Episode 639:09November 3, 2026

Ronnie Kahan on running up to 120 painters by hiring from within

Ronnie Kahan is the president of Apollo Painting & Wallcovering, a commercial painting contractor in Los Angeles that runs between 60 and 120 painters. Ronnie explains how the Northridge earthquake took his dad's six-painter shop to about 80, why his best hires are his crews' brothers and cousins, how asking AI what he's missing flags costs like parking, which once cost his team $35,000, and why getting paid 90 days after a job counts as good.

Ronnie Kahan

President, Apollo Painting & Wallcovering · Los Angeles, California

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The short version.

  1. 01

    Hire their brothers and cousins

    Apollo's best hires come from within. Ronnie asks his painters about brothers, cousins, and friends who are looking for work, and puts new people through a state-sanctioned training program. Every time they've gone outside to find somebody, it hasn't worked out.

  2. 02

    Promote from the field

    One foreman's son went from painter to estimator to project manager, and Ronnie's partner started in the field and was his assistant first. Some of his painters have been with him for 30 years.

  3. 03

    Ask AI what you're missing

    Ronnie doesn't trust AI to do a takeoff from a set of plans yet, because it makes a lot of mistakes. But he uploads proposals and asks it what he's missing. Parking is the kind of thing it flags: on one Santa Monica job, his team spent about $35,000 on parking they hadn't included.

  4. 04

    Never walk away from a job

    Some contractors win a job, find the mistake in their bid and walk away after signing. Ronnie never has, and nobody has ever had to finish a job for Apollo. When his team makes a grave error, they go to the client and see what help they can offer.

  5. 05

    Bigger isn't always better

    Growing too fast without the team to handle it puts a lot of contractors out of business. Ronnie's advice is to let growth come naturally rather than dropping your price to win a lot of work.

By the numbers.

Every figure is Ronnie's own, from the episode. Tap one to hear it.

120Painters in summer and winter, about 60 in the slower seasons05:19$35,000Spent on parking on one Santa Monica job13:3815 or 16Bids for every job won today, up from about five22:3930 yearsHow long some of his painters have worked for him08:56

How Apollo grows its own crew.

How Ronnie hires and promotes his painters, as he described it on the show.

Before

Hiring whoever turns up looking for work

Now

Painters who've been with him for 30 years

  1. 1

    Ask the crew

    When Apollo needs painters, Ronnie asks his guys if they have any brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles or friends looking for work.

  2. 2

    Train them properly

    New hires go through a training program, some through a state-sanctioned one, so they know their tools, their equipment, and safety.

  3. 3

    Never send a new hire alone

    A new painter always joins a crew on a job, so they're brought in slowly.

  4. 4

    Promote from within

    Look for talent inside the company: painters become estimators and project managers, and Ronnie's own partner came up from the field.

From six painters to 120

Ronnie grew up in New York and Texas, came to Los Angeles around 1990 and joined his dad’s small painting business, about six painters. The big break was the Northridge earthquake: insured office buildings needed fixing and repainting, the work was all time and materials, and the company went from six guys to 12 to 24 to 48, ending that run with about 80. Apollo, which he calls version four of the business, now runs between 60 and 120 painters depending on the season, and it moved from office tenant improvements into restaurants, retail, and hotels, including finishes like automotive paint at Universal CityWalk.

What AI gets wrong, and right

Plans have gone digital since Ronnie started, when takeoffs were done with a little wheel, and AI is coming into estimating. He wouldn’t have it do a takeoff from a set of plans yet, because it makes a lot of mistakes. Where it helps is as a backstop: he uploads a proposal and asks what he’s missing. One answer it has given is parking. On one Santa Monica job, his team spent about $35,000 on parking they hadn’t included.

Getting paid

The hardest part of the business is collecting. Getting paid within 90 days is good, and 120 is more common, while Apollo fronts the labor on every contract. Ronnie says developers sometimes hold up the end of a job to keep the money, and come back two or three years later to settle for 50 cents on the dollar. Competition is up too: Apollo used to win one job for every five bids, and now it’s one in 15 or 16.

Chapters and transcript.

The full conversation, lightly edited for reading. Bracketed text marks a cut or an edit. Pick a chapter or a timestamp to jump there.

00:09

David V. Kimball

Welcome to Retooled, a show where we talk to business leaders about how they've equipped their organization to adapt to change over time. I'm your host, David, and I'm here with my co-host, Dylan, and we're going to talk to Ronnie Kahan. Ronnie is the president of of Apollo painting and wall covering a commercial painting contractor in Los Angeles. We're going to dive into the usual, how Ronnie got his start and learn how it's evolved to the rapid changes in the marketplace since then. So first, let's start with just asking, Ronnie, tell us a bit about yourself and do a little intro.

00:43

Ronnie Kahan

Okay, thanks guys. Well, I'm originally from New York, grew up in Texas and made my way out here around maybe 1990. And actually had a normal job coming out of school, didn't really know what I wanted to do. I think I was going to go to law school, but decided it was I needed a break from school. And then my pops had a small painting business, maybe six painters, I think. And I just decided to get on board with him and to, you know, give it a shot, see what would happen.

01:27

David V. Kimball

That's awesome.

01:27

Ronnie Kahan

Yeah, things were great, actually. We, you know, I really didn't know anything about the business. And, but I think the art really... The big break came during the Northridge earthquake that we had in, what was it, 96. We went from like six guys to 12 to 24 to 48. We probably ended up at the end of that run with probably about 80 guys working for us.

02:03

David V. Kimball

Can you say more about that? Because not everyone might be familiar with what you're describing.

02:07

Ronnie Kahan

Yeah, so after the Northridge quake, we primarily focus our business on the commercial end of things. So we try to avoid, you know, paying people's bathrooms and living rooms and kitchens. But you have a lot of office buildings and all those buildings are, well, they have a lot of, they're all, they all carry very, they're covered with insurance. And so from top to bottom. Contractors were coming through, fixing the walls, repainting them, putting up wall covering, whatever they had there previously had to go back. And so there was about four of our clients that were doing this type of work. It was all on T &M, time and material. Uh, every day I'd go to a different building, just make sure the crews arrived, that they had everything that they needed and, uh, kind of learn the business really from the, from the bottom up.

03:08

David V. Kimball

It's somehow, sometimes someone else's, uh, you know, tragedy or someone else's, uh, difficulty can be helpful for someone else's business. Um, there's a, I know someone who just is really praying for heavy rain so he can do a lot of flooding, fixing and all that, you know, and everyone else's wanting sun. So that's just how it is in the business sometimes. So that's really interesting. So that's a lot of rapid growth. Well, over what period of time was that?

03:32

Ronnie Kahan

It was probably over a three or four year period of time. It was, it was fast growth and obviously there's lots of problems that come with that too. But this was, it was, it was sort of a sustained growth where, you know, it didn't, you know, we needed to find the guys in a, in a, in a, in the right manner. We needed to make sure that we weren't just, you know, going to Home Depot, let's say, and just picking up guys, you know, on the side of the street, you know. So I've always been on the impression if you're a good tradesman, you're going to be busy. So if you're just standing outside a store looking for work, you're probably not a great either worker or tradesman or whatever it is that you do. So that was probably, yeah, that was probably the big break that we had. And from there, we were able to sustain it. Um, you know, Apollo's probably like version four. We've had, uh, I've had three other companies. I've really been through it. Uh, one of our, one of the last companies we had was actually unionized and, uh, we went through like a federal elections. It was really kind of crazy.

04:53

David V. Kimball

Wow. I want to hear more. Go ahead, Dylan.

04:57

Dylan Baker

I was going to say, so you scaled the business to what it is now. What's your current headcount with the amount of employees or subcontractors that you have on the team?

05:09

Ronnie Kahan

So right now we flux between probably like 60 painters to 120 painters, just depending. Usually summertime and wintertime, we're up at about 120. And then... And then... Spring and fall, when we have some lulls, if you will, like, you know, it could be as low as 60.

05:30

Dylan Baker

Wow.

05:31

David V. Kimball

I'm interested. There's a lot of intrepidation and I guess you could say anxiety around the hiring process. And especially when maybe you have like a solo contractor or, you know, an entrepreneur who's trying to start and delegating that work and all that. How did you, I mean, it seems like out of necessity you grew, like you just, the occasion demanded it, but I guess in general, for anyone else listening, what advice would you give to people that are looking to scale, but maybe have a lot of intimidation around the hiring process? You mentioned it's really important to hire well.

06:02

Ronnie Kahan

Well, I would say the one thing we found a lot of success with is just hiring from within. So we'll ask the guys if they have any brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles. Family, friends, you know, anyone that's, you know, looking for work. And we put the guys through a training program and we have a state sanctioned training program that we put some of the guys through. So, you know, it's not just, hey, come on board, you're going to be carrying paint from here to there. It's, you know, we try to get the guys the right knowledge, safety, they understand their tools, their equipment and everything. And so we just have promoted from within. And, and actually found a lot of success that way.

06:49

Dylan Baker

Nice. I like that. Go ahead, David.

06:52

David V. Kimball

I was gonna say, have you tried the alternative where you haven't hired from within? Where you have you've been in a situation where you've had to just hire someone random? And what was the difference in the onboarding?

07:03

Ronnie Kahan

They never, they wouldn't, I mean, yeah, of course. And there are times that we'd have guys that would come to us. uh Now, if they worked for, like, say, a competitor and they knew who we were and some of the guys knew who they were, they might work out because, you know, they probably had the same work ethic or something like that. But if it was just like somebody that came in off the street that said they were a painter, it usually just didn't work out. Like, yeah, we've hired guys that, you know, we caught them drinking on the job. We've had guys that just said they were going to be there and never showed up. Um, I would never send like a new guy by himself to a new job, though. He would always be part of a crew, uh, because we want to integrate, you know, slowly. But, um, I would say that, you know, the onboarding, when you hire somebody that's sort of in your business, but not that you don't know personally, they usually have the knowledge, but there's always something missing. The work ethic. Or, you know, I guess what you really want is for everyone that you hired to have an owner's mentality, right? That way they're not spending more on material or buying extra brushes and things like that. You want them to be frugal with all that stuff.

08:31

Dylan Baker

Conscious of the spending. Yeah, definitely, definitely get that for sure. How would you say you go about like promoting within like you've had, I don't know, I'm assuming you've had like a core set of guys over the last 10 plus years or so. Do you guys, do you guys promote within usually with that for like the leaders of the teams?

08:51

Ronnie Kahan

So this is gonna be crazy, but I have guys that have worked for me for 30 years.

08:59

Dylan Baker

Wow.

09:00

Ronnie Kahan

That are, so they're, in fact, are one of my foremen. His son works for us and he, his son was a painter, just a smart kid. And, you know, we plucked him from the field and, you know, brought him into the office. And he was an estimator for a few years. And, and now he's a project manager.

09:24

Dylan Baker

Wow. Nice.

09:25

Ronnie Kahan

And, you know, and at the rate he's going, he'll probably be an owner soon, you know, or one day. But, you know, he's that that's what I mean by, you know, from promoting from within. In fact, my my partner right now. Well, my father retired, but we have another partner. He was also in the field. We brought him into the office and he was my assistant for a few years. And now he's a partner. So, you know, we look for guys, we look for our talent within our company and have just found a lot of success just promoting from within. And again, every time we've gone outside to try to find somebody, it just doesn't work out for whatever reason. It could be chemistry. It could be, you know, the company culture. It could be a lot of things, but it just doesn't work out.

10:23

David V. Kimball

So you've been in business for a long time. What have been the technological changes you've experienced, whether it's internally or external factors, technology, like whether it's communication between your customers or some kind of internal tool or software you've used? What kind of change have you seen since you started that is the most stark and the most obvious till now?

10:45

Ronnie Kahan

It's a great question. You know, I would say, well, probably one of the biggest, well, of course, I saw the transition from like pagers to cell phones. And unfortunately, you know, when it was still pagers, there was like room to breathe. Things weren't always in your court on a like, you know, things you get kicked back to you today. It's like you'll submit something, it gets reviewed and it gets kicked back into your box like by the end of the day. And it's like you just have no time to breathe. So the speed at which things are happening really have accelerated over the past couple decades. Probably the biggest thing is just how plans have become more digital. And we used to do takeoffs with like a little wheel and it was this manual sort of thing. And now it's done, you know, on the computer. And I even see a lot of AI coming in now, helping and assisting in the estimate process.

11:48

David V. Kimball

How has that transition been? I mean, You mentioned there's no rest, but hopefully like there's there are ways where this technology helps free up your time. I'm interested from your point of view is the and you and to be competitive, you kind of have to be if you didn't adopt these technologies like your competitors would just start taking over in a sense. I mean, or at least that's the perception. I'm interested to hear from you if you feel like it's been a net benefit or if there are things that you feel like have gotten worse as a result.

12:21

Ronnie Kahan

Well, you know, that it's a good question. It's probably though like the answers might be a little bit more complicated because, you know, you hear if you don't use or if you're not going to adapt with AI, then you're going to be left behind. And I think everybody sort of knows that. And so everyone feels like they have to use it in some manner. But AI makes a lot of mistakes. Okay. And I would say that to just upload a set of plans and having AI do your takeoff would not be a great idea right now. It still has a ways to go. And maybe they'll start making the plans a little bit differently to make it easier for AI. Because if you've ever looked at a set of blueprints, you know, it's very complicated and confusing. Like, I guess there's lots of ways that you can also incorporate AI. It doesn't have to be just with estimating. Sometimes I'll upload a proposal into AI and just ask it a simple question like, what am I missing? And, you know, for example, it'll spew back parking. You know, we did a job in Santa Monica and we didn't include any parking. And at the end of the job, we spent about $35,000 just on the parking.

13:40

David V. Kimball

Wow.

13:41

Dylan Baker

Yeah. So using it to kind of like audit and like poke holes in it is like kind of like a good backstop because obviously humans make mistakes too. And I'm sure, you know, within your business, you know, when it comes to like the legality stuff, like the contracts, you probably have a pretty dialed in system, but obviously, you know, you still miss things every once in a while. So

14:05

Ronnie Kahan

yeah, you miss them more often than you think. A lot of times, I think you get the jobs because there is something that you missed, and you just really hope that it's not like a deal breaker. I know that, and you know, some contractors have a good reputation, others don't. You know, I've seen guys that get awarded a project, and they realize what it is that they missed, and they just, you know, walk. They sign a contract, then they just walk away. I don't think that's the right way to do business. um... We all make mistakes and I always like to feel that the people that are hiring us are on the same team. So we'll try to work. If we make a mistake, if it's a pretty grave error, we'll usually come to them. And see what kind of help they can offer, if they can. But we don't walk away from a job. I've never had anybody finish a job for us. And we've been on some tough jobs, but you just bite your tongue and go to the next one, if you will. But

15:14

Dylan Baker

has there ever been, sorry to cut you off, has there ever been a time to where you were like, man, maybe I should get out of this business and try something else, like?

15:25

Ronnie Kahan

Oh yeah, oh yeah, I think every contractor has that vision. Yeah, but you know, every time I've done that, it seems like, you know, the business suffers and I suffer. And it's like it's in the sense that like, you know, it's been good. It's been good to me. It's been good to like, you know, the people in the business. It's been good to my family, that kind of a thing. It's also, I find it to be a more interesting trade of all the, you know, trades that you have. It's not like ceiling tile or... You know, you're just putting up drywall. We're sort of, I look at it as sort of, we help shape the landscape, you know, of what Los Angeles looks like, you know, by painting buildings or doing a new restaurant here or there. And, you know, we started out really just doing what's called tenant improvement, which is like businesses and office space. And it was just really kind of boring, you know, you paint white all the time on every wall. It's just like, okay, you want to do something else. So we kind of moved into like, restaurants. And restaurants always seem to utilize like some cutting edge things that you've never heard of before. And from there, it just snowballed into retail. And I would say today, that's probably like our biggest The sector of success that we have is in the retail section.

16:58

David V. Kimball

What are some examples of the restaurants using cutting-edge material? I don't know what you're referring to, but I'm interested in that.

17:07

Ronnie Kahan

So we just, well, let me see. Well, we just, okay, so one example would have been at the Universal CityWalk. There was a project we did. And the only kind of material that we could have used would have been like an automotive paint, which is a completely different like process. I literally went around a couple like body shops and we're asking guys that, you know, they could come and show my guys how to use the equipment and teach us how to, you know, apply that kind of paint. That would be like one example. Another example would be there's like a new product that's like a chrome like finish, like a mirror like finish. And it was, you know, I think primarily meant for metal, for cars, but it was done on some rounded columns at a restaurant.

17:59

David V. Kimball

Interesting.

18:00

Ronnie Kahan

It was almost like a glass-like appearance.

18:03

David V. Kimball

Huh. Is that like, I don't know if you know much about the decision making behind those things. Is that like a differentiator, like the restaurant wants to have kind of a signature look or some kind of distinctive feature and they go for that? Or is there like a practical side to it?

18:19

Ronnie Kahan

Well, there is. It's usually there's like a design. It could be interior designer. It could be a design company. And it could also just be like an architect with a design firm attached to it. But they usually decide what they have some type of vision that they've sold to the ownership. And then they go for it. Now, sometimes they work, and sometimes they're affordable, sometimes they're just like, it's just going to be so expensive or so out of reach that they'll come to us and ask us for some, like, maybe alternatives or other solutions that we might have for that problem. But it's usually decided by, like, by a team, and you know, like the ownership.

19:04

David V. Kimball

I'm curious. You mentioned that these other partners, you've never had another organization finish a job for you, and you've done, you've grit your teeth and finished a job even if it was difficult. So, but are there opportunities where you do work with vendors or third parties? Like, have you worked with anybody recently that you want to mention and give them a shout out? If not, that's okay. You're not playing favorites. I'm just interested in someone you've worked with recently.

19:30

Ronnie Kahan

No, well, we work with all the suppliers, Sherwin-Williams, Benjamin Moore, Dunn-Edwards, and we lean on them for a lot of support. We have a problem, you know, we have a paint rep that'll come out, inspect a job for us. If we see that there's something doesn't look right, you know, we try to stay ahead of the curve. I don't need somebody to... Scream at me and tell me like, you know, the job looks like garbage when we clearly know it didn't come out right. We'll try to fix it on our own before, you know, we're told to do that. It's sort of like quality control, if you will. But, you know, it's funny. A lot of people try to get away with things. I mean, I would say that over the years, we've actually finished a lot of projects for a lot of guys. For whatever reason, they hired the wrong company or they weren't able to do what they what was promised and then we'll get a call to come and try to clean the job up. And so we've seen some pretty crazy, crazy things. But, you know, it's like it's a team effort, though. It's not like any, you know, it's like guys on my team. Have more knowledge in some areas than in others, maybe. So one crew might be better for one job than another crew. It's kind of knowing, you know, who's the right person for that particular job.

20:57

David V. Kimball

Yeah, it seems like in your industry, that's an interesting metric. The not only the number of jobs or you haven't required somebody else to finish your job, but how many jobs you finished for somebody else. I think that both of those speak to the. You mentioned the quality control of your organization. So if you were to like put a percentage, you might not have these numbers handy. I'm just curious, what percentage of the time are you finishing up somebody else's work versus starting from scratch?

21:23

Ronnie Kahan

Well, and it used to be a lot more common, I think, but, you know, it's well, it's probably less than 10%, you know, overall. um, But, you know, there have been a few big ones that have happened. Or sometimes, you know, you hear like a guy just went out of business in the middle of a project or he just ran out of money and he just walked out, you know, and so they'll bring us in to try to fix it. And those situations are always very challenging because if you think about it. You know, your first gut is to be like, okay, this is all wrong. We got to redo the whole thing. And we try to work with our clients to say, okay, well, maybe this is salvageable. If that's acceptable, then we don't need to worry about it. We'll just worry about the things that they didn't finish. And, you know, and go about that way. But, you know, you asked me earlier, like about, like some of the changes. One thing that I did notice, one thing that we track is when we first started out, you know, our bid to win ratio, if you will, was like probably five to one. So for every five proposals that we did, that we sent out, we would get one job. And I think today it's more like 15 or 16.

22:41

David V. Kimball

Wow. Is it because there's more competition or what do you think? What do you attribute that to?

22:46

Ronnie Kahan

I think it's more competition. And in our business, in our industry, there's sort of a nuance between like, or let's say this unwritten understanding that, you know, your residential painters, they stay in their lane, we stay in our lane. But when the housing market... Drops or falls off. A lot of times those guys are like, Hey, this is a great time to get into doing commercial work. And so they'll start going after the same jobs and the pricing gets all like, you know, out of whack to usually a lot, you know, cheaper than we are. And so it just throws things into flux for a while. You know, that's unfortunately, I think it's just more competition, more people that have their license, you know, the license numbers just keep going up and up and up. So there's more people getting into the business, you know, every day.

23:38

Dylan Baker

You would think that they like, I don't know if this is different state to state, but you'd think that they would limit the amount of licenses that are given out to where the people who have licenses, it actually makes them. I guess like more, more in demand, I guess. Like, do they, do they do it that way in some aspect for commercial or is it a free-for-all? I

24:01

Ronnie Kahan

don't, no, I don't think so. I think in, you know, at least out here in California, it's just another way for them to make money. So if, you know, a million people want to become a painting contractor, so long as you've taken your exam and you fill out the application correctly, they'll, they'll, you know, when you pass your exams, I guess they'll, they'll give you a. They give you the license.

24:22

Dylan Baker

Wow, that's crazy.

24:24

Ronnie Kahan

Some states don't have any licensing though. I think like in Kansas, for example, I don't think they have contractions that do not necessarily need to be licensed.

24:34

David V. Kimball

Have you done projects primarily in California or have you done projects in other states too?

24:40

Ronnie Kahan

We've done some traveling in some other states. Uh, we've gotten, uh, into the hospitality, uh, section a bit more these past, like say 10 years where we're doing a lot of hotels and there's lots of hotels in remote locations that, uh, sometimes require a big contractor who's got the manpower, but we've done work in Vegas. We've done work in, uh, Colorado. We've done work in Arizona, and probably a job or two in Texas, but, you know, it's, yeah, we go out of, we also go up north, we go up to, like, you know, we've done some jobs up in Fresno, and so, yeah, if the work is there, and it's a, you know, long enough project, then, yeah, we'll definitely go after it.

25:36

David V. Kimball

One of the things you made pretty clear early on in this interview is you mentioned, like, hiring from the inside, and you hire people's brothers and cousins or whoever, so it seems like there's kind of a familial focus, you mentioned your dad was in the business and all that, so I guess, do you have any, with your own family, do you have any advice on managing running an organization like you have, and managing family time, and prioritizing those relationships for someone that, maybe they're a little bit earlier in their career, and they're thinking, like, they see the massive mountain in front of them, and they go, how am I going to manage all these things with my family? Or with my business?

26:12

Ronnie Kahan

Well, yeah, I mean, though, the first obvious thing is, you know, bigger is not always better. It We'll There's advantages to being like a small company. Um, And also, you know, I, you know, a lot of people are Put out of business because of growth, growing too fast and then not having the resources or the, let's say like the, the, what's the word I'm trying to think of, you know, like a team that's already in place that can handle sort of like the extra workload that you're doing. If you're just a one man show. It would be very difficult to just explode and take on a bunch of work because you don't have anyone helping you. But if you've got a dedicated office, you have full-time estimators, then obviously it's a lot easier and you probably have a better chance of surviving if you did it that way. So again, I would just say bigger is not necessarily better. But that'd probably be my advice. Don't, you know, it's always better when it happens, you know, naturally, I guess, as opposed to just trying to drop your price and getting a bunch of work. It's not necessarily, that's not a great way of getting.

27:40

David V. Kimball

So growing for growing's sake isn't necessarily. A worthy aim, but again, like to tie it to the family, like the family part of the question, whether or not you're planning on growing, let's just say you're trying to sustain your business. How do you divide up your family time and your work time in a way that achieves the right level of balance?

28:03

Ronnie Kahan

Well, I mean, I think that's like a personal. Thing for everyone, you know, I remember actually, you know, my dad barely, you know, came home. He worked really hard when I was a kid. And so I think I just saw him at night. But I think that for me, it's, you know, I always had. I'm obviously my kids are older now, but I have three kids and, you know, I always wanted to make sure that I didn't miss any time with them. So it was kind of important for me to get home. And, you know, it's I think there's many ways of saying this, but, you know, the work that you leave on your desk at the end of the day is it's going to be there in the next day. I mean, so it's like, well, why are you working burning the midnight oil for what? Why? Like it's just going to be the same thing the next day. You know, you got to stop and smell the roses and spend time with your kids and enjoy those other things too. So, you know, I got a great wife. She would always, you know, wait to make dinner till I got home so that, you know, I could enjoy, you know, eating with everybody. Things like that.

29:18

David V. Kimball

That's great.

29:20

Dylan Baker

That's awesome.

29:21

David V. Kimball

I love that.

29:22

Dylan Baker

Yeah, yeah. I'm curious, Ronnie. So where are you currently getting the most opportunities for your bids from right now? Is it from organic internal referrals? Is it from any sort of advertisement you're doing online? online or What does it look like for you guys right now? Because we talked to businesses that have leads coming in from a bunch of different channels. And I'm curious because we haven't spoke to someone in the commercial painting industry yet.

29:53

Ronnie Kahan

Yeah. So when you, you know, you always hear it's a small industry, right? And in a way it is like, I don't know. There'll be general contractors I've never heard of, obviously. But, you know, the name sort of sometimes will be familiar, like, oh, wait a minute, was that guy over at that company? And now he's over at this company. And people who know us that, you know, we try to be like, like a standard, you know, because sometimes if you're a general contractor, it can be difficult, you might take, you might get three or four painting bids, and they could be all over the place in terms of, like, the numbers, and so we try to be, like, you know, a standard, you know, that if our price is here, like, there's a good chance that, you know, we'll do the job at that price, obviously, but, like, you know, that's probably, you know, the number that you need for the project, and it's, like, one of those things where people know who we are, and so I get a lot of unsolicited leads or bids, bid requests, I turn a lot of them down, to be honest, because we have limited resources, too, even though we have like four dedicated estimators, you know, they're busy. And then you have projects that you've already bid that they have changes on them. And then you have, you know, questions and then there's job walks and then there's, you know, lots of different things that come up. And so, you know, everyone's time is spent very well, but. And it's like, you know, there are places that we do generate. There's like, I think it's called the Blue Book. And we have like, everyone gets a free listing in there, but I get a lot of calls from there. And we get a lot of calls from people who know, like in the retail section, for example, sector, a lot of these stores, they know who we are. And so. Like, oh, speaking of which, you know, we're doing a job in Florida right now. It's a retail store. And the company wanted us to do their specialty finishes for them because of the work that we did here. And so they told whoever was bidding the job in Florida, hey, reach out to these guys and get a number because that's who we want, to use for that.

32:21

Dylan Baker

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, man. It's like a pattern we're seeing that like the internal referral system is like over half of the business for like most people in general contracting and then, you know, your trade work, I guess I should say. But that's awesome, man. I mean, congrats that you don't have to, you know, spend money or spend that much money on the marketing or advertising size or side of things to get more leads in. It's great.

32:52

Ronnie Kahan

Right. I mean, we do. We have a, we actually recently hired a marketing team. Because we're always doing work for general contractors, our biggest challenges are the is the money collection and it's pretty bad out here. You know, our whole industry really needs to be, you know, really changed because I think if we get paid within 90 days, that's that's great. I mean, great. And I don't

33:24

Dylan Baker

know any. Net 90 is insane, dude.

33:27

Ronnie Kahan

And you know, the craziest part is we have to finish these jobs. So like name another industry, even in the medical profession where you like you finish your job and then you get paid for it 90 days later.

33:43

David V. Kimball

Hmm.

33:44

Dylan Baker

That's nuts. You have to front all the labor and all the costs and everything. You got to pretty much bankroll every contract. That's wild, man.

33:54

Ronnie Kahan

There are times when if there's like a lot of material, you can put in an invoice for the material maybe ahead of time and they might help you out with that. Without a doubt, the labor you're going to pay for it. And as I said, if you get paid in 90 days, that's great. Like, it's usually more like 120. And, you know, California gave us a little bit of relief by changing the law of the retention. It used to be a 10% retention now. Now, they only have to hold 5%. They can only hold 5% retention, but really, that amount is so insignificant, it doesn't make a whole big difference.

34:30

Dylan Baker

Would you say that's because you deal mostly in the commercial space rather than smaller businesses, and that's why they're given that lenience for the net pay structure?

34:41

Ronnie Kahan

Yeah, and also, I always looked at it like, when you want to work with some of the big boys, for example, the big contractors that are doing the really big jobs, if you think about it, you know, they get a progress payment. Their progress payment could be a couple million dollar progress payment. And if they keep that in their bank cycle for a month, just even earning, you know, whatever, 1%, 2%, it's enough to pay for a receptionist salary for a year, just that one month. So, you know, yeah, you're supposed to get paid when paid, but those guys will hold on to the money as long as they can until we call and cry for it, you know, because it can, it can, you know, like I said, that interest alone, it's such large dollar amounts that they can, they can float it. And I also feel that if you don't have a strong financial, a lot of them won't even do business with you. You know, they don't want you calling and complaining for money all the time, even though we have no choice but to do that.

35:45

David V. Kimball

I wonder what kind of catalyst for change would be required to reverse that expectation. I bet you think about that a lot.

35:54

Ronnie Kahan

Yeah, me too, David. Let's put our heads together.

35:57

David V. Kimball

We'll solve it right now, right here.

36:00

Ronnie Kahan

I think it's going to take, it's an overhaul of the entire system, for one, and it's not just, you know, I don't think that... You know, one painting company is going to be able to, you know, change it and make it and make a difference. But I think that if a group of us got together and put our heads together and decided like, hey, this is what how it's going to be, because, you know, really, there's another game that these developers will play. And, you know, they all know it, too, which is, you know, they'll have some kind of issue at the end of a job to sort of hold it up and put it in legal status, and everyone will leave the job to protect their rights. But it's, you know, it'll be at least two or three years before we see our money in that job, and then the developers know that, and they'll come back after two, three years and try to settle for 50 cents on the dollar.

36:51

David V. Kimball

We heard it from somebody else. We were talking to how litigious California is in particular. So you are definitely on an uphill battle there. I know we're almost at time for our show. Dylan, did you have any other questions you wanted to ask Ronnie while he's here? Or do you want to wrap up the episode?

37:08

Dylan Baker

Yeah, Ronnie. So if you weren't in the commercial painting industry, what would you be doing, you think?

37:16

Ronnie Kahan

Wow, that's a great question.

37:18

Dylan Baker

As if you were... As if it were like a passion thing rather than a paycheck.

37:24

Ronnie Kahan

Maybe, you know, the only other area that like my, my dad and I had some success, we made some money in this business and we bought some properties. I'd maybe just go into some development, you know, maybe buy some more properties, fix them up and sell them. It used to be decent enough out here that you could do that, you know, because you could buy the properties for a lot less. But now a teardown is a million dollars here. So the dollars just don't really make sense anymore on that. But I'd probably pursue that maybe as a passion.

37:53

Dylan Baker

Flipping houses or flipping properties pretty much.

37:56

Ronnie Kahan

Flipping properties or just trying to get them, improve them, you know, raise the rent a little bit to, you know, make them nicer than they were. So eventually you've, you know, fixed up an entire building, but yeah, I think real estate's been pretty good out here.

38:13

David V. Kimball

Ronnie Kahan, where can people find you if they want to do business with you? Assuming you have capacity, it seems like you're doing very well. So if you want to connect with you or learn more about your work, can they do that?

38:25

Ronnie Kahan

Yeah, you can go to our website. So, I went to It's www.apollopainting.net. And you can check that out. It has a lot of pictures of current jobs that we're doing and some of the other services that we offer. And if it was a contact sheet and just reach out to us and we're happy to help whatever project they may have.

38:47

David V. Kimball

Thank you, Ronnie. It was a pleasure. Take it easy. Thank you so much for your time.

38:51

Ronnie Kahan

Yeah, thank you.

38:53

Dylan Baker

Thanks, Ronnie.

What came up.

The tools Ronnie mentioned on the show. We don't take money from any of them.

AIChecks a proposal for what's missing; not trusted with takeoffs yet
Digital takeoffsMeasuring plans on the computer instead of with a wheel
The Blue BookA free directory listing that brings in a lot of calls
Sherwin-Williams, Benjamin Moore, and Dunn-EdwardsPaint suppliers whose reps come out and inspect a job

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