Building an Empire with Servant Leadership

Chris Kiefer (00:01.924)

Nick.

Nick Slavik (00:12.225)

How's it going, man?

Chris Kiefer (00:13.462)

Hey, hey, the man, the myth, the legend, how are you doing?

Nick Slavik (00:16.865)

Stop it, I'm good, man.

Chris Kiefer (00:20.67)

Um, I have one other coworker joining me or joining, um, should be on a second. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm stoked, uh, that we get a chance to chat. Thanks for taking the time to do it. And, um, before I, I just always start recording because I like the organic feel, but then I have my editor cut out, whatever is not relevant. Did you have any questions before we dive in and, and then if not, I have one.

Nick Slavik (00:24.084)

Awesome.

Nick Slavik (00:42.494)

Oh yeah, no worries.

Chris Kiefer (00:49.61)

think just to let you know at the end.

Nick Slavik (00:52.641)

No absolutely no questions man I love off the cuff stuff so I'll roll with any punches you got

Chris Kiefer (00:58.238)

Okay. So at the end, the question I ask everybody, last two questions are three book recommendations. So if you want to take a second to like, you know, jot them down or whatever, they don't have to be related to what we talk about. They can just be your favorite three, your first three, you read your last three, you read your whatever, however you want to do that. Just three book recommendations and then favorite movie. And then, um, and then the last, the last part is

Nick Slavik (01:05.806)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Kiefer (01:27.55)

if you, what's your preferred method that people get in contact with you. So it could be LinkedIn, email, website, whatever you want. And I think that's it.

Nick Slavik (01:37.505)

You got it, man. I'll write notes just so I don't blank.

Nathan (01:38.869)

You just throw them in the house.

Chris Kiefer (01:46.126)

And Nathan, it says you have Riverside open and another tab still, so just close out of the other one. And then I think we should be good. Nick, this is Nathan. Nathan, this is Nick.

Nathan (01:52.949)

Hmm

Nick Slavik (01:58.009)

How's it going, man?

Nathan (01:59.369)

Good, how are you?

Nick Slavik (02:01.049)

Good, good, good. Thank you guys for the opportunity.

Chris Kiefer (02:04.49)

Oh yeah. And you, well yeah, we'll just, we'll go ahead and jump off into this and then I will, yeah, we'll see where it goes because I got a bunch of fun stuff to talk about. Welcome back to The Pursuit of Purpose. My name is Chris Kiefer and I am here with Nick Slavik today as well as a co-host, Nathan Tenepal. So we are going to be talking about painting related things and purposeful.

Nathan (02:05.374)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (02:34.662)

attitudes and actions and work and all that stuff. So first of all, Nick, thanks so much for taking the time to join us today.

Nick Slavik (02:41.837)

Now, I appreciate it, guys. I do deeply appreciate the opportunity. So thank you for this.

Chris Kiefer (02:47.294)

Yeah, so you are, I feel like, I'm gonna go out on a limb, but Nathan, you can tell me if you agree, you have to be the most recognized name in the painting world. If there is such a person, can you even think of someone that would be, and I know this might be awkward because we're like telling you how famous you are, but the point is like, and actually, I'll get into why I believe that, but is there anyone else that you know

Nick Slavik (03:04.31)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (03:16.746)

that is very prominent in the painting world.

Nick Slavik (03:21.549)

Yeah, so me being from Minnesota, I'm gonna be limited in my ability to respond to that. We are passive aggressive, we are introverted, and we have little to no self-esteem. We suffer from that. So number one, I'm almost biologically prevented from giving you a response to that. I will tell you this, data plus feelings. The feelings is if there are many more people with many more followers than me, but...

Spirit-wise, connection-wise, I think every connection I have is much more deeply meaningful than a follower on TikTok for most other people. So there are people with many more views, many more followers, many more reach. But it's quality versus quantity for me, which is, yes, I do touch a lot of people. But the people I do touch, it's pretty meaningful. And that's what I would consider. I'm blushing even saying that because it's

It almost feels like bragging about myself, but I do believe it might.

Chris Kiefer (04:22.526)

Yeah, because the reason I was gonna say as far as why is you have done Ask A Painter Live for how many consecutive weeks? 300 or something like that?

Nick Slavik (04:34.909)

Let's see what show we're on show 399 so that's 399 consecutive weeks without missing a week.

Chris Kiefer (04:42.27)

Yeah. So I feel like to me, I have the, that's it. That's like talk about consistency, you know, how many, I don't even have to do the math 400 divided by 58 years. That's like the beginning of when internet was invented. So you were like early on this.

Nathan (04:49.938)

It's amazing.

Nick Slavik (04:50.933)

It's almost eight years, right? It's getting there. Yeah.

Nick Slavik (05:00.155)

Honestly, I think I was just recounting this to somebody in my shop today. I'm actually coming from the Slavic shop today. I was recounting the story that I think the first week that Facebook ever offered live was the first live I ever did.

Chris Kiefer (05:15.626)

That's awesome. Did you do anything else besides, like before Facebook, did you do YouTube or any other like putting yourself out there on the internet?

Nick Slavik (05:25.921)

No, so one thing that I have done, there's many things, right, that we're just lucky enough to do, and it works, and it's great, and it's consistent. A lot of the things that is not genuine to us, we're not consistent with, so obviously Ask a Painter is genuine to me, because it takes no problem for me to be consistent. 12 years ago, 13 years ago, I started on Facebook, then when Instagram came off, I did Instagram, and then I just followed all the social media.

And initially, I really do like sharing because of the connections it would make. And it really opened up my world because I'm endlessly fascinated about the coding science, the tools, the materials. And as I started to grow my business about the human side of this and management and leadership and intentionality and grit and perseverance. So it's just been like it's been this magic mirror social media in which I can look into.

and it connects me with humans I would never know exist. You too being some of them, so.

Chris Kiefer (06:29.63)

Yeah, I was gonna ask really quick, Gary Vaynerchuk. Do you know Gary Vaynerchuk? Are you aware of him?

Nathan (06:30.533)

I have a question. Yeah.

Nick Slavik (06:37.488)

Is this a test?

Chris Kiefer (06:39.958)

Yeah, I'm just curious because I was like, there has to have been maybe you read one of his books or something because yeah.

Nick Slavik (06:42.024)

Yeah, I'm familiar.

No, and yeah, so I actually, I take, I don't often take a lot of like bipolar stances on stuff. There are a bunch of like influencers and people who write and read business books that I'm aligned with and not. I do appreciate what he does. His methods of communicating are a little off putting to me, but I do believe a lot of the things he actually says are true. Yes.

Chris Kiefer (07:10.326)

Okay, because I was gonna say, was that a no he does it.

Nathan (07:10.545)

Yeah, he does not have a Midwestern style of communication.

Nick Slavik (07:15.893)

Yeah, he says the F word too much.

Nathan (07:18.513)

Yeah, he says a lot. It's one of his favorite words, I think.

Chris Kiefer (07:18.658)

Hahaha

Nick Slavik (07:22.109)

And I get it, like, you know, so I am apt to use some spicy language, but I, Minnesotans bristle when that's an affect people place upon themselves. I feel like he's doing that, that he wouldn't normally do that in his life. Maybe that's judging, maybe that's being a little scarcity mindset of me, but it is one of those things where in Ask a Painter, you're not going to hear a lot of that.

Chris Kiefer (07:44.706)

Because I was more curious if that was a reason to start.

Nathan (07:44.854)

Yeah, it's an emotional...

Nick Slavik (07:49.885)

No, and so interestingly enough, back when I started on social media, there were none of these humans. Mr. Beast wasn't here, Gary Vaynerchuk wasn't posting, Joe Rogan didn't have a world famous podcast. Like there literally wasn't this, right? So what I got is I love immediate feedback, I love qualitative data, and when I would post a picture of like a historic restoration I was on,

and I would show this beautiful piece of trim that was put there 140 years ago, and you could see the marks from the craftsperson saw, and I wrote something meaningful about how that means something to me. It would get tons of likes. When I would post something that is a little shallow, hey, I got a new truck, I wouldn't get as much. So for me, that's a certain thing that really helped me understand, oh, wait a second, there's other people that think this is meaningful. Their names and their qualitative data are right down below, I should connect with them.

So it was, it's a roundabout saying it's a biological thing. I was either going to do this with humans near me. Social media just became an avenue where I could show a lot of people what I love. I love showing people what I love. It just coincided with the advent of social media.

Chris Kiefer (08:46.85)

Love that.

Nathan (09:04.245)

Okay, so I hear you saying like part of the big reason why you do this is just the human connection. Like that's just something that's really important to you. And obviously social media is a great way to do that. And you found being genuine, being authentic has created deeper connections than, you know, look at my new track or whatever else it may be. So my follow up question to that is like I hear you saying that's part of why.

Nick Slavik (09:28.162)

the deepest.

Nathan (09:33.533)

you've done this show for 399 straight weeks. Why else do you do it? Like you made the comment like, oh, I can do this for another 400 weeks and like it wouldn't even be a thing. Like I love it, you know? And to me that's like, there is a deep fire inside of you that drives that motivation and makes it feel like not work, right? Like...

Nick Slavik (10:01.485)

No, and that's, I, or has an.

Nathan (10:02.281)

So what is that? What is that fire? Why do you do what you do?

Nick Slavik (10:05.825)

Yeah, that fire has a name and it is servant leadership, which is, um, you will know a lot of people, maybe you guys are this too, I have a feeling because you're doing a podcast. It is that, but there's people who are deeply involved in their communities and their churches and sports groups and charities in industry associations and things like that. And naturally you find some people in your life that are just, they're on city council, they're on the school board, they're volunteering all the time. These are servant leaders.

Nick Slavik (10:36.177)

some positivity to those around them. And they're gonna find an outlet sooner or later. And in the olden days before any social media, it literally is just that, help your neighbor, help out the school, volunteer to be a coach for a baseball team or a volleyball team. But now when we have social media, I weaponized the servant leadership. I didn't know this was me. This was something that people told me I had traits of, but I will always reach outside myself. Social media just became the thing that knocked the end of the spigot off. And now it's just like,

fire hose shooting out there. And it really let me fully express this need to go outside of myself and affect the lives of others.

Nathan (11:14.737)

think serving leadership is such a big deal and I think it can be contagious. I think people see you doing what you're doing and they're like, he's not trying to sell me anything? Like, where's the offer? Where's the, like, what's he trying to do here? And you don't, like, you, I mean, and that's...

Chris Kiefer (11:24.982)

What's the hook?

Nick Slavik (11:28.673)

No, like, it's famously, I literally have nothing to sell. Like, literally I have nothing to sell. I'm not a coach, no.

Nathan (11:36.153)

Yeah, not even a sponsor. You should like pitch somebody, like make something off of this file. I wouldn't blame you.

Nick Slavik (11:42.505)

No, and so obviously it would be not trustworthy of me to say that there's not, Escapainer is not a business, but I take like a broadcast radio effect where the Escapainer show and its four verticals is sort of my way of reaching out there, making genuine connections. It turns out there's some economic value to that, to some very large underwriters who send me around the country to teach what I say on Escapainer to other people. And for those people, it's free.

but we just have one or two people paying for it. So this is not a new model, right? It's TV, it's broadcast radio, it's large underwriters pay for it so that the masses can consume.

Chris Kiefer (12:20.922)

Yeah. The, I was going to ask, um, what is the, uh, I don't know how much you, I'm just, I'm like a data marketing guy. So I'm just curious about this. And to the extent that you can, or that you're open to talking about it, like obviously site went on a, well, I should tell you my background is I'm an engineer by education. I ran a marketing company for six years.

Then I had kids and was like, I'm not making any money in this small business marketing company. So I took a job as a marketing director for a growing painting business. And I was at that job for three years. And then in that process, I realized, man, this engineering stuff that I just can't in my bones, I'm just obsessed with automation and data analytics and all that stuff. I had automated all these processes and other painting companies were like, Hey, can you do for us what you did for them?

And I was like, oh yeah, sure. So then I knew another one and another one. And now all of a sudden a year and a half later, I'm helping people automate their businesses, their painting business specifically. So I didn't know of Nick Slavik until, I don't know, five months ago-ish, maybe six months ago. Cause I was the marketer and I would say from my view, you're focusing a lot on just like mastering the basics, professionalism, you know, bidding.

job costing, all those things, and I was in digital media land. But anyways, since I've gotten into this space of trying to put out content, I know that obviously the strategy of, hey, we have this show, and if you want the templates, you can drop your email and I'll send it to you. What's the list value, or how are you leveraging the list to

And I should also clarify that to me, I think there is absolutely nothing wrong. Someone might be like, oh, what are you gonna do with my information? It's like, well, I'm either gonna add you to my newsletter or to a newsletter of something that I think is going to serve you if you're a painter and you can unsubscribe if you don't like it. Is there anything more to it than that? Than like genuinely connecting people to further resources that they might find valuable?

Nick Slavik (14:30.273)

Yeah, so I can, with a straight face, and honestly and genuinely say that I legitimately want to help other people the way that other people have helped me. I had been in this industry for 25 years before I got serious about running a business. And in the first 25 years, it was grit, it was pain, it was high-low feelings, all this other stuff. And I loved the craft so much I didn't leave. Only in the last six years did I go from one person to 40. And that's...

solely because other people did for me what I am now doing for other people. So I would feel very disingenuous if I didn't then turn around and do that for others. Now you could make an argument that Ask a Painter and its Four Verticals is a not fully realized business. So we have the live show, which is the flagship. We have in-person events. We have public speaking and we have content creation. So

Chris Kiefer (15:17.334)

What are the four verticals?

Nick Slavik (15:27.273)

What people know of me of like the live show, that is the most visible thing that if you're a painter and you search any painting topic, you're likely going to trip over, right? It's an accessible thing, it's live, it's fairly informal. I give resources away, it's fine. The biggest bottom of the iceberg, the tip of the iceberg is the Ask a Painter show. The bottom of the iceberg is a lot of the content creation, which if I'm being honest, I think I have 24 separate contracts every year and almost nobody ever sees where this stuff lands.

It's for all of the big industry patrons and things like that. And I'm very respectful. There's a whole bunch of NDAs and I execute contracts like a good soldier whenever I'm able to. Whether people see it or not is a whole other thing. What I don't do right now, and this is the part where you could make the argument, well, maybe this isn't a fully realized business, but I would make an argument. I'm not taking people's information and using it to market anything specific in a direct way.

This is a very indirect thing where of my four verticals, there's one that's wholly a loss leader that feeds all the other ones. The other ones could not exist without the other one. The best example I can give you is I host two in-person retreats every year in a place that's very special to me. It's invite only. You gotta go through an application process. You gotta be vetted by me. There's typically 15 to 18 people. We go to a luxury lodge. There's a private chef.

deep on you come there with an ask. And this is a think tank of other people. And I have people prepare for their ask for six months. They show up. And usually what people get out of the feedback of this group and the interaction, they make life changing decisions on it. Now, that is not free. That is a thing where I use Ask a Painter to meet my core people. We vet them through industry events. If I like you at industry events and I know that you could be a beneficial think tanker in this think tank.

You might get an invitation to a retreat and then it's a fear system for all those things. And it's very selfish because it's things I want to do with my friends.

Chris Kiefer (17:32.726)

That's awesome. I love that.

Nathan (17:35.673)

I think you're a great example of somebody who's found something you love and you've found something you're really good at and you've poured yourself into it in a way that gives back and in your giving, now you're finding yourself with these opportunities to receive, right? And I think that's like really could be a blueprint for a lot of people, right? Like what do you want to do with your life?

You want to do stuff that you love and you care about and brings you fulfillment. Like Nick Slavik is an example of one way to do that. And if you can do that as a painter, okay, you can do it with anything, right? Like, it doesn't matter what you, it doesn't matter what you do. You can find your passion and you can find the thing that is excellent to you. And like, you're really good at that doesn't take that much energy and like,

pour your life into that and like good things will come to yourself but and those around you.

Nick Slavik (18:41.91)

I was very lucky that I actually found my passion. And I don't read many business books. I know you're probably gonna ask me for some recommendations. I don't read many business books, but one of the ones I did read was Grit. And Grit is a book by a social psychologist that lays out a data-based way of like, who are the outliers and how do they get there? And one of the things is, you do not get struck by lightning, by your passion. You don't just walk around one day and trip over your passion. You need to.

rigorously explore and try and fail to find your passion. Turns out I was born into my passion in my family business. And so I was very lucky that for a long time, I was just a painter and I always thought the grass was greener elsewhere, until I realized that almost everybody I know hates their job in some way. You know, there's very few people that are truly in their prime, in their passion, get energy from work, instead of just being neutral or negative. And once I realized that was me, no looking back.

And this is literally that, which is I have no problem being a rugged capitalist, right? If there was an opportunity to make some money on flipping a house, I would do that. I do not get deep love and satisfaction and energy from that. What I want to do is find a historic home, restore it, find a way to have a foundation for needy children to be there so that for generations into the future, this beautiful historic home fosters. It's a force multiplier to give greater good for the longest period of time.

Now it's a long play, right? And Ask a Painter is a long play. But if I want to devote myself and my life to something meaningful, I'm going to form a decade long foundation so that I can reap the rewards from my connections from Ask a Painter and the beautiful humans I meet with it for the rest of my life. I don't want to scale up a show, get a standard operating procedure and then sell my podcast. Like that is not me. I get energy from this and I will continue it as long as it's relevant.

Chris Kiefer (20:34.123)

Hmm.

Chris Kiefer (20:39.514)

So I've got a I love I love everything you're saying and obviously my show being the pursuit of purpose I would say from a very Or long as I can remember As as like an adult I should say not like when I was six I was thinking about purpose, but as like a high school senior and on I was just like what's the like? What's what am I doing? Like what is and how does this matter and? For me I have I would say

Nick Slavik (20:55.398)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (21:07.114)

Well, there's a backstory I won't get into right now, but what I'm obsessed with at the moment is I feel like I found my passion in data and analytics. And I'm my only three months ago, three months ago, and this was again, I'd seen you and some other people and for probably like six years, I've been like, I should put out content. And it was really like, I was like, I should put out content. It's like that thought was with me for years and years and years. And

Nick Slavik (21:16.977)

Ah

Chris Kiefer (21:36.618)

What I'm obsessed with right now, because I've only been doing my YouTube channel for three months, so I'm like very early in this journey, but it's had remarkable traction. There's already a thousand subscribers. I feel like it's the most niche painting YouTube channel on the planet, because you're a painting focused. I'm like painting automation specific, like that's it. If it's related to automation and painting, I'm talking to you.

but it's so niche and there's people that are like, ooh, this is interesting. All of that to say, what was it that made me, and I'm trying to dissect this, why did all of a sudden I start the YouTube channel? Or go back even further when I started my business. Or like I took the first step, like 399 weeks ago, there was something that was like, I've never done a show before, and now I'm gonna do the show. And then you did another one, and then another one, and then another one, and it's like.

Nick Slavik (22:22.62)

you

Chris Kiefer (22:33.35)

Once the momentum starts, it's not that it's easy and you don't have days of resistance trying to tell you that you should do something else and skip this week. But I do think, and maybe you can disagree, the first one, maybe the first five or something, is like excruciatingly difficult. It's like that activation energy in a chemistry equation, if you're familiar with that. You have to get over the hump and then it's like, and then the reaction takes off and you're coasting for a while.

Nick Slavik (23:04.333)

Yep, absolutely, absolutely perfect metaphor because Ask a Painter is a great example of that. I've also heard a great metaphor from standup comedians, which is you will likely be a standup comic in open mics and clubs and things for somewhere between three and five years before you find your voice. You will start mimicking everybody else because that's what your reference points are. You will start experimenting with things. You will fail miserably. Some things will hit and the data will point you in the right way.

Ask a Painter is a perfect example of that, which is it was dedicated to homeowners in its first 20 episodes. I thought this was Ask a Painter so that everybody who wasn't in this trade could ask a professional painter the questions. And initially, the first 20 episodes were commented on and watched by people from my hometown who were not painters. The second painters found it, I didn't have a choice but to pivot. I found my voice. I was forced into finding my voice that this is a show for painters, not homeowners.

Chris Kiefer (24:01.634)

So, but what do you think that, can you even remember, like how long were you like, I should do a Facebook Live before you did it? Or are you someone that just has the gift of like, I have an idea, I take action, I don't think about it, and then I analyze later.

Nick Slavik (24:11.003)

Oh.

Nick Slavik (24:17.781)

Yeah, so the one thing again, we talk about looking into a lot of things. I have this great thing where I almost to a fault just start stuff. And so that was no problem for me. And I knew at that point, at that point, Facebook was going well and Instagram was there and I saw some people get early traction and I just thought, you know what, there's a lot of grace for early adopters and it's way better to just start and start finding it out. Then wait for the perfect time and the perfect, you know, thing. So I literally, I was graced with the natural.

to just do it. And having a developed skill of being really good off the cuff and having a deep base of knowledge about the industry so that there's really not anything people can ask me that I don't know, that just lent it to, yeah, just fire up and go live. You'll be fine. Just do it.

Chris Kiefer (25:06.242)

Love that. Do you have, cause I feel like that's the same, you probably are, that idea of like taking action, doing the first thing is probably conversations that you have with people that have met you, that I'm sure obviously a lot of people have businesses, but how many people have you talked to that are thinking of starting a painting business? And you're like, just go, like go to here, click on this website, register your business, get a bank account, you know what I mean? Like.

Nick Slavik (25:35.117)

No, it's I literally, we just did Tanner Mullins' liftoff, which is, I think there were like, it's the largest virtual event in the painting industry. He had me be the anchor speaker, and literally my closing slide was, if you want to win in 2024, just execute. Just do it right now. Just right now start, do it. Just stand up and go do it. And it's literally all the people that I know and look up to in this industry just did stuff knowing that it's gonna fail a lot. And you're gonna have to find your voice after a while, but they're way ahead because of that.

you know, that scientific process of, you know, coming up with a theory, finding variables to test, testing it, getting the data and cycling that over again, the faster you go through that cycle, the better you're gonna be off in the end. Instead of waiting for, well, I'm gonna wait till I have the perfect business model and the market is right, it's never.

Nathan (26:22.137)

Yeah, I was listening to a podcast. There was a professor who gave his photography students a task for the semester and he gave half of the group the task of I need you to submit a hundred photos. Okay. And then your grade is going to be based on how good they are. And then the other half of the students, he said, your tat, your assignment for this semester is to submit one photo, submit the perfect photo. Okay.

And so and then they looked at all the photos and the majority, the vast majority of the of the best photos. Did it come, do you think it came from the people who did one or the people who did a hundred?

Nick Slavik (27:01.017)

Probably 100, right?

Nathan (27:02.585)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The ones who were trying to make it perfect, spent all this time, you know, hemming and hawing over these little details versus the people that did 100. They probably made 70 terrible photos, right? Yeah, or more, but they practiced and they reiterated and they said, here's my photo. What do you think? And they're like, well, this is terrible, but that one part's good, right? So then the next photo, they incorporate the good part and switch everything else, right?

Chris Kiefer (27:16.458)

Yeah, or more than 99 bad ones.

Nathan (27:30.897)

And by the time they submitted their 100th photo, those were the best ones.

Chris Kiefer (27:31.018)

Yeah, it's reps.

Chris Kiefer (27:36.282)

Yeah. And I would say I've heard the, uh, the debate, the debate of quantity versus quality. You guys have heard that discussion before quantity leads to quality. It's not an either or it's the, it's the, it's the repetitions that gets you better. And so, yeah, I, I love that story. And I think that that's a, uh, it's exactly the same thing of like, people look at Nick Slavik at three 99 and like, Oh man, I could never do that.

Nick Slavik (27:37.067)

I love that.

Chris Kiefer (28:05.874)

It's like, he's been doing this for 400 weeks and speaking and, you know, and, and it's the repetition, you know, not, I'm sure not to say that you were trash on episode one, but I'm sure you've come, you're, you're.

Nick Slavik (28:21.614)

you should go back and watch. It wasn't the highly polished product that people know it as now.

Chris Kiefer (28:29.983)

Yeah, that's awesome.

Chris Kiefer (28:36.078)

Um, what else? Okay. So I have some other questions if, if Nathan, if you don't, um, I'm curious, one of the things that I, uh, this goes back to kind of just like jumping in, starting the, the episode that I watched, I think I've seen your live show twice and the one that I thought was really, um, just a great mindset to teach people is, is around that perfection thing, but with job costing.

I think you said it's one of your most popular topics. And there's so many people that I feel like drag their feet and they're like, ah, but I don't know if the percentage, like they're just getting caught up on all these details. Like, did I get every receipt? Or what if I'm not positive the time tracking's right? Or whatever, you know? Or it's like, I'm not sure if I'm doing the production rate estimating correctly. So is that gonna, it's like, literally just start. Just freaking.

open up the sheet, take your last job, put the numbers in and see what comes out. And now you have data and you can start working. But how many times do people just get tripped up on like, I don't know what to do. And it's like, I feel like laughing because my, like with kids, the beauty of kids, my four or six year old, they're like, dad, I'm stuck. And I'll.

they still don't quite get sarcasm, which is unfortunate. Cause I'm very sarcastic with them, which probably confuses their developmental brains. But they're like, I'm stuck. And I'm like, ah, I guess we're never going to be able to draw ever again. You know, you didn't get like, what are we going to do? And they're just like, what? Like, well, when you try again, it's like, oh, you think we could draw? Oh, that's a good idea. Let's try it. Let's do another version of the paint, of the drawing, you know? And it's like, so the kids know it, they get it. But for some reason, as adults, we're just like,

Nick Slavik (30:10.054)

Yep.

Nick Slavik (30:17.91)

Yeah, that's interesting.

Chris Kiefer (30:26.622)

if I don't understand it or I don't have a solution out of the gate, then like, you know, I feel like that's another thing that's holding people back. But what would you, where did that piece come from of just like, cause I think a lot of people are looking for software and, uh, they think that the reason that they're painting business is struggling is because they don't have the right software. And there's people that come to us all the time and they're like, what software should I use? It's like, well, depends how big you are because if

Today's day one, I would say maybe just use a piece of paper and see if you can close the job. Because paying a couple hundred bucks for software is not your problem right now. It's like all the other psychological head trash that's preventing you from talking to people or whatever. And then as you grow, the tools change. And there's different tools that are gonna serve a large company better than a small company or whatever. But anyways, I feel like it comes back to.

this idea of like taking action in imperfection. And I'm curious, did you have, was there a moment in your life where you realized that? Or was it just kind of like, that's just how you've always been?

Nick Slavik (31:33.805)

No, I've realized that again, there are some things where you can be like, well, listen, here's something that I had to work really hard on and I did research. There's some things that I'm just biologically programmed to do. Fast start is one of them. For all of its pros and cons, I am a fast starter. Like if there's an idea, I'm a visionary by heart. If there's an idea, I just start. I did not understand that was a good strategy for certain things. But I did early on when I had

a lot of questions about coding science. And when my dad started me at a very young age, we didn't try anything. There wasn't any scientific process. There wasn't any constant improvement. So when I left my family business and started my own, I went as hard as any single human slash painter has ever gone with trying everything, every way, every how, under every condition, and constantly getting data feedback and refining my processes. And my...

coding systems and standard operating procedures, I would argue are some of the most simple, beautiful airtight replicable systems ever. And after I saw what a weapon those were and what a comfort those were to all my apprentices and people, I thought, well, this is the pattern. Like you need to just go hard and you need to try everything. So job costing is a perfect example, which is business owners love to sit in front of their computers and massage that spreadsheet within an inch of its life.

until it's perfect and it's never perfect. And they never bring it out into the real world and execute it and deliver it. And I just, I did the same thing with job costing, which is like, hey, find the first template online, start using it, you'll find the problems in it. And I did. And it was just, it was a two year process for me to refine my template, just like my painting SOPs. And I would argue it is, you're never going to find a simpler, more beautiful thing to give you the information you need, at least for my person.

Chris Kiefer (33:30.698)

What size business is Nixlavic Restoration?

Nick Slavik (33:35.285)

Yeah, so we're about 3.3 million. We do res repaint and depending on the time of the year, we have between 25 and 40 people, two project managers, two estimators and an office.

Chris Kiefer (33:46.462)

And then the reason I asked that is because I was going to, I'm curious, because I know that you are very, what's the word? Like you have your systems and stuff dialed, like even the job costing thing and the apps. I think, I can't remember the apps that you said you use, but what I've started doing as far as the YouTube channel goes is my philosophy is like my goal, and this is, going back to Gary Vaynerchuk, I'm completely on board with like,

I don't really love his delivery, but I think he's got a lot of truth in what he's saying. And so one of the things that I've always resonated with is he said, the ideas are, well, we'll censor it, ideas are poop, execution is the game. So it's like, I can literally tell you every single thing that I know. I can transplant my brain and every thought that I have to you, but you're never, like 90% of people can't execute.

Nick Slavik (34:33.397)

Yes.

Chris Kiefer (34:44.874)

the way that I can and that's why I am who I am. And same thing for you. Like you could tell a hundred painters, look, this is how I run my show. This is how I do everything. This is how I run my business. This is how like ideas, value, spreadsheets, templates, everything. But for some reason, 90% of people can't execute. The other piece is this idea of like the secret sauce. Like every business is afraid like, oh, if they find out how we do this, like.

this is the thing that's been getting us to win the job over our competition. And Gary Vaynerchuk has said, the internet has eliminated the secret sauce because you have someone like Nick Slavik who's been doing this for 400 weeks, who's telling any business that wants to be a professional painting company how to be a professional painting company. So there's nothing that somebody's doing in their painting business that Nick hasn't already told the world.

or someone else is gonna tell the world in very short time. And so the idea is like, why not just share with the world what you're learning as you're learning it and just post it for everybody to see. So that's my perspective is like, yes, we're gonna get clients that listen to this episode and other content and they're like, hey, they watched the tutorials and they're like, this is really cool. Chris knows what he's talking about. We're just gonna hire Chris and the team to make this. But at the same time, I also am like,

Nick Slavik (35:41.666)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Kiefer (36:10.586)

motivated by the idea is that on YouTube, I can help thousands of people without my personal time, and then two of them are gonna ask to work with me directly. So like that, and it's such a freeing way to operate, to just be like, oh yeah, here, check this out. And then if someone else has a question, it's like, hey, go check out that video. I already solved that. There's an hour long tutorial on how to do that exact thing.

Nick Slavik (36:15.096)

Hmm.

Nick Slavik (36:22.73)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (36:27.884)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (36:39.326)

And then if they still want more, then we can talk about a discovery call to work with us or whatever. All that being said, my question to you, running a three and a half million dollar painting company, is if you were to make a request on like, is it possible to automate XYZ for a three million dollar painting company that I would then go make a tutorial for the world to see for free, so if anyone wants it on YouTube, is there any piece of your business that you're like, I've always wondered about this.

Nick Slavik (36:45.058)

Yeah.

Chris Kiefer (37:09.066)

And I'm not saying that this is even for you to use, I'm just saying, what are the pieces in your business that are like, I could see some massive time savings in this area if this was even possible.

Nick Slavik (37:13.003)

Yeah.

Nick Slavik (37:21.473)

Hmm. Okay. So stream of consciousness for me personally, because I do I do all the marketing for the business. Marketing would be a great thing. I but the problem is, I don't spend a lot of time on it. There are companies that offer automation, but for every okay, so the way I think about automation is I use some in some very specific ways. And I specifically go around automation because there's a list of

pros and cons that come with each one of those. And I don't know if it's universal for every painting business, but in my business, there's some things that we hold very valuable that automation would actually hurt. There's some things, some very basic things that automation helps a lot. So like one of the biggest things that I don't do that a lot of other painting companies I know do that I respect is like letting clients schedule their own estimates. For me, it makes perfect sense.

on paper, it's like, yeah, let them sign up for their own estimate. The problem is if, if you let that happen, we do 36 to 40 estimates a week between two estimators and geographically, they will place themselves in a way that causes a lot of problems and we actually can't get to 30% or have to reschedule 30% of our estimates. So for me, it's like on paper, I love that. I think that's great. The problem is we want to make the biggest connection we can with these people.

and rescheduling is typically a huge pain point. So that's just one example of something like that. Now, I've tried automation with marketing and the typical pro is that it saves me time, right? And it can go over multiple platforms and everywhere. The con is people lose my very specific voice of my company if I'm not constantly managing that system. So if I had to have something automated, it would probably be...

Chris Kiefer (38:50.702)

Mm.

Nick Slavik (39:12.397)

the collection and analysis of marketing data. Because we have a very simple way of collecting marketing data. Our website has a drop down list. And in order to schedule an estimate with us, you have to tell us where you heard about us from. It would be great to have a automated system to analyze that stuff daily to see what comes in, like a live stream, almost a dashboard, of that sort of thing. I do this very manually now. It takes a lot of time.

Chris Kiefer (39:34.944)

Mm.

Nick Slavik (39:41.037)

Personally, that would be the most helpful for me because I'm the only human with a job description that contains marketing in my business.

Chris Kiefer (39:47.25)

Interesting. I was going to say, I'll send you once it's posted, I'm going to send you this conversation that Nathan and I just had about, I'm going to ask you before I say this, what do you have or how many marketing sources do you have on your list?

on your website and maybe I could even go look.

Nick Slavik (40:06.092)

There's about, oh yeah, there's probably less than 10. There might be between eight and 12 listed.

Chris Kiefer (40:13.814)

That's great news. Nathan, you can tell them why. This is good. I love when I take, like I have opinions and then I find out that the leading guy in the paint world just agreed with my opinion that I have developed over the years.

Nick Slavik (40:26.905)

Ooh. What did I do good?

Nathan (40:28.365)

Yeah. So what we're, what we were talking about is like, there's, you only have eight to 12 and some people might say, well, what do you mean? There's 30 different ways somebody could hear about me. Right. You know, they, it could be a past customer, could be word of mouth, could be that billboard, could be that specific ad, could be that specific Facebook campaign or what, whatever. Right. Um, but what we were, what we were talking about is the value of creating buckets for things to fall in.

so that when you do analyze the data, it's actionable, right? You can see, you know, this text campaign worked, I wanna do that again, right? Or this, you know, direct mailers in general over the last year has not worked, has not worked, right? I maybe got a few leads in July, but it hasn't worked, right? So I'm not gonna do that anymore, right? So just having...

Chris Kiefer (41:02.648)

Mm.

Nick Slavik (41:03.053)

Yes, yes.

Chris Kiefer (41:26.214)

The yeah, I, and I said, I think you should have 10 or less because logistically, when you're dealing with people, you like your receptionist is only going to be able to like mentally categorize so many different types of, wait one second.

Nathan (41:26.697)

the buckets that you can put it in.

Nick Slavik (41:47.973)

sources right? Oh sorry is my phone in the background being a pain in the rear end?

Chris Kiefer (41:52.53)

Yeah, I was like trying to talk through it, but I was like, All right, I'm just gonna wait.

Nick Slavik (41:59.298)

Sorry.

Chris Kiefer (42:00.826)

No worries, Happy can edit that out. So what I was gonna say is that a receptionist and a client were only gonna mentally be able to skim or scroll through so many options. And I think it's somewhere in the seven to 10 area where it's just like, if you see a list with 12, 14, 15 options, you just are like, I don't know, whatever, that looks good and you go to the next one. So your quality decreases quickly when you have so many.

Nathan (42:04.181)

Thanks for watching!

Chris Kiefer (42:29.29)

And then the same thing for your receptionist. If you have too many options when they're talking to someone on the phone, they're not going to, you know, it's more likely that they someone would say something and one time they pick one set course, one source. And the next time someone says that, they'd pick the other source. Cause it's just like, it's too much granularity. So anyways, the one I want to challenge though, cause, and I'll just link the for everyone else listening that wants to go deep into this topic. You have past customer as a source.

And I would say, I don't think that that's a lead source. I think it's important, but I don't think it's a lead source. What would you say to that?

Nick Slavik (43:11.501)

I would say then, my friend, if you're gonna challenge me, what would you categorize a past client that calls us and ask for another estimate, huh?

Chris Kiefer (43:20.51)

Yes, we're getting somewhere. Because I would, or I guess, so, well I have two things. First would be, if I told you that you got 20 past customers last month that called you, and you're like, sweet, so this month, what are you gonna do to get me more past customers?

Nick Slavik (43:38.421)

Okay, so yes, this is a thing that I dive deep into. I have a marketing master's class, like nuts and bolts from a paint business owner thing that I travel around and do. And I say that same thing. There are, I put my marketing into two categories, things that are free or great that are not scalable and things that cost a hell of a lot of money and are absolutely scalable. So think Google or every door direct mail, right? And so for me over the years, as I've gotten more sophisticated,

I agree with the same thing, which is I said the same thing you just said to me, to some paint business owners, single owner operators that brag about, listen, I've been a painter for 10 years. I've never once spent a nickel on advertising and someday I want to get off the brush in the ladder. But I take that as a point of pride. Everybody's a repeat client and I say the same thing, which is great. This year, if you want to double your business, how do you double that? How do you double that right there? Because you can't, that's not up to you. So that's why as I've gotten more sophisticated.

I've made my two buckets of things that can cost a lot of money that are scalable. And we try to be reasonable with that. And then there's things that we know we can work on, but we can't control, that give us relatively low price leads. We have about 13 different things that I touch a week in order to make sure the mix and the soup and the maelstrom of that gets the leads we need.

Chris Kiefer (44:59.114)

Nice, okay. Because I would say, yeah, very similar belief, but I would say, I think that the past customer, you shouldn't even allow the customer to pick that as an option. Because I want to know why, even if they were a past customer, what marketing or activity do we do that made you reach out? As opposed to giving, it's almost like giving them the out to say, oh, I'm a past customer. Instead of like, oh, I'm on your newsletter and I get your newsletter every month for the last three years and I love what you guys do. It's like, oh, we should probably keep doing that newsletter.

Nick Slavik (45:12.397)

Yeah.

Nick Slavik (45:17.113)

You're right.

Chris Kiefer (45:28.758)

You know, but yeah, I love that.

Nick Slavik (45:30.069)

Yeah, I think, yeah, and if we really wanted to get, and you know, granularity is the killer of this, just like you guys said. If I go on a website and there's 31 options for how we get there, I'm like, whatever, just click the 19th one, whatever. They don't care anyway, right? It's one of those things. So the next best granularity would be previous customer subset mailer, subset, that would be great too, but now you know they're not gonna respond to that. They're not gonna click the second order of that, so.

Chris Kiefer (45:55.252)

Yeah.

They don't care as much as you. Yeah, exactly. Um,

Nathan (45:59.906)

Hehehehe

Nick Slavik (46:00.081)

No, and again, I will say in the end that for me, I know that there is not gonna be an exactness in the way that people report this anyway. Like we got our first, I added my 11th thing, I think you guys are on my website, I added my 11th category, door hanger, cause we started door hangers this last year, and somebody just, we were so excited as a company, a lead came in through the website and it listed door hanger.

The problem was it was in an area where we did not put door hangers. So yeah, it's like, I know that yes, we want exact stuff, but we know that with the irrationality of humans and a dropdown menu, it's going to be at best as I can concern, discern 90% accurate. And so for me, it's more of like, listen, what are we really dealing with here? It's more of like 90% of this is accurate. There's enough actionable items here where I don't need to go the next.

Chris Kiefer (46:33.263)

Hahaha

Nick Slavik (46:57.722)

I think I'm saying what you guys are saying too, but I'm just a realist about it

Chris Kiefer (46:59.826)

Yeah, yeah, love that. I love that. Two quick questions. You guys are doing everything. What CRM or mailing tool are you guys using in your business?

Nick Slavik (47:12.853)

Okay, we don't have one, right? I'm gonna start with that. The second thing is it has been very intentional for me that we base this entire business in Google because I love to constantly manipulate and change the stuff. And we haven't signed on to like a enterprise software or something like that, not because I don't like them. I think all of them are great. The problem is I want to be in complete control and my personality dictates that I do not mind.

manipulating my own spreadsheets and my systems and processes. I actually get energy from it and it's been a very positive thing because us using a series of G sheets and Google workplace documents under my supervision has been great for us because we can literally change three times a day. We don't have to learn a process. We don't have to comply with a software that we didn't create. So what we do is

80% of what we own in this company, probably 90%, is literally a G-sheet that we use to sub-device.

Chris Kiefer (48:14.73)

And so you're like, basically your CRM is like spreadsheet of all contacts, name, email, phone, address, whatever, and then you have another spreadsheet of your jobs and leads and stuff like that.

Nick Slavik (48:23.571)

Mm-hmm.

Nick Slavik (48:27.381)

Yeah, and we, with the goal, we know that there's pros and cons of all this stuff, right? It takes a lot of manualness. One human with a couple bad T-strokes could cause a lot of damage. The problem is we try to make them as simple and as beautiful and we manipulate them so much that we can tell when something's off. Also my system only works if it's constantly monitored and you force it into a single source of truth. That is the most important thing.

Nathan (48:28.745)

That's so cool.

Nick Slavik (48:57.349)

which is this system goes completely sideways when every day you create another sheet and you have sheets scattered all over the place. Every time we do something we always try to mush it into one single source of truth so we know that the information is here. We just have to be sophisticated enough to find it.

Chris Kiefer (49:17.914)

Oh my gosh, I'm excited for more relationships with Nick Slavik. Um, you're saying so many things that are, they're saying so many things that are the principles. I'm like a thousand percent. And then there are some other things where I'm like, I think that you, you're just this, you're this close to air table and it's your new Google sheet and then you're off and running and you love it. That's what's, that's what's about to happen.

Nick Slavik (49:23.745)

Dude, we could, listen.

Nick Slavik (49:33.706)

I know. And listen.

Nick Slavik (49:39.309)

Dude.

Nick Slavik (49:43.981)

My system that I created, I am literally Icarus flying close to the sun. If you put another manager in charge of this, it might completely go sideways and you could delete my business with two mouse strokes, right? The problem is it fits my personality well. And I am very upfront and honest when I share all my templates, which is you're going to be unsatisfied. My standard operating procedure that I laminate and give to my painters is a spreadsheet. It's literally a G-sheet.

Nathan (49:50.642)

I'm out.

Nick Slavik (50:11.433)

So if you think that I have some magic things that's going to tell you what to charge or do something for you, it is not. In fact, you're going to have to learn Excel or G Sheets in order to do this. And so I just want you guys to know, and I think you guys know this, but it's very important for everybody watching, listening to know, too, that I am fully aware of the pros and cons. And we work to limit the variables that are the cons of this. But right now, we have such simple ways of doing this, and we force it into a single source of truth.

beautiful functioning system that does have faults. I do not want to tell people that this is.

Chris Kiefer (50:46.098)

Yeah. So I'm going to highlight to wrap this up. Source of truth could not agree more. That's like one of the biggest issues that I see for any business is that they're like at the end of the month, they got to run a report and they're like going and exporting CSVs from four different softwares and trying to merge it and it's not lining up. So that's number one. Second thing is I love that you brought up the pros and cons because I, I preach on this every day. It's like

Nick Slavik (51:06.978)

I'm sorry.

Chris Kiefer (51:13.682)

If you're coming to us or you're looking on the internet for the silver bullet software that does everything and your dishes and makes your bed, it doesn't exist. It's stopped looking for it. There's no perfect system out there. It's all trade-offs just like life. It's like, I'm going to, everything's a trade-off. It's not a right or wrong decision to have a show and not be with my family, but it's like, I'm going to choose to do this instead of going and doing this other thing. You know, like saying yes to something is no to something else.

And I think that that's another fantastic point to end on. So to be mindful of time, I do want to shift to some of the wrap up questions. What are your three book recommendations?

Nick Slavik (51:56.757)

Yep. And, and, uh, properly frame this. I am famous for not reading a lot of books, but the books I do, I, you'll see the theme here, the books I do read. I fricking execute. I just do, I implement every page, every line, everything. And sometimes it takes me years. Uh, traction, traction is number one. I am, there's, there's lots of, um, in, in thinking about the books that I recommend, I usually like a good mix of books, traction it's a nuts and bolts, no nonsense, straightforward, simple, single source of truth.

on how to grow your business and how to structure your business. It's not a proprietary system. It's not novel. It is a simplified accumulation of everything in business that really works in a very easy to read thing and just execute. And when I was turned on to this book, I literally within like six weeks did almost all the book in my business. It just hit me at the perfect time. So traction is like literally just executable data.

executable information. And you asked for three books, was it? Okay, so there is a and these aren't meaningful to me in my professional life, right. So there is a author, a Minnesota author named Sigurd Olson. And he is a naturalist. He's the one who 100 years ago, instituted a lot of the wilderness in America. And his way, I'm from Minnesota. So obviously, I'm biased, I love this, but he's a naturalist. He writes of

Chris Kiefer (52:59.414)

Yep.

Nick Slavik (53:24.929)

real non-poetic beauty in the wilderness. And every time I read one of his books, it always makes me think of how insignificant me and my painting business is. He's talking about the eternity of time and how glaciers scraped over a rock millions of years ago. And that scrape is still there in Northern Minnesota and you can see it. And it really centers me in a very odd way of saying, I color houses for a living and I'm only gonna do it for 50 years.

And it just really puts you in a time and a place of, this is important, it's good to be intentional, it's good to have purpose, but understand how insignificant all this is. So you should just get out there and do stuff and be nice to people, right? Oh, so he's got about 10 books. I would probably say his first book, Singing Wilderness by Sig Olsen, S-I-G-O-L-S, I think it's O-N. But it is, I mean, it's literally just,

Chris Kiefer (54:02.967)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (54:06.294)

And the book title is...

Chris Kiefer (54:19.392)

Yep, it's Owen.

Nick Slavik (54:21.085)

It just puts you in your place. The third one is From Here to Eternity. And it is a beautiful book about a young man coming of age. It starts off with like Pearl Harbor happening and then how he navigates that as a young person through personal relationships and other things. And this may be one of the worst book recommendations ever. I don't know that. But for me, my mother sent it to me when I was

in my first year of military service. And time and place, I was overseas, I was stuck in a bunk and I had a lot of time to read. And this book is literally 1500 pages. It's a massive one. And it hit me right at the perfect time. And again, it re-centered all this, which is like, it's not this hero war novel. It's actually kind of weird and sad, but coming of age, figuring out what you're supposed to do in your life, purpose, intentionality.

the significance and insignificance of everything. It just hit me at a right time where I, I only recommend it because I think about it 30 years, 20 years later, like this just doesn't leave me.

Chris Kiefer (55:26.798)

Mm, that's awesome. And favorite movie.

Nathan (55:29.781)

Hmm.

Nick Slavik (55:33.385)

Yeah, so again, there's lots of great movies. I want to offer something unique, which would be Apocalypse Now. It is a, it's literally the best movie that's ever been made. Yes, and even the redux version where they added some extra stuff in, yes. And it was a, the most significant thing about that for me is I did not even begin to understand it. And I was in the military when I saw it.

Chris Kiefer (55:43.318)

A 1979 one, right?

Nick Slavik (56:00.661)

I didn't understand a thing about it. I just thought it was visually interesting. Over the next 20 years, I understood subsequently everything in that movie. And that is interesting to me because it's way less about what those things were in the movie that it really let me know that life experiences and trying stuff out gave you wisdom that you didn't have before. And you may not even realize you're accumulating all this wonderful wisdom. But now when I watch that movie.

It completely makes sense to me. I see all the through lines. I understand every bit of it, even the weird esoteric stuff. And it's only because I lived a certain amount of life as a business owner and as a parent, as a father and a husband.

Chris Kiefer (56:39.982)

Hmm. Thank you. Those are awesome. What is your preferred method of contact? People wanna get in touch with you.

Nick Slavik (56:48.245)

Love me some email. It's nick at nickslobberk.com.

Chris Kiefer (56:52.398)

Fantastic. Any closing remarks from either of you?

Nick Slavik (56:58.453)

No, I hope this is not the last time we do this.

Nathan (56:58.821)

I just want to say this is

Yeah, seriously, I feel like we could sit here for three hours and get into like, I want to know all your G sheets. I want to see them all and I want to know how you use them from the time somebody calls. And if you're not a painter, you'd be like, Oh my gosh, it sounds like hell, like, literally, like, but for me, there's so much fun.

Nick Slavik (57:17.157)

No, no, no. My, my, yeah. No, listen, man. And when you said my job costing episodes are some of my most watched, that's the weird nerds that are attracted to Ask a Painter. Like, we are, we love oil primer more than anything, but we also are intricately interested in G-sheet job costing. So listen, one of the most sort of like,

Nathan (57:31.733)

Hehehe

Nick Slavik (57:45.081)

Interesting things that I like to do is share spreadsheets with other people. So if you guys ever want to do a live screen share, when I try to describe how I do my stuff, nothing would bring me more pleasure.

Nathan (57:57.397)

Let's get it on the calendar. Ha ha ha.

Chris Kiefer (57:57.494)

Let's do it. I was gonna say, the thing I'll leave you with, I just have to ask and you're gonna have to, I have a video coming out next week sometime and I'll send to you, but I'm curious, to what extent have you experimented or looked at Airtable? Like a scale from one to 10. One being like, you've never even heard of the name and this is the first time you're hearing it and 10 is like, you're as good at Airtable as you are at Google Sheets.

Nick Slavik (57:59.723)

I'm sorry.

Nick Slavik (58:25.291)

1.7.

Chris Kiefer (58:26.802)

Okay, because I believe and I'm Nathan is like, Nathan and I met at a conference and we were both sitting next to each other talking about our Google Sheets. We were like, Hey, check this out. We're like, look at this. Like, we were seriously like everyone else is like going off to lunch and we were like, Oh, let me see that formula. How'd you Oh, that's a great idea. And like, that's how our relationship our bromance got started. Many years later, here we are. But I, I

Nick Slavik (58:39.645)

Oh

Chris Kiefer (58:56.094)

resisted and I had looked at air table years ago and I was like, Oh, it's just like Google sheets. It just costs money. That's stupid. And, and I got rid of it. And then in the last six months because of another guy interviewed Gareth Pronovost, who's like the leading air table expert on YouTube, I was like, I need to, uh, I need to learn this. This is like, there's something here that I'm not that I'm missing because it just, he was raving about this. So I guess my, my offer or proposal to you would be,

Nick Slavik (59:13.226)

Mmm.

Chris Kiefer (59:26.13)

If you like Google Sheets, I believe that you will like Airtable 10 times more because you still get all the control. You get all, it's completely customizable just like Google Sheets is. But the one key thing, and I'm sorry that we're going past time, I'm sure you've got other things to get to. This will be my wrap up, relational databases. So have you ever heard that term?

Nick Slavik (59:53.237)

Yes, I have.

Chris Kiefer (59:55.906)

So Google Sheets cannot do relational databases. It's not possible. So what you have in a Google Sheet with like your, you know, your project list and another tab with your customers and whatever, those are, think of those as, each one of those as a database. You've got your records down and then you've got your data points in each table. You have a database of projects, customers, people, maybe callbacks, I don't know, whatever else you track, time, hours, like,

Nick Slavik (01:00:00.929)

Yep.

Chris Kiefer (01:00:25.31)

or expenses, you could put all of it in there. In Airtable, exact same concept, except now I can say, I want the project in this sheet to relate to the contact in the contact sheet and relate to the employee in the employee sheet. And it's literally linking to that record as opposed to like what you would normally do in Google Sheets is like, just have a dropdown with your crew leader names and you have to constantly update the dropdowns and stuff.

and then you're looking up information with VLOOKUPs and other sheets, it eliminates that entirely because it's literally relating one database to the next. So in my opinion, this is why I love what you said, there's pros and cons, right? I believe that Airtable is literally all the pros of Google Sheets, still has cons of like, roughly your spreadsheets and stuff like that.

but it's all the pros of like Google Sheets with the added benefit of relational databases, which is not to be undervalued, if that makes sense. And the part that I think is so scalable about it is that it's 20 bucks a month, because people are like, I don't wanna spend hundreds of dollars on software per user. And it's like, yeah, so I could go on, but that's like what on my YouTube channel, I'm like all about trying to scream as loud as I can about how Airtable is something that you should be paying attention to.

Nick Slavik (01:01:30.337)

Yeah, so.

Chris Kiefer (01:01:51.21)

because it's still, I'm the same way as you. I don't wanna be put in a box and be forced to do my jobs and my management the way that your app says I have to. And you get that freedom in Airtable. So anyways.

Nathan (01:02:00.553)

Hehehehe

Nick Slavik (01:02:00.67)

Hahaha!

Nathan (01:02:04.601)

Yeah, I know it feels like you're cheating on G sheets. I've spent so much time intimately with G sheets that when you bring up another spreadsheet tool, I, it feels icky.

Nick Slavik (01:02:05.293)

Dude, I paused.

Nick Slavik (01:02:16.429)

You can't imagine life without Google, right? And dude, you shook relational databases. You shook a core memory from between 18 and 20 years loose for me. I know that word. And while you were describing it, it shook it loose. This is back in college when they taught me Microsoft Access. This was that old school crappy interface, just old school true database. You could, and it's what United Healthcare has with 10 million employees that you can query.

Chris Kiefer (01:02:19.564)

Yeah.

Nathan (01:02:19.701)

I'm out.

Nick Slavik (01:02:46.069)

show me all the humans that had this during this time under this condition. And you can, it's like, oh, dude, I haven't thought about that word in 20 years.

Chris Kiefer (01:02:56.138)

You're about to start thinking about it a lot more. But anyways, yeah anyways, super fun Nick. Thank you so much for coming on. We'll definitely be chatting about Google Sheets and spreadsheets and data and all that stuff. Keep doing what you're doing in the world. It's infectious and exciting and like I said, it was a big motivator in me being like, I need to fricking start putting information in the world like Nick is. So for anyone listening, you can check out our YouTube channel obviously and then maybe join.

Nick Slavik (01:02:59.118)

I love that man, thank you for that.

Chris Kiefer (01:03:26.131)

Nick Slavik's next Ask a Painter Live.

Nick Slavik (01:03:30.101)

Yeah, love it, man. Thanks for the opportunity.