Cayleb Pletos Is The Painting Contractor Marketing Expert

Caleb shares his journey from "glorified freelancer" to business leader, discussing the challenges of building a team and letting go of control. 

He explains how his agency niched down to exclusively serve painting contractors after noticing their success in this space.

Key insights:

• Personal growth directly impacts business growth
• Leading by example rather than micromanaging
• Specialization allowed deeper industry expertise
• Painting marketing works due to its visual nature and emotional connection
• Facebook ads create attention while Google captures ready-to-buy customers
• Currently at $30-35K monthly revenue, aiming for $100K
• Future plans include investing in Detroit real estate to help rebuild communities

Find Caleb on YouTube: Taurify (T-A-U-R-I-F-Y)

https://www.youtube.com/@Taurify

Transcript

 Okay. Caleb PTOs is here with us. I'm excited because this dude is cornering the market in an industry that really needs a lot of support on the marketing side. And we'll talk a little bit about that. But I'm grateful, man. I'm grateful that you're here. So usually. What I do is I start you off with we call it an ignition question.

Okay. And then from there, we just wherever it goes because this is called the Nice to Meet You podcast busy behind the scenes stories behind busy professionals. So the question is, in the last 12 months, okay, if you were to look back and reflect on the last 12 months. Then turn that into a Netflix movie.

Okay. What would your movie be and why? Interesting. All right. I gotta think about that one. Before I dive into it, first off, I just wanna say thank you very much for having me on the show, Rob. It's been a pleasure, getting to know you this last six months to a year. I can't wait to see what.

The business future looks like for everyone involved here. Yep. Okay. So what would this Netflix movie look like over the last six months? Yeah, six months to a year. Okay. So the big thing that we have been focusing on six months to a year is like building our team to become more stable.

And I, at the beginning when I started the agency, I. I felt like I was just running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Hopping between operations, sales, service, delivery, outreach, all this stuff. I was, wearing so many different hats. So I feel like this movie would, I.

Be something about building a team and bringing, people together. And not only the kind of, the physical part of doing that. How do you find people, all that jazz. But also I. What do I have to do to transform myself from just glorified freelancer to an actual leader?

And that is tough because one of the things that I've really struggled with over the past year is like actually giving up control. I care so much about this business but we're at the point where I can't do everything. And if I try to do everything, then you know, nothing ever actually gets done because there's so many different things and so many different fires.

So you have to give up. Control, you have to give up certain things in order to make it to that next level. So I feel like it would be, a movie that goes from the glorified freelancer stage, I'll call it. To like the actual business, well-oiled machine.

And I feel like that would be focused on building the team. How do you find the right people? How do you not necessarily a how to, but just showing the behind the scenes of recruiting people. Some of the hires I've made, some of the fires I've had to make some of the, how.

You can't just like rule with an iron fist. Yeah. Just yell at people and expect them to do what you want. You actually have to be a good leader and lead by example and also part of that having a better business and having a better team is I myself need to be better.

'cause the world of the outer, my, my surroundings and everything is a reflection of the world, of the inner. So me inside who I am, what I do, if I. Wake up at 2:00 PM eat like garbage, never go to the gym. Even though that doesn't technically, translate into my business.

It does. Yeah, it does. Yeah. You know it, so if I am the type of person who you know is healthy, who is kind, who is caring, who. Who's all those other things that reflects into my business. And it also, shows up to my team. I have to be, yeah, I have to be the best person here in terms of, leadership.

Because I have to set the bar if I'm showing up to meetings 20 minutes late and stuff like that. Yeah. How can I expect them to show up on time, yeah. It's the and actually I have it up here. I never talk about this, but I wrote a book a while back Nice. Called become the type of person that gets the goal.

And this nice it talks a lot about, like you have to become better in order for your business or your life to actually become better. It's a reflection. Yeah. And one of the topics that I spoke about in that book was trusting the experts in your field, you have to empower your team.

You have to give up that control and let them make decisions. Sometimes that means failing. Sometimes that means, doing the wrong thing or, but they have to learn that they have to go through that in order to become better. I have something to say there. I've got something to say about that.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, what's interesting and funny is, probably the, for the listeners they're like, okay, this guy's great. He wants to have a better team, but what do they actually do? So for the listeners Caleb, I came across Caleb on YouTube because I was looking for, I. Who does Facebook ads for painting contractors because here locally in the South Bay Cooley Brothers painting very good friend of mine and had some questions around Facebook ads.

So I was looking, I'm like, okay, I wonder who does it? And I typed it in and I saw Caleb and then I looked, there wasn't a whole lot of other people, but I checked this channel and it was a whole lot of those types of content. I'm like, oh, okay, this is good. And I reached out to. Him And then now we're actually working Cooley is working with Caleb's company.

I think what appeals to me mostly about Caleb is he and his ability to really niche down and focus only on painting. 'cause on the discovery call I'm like, yo, great. That's awesome. Sounds like you guys doing good 'cause you have. Only painters, but would you do something for rain gutter companies or, plumbing 'cause it's home services.

And she's you know what, maybe not so much. We just do painting. So that was very impressive to me. So that's what they do. I. Facebook ads or, and Google ads for the painting industry. How, so you wanna build a team, which means you started from the solopreneur. How long did you do it by yourself before you landed on doing the painting?

Specific? Yeah usually, yeah, I definitely glossed over all that. Usually that's an intro thing. So long story short, we're a marketing agency specifically for painting contractors. And how that ended up happening is our second client ever was a painting contractor. We knew we wanted to be in the home service industry.

I. That's where, we felt like we had the most experience and you felt it would be a good fit. When we, I say we, it was just me starting the agency three, maybe three, four years ago now. So our second client ever was a painting contractor. We didn't start being only painting contractors, we worked with a couple different industries, automotive detailing, a couple of Shopify stores and things like that.

But. What we did is we started documenting our successes, our failures, and just throwing this all up on YouTube. If you scroll back on our YouTube channel, you look at some of the first videos it'll literally just be me walking through, Hey, this is exactly what we did.

This is what worked, this is what didn't work. This is exactly how you could do it too. It wasn't really a big sales pitch. It was just like a, Hey, this is what we're doing. You can. Follow along and learn a lot. Or if you want someone to take care of it, that's where, we come in.

But a lot of people in the painting industry started reaching out and we noticed a need. So then we, dove deeper into it. And then it got to the point where about 50% of our clientele was painters, and then the other 50% was like a different. Business. And we basically decided, Hey, listen, like we have these other industries and we still have a few legacy clients, but we really try our best to like work only with painters for a couple reasons.

One, that's what we're the best at. So it's a lot easier for us to get results. Two is just the experience that we have at this point. Like I can point to. 50 different painting companies across the United States and Canada, and I know exactly how they operate, exactly what they do. And that helps us to be so much better in this industry.

If you were to, if you were to come to me, Rob and say, Hey, I wanna start a grocery store, how do I start advertising? I don't know. No idea. But if you have a very specific problem in your painting company, chances are, we know somebody that has had that exact problem. And between that, some of our industry partnerships and we've built this sort of machine that is specifically designed for this industry.

And realistically, like there's only a couple of other companies out there that do this for painting contractors, it's getting more crowded. I think there's more people coming into the industry from a marketing standpoint. But it's definitely very interesting. It's a good space to be in.

I enjoy it. I like it. There's pros and cons, like most things. But painting is something that's weird because it's not it's not a hundred percent a need, but it's also not a hundred percent a want. It's a little bit in, it's a little bit in the middle. And I think a lot of people come at, come at marketing the wrong way with this. If you were to do something if you were to be in an industry like HVAC or something like that, it's super, it's pretty much like all need based. Something breaks and it needs to be fixed or something of that nature. So I, I think the reason why Facebook ads branding and stuff has a good place here is because of, how visual it is.

The emotions tied to. Creating a beautiful space to live in. Nobody needs to have their kitchen cabinets painted, but it's right. It's super nice and it feels awesome when you have, if you're having family over for the holidays and you wanna create a beautiful space for them to live in or enjoy time and, that's super cool.

That's super awesome. And there's gonna be people reaching out on both platforms, Google and Facebook. Yep. Realistically I think that every business should have a combination of both. Google is gonna be the people who are like super action oriented, ready to go which is great.

But there's just not a whole lot of them. And they, you, yeah, they, at some point you're just kinda waiting for them to come in. Facebook, you almost, you have more control and you can create that attention. So both have their place. Both are awesome. But it's definitely definitely a good spot to be in.

I enjoy it. And the people we service, I think there's some of the hardest working people out there. And it's really cool watching their businesses grow and, watching them change their lives really. Yeah. So it's interesting because you mentioned that painting is not really a need.

It's more of a it's cool to have. Yeah. What do you see is working for your clients in terms of how you're advertising for them to break through that barrier of like you said, HVAC or even plumbing that's this is bad. I need it fixed. Neck bleed. Neck bleed.

I'll pay whatever. Painting. It's oh, it looks pretty, we need it. Maybe not really, yeah. But it sounds like it's still working, so what's actually working? Yeah. What's different between painting and other industries is that when somebody hires a painting contractor, they're there for it.

The experience. They want somebody who they can trust. Somebody who they can care. Who they can care. Not saying that these other industries, that's not the case, but I feel like people buy the experience more. Here this is something where maybe you're moving into a brand new home and you know you want it to be done right?

You want it to be beautiful before your wife and kids move in to this $500,000 house you just bought, or, that experience is what the best customers buy and what the best businesses provide. Most of our contractors, they are of the top in their local market. They're not the, chuck in the truck, so to speak.

Those people are going to attract the buyers who just want the cheapest price. And that's all on Facebook, on Google, on all of these platforms. And just in general, you get out what you put in and you attract who you present yourself as. So if you have a Facebook ad of you with rusty old pickup, smoking cigarettes, while you're talking about, having your house painted.

You're probably not gonna attract the best kind of people. But if you have videos or pictures promoting you, your family, your business how local you guys are, people really care about that. They wanna do, they wanna do business with people. They don't wanna do business with a business.

So we really try to lean into that with all of our ads and the people that we target. And there, there are some sub. Targeting portions to it as well. Not just the creative, we wanna make sure that we're sh only running ads in areas that can actually afford the services and things like that.

Good point. But it's, I would say it's about 50% targeting. The other 50% is like the creative side that I. Attracts those higher end buyers. If you have a, if you have a landing page that you send people to and there's all these million dollar houses on it, talking about how beautiful of a, job that's gonna, that's gonna appeal to those people who have those million dollar houses and want that kind of, yeah, want that kind of job.

But it's not really gonna appeal to those who, the people who only care about price will just see themselves out. Yeah. On the flip side for a service provider in that you, you started broad and then you went down like niche. Do you recommend people going niche first or like what you did, go broad and then niche down and figure it out?

Or if you were to start over, would you do something different or would you just run the same play? Okay, so I. I would probably recommend starting broad. 'cause realistically, you're not gonna, I would've never guessed that I would own a marketing agency for painting contractors. I was just following the path of lease resistance and also following the need.

That's what a lot of that's what a lot of businesses will do, and I think it's a smart play in my opinion. For example, I know you and I have talked about this sort of off camera, but if you own a painting company and then you get a lot of requests for gutters. And you're subbing out all this work, you're like, okay, that would be a great sidestep.

You, maybe you didn't come into the painting industry to have a gutter company, but now that you're getting five requests a week, it's okay, I obviously have the need here. Let's follow what people want. I think that following, following the desire, following what people are asking for, doing it smart, doing it properly. But I think that was a smart move that we made, and I'm happy about that. And I think that's a good way to operate, not just for like additional revenue sources in your own business, but just when you're trying to find the right fit for you. I don't think I would've known, like I, I know I wouldn't have known.

Yeah. To just, I wouldn't have known to just land here. Yeah. We followed what we believed people needed and we dove deeper and deeper into that until we decided to just completely, jump into the deep end there. Okay. So I guess to, to to hone in on that a little bit more, I don't think I would recommend starting off in, into an industry like.

Being 100% niched into it before you even had your first client there. I don't know if that would be the best the best play. But you can do it slowly. Maybe like in my world, it would look like, Hey, we own a marketing agency. Hey, we own a marketing agency for home service providers. Hey, we own a marketing agency for painting contractors Like.

It doesn't have to be all at once, but you can slowly Yeah. Slowly niche into it. Okay. So it definitely sounds like, 'cause I know you mentioned earlier is you want the team to experience things and then they learn from it. And then from here what you mentioned is you'll have to go through it to find out what you're good at and then you can drill deeper.

Now that sounds counter what the coaching industry is pitching, is. Shortcut success by following what we've done, right? The saying of experience is the teacher of fools, right? So it's definitely the polar opposite. It, I see the pros and cons on both, but what would you say about that statement where I can follow the example of.

Caleb he's in the painting industry. There's things that's working. Let me go start a business in the painting industry and but do something different. Yeah. When I say to do it in your own time, like I do believe at some point it's good to niche down, but I don't think that I think you need to have some sort of experience in that niche to actually pick the right one.

Like for example, the first other niche that we had a lot of people in was automotive detailers. Okay. I think it's a, I think it's a cool industry. And I think it's great. And the reason why we picked that is just because I personally know a lot about cars. I love cars and stuff, so I felt like I could talk the talk in that industry.

I was pulling from, I felt like I could relate to a lot of these people. Yeah. Yeah. However it, and I know there are a lot of people that have success in that industry, but it just, we noticed that the, we were doing okay, but it wasn't just the results that we're getting, we were getting for our painting contractors were just a lot better, honestly.

So that's where that came from and we followed that path down. And when it comes to like my team making mistakes and things like that I. Don't get me wrong. Like I'm always here to help them out and always here to I'm basically for more or less like looking over their shoulder.

Like in a I think one of the good examples that I can use for this is, we have strategy calls with all of our clients where we discuss how things are going, what we're currently doing to move forward and just checking in on everything. Like right now, I will let. For a handful of clients, I will let a our account manager take over.

She can talk about everything. She can say everything. I'll let her answer questions. I'm there if I need to jump in, but I try to like, bite my tongue and let her handle it. Because, that's letting them have that experience. But with a little bit of training wheels on.

Yeah, that's good, man. That's good. Last question. Where do you see yourself in five, 10 years from now? Are you still gonna be doing what you're doing and then just grow bigger or are you gonna do additional spinoffs or be author additional books? Yeah. What? I'm probably not gonna pick up the book again.

I thought it was cool. It was just like a bucket list thing I wanted to do. Yeah. And the only people that bought it were just my friends. I bullied into buying it. It, it wasn't really it was almost just like a passion project, I always wanted to do it.

So I, I just finally did it. And then that was probably about four or five years ago now, but, that was pre agency. But the main reason that I started this agency was basically to produce a good amount of cash flow so that I could take myself to the next step. And I think that an agency or any really service business, it's a great.

Sort of cash flow machine. There's a couple different angles that I could go with this in the future. Some people will go the private equity route where they will buy into a handful of their clients and then kind of transition into that. I think that being in an agency gives you a phenomenal you, you have a lot of business knowledge because of the people you talk to, like you're talking with business owners every single day. And I think I, I think it allows you to understand operations really well, marketing, sales, all that jazz. I think you get really, you really learn that stuff.

I don't know if I would go to the private equity route at this point in time. I'm not super interested in that necessarily. Five to 10 years. I definitely wanna max this business out as much as I can at this point in time. Just, I guess just to put like revenue behind it we're at about 30, 35,000 a month right now in the agency.

I'd really like to bring that up to round a hundred. There's no way we can't do that by the end of five years. Probably sooner than that to be honest. But from there, we gotta do something with cash. I don't think that this is a business that's easy to run or enjoyable at a max scale.

I don't think having 400 clients, that's not really it's almost too big. Yeah. At that point, people don't get good results and so on. There needs to be some sort of a personal touch there. And then like with that money I would like to put a good chunk of it into real estate.

I really enjoy that. I do have a couple rentals right now. I'd definitely like to buy into that a little bit more. Nice. I come from the. The Detroit area. Now I didn't grow up on eight Mile, but my family, all my family all worked, in the automotive industry and things like that.

Yeah. If, if you've ever heard anything about Detroit on the news, we'd know. We, you'd know. We've been through some rough periods. So there's a lot of rebuilding that needs to happen here. Yep. And I would really like to be part of that helping to put some of that money into there are so many neighborhoods and communities that are just.

You can drive, downtown is beautiful, but like the like immediate suburbs, they really need some love. So I'd really like to help, rebuild a lot of those a lot of that real estate help, bring the help my little piece of bringing the city back to life a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I enjoy a lot. I enjoy the agency too, obviously, but, yeah. That's like a, when we have a solid amount of cash play. Yep. That's good. I like that, man. Yeah. I love Michigan. Yeah. Detroit area. Yeah. Shout out to Eric. Eric Howard Southwest. Yeah. Where can people find out more?

I know the YouTube channel. It's Towery. Yes. What, where does Towery, what's that word mean? Yeah. It's a made up word. The original sort of idea was. There's a, the bull obviously and that is, that was a playoff of the bull and bear market bull rising, so that was all right.

Kinda where that came from. And then tour Taurus, and then that sort of turned into tophi. Wow. Yeah. So it was the bull theme. Yeah, so Toury on YouTube is where they, you can find your information. Yeah. Toury on YouTube, T-A-U-R-I-F-Y or you can just look that up on Google. You'll find our website and a lot of examples, testimonials and things like that on how we've how all of our painting contractors.

Yeah. Yeah. So to be clear, you're not taking like a fitness company. You only work with. No. The. We've never worked with a fitness company. I wouldn't recommend it. We're only really looking to sign on painters here. Nice. There are other people we probably could help, but realistically probably not as good as someone else.

But if you're a painting contractor and you wanna take your business to the next level we got you. But if you own a salon, a fitness place, a gym, we're probably not gonna be the best fit. Nice. Love it. Yes. So only painting contractors and if you're a painting contractor in Southern California.

Don't call them because they're working. Yeah. The spot's taken. Sorry guys. Cool, Matt. I appreciate you, dude. It's been good. Rob, it was a pleasure. Thank you for having me on. And everybody, guys keep listening. Rob is awesome and I think he's really trying to put a lot of good out into the world.

Amen. All right. Thanks brother. Thank you.