The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Deep Dive: This Dude Quit His Job to Make $18K/Month With This… Ep. #99

Episode Date: December 2, 2024

In this episode, I sat down with Cinco Winston, the founder of True Line Striping TX (https://truelinestripingtx.com). Cinco shares his journey of leaving his W-2 job to starting a successful pavement marking business in Waco, Texas.We discuss his approach to finding clients, managing cash flow, and offering early discounts to build credibility. Cinco shares his strategies for pricing jobs effectively, the challenges of door-knocking for new customers, and the lessons learned from navigating the early months of running a business.Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytFree weekly business ideas newsletter: http://tkopod.co/p-nlAsk me a question on or off the show here: http://tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: http://tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: http://tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: http://tkopod.co/p-xShare this podcast: http://tkopod.co/p-allScrape small business data: http://tkopod.co/p-os---00:00 Highlights & Introduction06:07 Understanding the Business Model: Costs and Profits11:53 Navigating the First Jobs: Building a Customer Base18:15 Job Types and Revenue: Small, Medium, and Large Projects24:49 Building a Customer Base Through Networking30:52 Sales Strategies and Customer Acquisition36:13 The Challenges and Rewards of Business Ownership41:55 Scaling the Business and Future Plans

Had you even knocked a door when you quit your job? I gave myself about six months. Now the business has replaced my income that I had from that W-2. The first two months were we got to profitability within two months. I did a $6,000 job. What's going to be your profit on that $6,000 job? How many jobs have you had, give or take, so far? What has your revenue been?

Okay, so tell me about your business. Yeah, so I started true line striping, which is, a pavement marking company here in Waco, Texas. I just started it a few months ago. Oh, wow. Still fairly new to it myself. But yeah, and we provide new layouts and parking lot restripes primarily for businesses that are looking to enhance their curb appeal and stay compliant with all the fire codes

and ADA accessible codes and whatnot. Okay. So I got to know, like what made you even start thinking about this industry? because I would bet even like entrepreneurs like myself, 80, 90% of them don't even know this industry exists. So it's not like I from a young age grew up and just wanted to throw paint on the ground. It was more of a, hey, I want to own a business, what businesses are needed in my area sort of thing. And my background is in construction. So I wanted to do something that was construction adjacent.

I'd done residential and commercial building. So I feel like I had a decent enough experience working with different subcontractors. And there weren't. There's maybe, I would say, one big player in this market. But I really don't think it's a saturated market for line striping. Specifically in Waco or anywhere? Specifically in Waco. Here in Waco, I can go an hour and be in Temple Belt and Clean that whole market as well.

So essentially, I was actually looking at buying. a business. And so came across a franchise that was trying to sell a striping business here in Waco and went down that path for a couple months, realized, you know what, I think I can do this a lot more cheaply and have a lot more options down the road if I were to do it by myself. So ended up launching it myself. Okay. So you're the sole owner, sole founder. Yes. And you were doing construction beforehand, like as a W-2? Yes, yeah. So I was working my way from being an assistant superintendent

up to being a project manager, kind of with various different companies. But yeah, I was working under a general contractor. Okay. Did you have to quit that entirely to start this? Or did you, like, roll into it? I did not have to, but I did. There are some other line stripers that I know of across the country

who hold their W-2s. And my mindset is such that I feel like I wouldn't be able to do either of them very well if I was constantly being torn. And my W2 job, it was at least a 40-hour week job, you know. And so I feasibly I could have just done like organic marketing and gotten leads without me going door to door, which is a lot of what I've been doing as I am still pretty young in this business. I could have just let leads grow on their own, but I wanted to kind of hit the floor running and just launch and get after it and be able to dedicate the majority, if not all

of my week towards it. Good for you. I feel like that's so rare. I speak out of both sides of my mouth. So I wrote a newsletter a year ago. I remember I was in New York. It was like 3 a.m. I couldn't sleep. I went in the bathroom, pulled out my MacBook, and it was called Burn the Boats. And it was just talking about like when there's no plan B plan A just thrives right but that's hard that's hard to do like plan A has to work I've been forced to burn the boats twice because of once a part both honestly partnerships went bad and when you start 75 businesses you're going to have some bad partnerships and yeah that wasn't a willful decision like you made nonetheless like I only had one option left when that happened and like what I did after those moments were the two big

biggest and best things I've ever started. That's awesome. So yeah. Yeah. And definitely just kind of knowing my motivation, what gets me, gets me going, gets me out of bed and being able to to devote my time to this. And there was there was about, I get my employer about a month heads up. And I had even told him before then like, hey, just saying, no, I kind of have this

itch to go out on my owner, do my own thing. So he was aware. But there was a couple weeks overlap. And even that just like couple weeks overlap. I'm like, gosh, I feel so torn. But yeah, I'm glad that I'm able to devote all my time to this now. Yeah. And on the other side of my mouth, I always counsel people like, just do something.

Like go buy a domain, go find a customer. Don't quit your job. I use an analogy called the wing walkers code. You know, the guys that like walk across the airplane wings. And they hold like they never let go of a crossbar until they hold the one, the next one. And so I totally counsel people to do that because for 80, 90% of people, like, if they have to quit to start something, they're never going to start something. The next best case scenario is to do something now while you have your job, not just to de-risk, but to ensure that you actually do something. Yes.

Right. So it just depends on your situation. Yes. So I don't know if I would as a blanket statement would advise anyone to do this. Yeah. No. It sounds like very clickable to like take a. hard stance on one side or the other, but, you know, life is, is, lives in the gray area.

Right. So you didn't have any customers when you quit your job. Is that correct? That's correct. That's crazy. And what type of assets, what types of assets did you need to buy to launch and how much did those cost? So I bought a 16 by seven foot trailer that's enclosed.

And, and that was 7,000. and I bought that new. And I bought a line striper. So it's just a walk behind machine that has a spot where you can put five gallon bucket and a Honda motor and a pump. And that's how you actually apply the paint stripes. So that was about 10,000. Okay. So 16 by 7 foot, just like a box trailer.

Right? Like you'd rent from you all. So seven grand for that, 10 grand for the striper. That's brand new? Yes, yeah. Both those are brand new. And I use my personal truck. So you truck with a hitch, $17,000 worth of equipment, some paint, you're in business.

Yes. It's not bad. That's less than what I thought it would be. And I imagine you can surely finance a trailer, but could you finance the machine as well? Yes, you could if you wanted it. I was able to buy them outright. So I chose to do that route. But yes, you can finance both of those.

How much runway, like savings runway, did you have when you quit? I gave myself about six months. I told myself, you know, I'm not going to take money from the business for the first six months and give myself six months to build it up to where, okay, now the business has replaced my income that I had from that W2. And we're still within six months. And we're on track. The first two months were definitely better.

than expected. Wow. Yeah, we got to profitability within two months. So you're in month three right now? I'm in month three. Okay. Oh, I just love everything about this story. So your overhead, you don't have any payments.

I assume you don't have a payment on your truck. Correct. No payment on my truck working out of my house. Yes, my... I just know the type of guy that pays cash for a $10,000, you know, paint striper machine is the type of guy that doesn't have a loan on his truck. Exactly. Okay. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Right.

All right. So your margin is just your cogs is just the paint and your time, right? And I'm still building up. Stensils are another like upfront cost, but I try to build those into the quotes that I'm generating. So as I need a handicapped. And so I build that into the quote. But now I probably have $2,000 worth of just stencils now.

Okay. So stencil you buy once. and you can basically use forever? Yes. Okay. So your first handicapped job, you got to go buy a stencil for that and you should keep using it. Okay. How many stencils do you have?

And like what types? You have a no parking fireline stencil. You have the- Because we're in Texas. Handicap Man stencil. You have your number stencils, visitor reserve stencils. I needed to get a service one for this fast food restaurant drive-thru that I was doing.

You get all your directional error. rows. Yeah, you get some stencils. They're more like, they're not scrap stencils, but for your wheel stops, those are the ones that I have right now. Okay. You must drive around town and just look at parking lots, be like, oh, what a crap stencil job this guy did. Oh, I could buy that. That's a good looking stencil. I'm going to need that eventually. Okay. Yeah, all the time. Do you know, me and my wife, since I've started this, we say we're both parking lot snobs now. You're like, babe, we can't go. We can't go here. This stencil job is terrible. Exactly.

Yeah. The chicken must be bad too. Right. Okay. All right. So you quit your job and had you even knocked a door when you quit your job? When I told my boss, hey, I'm moving on to this. I had not talked to anyone.

And within that four month period while I was still working, of course, then I'm starting to get my name out and actually sold a couple jobs during that interim period or that overlapping period. And the first jobs that I sold, I sold them at a discount, told them what I'm doing. Hey, just starting out and honestly trying to build my Google review page. And since then, and I'd say maybe the first three to four weeks, pretty much all my jobs were discounted pretty heavily. Some of them were essentially at cost. If it's a smaller job, I only charged two or 300 bucks and that was essentially at cost for me. But then the others I'll do a 40% discount to where maybe I make a little bit profit or 20% discount. And then it's like, okay, now I'm like really

marketing, you know, and now I'm at the point where I'm not offering discounts anymore. I don't feel the need to. But yeah, so that that's kind of how I started out. Okay. So let's, I want to talk about how you got your first customers. But first, I want to talk about unit economics. So tell me what like a small, medium and a large job looks like both from a revenue and a profit and a time invested standpoint. Sure. So a small job would be like a gas station. So call it between five in 10 spots has one ADA stencil. So a lot of a lot of guys will do job minimums. And those minimums generally range from 300 to five or $600. So that's your minimum job. And in, And for that, so a five-gallon bucket of paint is around 150 bucks.

Jeez. So if you don't, if you already have the stencil, which in this case, you would only need the ADA stencil, you have a 150 bucks worth of paint. You're only going to use like two gallons of that to maybe three gallons on a job like that. Okay. And how much is the stencil? The stencil, the ADA stencil, I think it was around $100.

on average stencils are about 100 bucks, some are less. But you're going to use them over and over. Yeah. And so for that job, if you're putting in $100 worth of paint and you're charging 400 bucks, then you got 75% margins on the gross essentially. And it would take you, depending on how far you live from it or where your shop is from it, an hour of drive time. And that should take you no more than two hours.

to complete it. Okay. So $150 for five gallons of paint, you're going to use two gallons. That's $30 in paint. Your stencil, let's say you use it 100 times over its lifetime. That's $1. So you're in $31. We won't count drive time because that's variable. But two hours of labor. So two hours to make $369.69 profit. That's not bad. So that's like $180 an hour of profit, which is like 360 grand a year of like if you just did if you did that for eight hours a day 40 hours a week five days per week that's you're making 360 grand only doing small jobs and I'm sure the larger jobs get even more profitable with no employees it's not a bad living you pay off your equipment first couple months right yeah definitely okay all right so small job gas station one one thing

that you do need to consider is that people use parking lots during regular business hours. So a lot of this work has to take place in the middle of the night or at least after 5 p.m. You do have those jobs, churches, restaurants that are closed Monday, Tuesday. You do like offices that you can work in during regular business hours. But that is something that you need to consider. How long does it take for the paint to dry? Depends on what paint you used.

I only use solvent-based paint, which dries much quicker. So a couple hours. What do you do while it's drying? Do you block it off and then leave? You can set up cones. If I finish a job at 2 in the morning, then I go, I'll just leave. Like, no one's going to be there until 6 a.m. But generally, and it depends.

So, like, when you're painting, like, an ADA stencil, that blue square, that takes up a lot of paint. So you do that first generally. Like, once you get to a job, do that first. Go ahead and stripe your line. By the end, once you're done striping the lines, you come back and spray the white or yellow ADA stencil on it. And it's probably by that time. And then it doesn't take as long for that white paint to dry just because it's essentially less surface area. Yeah.

Do you have to like adhere the stencils to the ground? No, you just lay them down. It's like a, I forget what it stands for. It's the like heavy duty plastic material. It's like a eighth inch stick and it's heavy. So it's not flapping in the wind, but it just lays there. So you only need stencils for the icons or whatever. And then you use the machine for the stripes.

What do you use for the stencils? Do you like a roller? So the machine has, it's a spray gun that's mounted on the line striping like machine. So you can take the gun loose and just freehand it and spray the stencils. From the same bucket of paint. with that same gun. Yeah. Now, can the machine hold multiple colors of paint?

No. So paint changes is something you have to factor in. I know that there's guys across the country where they will charge for the paint change. Like if you're doing a business where you have to do white parking lines, a blue, ADA stencil and red fire lane, they'll charge you 200 bucks just because it's going to take them an hour worth of paint changes. because you have to like run run a acetone through the machine between colors. That way you get the machine fully cleaned so you don't have paint that's coming out purple if you're going through red. Could you not have just a second hose and nozzle that you swap out?

So a lot of people will get a separate machine and have them have dedicated. So with one machine, you're forced to do a paint change. but yeah my goal is to get a second machine as soon as possible so you're spending an hour currently to swap out the paint but you're not charging for it yet that's correct okay where does where do all the chemicals go like the paint when you we clean it out of the hose so you have to like dispose of it properly yeah so you just keep using it and then pay for a recycle you just like spraying it back in the bucket exactly yeah interesting you cycle it through the machine and so you can use you can use a lot of the time I'll just put gas through the machine and that cleans it up because gas is a lot cheaper than acetone.

And so you can just cycle the gas through the machine, put it in your trash bucket. And then next time you need to do a paint change. Sure, it's not 100% gas. There's some paint in there, but it's way more gas and it's not enough to clean it up. Interesting. All right. So two hours for average size gas station, right? not a Buckees, not like a big racetrack or quick trip, but like a smaller gas station?

Right. Okay. Now, what about a medium job? So a medium job, I would say the ones that come to mind probably in the $1,000 to $2,000 range. And this is like your office. You're like, I think there's a dentist office. We have it's 30 spots, it's 30 or 35 spots. I recently did it.

It also had some fire lane. It had, I think they had two ADA spots. That was a $2,000 job. Wow. Yeah. Are you quoting by the square footage or by the number of parking spaces or how does your math work look? I quote by the linear foot.

Okay. So yeah. The linear line foot? Yes. Yeah. So a parking space, a parking line is generally 18 feet long. So you count up the number of spaces. say you have 10 spaces, 180 linear feet, you price kind of between there.

And prices range. I mean, I know markets are very different, but can range from 30 cents a linear foot to 80 cents a linear foot. And that would be for a restripe. If it's a new layout, like a new build is going up, but then you have to factor in your layout costs because you have to figure out where all those. You don't want it to. You don't want it to look like crap. Right.

You got to measure it right and align it. So a restripe, you're just, you're painting in the colors. You're just, it's easy. You know where the paint is going and you just line up your laser and go right over it. Okay, so one to two grand for a dental office, a couple ADA symbols, 60 spots. What would that job cost if it were not a restripe? If that was not a restripe, then it would cost about 1.5 to 2x. Wow. Okay. Does it literally just take about twice as long? It doesn't, I wouldn't say it takes twice as long. It just takes more, more thought has to go into it. It's hard to work. You have to have another guy with you. You can't do that job solo because you're popping chalk lines. Figuring you have exactly where all the lines are going. And then if there's no prep work that's required moving things out of the way, all that stuff.

Do you prefer those jobs or hate them because they're annoying? Honestly, I like the variety. I like having them sprinkled in. But it's nice when you can knock out like two minimum jobs and one evening. You know, and that's your day. Yeah. I'm just comparing it to like painting my house and like getting it all just right. And I like I do woodworking and make beds and tables.

And like that's the worst part of it for me, the finishing. Okay. So what does a big job look like? So a big job. those are generally your new layouts. There was a tattoo parlor that went in recently. That was a $5,000 job. And I'd say big jobs range from $5,000 to $20,000.

That was no more than 40 spots, but it had fire lane. It had a lot of pedestrian zones. So I had the like angle burns. And I also do sign installs too. So I'll put the signpost in with the ADA sign on it. I'll do that as well. But this job had a couple of those. And then, yeah, so that's kind of your larger job.

There's a car wash that I'm doing that's getting built down the road. That's going to be a $10,000 job. And same thing. They have more wheel stops getting installed. Is it common for striping companies to do the signage as well? Or is that kind of a you thing? It's pretty common for that to be included. Okay.

What is the biggest job you've ever done? The biggest job that I've done to date is. is that $5,000 job. The biggest proposal I've gotten accepted is the $10,000 job for the car wash, and that'll be next month. That was a good day, huh? Yeah. Definitely. Oh, no, I did a $6,000 job that I'm racking up this week, actually.

What's going to be your profit on that $6,000 job? So the $6,000 job, we have to use $3,000 worth of material. Mm-hmm. So this was a lower percentage margin. more cash about 35% okay okay so you're still making a couple grand from it and how long will that take two days okay 60 hours like full days yeah okay man okay okay all right so let's talk about your first customer or two how did you get them what was the conversation like were they worried that you're a new guy or you're just like listen if I screw up this line I'm just

going to fix it or hey, you know, I went to my driveway and I'm, I'm an expert at line striping now because you should see my driveway. No, I mean, there's not so the how I got my first customers were jobs that I was actually the like project manager on. I told them, hey, like, we were doing small renovation jobs for them. I told them, hey, I'm starting this company. So it was prior connections were my first two jobs. My third job was a auto shop. And I needed to get my truck service there. So I told them what I was doing, told them I would give them a discount.

They're like, yeah, we were actually thinking about getting that done. Sure. Work up a quote for us. And of course, I gave them a great deal. They went with me and it was good. And yeah, on those first couple jobs, I'm glad. that I gave them a discount, I would probably do a better job today than I did two months ago. Do you drive by that auto shop and just cringe it yourself?

Yeah. And I mean, it's not bad. It could be better. But to your standards. Yes. Today, it's. Yes, exactly. So I think that offering a discount is key.

And also, I trained with someone who was in Oklahoma. So they were far enough out of my market. They did not see me as a competitor. I trained with them for a few days. So I got used to the striping motion. What guardrails does the machine have to make sure that you go straight? How hard is it to do a good job with the equipment that you have? So the front wheel, so it's a three-wheel machine, two in the back, one in the front.

That front wheel has a caster that locks in place. Granted, if you apply more pressure on the left, then it'll go towards the right if you send vice versa. So you need to apply consistent pressure. If there's any, it's a heavy machine. It's a couple hundred pounds. So it's a heavy machine, especially if you have five gallons of paint sitting on top of it. So if there's any slope to the surface, then it's going to pull that way. So they have a laser dot that you put right on the edge of where the,

fan is going to be applying paint. So you have to focus on getting that right on the edge of the either existing paint line or if it's a new layout right on that chalk line that you popped. You got to be focusing the whole time. Yeah, it takes 100% of your attention. Okay. All right. So I love that you said your first couple jobs came from a network because I always counsel people to do that. Like if you, any business you start, there's someone in your circle that's willing and able to support you financially, right? So I love that. That was your first two jobs. That made your third job, which was really kind of your first, like your first job to a stranger, right? Right. So much easier because you had a track record. Right. You know, they didn't have to know

that you had a connection with them. It didn't matter. It meant that you were a little more experienced than you were before. How are you acquiring customers on a regular basis, like moving forward today? So a lot of what I'm doing, how I've gotten 90% of my customers still has been door knocking. And they don't know about true line striping. You know, sure, they need the service done. They're getting it done once a year, once every two to three years. But they just don't know that I exist. So I'm still handing out a lot of business cards, just show on my face, trying to meet people, meet facilities managers.

I'll go into fast food restaurants. and say, hey, is there a store manager or general manager that you could put me in touch with and at least establish a relationship with them? So that's how I've gotten 90% of my jobs. The rest of them have been through my Google page. And people just Google and parking lot striping and me popping up and them going with me. Okay. How many jobs have you had, give or take, so far? So far I've had, I think it's 18 or 20 jobs. And then what has your revenue been? So month one revenue was 7,000 and month two was 18,000. What's month three looking like so far?

Month three. So generally with striping, it does start to slow down a little bit during the winter months. On the books for November and December each, I have 14,000. So 14,000 for November, 14,000 for December. Okay. Which were a weekend to November, which I'm so I'm pretty, pretty happy about that. You're feeling good about it so far.

I mean, he's clearly going really well. Okay, back to the sales aspect. You don't strike me as like an extrovert, you know, walk up into restaurants and ask to speak to the manager. Has that been unnatural for you or is it just like, that's just what you have to do? You just, that's just what it is. It's not hard. It's not easy. It's just part of the process.

Yeah, it is incredibly unnatural. and I can have that thought for about a half second, but then I move on to the second thought of it has to be done. So then I do it. Yeah, you go full jaco. Right. I'm much better than I was two months ago, but it's not my strong suit.

You just have to be honest with people. And I've learned that that's what it takes. And even if you lose a job, like you want to build the relationship, you know, you want to communicate clearly the services that you can offer, how you can add value. But you're not trying to swindle anyone, you know. Yeah. It's, it's not my MO to try to upsell people on things they don't need.

So if there has been an interesting realization, I would say, whereas in other jobs in the past, if someone says, like, no or there's an objection, then I always honor that. But there's this fine line of like, okay, well, I actually do. have a service that has value. Yeah. And I can see with my eyes you need this. Yeah.

And like, so it's like maybe I'm not communicating something clearly, you know, maybe I'm and it is my responsibility to connect the dots for the potential customer. So I think that I'm definitely getting better at like, okay, how can I succinctly connect the dots for the customer and communicate value? So early on, you're like, right, a nose no, he said no. And now it's like, you know what? Like, I know he needs this. And most services that people sell, you don't always know that, right? Like, let's say you're selling cleaning services. They might be fine doing it themselves and they can or they might be super happy with

their current company. But with this, it's like, I know for a fact you need it because I'm looking at it right now. And there's a zero chance you own a $10,000 driving machine. You might have a previous relationship with someone you used five years ago when you needed it done. But probably not. You probably haven't even thought of them for five years. So like there's really, it's such a great business because you just know they need it. And that's like a framework that I'm starting to put together of when deciding what business to start, start one where that's the case. Like I interviewed some guys that clean ponds for a living. And they started going door to door. And they had amazing success because they only freaking knocked on doors that had a pond that was dirty.

And therefore, thanks to selection bias, they knew that that owner was probably wealthy enough to afford a $2,000 to $5,000 pawn cleaning because who owns a pond, right? And so, like, they knew they could afford it. They knew they needed it. They knew it needed to be done. And they knew with reasonable certainty that they weren't about to do it themselves. They might not even know that their service existed. And so their close rate was probably a hundred times higher than a door-to-door pest control salesman. Wow.

Right. But one thing that I've also learned is that I don't need to make the sale during that first, like, contact. Because, yes, we can see faded parking lines. But essentially, it's still subjective if someone's like, well, I can see them enough. You know, it's like they don't need it now. But it's like, okay, well, you'll really think that they need it in a year then, you know? And so like I was driving today and I passed by a church and had it knocked on their door yet. So I'm like, I'll stop by.

So you see what I can do for them. And they told me that they're actually doing a complete parking lot do over and they're going to mill it up, which I don't do any of the milling your asphalt repair sort of stuff. But I'm like, well, like put me in contact with the guy who's doing that because that's another play is getting. in contact with all the asphalt companies because a lot of them don't want to do their line striping because it's it's usually done it all to hours there are companies that just clean parking lots too for a living like there's pressure wash companies that clean parking lots or gas stations and then there's literally companies that just go out and pick up trash at like

restaurant or grocery store or convenience store gas stations like that could be a referral partner for you too definitely yeah yeah and thought about that Sure. You could give them 400 bucks for a job and all they have to do is shoot you a text. Right. You know, it's a no-brainer for them. Yeah. All right.

So you've gotten better at sales because you realize more that you're offering something that they need. And I think that's such a critical unlock because a lot of people, myself included, is I don't, I'm not good at sales. I don't do sales. And it's like really no one likes sales. that's like saying like, oh, I don't, I don't run marathons because they're hard. It's like, yeah. Lifting weights is hard. Like, you're not special.

Like, people that run marathons aren't like, oh, this is so, this feels so good the whole time. Like, it hurts the whole time. It hurts for two to four hours straight. But like, why should sales be any different? Yeah, it's not fun. Even really good salespeople are like, this is a job. It's a grind. It's kind of a cat and mouse.

You can make it more fun. There's no better fertilizer in the garden than the owner's footsteps. Like you are so good at sales because it is your business. And if you're selling the same thing for a different business owner, you'd probably be half as effective. Right. Yeah. Someone that you hire will probably be half as effective as you.

Yeah. Yeah. And going back to like the initial point, I never would have learned this or tried to learn this had I not just like gone full send, if you will. You know, like this is one of those things for me where it's like, I've, always been sales averse. I've let someone else do that. And I'm the ops guy.

I'm the numbers guy. I'll all follow through, follow through, do the work. But yeah, I'm so glad that I've been able to at least do sales. And again, I'm no expert at all.

I screw up a lot of opportunities, but still grateful for the opportunities, nonetheless. Did you read any books or refer to any resources to learn sales? I have not. You're just kind of winging it. The striping company that I trained with, the package that I bought with them also included some marketing and sales techniques and videos. So that's been my primary resource of, okay, where do I even start, you know, whether it be cold calling, cold emailing. So that's kind of been my main resource to get me started. But now it's just

been, okay, but what is starting to work, what's not starting to work. And there is so much of, like there are so many different techniques that you can try. And I'm so young that, like I haven't even tried like half of them. So it's how old are you? Well, I'm 28, but just referring to like so young in the business. Like I try. I had very many at all. So I need to make sure that I'm not afraid to at least try some. Yeah. Yeah.

It's funny. Not to harp on sales too much, but I served a mission for my church in Hungary, Eastern Europe. And that's really sales. Like we knocked on doors all day every day. And every time I would knock on a door, I was just secretly wishing, don't answer, don't answer, don't answer. Like 20, like I knocked on like 25,000 doors.

And I thought that, like, I was out there doing it. I was hardworking. I was diligent. I was efficient. But at the same time, it's like the natural man in me, like the weak Chris was just like, I don't want to have to sell. I don't have to sell. Don't answer.

I don't ask. And it's like, don't answer. Don't answer. And then they answer, it's like, hey, would you like to buy my X, Y, or Z? Right. But it's just like, it's just it. You do things because they're not easy. Right.

Yeah. Definitely. Period. Okay. So you went out on a limb. You burned your boats. You started this business. And a lot of people like the idea of being a business owner, but then they find they don't actually like being a business owner.

How do you like it so far? I absolutely love it. I love tracking that dollar from when it's a thought to when it's in my bank account and being heavily involved in every step of the process. Ensure that that means that there are stresses that come along with each of those. But I've really enjoyed it. What do you not like about it? And what do you love about it the most? So right now, like, I'm the only full-time employee.

I'll have guys who will help me out on larger jobs. But I'm the one selling. I'm the one creating the proposal. I'm the one, like if they accept the proposal, scheduling the work. And then like completing the work, like building a team of guys to complete the work, invoicing, collecting payment, asking for the review. You know, so doing all of that. And so there, there are. hides and lows throughout all of those, whether it's, it's challenging to collect payment or a

five-star review comes through, you know. So there's, there's, it's hard for me to just pick like one thing that I can say like, oh yeah, that's, that's the most exciting thing. Yeah. Just the whole thing in aggregate is exciting. What would you say your close rate is when you go knock a door cold? not necessarily closing on the spot, but over time, what percentage of those will you close? Yeah, it's hard to kind of see just because, I mean, I've knocked so many doors in the last two months. And a handful of them have said, like, where our fiscal year ends in December or not to March, like, reach out to me then, you know? This is more of a guess, but I'd say it's probably between 5 and 10%. So it's not, it's not super high.

I mean, for like, that's pretty high. Like for any type of sale, I feel like that's pretty high. Yeah. One thing that I will say is interesting. I've never done like home services, but I think that this is very different than that because oftentimes like, I don't know if I would say oftentimes, but a lot of times businesses will have like a maintenance line item, like a maintenance budget. And this can be pulled from that.

and it's a less emotional decision for a lot of people. Granted, if I'm trying to sell a small business owner, then it can still be an emotional decision. But it's just a different sale than like cleaning someone's windows on their house. Yeah. Yeah. How much can you lean on regulation or not? Like you knock on a door, it's like, dude, your lines are gone.

Like, you could get fined for this. Like, is there anything you can point to to help close the sale? Yes. Yeah. So regulations is definitely something that you can bring up. I've realized that even if I bring up regulations, then people don't act unless they get the notice. Like there's gas stations that I've reached out to and they like agree with me. They're like, yeah, they're trash, but we're not going to do anything about it until we get an NOI from the inspector. So like, I. Okay. And that's kind of like getting a letter from the HOA, right? It's like warning, fix this. It's like they're not fined right off the bat. It's a warning. Exactly. Yeah. So they have time. And I've gotten a handful of jobs that way. Is there any rhyme or reason to win those warnings are sent? I'm not sure. Like if you could find like, there was, you know what I'm saying? Like you could tie that to something. You could. Right. If you could go full better call Saul and make like an official looking letter with like a red line across the. envelope and it's like notice important and like you could start a company called like official notices ink that has nothing to do with the government have you ever gotten letters like those it's like yeah there there that's an entire industry and i i i've been down the rabbit hole and i hate it so much

so i i am joking right now but their entire you know eight figure companies built on tricking business owners into thinking they need to pay some fee or fine to what looks like a government agency that is not so yeah that's all all home warranties are. Yeah. Yeah. So like if you wanted to be shady, you could just send like, notice like you're, you can even do it where it's not shady and it's like you could send it as yourself and be like, hey, it's just direct mail at that point. But it highly targeted direct mail. Hey, I noticed that your lines are pretty faded right now from what I'm seeing here in Waco. So you're establishing yourself as like a local expert, which that's exactly what you are. I'm seeing that, you know, eventually you're going to

letter sooner and later, like, it's just a matter of time. It's always good. You know, you don't want the city on your wrong side. And this is speaking from experience, because I've had the city of Waco on my bad side. That's another story for another day. But it's like, so it's good to get ahead of it. You know, you never know when you might need a call in a favor. And then you could roll up in person and say, did you get my letter? You know? Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Kind of soft a little bit. Yeah. Okay. So five to 10 percent, not bad at all. Not as high as I thought, honestly, but not bad compared to selling any other product or service. What's next?

Like, how do you scale this? Do you want more locations? Like, what are you thinking? So I think that you, one way that you can scale this is by adding on services. My philosophy is I want to get good at line striping and just get my name out there. And I feel like I've touched just such a small sliver of the pavement marking market here. So being able to focus on that, get to where I have two two-man crews that are operating. If it's not 40 hours a week, then maybe they're doing it as side jobs 20 hours a week during their off hours.

You know, and they're making like some pretty nice extra income. I think that that's one way you can scale it, but then offering additional services, getting into crack seal, seal coating, like parking lot sweeping, street sweeping, that sort of thing. roadway markings does require different insurance. That's kind of a different animal, more liability there. So a lot of people, like, I've had buddies. They're like, they're restriping that one. I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to do like Franklin Avenue, you know. Yeah, yeah.

But anyways, so I think that adding services is what a lot of people get into. And some people go the pressure washing route, like, and add commercial pressure washing to their fleet of services. And how often does it need to be done on average? So fast food restaurants, like you're, I think, kind of higher-in fast food, like Chick-fil-A, raising canes. They do it twice a year. Okay. Wow.

Holy cow. I would not have guessed that. What do most people do it? How often? Apartment complexes are every three years, pretty much, three to four years. And I there's, I know one apartment complex. apartment complexes, if it has like between 300 and 400 stalls, that's going to be between an eight and 12 or $14,000 job.

I didn't realize it was so recurring. I would have thought it was less frequent than that. Wow. Okay. And I mean, you do have those, like, I've knocked on doors and they're like, I think the last time we did it was when we built the building 15 years ago, you know, and it's like, you can like kind of see where the. lines are enough for for people to park but the second you put new paint on there that's what

everyone's talking about oh my gosh like this is a brand new parking lot does shade play a role like if it's more shaded that it doesn't fade as fast yeah so weather definitely plays a role yeah traffic it plays a far bigger role but weather also yeah plays a role okay north what's interesting is they have snow plows that will scrape up the paint so if you're thinking about doing this up north It's probably even more recurring. Yeah. So snowplow business in the winter and line striping in the summer. Just invent the disease and sell the cure.

Right. Yeah. So you said there's one big company in town doing it other than you. Is that right? Yes. Well, there's a couple other companies that do, that also do line striping. There's one who's been here for like 40 years. And they also do the crack fill, the seal code.

they do street sweeping. They have like a lot more equipment that they can do. I know they do wheel stop installations. They make their own wheel stops. So into them, I've actually got to know one of their guys who does their estimates pretty well. He like talking to him, he's like, yeah, line striping. Like it's a drop in the bucket. Like we chase after the seal coat jobs.

And that's another selling point. is like I could go to someone and say, hey, you may not have the budget to do a full parking lot makeover, but for roughly 10% of the cost, we can get you a parking lot that is incredibly updated. You know, it won't look like brand new asphalt, but people will notice it. Your customers will notice it. Yeah. And like you said, with your growth plan, like you could totally start offering recurring services, right? Recurring pressure washing, recurring parking lot cleaning.

would you rather go that route next or just get more striping jobs next? I would rather I would rather get more striping jobs and become the line striping guy in Waco where I think there's plenty of work for I think there's enough work for me to be running for crews. There's a lot of new construction going on. It's a big enough market where there is the recurring revenue. And there isn't anyone who's solely. focused on the line striping. So I don't want to take away from like that vision because I have

a random request here or there from existing customers of like, hey, could you all smart? The barrier to entry for the crack feeling seal code, I mean, I would say is probably two to three times higher just because the equipment's more expensive and it's more intense know how. You could be a multi-million dollar business just doing striping in Waco, Texas. I'm sure you've mapped it out and you'd still probably own a fraction of the market. Every market is bigger than you think it is. Every niche is bigger than you think it is. If you were to be counseling someone that's starting this and whatever city, USA,

what would you counsel them to do differently that you wish you would have done? That's a good question. I think if someone in their market is willing to teach them to just like run a line striper for more than just a couple jobs, but like to run a line instructor for maybe a month or two, you know? And that way they can just see more and not have to learn so much on the fly.

I think that those have been like some of my biggest time sucks is learning on the fly and correcting mistakes. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you do a mistake on the customer's property, you have to fix it no matter what it costs or how much time it takes. I like that.

That's just another framework that I'm thinking of is any business that gets the majority of their revenue from cold calling or door knocking, like, I don't care of the market, forget your market research. There will always be a market for that because it's first principles. It goes against our human nature to want to do that. If you can reliably acquire customers by knocking on a door, then like, I would be so bold as to say that in any market. Like, of course you should do market research.

Like, it's easy. You get on Google Maps. You divide a little bit. But like, if you're willing to go out and do that, you could start this anywhere. Yes. Because I mean, how many of your competitors are knocking doors? Yeah, no, none of them. Exactly.

And it's going to be tempting for you to stop knocking doors. Like it's human nature, right? Especially as your Google leads come in. But like, that will always be a reliable revenue source. Like, it's like the most efficient. thing is usually the least effective thing and vice versa, right? It's not efficient for you to knock doors, but it is so effective. Right. It's very efficient to send a bunch of cold text less effective. Right. Right. Definitely. Man, what a good story. Well, Cinco, I love your story. I love

your name. Where can people find you if they want to reach out and ask questions or. Yeah, I mean, hire you. Yeah, they can, my website is just true line, striping. TX.com or you can email me at Singo at trueline stripingtX.com. Okay, perfect. Well, I appreciate your time. This is super awesome. Thank you. Yeah, thanks so much, just really appreciate it.

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