I

32:34

think what I’ve run into over the years coaching business owners is that it’s hard

32:40

um now there’s also a risk because what if I hire the wrong person sure and they don’t succeed you know that’s probably

32:46

the big unspoken fears like so now am I confident in my hiring

32:52

um and I think what I’ve seen at least especially and like I said I worked in

32:58

you know with franchise owners a lot that’s where the big I think lack of

33:03

confidence or lack of experience can come in and I don’t trust myself to be

33:09

able to hire well and so now it’s really scary because I’m now going to turn over

33:14

one of the most especially like if I’m going to hire a salesperson I’ve been doing it I’ve been controlling that

33:20

that’s my income source and the first time I hire and hand that off to

33:26

somebody what if I’m wrong and it’s like turning the spigot off in my business I

33:31

mean you know and I I can see I I get but you’re also

33:37

at some point if you don’t hire that person you have no quality of life right right exactly

33:45

well and I think that’s helpful too to say what is this fear really about right

33:51

and go deep into it not just I feel some resistance around writing this paycheck every month but what is the fear really

33:58

about and um and examining that and then from there you can say okay I need some tools

34:03

and resources to know how do I hire a great sales person and maybe I should expect that sales are going to go down

34:08

for a little bit when I make that higher which is what I generally tell people you got to be prepared for them to go down before they go up so that’s yeah

34:15

you’ve got to be prepared for to take a little bit of a back step for a period of time and I think you know that’s

34:22

probably where the argument comes in are you ready you know if you need every dollar you’re taking in and you can’t

34:30

afford to backstep a dollar then you know then you’re not ready to hire somebody that’s for sure great Point

34:36

that’s a great Point um and that goes back to really what I was talking about in the beginning when you really sit down to set your goals

34:42

you need to look at okay what is it that I really need from the business you know

34:48

and and now you’re looking at a portfolio sometimes because of family you know maybe it’s in our case it may

34:54

be the you know the wife may be running the business a husband may be running the business um you know Partners may be running the

35:00

business whatever you know is there you know in every scenario is different is this the sole

35:06

income for the family uh or for you as an individual or do you have other sources of income

35:12

um so I mean there’s so many Dynamics there but when you when is assuming it’s your sole source of income

35:19

got to focus you got to turn around say where is it I really want to be right I

35:25

think it’s important to remember your long-term goal you know is

35:30

just to say because you’re not there’s levels you’re not going to get to without scaling and

35:37

that’s that goes back to when you’re you know again if you are giving every

35:43

inch of time that you can give and and most I’m going to tell you most people get into business for themselves

35:49

not because they want to make a lot of money necessarily I mean they everyone wants to make I mean we all want to make

35:55

a lot of money but it’s really to control time yes to have Independence freedom

36:00

and the problem is if you don’t create an organization that doesn’t need you you don’t have freedom

36:08

so true so you know you have to in order to really have freedom in business you

36:14

need to be able to walk away for two weeks and the business continues to operate

36:19

and generate income then you have a business because if you if you can’t do that then

36:24

you have a job such a good point it’s such a good point every cell opener is like oh I know the

36:33

new stages too right so there are stages that we go through but I think with that in mind of

36:38

what are you ultimately creating for yourself and are you always having the mindset of not being needed and

36:45

necessary in the business or are you letting things be contingent on you I know we’ve got just a couple minutes and

36:50

I know there’s two more spaces I think that you said right in the growth process so can you touch on those

36:55

briefly and then I want you to share where everyone can connect with you um I’m sorry in the growth process so I

37:03

think you said there were four different stages with like scaling and bottlenecks right so it’s really just yeah you know

37:08

so you know you’re an owner operator you’re you’re basically working a job every day that it happens to be self

37:14

you’re self-employed sure then you start to manage managers and then your leading managers which is

37:21

then so your or you can see as the organization is growing so now you know when you’re leading managers you’re

37:28

really sort of the CEO of your own business and now you’ve got you know directors or VPS whatever that are

37:34

running the different segments of your business and then the entrepreneur the Enterprise level the business is when

37:40

you’re leading leaders ah so so leading managers would be you know uh you know

37:47

so is I think if that’s the simplest way I can put it so you know really um you know do you graduate yourself to

37:54

the board of directors at some point you know is there a do you hire a CEO you know CEO of your business and you know

38:00

I’ve trans I’ve helped people transition through that I always say you know Fresh Coat, started with owner operators

38:06

and you know I mean the franchise and I said I’m a great example of the fact

38:12

that now they’re you know retired there’s they’re still owners but they’re not involved in the day-to-day because

38:17

guess what they hired a president they hired a you know a c-suite to

38:23

take care of the business for you and I think it’s really hard a lot of times for solo you know entrepreneurs in the

38:30

beginning to think well I could never do that well you might if you grow a large enough business

38:35

you know what and there are people that can you know out there that specialize in running it for you you know and but it goes back to

38:43

that first question so I think hopefully I answered that question that’s just you know those kind of for what we would call four stages and for every business

38:50

whatever business model you’re in there’s inflection points you know you

38:55

get to you’re if you don’t move over and change your and the hardest thing is I’m changing my role you know even in the

39:02

almost nine years I’ve been here at Fresh Coat my role has changed when I first got here I had a team of five or

39:09

six people and now we have a team of 22 people and you know I’ve gone through

39:14

some of those stages even with Fresh Coat, you know when I first got here I had to do a lot more heavy you know you know I

39:21

had to take on certain roles and because we just didn’t have enough you know we weren’t at the volume we didn’t have the

39:28

team yet and every time as we were growing we just kept investing in adding people

39:34

and what’s nice is the as you get to those levels those people get to specialize more you know in the

39:40

beginning you need more generalists in your business and that’s another little mistake I see

39:46

um we all make yeah is that you know we we need to hire we actually need to hire bigger and when we’re smaller

39:52

uh I need when you you’re first hire in small in a smaller business needs to be a more skilled person

39:59

when you’re bigger you can hire more entry-level people because you just need you have people who can specialize in

40:06

one thing or another but you need more generalists and and skilled people

40:11

in a smaller business and that’s a really hard thing for people to do because

40:16

um they generally come with a higher higher price tag oh my gosh yeah gosh gosh this is this

40:22

is so good I mean so many little things that are Paradigm shifts and perspective shifts and I think one of the biggest

40:28

things I’m taking away is always making a decision based on where you’re going and thinking about it that way and

40:34

analyzing through that lens so I think we’re gonna have to have you back to dive into more of this because this has

40:42

been so much fun I’ll come back anytime I feel like there’s so much more and we just kind of scratched scratched the

40:48

surface here um but this was amazing Tara can you please tell everyone if they want to connect with you or learn more about

40:54

Fresh Coat and the opportunity what the best way is to do that sure I mean uh to connect with me I probably best way is

41:00

to go through Linkedin Tara Riley um just you know plug in chair Riley and Fresh Coat, you’ll find me

41:07

um I’d love to connect with people I’ve always that’s just a fun thing if you’re interested in the opportunity that Fresh

41:13

Coat provides freshcoatfranchising.com is out there and by and by all means we’re always

41:21

open for business I’m going to tell you we have an amazing group of professionals out there of business owners that come from all walks of life

41:27

that are dedicated to providing professional painting Services

41:32

um and you know and we’re always open for business so freshcoatpainters.com if

41:37

uh like like you said earlier if you chances are somewhere in the country you’re living near a Fresh Coat and you

41:43

know you know we’re here to provide professional painting Services both in the residential and the commercial

41:48

spaces so absolutely absolutely well thank you so much Tara this has been

41:54

really really enlightening and like I said earlier perspective shifting in

41:59

terms of things we want to be thinking about and need to be thinking about as we grow and scale and so thank you again

42:05

for your time for your expertise it was so great to have you thank you I like I

42:11

said I’ve enjoyed getting to know your work a lot better and and thank you thank you for everything you’re doing

42:16

for women and women and entrepreneurs and sales folks out there and and and the guys too I’m sure they’re all

42:21

getting we’re all get out to our men there’s a lot of men who listen we love you that is by the way I will say I was

42:29

trying to tell somebody where I was going I’m like She Sells and it was like I was just on

42:35

the beach yeah right oh gosh I know I know it’s so funny I did not think about

42:40

that when I named the company and then when I go on podcast interviews I get a fair amount of that so awesome thank you

42:46

but yeah no so so good to have you so thank you again and to you my listener go connect with Tara on LinkedIn and let

42:54

her know what you loved about this episode I know there was so much wisdom and I’m always a big fan of when I can

43:00

accelerate the learning curve and not have to go through different experiences to learn what I need to learn in order

43:06

to achieve my goals like that is the Beauty and the value of connecting with incredible incredible leaders like Tara

43:12

so thank you as always for being a member of the She Sells Community thank you for listening to the podcast

43:17

remember to head over to elysearcher.com to check out more resources to help you

43:22

accelerate your sales, your abundance and your life and I will see you on our next episode. Bye for now.