Wow, that’s a lot for the family to ship you off all the way across the country to get an uncle. Yeah,
Greg Owens 6:08
actually and I had to pay for my airline ticket. I still remember it was like 400 bucks, which is kind of crazy. So that was a long time ago. Yeah. And yeah, and so I like a week or two weeks after I dropped out, I found myself in San Francisco and started in Marin County Mill Valley and, and started my painting career and started working, started working with my uncle
John Corcoran 6:33
who was there a lot of culture shock me for 16 year old beats plunked down in sleepy Mill Valley. What was that like?
Greg Owens 6:41
Oh, for me, it was great. I was 16 years old and had a tremendous amount of freedom. I didn’t, you know, I was basically now an adult in all ways, right? I tend to take care of myself. I had to buy my own groceries, buy my first car, buy, you know, pay for the rental of these things, but I was excited, it was sort of an exciting time. And I absolutely fell in love with Marin County and the San Francisco Bay Area, mostly because of our weather.
John Corcoran 7:17
A lot warmer than New York,
Greg Owens 7:19
it’s well, it’s never too hot and never too cold. So it stays very moderate and even though we get impacted by the rainy season, it’s only like a short season. And you can still actually paint outside in the winter here, because it’s warm enough like even you know, like we were painting outside a few weeks ago in February and no problems at all. It’s it’s a it’s it’s just never too hot, never too cold. And, and that’s great. Whereas like I actually worked in LA and stuff and for a little period of time, and that’s just too hot all the time, right. It’s silent naturally.
John Corcoran 8:00
Definitely, definitely, it, at what point did you figure out you liked entrepreneurship? Did that take a while?
Greg Owens 8:06
Well, like I said earlier, I think it’s in my blood in a lot of ways. Like for some reason, I knew that I wasn’t a good employee, that it would be that would be challenging for me. And then I wouldn’t be able to rise up through the ranks because I didn’t have a degree or didn’t have didn’t finish school and that kind of thing. So I figured the best way for me to prove my worth was through hard work. And, and being an entrepreneur you get you can be rewarded for your hard work. And so that’s what led me that direction for sure.
John Corcoran 8:39
What about working with your uncle? What was that like? Was he a good mentor? Was it a rough adjustment?
Greg Owens 8:47
Yeah, both. You know, I think working with family can be extremely challenging, even if it is an uncle. There were definitely times where it could be difficult. I think My first year working with him, he kept promising. We just work all the time. And it was, we were 16 years old and working six, seven days a week, and told that we have to work really hard because it’s gonna start raining. And when it starts raining, there won’t be any work. But for California, that was actually a drought year. So it never started to rain. And so we just kept working. And it’s like, you know, and so there’s a little bit of what challenges is like, it’s a family business. So you just keep pouring everything into it, but you’re not getting paid for all your time. Right? And, you know, and it just seems like you’re just constantly doing stuff for this company, but you’re like, wait a minute, like, I’m getting paid by the hour and that’s what led to my conversation with him. When I was 19 years old. I had moved all of our he .It was a small company. It was mostly And I painted it with maybe a couple other painters at times. And he was doing all his books and everything on a general ledger like writing it down, and I took it to a new product called Quicken at the time and, and put it onto a computer. And I remember that first year that we went into the CPAs office and he used to come and do a CPAs office because he had real estate too. And so I took over all of his bookkeeping. I took a few college classes on accounting so I learned how to do what I needed to do balance wise and how to take care of things. And I took all of his both his rental properties and his the painting business and put it all on on Quicken at the time, and then I remember the first day we went to see his CPA and his CPA is like where’s the documents my uncle used to bring these boxes in receipts just handed to the CPA and I just handed over these two pieces of paper. Basically a p&l and balance sheet and some other notes around what was spent on things. And my uncle’s like, what’s going on? Like, where’s all the paperwork and the CPAs? Like, I got everything right here. This is perfect. Wow. Yeah. And so as a really, so I really enjoyed having that sort of thing wearing the multiple hats because I was doing the bookkeeping and estimating and doing the painting actually to I painted for 10 years of my life. So I would do bookkeeping, I was running a business and as an entrepreneur, you have to sort of juggle all these different roles. And that was sort of perfect for me in a lot of ways because I get bored from painting on a project for too long. I’m bored and it’s driving me crazy. But if I have to do, like run off and do estimates and run off and do bookkeeping, or take care of employees or things like that, that
John Corcoran 11:56
you like that variety.
Greg Owens 11:57
Yeah, that variety was perfect.
John Corcoran 12:00
So what point did you have the discussion about you becoming an owner in the business and who initiated it?
Greg Owens 12:06
I initiated it for sure. And it was when I was 19 years old. And my uncle was like, yeah, you could be a partner in this. And he, he and I became partners, and we changed the business identity a little bit. So it was actually Fred McCarthy Painting, and we changed it to McCarthy Painting. Because that made more sense, because it’s not Fred coming showing up anymore. That was my own goal. And it made a lot more sense to be, you know, to be McCarthy painting, but it’s an interesting thing, because we, you know, it still meant what it meant is that I worked harder and made actually less at the end of the year, which is really, that was really a
John Corcoran 12:51
That’s a rough one.
Greg Owens 12:53
It’s super rough, right? Like, wait, I just worked insanely hard this last year. At the end of the year I made less money. What is going on here? Why, why? What’s rude?
John Corcoran 13:06
a rude awakening there?
Greg Owens 13:08
Yeah. And you really sort of start to learn like, a lot because it’s a it’s a rude awakening, like you said,
John Corcoran 13:14
Yeah, yeah. But you stuck it through, obviously.
Greg Owens 13:18
Yeah. And so my uncle didn’t really understand. He was a great mentor in a lot of ways around buying real estate, and that’s where he was most successful. And then the painting company was a means for doing that. Right. And so you would use the income from the painting company to help buy real estate and the real estate did really well. And the painting company did really well, but we were when we were painting and stuff. It was really the pain points that came in when you had employees and workers comp and you had all the other things, all the other overhead expenses. We didn’t really have an understanding, neither did my uncle as much have what we actually needed to charge to cover all of our overhead and and then also managing employees and jobs and that kind of stuff and doing job costing. Yeah. And
John Corcoran 14:11
and you’ve worked up to him built it up to the point where with the business you know, it’s well over seven figures we’re recording this in the midst of the Coronavirus kind of pandemic. So, you know, it’s a little bit uncertain time. But setting that aside, you’ve done an amazing job of growing it, scaling it up adding more teams, adding more projects, that sort of thing. Did that just come gradually over time? Or, you know, did that happen when your uncle was still part of the business after he left the business that you felt like you could really double down on increasing it? How did that come about?
Greg Owens 14:44
Yeah, I think it was around when I was like 25 years old. And the it was a tough year. It was one of those years where I worked really hard and didn’t make didn’t have much to show for it. Hadn’t hired more employees and my uncle had gotten sick. He had gotten rheumatoid arthritis, and he wasn’t able to work anymore. And, and but he still kept him on payroll and things like that, because he was a founder of the company and I really cared about my uncle and thought it was like the right thing to do is, you know, take care of things that he needed. And so I really was like, sort of trying to figure out how to run a better business, let’s say and really sort of, you know, there’s a lot of there’s, this is sort of a known fact, when it comes to entrepreneurs and growing and growing pains. It’s like, it’s when you’re sort of in between steps of growth that you could really where it really hurts the most like it’s a large learning curve. And I was at a time when we were in that sort of that step of learning and becoming more and more of a bigger company, and taking on more overhead that I needed more help and needed some buddy, that sort of For me, it turns out and this is where eo comes into play in a lot of ways. It turns out I learned, I learned from different ways. And one of the best ways is like learning from seminars or mentors and mentors have been a major impactful way. My uncle was a great mentor and taught me a tremendous amount. And I really honor that but, but he had never really scaled a company to a certain size, I think when it was him and I together, we were like, three 300,000 a year or something like that. Just a couple, two or three employees working and they were like, seasonal. So I decided to go to the PDCA,
Painting and Decorators, Contractor’s of America Convention that was held in Palm Springs when I think I was 26 years old. And I didn’t have enough money to stay at the hotel, so I stayed at a separate hotel across town, because that was like the hotel itself was like 300 dollars a night. And this hotel was like $28 a night in poverty $8 a night. Well, something like that. Yeah, yeah. But it was across town and it was not a very it was pretty fishy hotel. But I you know, and I drove over and I showed up to the convention hall and went in and they had this thing called roundtables and what they did is they had different discussion, table topics going on at different roundtables that you can choose and, and go into and learn right and, and this is why I sort of started finding my passion for learning really expanded because I really love like seminars, mentors, other ways of learning, especially mentors. So I sat down at one table that was on, on knowing your numbers in a painting business and this mentor this person that was teaching the topic at that time, his name was George and In five minutes, like explain the numbers and metrics and things that I needed to be paying attention to, as a, as a painting contractor and painting business that really resonated with me and made a lot of sense. And I came away from that being sort of stuck in a way of like, wow, like, That’s crazy. That’s, that’s all I need to know is these things and track these things. That’s, that’s unbelievable. And he would and, and he and he had done it in his business and his business was, at the time, twice the size of my company and, and I think he had like 20 employees compared at the time maybe I had eight or something like that. And I it was interesting, because it’s interesting study of like synchronicity in a way and I so we’re at this convention and I really learned a lot from this guy George in this one set, little table topics that So when I started stalking them at the convention for the first time, yes, I chased after him and I, I kept stalking him. And I kept asking him questions and got in the elevator with him and he handed me his business card. He’s like, Greg, here’s what I’d like you to do. I want you to know when you should join this group that I joined called pro salt. And that’s a consultant that really consults to painting contractors, roofers and landscaper,
John Corcoran 19:29
and we’ve talked about that before. It’s an interesting model, but we’ll pause on that, and we’ll come back to it.
Greg Owens 19:34
Yeah. And so, uh, and what was funny about that, you know, we can come back to it, the, and then he, and then he said, Look, why don’t you you know, here’s my phone number and call me in the next like, next week, and we’ll talk more, and you know, I’ll help you out. Right, I’ll mean to augment you and I was super excited about this business card. And so I did. I called him the next week and it returned my calls. Call them again, either return my call and call them again, return calls. So I was like, man, I really want to learn from this guy. And so then I turned around and I wanted to write him a letter, but I didn’t know how to write business letters. And I, so I went to the library and got a book on how to write a proper business letter. You know, and this is before computers and the internet and so I had to type it out and, and I and, and I sent him this letter, he sent me a reply back in a letter and it said, Hey, Greg, I’m going through some personal things right now. Why don’t you call check back in with me in six months. And it’s funny because I still have these letters today. It just reminds me of the times for them. I have this perseverance and new sort of the path was laid out in front of me and
John Corcoran 20:52
Yeah, definitely.
Greg Owens 20:54
And so six months later, you’ll have a paper calendar at the time and six months. Later, I was too afraid to call him again because that didn’t seem to work. And so I wrote him another letter. And just and he wrote me back saying, Hey, here’s some dates and times that I’d be available. Why don’t you come visit my company? And, and you can come in and you know, and where was he? Where was he? He is in Atlanta, Georgia. And so okay, I picked a couple of the dates, told him the dates the times and stuff and got on a plane and flew to Atlanta to spend two days with him. And he picked me up at the airport, and I remember he had no clue who I was.
John Corcoran 21:40
He didn’t remember from having talked to you at the conference. Okay.
Greg Owens 21:44
Yeah. He talked to a lot of people, right. Yeah. And a lot of different things. And I was just one other thing and and, you know, like persistence, like paid in this way. Yeah, definitely spend. I spent two days with him touring his company talking to his employees. And looking at, like, there
John Corcoran 22:03
were a few of the things that they were doing differently that that you learned that you picked up that you took back with you.
Greg Owens 22:07
Oh, man, there’s so many. We were doing some of that, because I had I had started doing some of the things he told me from, from the Convention on time. And so I started doing some of those things. But really, it’s sort of a lot of the metrics of tracking numbers and making sure you’re doing job costing and how to charge correctly for a paint job to cover all of your expenses. Those are the biggest ones. And then marketing. He, he’s sat me down and we also had to make a budget and I remember this so clearly, like, we sat down in a bar in Atlanta and had like bar food and had some drinks and he opened up his laptop and I’m like, this is kind of a weird place to go over this, but Okay, yeah, and he had my profit and loss. Statement of my balance sheet and we made a budget for the coming year including buying me a brand new truck which I had always just bought like really old beaters you know and got my own vehicles and things like that I’m like a brand new truck how’s that gonna work out? You know and and he laid out a plan and I and a marketing plan behind it which included spending probably $20,000 on marketing and I was only making $28,000 a year then it just seemed like an insane amount of money but he told me how to do it and how to splice it spaced it out and at the money would come in if you invest in this way. And so I went back and executed on those things and yeah, but in the new year had a super successful year and bought a brand new truck and made more money than I’d ever made before that year and and he continued to be a mentor ever since then. And it turns out for some people, not all people are like this and people learn in different ways. For me, I’m learning from somebody that’s already walked the path. Like I could read a book but there’s no my brain wants proof, not promises and book a lot of times as promises I don’t actually get to see and feel and taste what’s actually that person actually went through and I don’t get to ask questions about how they did it or how they were feeling. And so learning from George, my mentor, was great because I could ask him questions and I could see the proof. Right, right. His numbers showed me how to do things and he showed me like I was able to learn from his mistakes. So when he liked him for instance, even when he told me like, you’re gonna need to spend 20 grand I’m like, that’s super hard Georgia and made twice I like, like he could see visibly it needed that I’m like, scared and it’s like spending. I only made 28,000 you’re telling me to spend 20 grand on marketing and when you lay it out the Numbers wise and how he does it and how it’s going to be incremental spending, and then how I’ll start seeing that return. And then I can track that stuff. And that made it all palatable and easier for me to do where it was just too overwhelming, right? For me at the time, right?
John Corcoran 25:15
It’s probably Yellow Pages back then or something like that. I imagine. It was a market.
Greg Owens 25:19
Oh, no, it was actually direct mail.
John Corcoran 25:21
Okay,
Greg Owens 25:22
it was on direct mail, only neighborhoods becoming a neighborhood painter to the, you know, in places like where you live in Tiburon, or Mill Valley here, and mailing and being consistent about your messaging and that kind of stuff. So, yeah, that stuff doesn’t work as well as it did then. But, you know, we’ve had to adapt and change over time.
John Corcoran 25:42
Right, right. Right. So the million dollar question with this relationship with George, which I hear from people all the time is how do you initiate a relationship like this? How do you reach out to someone who’s super successful, more successful than you are? and get them to give you their time. I’m Assuming you weren’t paying him for his time, right? He just did it out of the goodness of his own heart. So how do you get that to happen?
Greg Owens 26:05
Yeah. And this is a subject matter that I’ve become very passionate about. It’s something that I’m very involved in EO about, because I really enjoy.
John Corcoran 26:14
Yeah, you’re a big leader in EO with different mentorship initiatives.
Greg Owens 26:19
Right? Yeah. And so I really, when I saw that EO entrepreneurs organization had a mentorship program, I jumped in and wanted to figure out ways that I can help and contribute to it and also learn, like, what was it about me that learned better this way? And are there other people out there that also fits this category? And is there a way we can connect somebody that’s super successful to somebody that’s trying to learn and trying to learn and grow and wants to learn from a mentor and so yeah, I think there’s there’s definitely, I’m asking, so I don’t think people really ask is one Ways right and and being persistent about it as you can tell with my story I was incredibly persistent took took a while for me to develop and and and then like as soon as he gave me some dates I didn’t say those dates don’t work for me and they probably didn’t fit my calendar but I made it work I didn’t come back to him say oh no no i can i can we try these dates it was nothing like that I took the first available dates and gone planes spent the money and flew out to visit them
John Corcoran 27:30
it was a large sum for you back then just spin
Greg Owens 27:33
adding another large sum was like my first business trip, right like like, wow, this is really I get to go on a business trip. I’m looking, I’m a painter, right and I’m used to wearing whites and getting dirty and painting and that kind of stuff and so it was different. Like I was like no I need to dress up and be a business person and get on this plane and go have a business meeting right and but So I think, George, or people mentors get a lot out of when there’s an energetic being, wanting to learn and wanting to really absorb all they can’t. And it’s a really important part of it, because what does she get out of it? It’s, well, what, what won’t work and I saw this multiple times with other people that have also asked him to be a mentor. And that kind of thing is like he’ll give them some ideas. You’ll show them like some paths and show them what he’s done that’s been successful. And they’ll go back and reinvent the wheel and try something completely different. And it’s really like an energy waste and an energy suck.
John Corcoran 28:48
It’s really discouraging for the minute it becomes
Greg Owens 28:50
super discouraging. And eventually they stopped returning the phone calls or they stopped, they or they ended the relationship somehow or they really just didn’t put any energy into Because they’re like, man, keep coming back to me with the same problem over and over. I’ve shown you what I’ve done that works, and you haven’t even tried it. Right? So I think where we’re George has been very excited and other mentors in my life, for sure, and I’ve seen it in other relationships is, is when you hear something ideas, to go and explore them to their fullest and execute on them to the best of your ability, and maybe you have to change maybe, but you when you come back to the table, you say, Hey, I did what you said, here’s the roadblocks I ran into with it. But here’s some success points. I ran into it. And in that dialogue, the mentors also learn more about how they actually did it through teaching like, Oh, you hit that roadblock? Yeah, I forgot to tell you, you need to do it a little bit more like this or change your messaging or try it this way is what we’ve learned and you sort of have this intellectual conversation that helps both people learn and grow a tremendous amount. Because sometimes the mentor doesn’t even know how they did it. But when they have to break it down, they learn what was in it and behaviors and feelings that they had to go through to be successful in that way and make that that piece work for them. And so I think that that’s what energizes the whole relationship and keeps it going, where they’re excited to take your call. They’re excited to know, to have another meeting with you and they want to, they want to continue to help.
John Corcoran 30:24
I want to go backwards a little bit, but how did you first come across EO and why did you join? How did you come to join in the first place?
Greg Owens 30:33
Yeah, and there was a marketing guru that I was reading in a newsletter. Jay Abrams.
John Corcoran 30:41
Abraham?Jay Abraham?
Greg Owens 30:43
Jay Abraham. Yeah. So he’s a famous sort of marketing. Yep.
John Corcoran 30:48
I met him
Greg Owens 30:49
phenomenon. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um, I’ve had opportunities to meet him and
John Corcoran 30:56
as I said, just listening to a podcast interview he was doing this morning. Really nice, because he’s still in it a little bit. He is Yeah, yeah.
Greg Owens 31:04
He’s like the one of the grandfather’s of like, sort of Internet Marketing and newsletter marketing and that kind of stuff and marketing ideas. And so but when somebody was interviewing him and a piece came out about him and he had mentioned entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs organization in it, okay. And I thought, wow, that’s interesting and I’d read this, I’ve read this in multiple books. And I think I read Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People at the age of 18. So, my uncle Fred helped me tremendously in finding books and reading about successful people and working on and sort of me falling in love with this sort of how you can improve yourself through all different kinds of means and my uncle had that book laying around and I picked it up and read it but you know, in that they talk about is in order to be successful. You’re, you’re the average of the five people that you hang out with the most. Yep. And at the time, I think I was when I was 18 or something. Um, I made a realization that like the friends and people I was hanging out with, they were not going anywhere. And I need to find other friends that were on a path of growing companies and being in business. But I think it wasn’t until I was 26 that when I read that article, and I was like, Oh, this is something I need in my life. Yeah. And so I read about that in a Bruce Abrams publication and saw that an entrepreneurs organization had a chapter here in San Francisco. So I reached out to them and a guy named Mike Faith called me back. Mike’s a dear friend now and then Mike. Mike calls me back and he’s like, he’s from England. He’s like, hey, Greg. Yeah, absolutely. Like, why don’t you come and pick me up, there’s a meeting this week of the whole chapter and why don’t you pick me up in my office and take me to the meeting and we’ll go together and I’ll introduce you to people and, and so it was a great way of sort of like being introduced because he, he was super he was he was ex president at that time, I think. And he had done different things, wore different hats in it and super successful headsets, calm guy, and I picked him up and we went there. And he introduced me to a lot of people. And yeah, and so that started this whole path of entrepreneurs organization, and I realized these were these were more of my people and I can have real conversations about the problems I was facing and have that sort of, you know, ability and sounding board and the forum being introduced the forum and all those kinds of things was tremendously impactful to me.
John Corcoran 33:56
And what I’m is always an interesting one to ask. What is your perspective on the role of volunteering within a group like entrepreneurship?
Greg Owens 34:07
Yeah, it’s a double edged sword as all things can be. But, and you’ll hear this a lot within the eo ranks and things. It’s sort of like the more you give, the more you get back. Right, but you definitely have to be careful, but you can overdo it. You can overdo it, where you get so involved that you’re your own company gets a little time from you. So you definitely have to find a balance in there. But I personally have grown and learned so much through EO and because of the eo, they I got involved in the mentorship program there and finding mentors for your members and asking them for their help and, and connecting mentors and mentees and helping those relationships and because of that they the organization some people above me in New York other volunteers like myself, said, Hey, Greg, we think you’d be good as a trainer. And so you set, had a training that was going to happen for mentorship coaches, to go to London, and this is probably five years ago or six years ago. And a bunch of us got together some of the top facilitators of eo there are other entrepreneurs that are also facilitators. And then I’ve learned a lot as facilitators. And they taught me how to become a facilitator for yo and we, we spent two days working on it and practicing the craft of facilitating and
John Corcoran 35:42
facilitating forums
Greg Owens 35:44
to facilitate EO members in mentorship, what they call mentorship launches, and then also another product that we have as mentors to ship summits. Yeah, and so they which, when I first saw a facilitator for EO and EO has different facilitator ranks, like there’s facilitators for the forum. And when I first saw those, and I knew I found out that there was actually an eo member that learned how to facilitate other yield numbers. I was like, Oh my God, that’s crazy. Those people are nuts. Like, that’s not easy. That’s not an easy job. And he does this amazing job of teaching people and, and sharing the knowledge of how to be a better facilitator. And so there’s the forum facilitators, there’s the accelerator facilitators, those are you know, members that own businesses and and do that. There’s the summit strategy summit that does it for the chapter boards. There, those are all facilitators. And then there is mentorship and mentorship has facilitators to facilitate what we call a launch and that’s when we have the mentor and the mentee in the room together and we make sure they’re going to have the best start possible to their relationship and so Oh, interesting. So it’s like
John Corcoran 36:58
helping with that one on one. relationship and how to get the most out of it and get the most out
Greg Owens 37:02
of a facilitated first meeting. So they go deeper, faster, they have clear things, they’re going to talk about clear goals that they’re going to work on throughout the course of the year of their program. And so, so that way, there’s not a lot of wasted time and like having coffee and trying to figure out what you want to talk about,
John Corcoran 37:19
like an arranged marriage, in a sense, kind of, you know, I want to circle back to pro salt because I don’t think we completed that discussion. That’s very interesting, it’s an interesting model you want to share with everyone how that works?
Greg Owens 37:32
Yeah, it’s a consultant. His name is Monroe Porter. He lives in Richmond, Virginia, and he was traveling to PDCA, Painting and Decorators, Contractors, Conventions. And as being on the speaker circuit in that way to contractors, and he’s a consultant to contractors. He had this really sort of wise idea. My mentor was a part of this program too, and he decided to fly in non competing painting countries. tractors into Richmond, Virginia, where we would then work on our businesses and for like four days, and he’d have, there’d be some seminars within that. But then it was a lot of us just sharing ideas. And he facilitated us opening up sharing ideas. And since we were non competing, we can talk about numbers, and we can talk about benchmarking, and we can talk about marketing and all those kinds of things together in our groups. And there’s a tremendous amount of learning and I gained a lot of friends from that and a lot of very industry specific so EO is great for like a broad brush of entrepreneurship, but then this is a much more narrow sort of view of how what it’s like to be a painting contractor and a service business and that kind of thing and, and learn in that way, which has also been extremely helpful to me.
John Corcoran 38:48
Yeah, and that’s an interesting model. I’ve a friend Kevin Waldron, who was in the disaster restoration field, said that there was one that he did as well where he would fly in. We fly into different companies to the actual company to their headquarters. And they would interview all the employees and then break down the business and their process and everything, like a team of like, I don’t know, 10-15-20 people or something, go around, interview all the employees, fascinating way of kind of breaking down each business and then improving each step of the process.
Greg Owens 39:20
Yeah, no, that’s it. That is great. There’s nothing I don’t think there’s anything better. We’re encouraged within our group to go visit other painting contractors and spend a day with them and learn from a CD, you know, just this for me, there’s nothing better than learning and seeing that, what somebody else does day to day and how they run things and how they do things. And you know, and sometimes you look at it and you’re like, Wow, that’s a lot of hard work. And I wouldn’t do it that way. It’s my way feels better for me and other times you learn a new thing and you’re, you implemented makes all the difference in the world and business. So Right, right.
John Corcoran 39:58
I want to wrap things up, but before We do that I want to ask, you know, as we mentioned earlier recording this at the end of March 2020. And of all the people I’ve talked to, and I’ve talked to a lot of business owners over the last few weeks, I have to say you’re one of the more Zen business owners out there not to ruffle you know, maybe it’s just an exterior thing. I don’t know, maybe you’re you, you know, melting inside, but is there something there’s some kind of inner strength or something? What is it that you think gives you that kind of even keel?
Greg Owens 40:33
Yeah, interesting that you pick up on that? Thank you. I’ve definitely been on a path personally in my personal development, of needing to work on myself since the age of 16. Really. I suffered from depression at a young age, and didn’t know why. And that was really troublesome to me. And I really wanted to figure out and sort of learn about my own mind. And so I really sparked this curiosity and reading and learning and, and finding tools, and I stumbled across Buddhism and, and finding tools. So I like Buddhism because of the tools they offer in how to work on yourself. And so I think a lot of it is like, getting, getting your mind straight. Warren Rustin, who talks about this to a tremendous amount if you haven’t interviewed him yet? And, you know, definitely put him in that, that.
John Corcoran 41:34
That’s funny. You’re like the second person in a week has mentioned him and said, I should interview him.
Greg Owens 41:39
Absolutely. Because it’s all about getting your mind set. And this is something I’ve read a lot about and do my morning routines. I try to do it. I saw Steve Anchor like a long time ago, he was an EO speaker. He studies happiness and the chemicals you need inside your brain to have more happiness. And I’m a big believer in The five things that he talks about doing and it’s exercising every day, even if it means just going for a walk, it’s journaling every day and journaling, like three things, you’re grateful for journaling, like a positive story. So you get a one two punch for every positive story, like your brain doesn’t know the difference. chemically, when you experience something positive, you get a chemical release. When you write it down again, and repeat, you’re sort of revisiting that experience, you get a second dose. And so that’s been super helpful in journaling and writing, and then meditating and at least doing five minutes a day, but I try to do 20 minutes a day. And that’s been unbelievably powerful. And then random acts of kindness, you know, finding ways to give back to people and do different things. I notice I try to do all of those every single day. I think the scientist said you only need three but you know, and I figured I’m a slow learner, so I needed to do all five every day.
John Corcoran 43:03
That’s great advice. All right.
Greg Owens 43:05
And I think I focused, I really tried to focus like during the last 9/11, earthquake, I learned a long time ago that I couldn’t pay attention to the news too much. And I had to limit my intake and had to work on the things that I can control. So during this, you know, where there’s, there is a tremendous amount of hardship and a lot of decisions I’ve had to make of laying employees off and, but also figuring out ways that they can still contribute within, you know, within the ways that can to be able to go and do projects we’re allowed to do. So we’ve figured out a whole bunch of different types of projects that we can do that fall into this sort of necessary for the well being and health of our customers in a lot of ways. We have empty homes that people need to move into that we feel like that’s important. They need to get them painted and cleaned up and really well cleaned. And once of some of the best ways of cleaning is by painting, because you really sort of do your doing that deep cleaning in that process are washing the exteriors of commercial buildings and things along those lines and using soap and bleach sort of where we need to and making it so that there’s a little bit more sterilized in a way, right. So yeah, and we’re looking into other things too. So,
John Corcoran 44:28
but that’s great. I mean, it seems like you’re just really focused on rather than fixating on what you can’t control focusing on what you can and figuring out a path forward. And I’ve done the same thing where I’ve really limited my news intake, this time around, because there’s a lot that you just can’t control, you know, and just spending all the time fixating on it absorbing it just gonna create negative energy and it’s going to really messes with your head.
Greg Owens 44:52
Yeah, and we seem to live in a very polarized world lately, and I have a lot of friends on both sides of the spectrum that you get super upset over what somebody else has said, you know, in politics and things like that. And it really affects them. And, and I don’t see any benefit from that for me personally. So it’s like not I’m choosing not to partake in those kinds of events and discussions and things like that and focus clearly on what I can focus on and what I can control and, and that means a lot of outreach to my employees on a regular basis and kind of telling them that, hey, this is temporary, and we’ll get through this and finding out who needs help and seeing if there’s ways that we as a community can help each other. And, you know, if there’s somebody that’s met in need of something, we’re trying to figure out how we can get it to them and, and keep everybody just, you know, in our thoughts and helping out.
John Corcoran 45:48
Yeah, yeah. Well, this has been great. Greg, thank you so much for that in particular, thank you for saving, sharing, Steve Anchors research, you know, those are some of the I also try to implement those different exercises lately. I’ve been doing them with my kids trying to get them involved in them as well as the young age and teaching them which is not so easy at a young age. But
Greg Owens 46:09
TED Talk is hilarious. Okay, rolling things. I’m telling you the science behind them. And they’re really it’s To me, it’s things you’ve heard before, but he condenses it into and shows you a little bit more of the science behind how they work.
John Corcoran 46:22
Perfect. We’ll check that out. Well, Greg, owner of McCarthy Painting, Greg alright everyone, tell everyone where they can learn more about you or maybe reach out if they’re looking for a mentor.
Greg Owens 46:33
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think for painting and things like that, it’s info@McCarthypainting.com on the web, McCarthypainting.com my personal email, Greg, Greg@McCarthypainting.com you know, ask any questions you’d like and we can, we can help out. We’ll definitely try to do that.
John Corcoran 46:54
That’s great. All right. Thanks so much, Greg.
Greg Owens 46:56
All right. Thank you.
Outro 47:07
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