“I think school is important, but learning from others, reading books, and learning from mistakes are the top three ways to become a CEO”
Bill Nishanian and his wife moved to Nashville Tennessee in 2009 and started Nash Painting. Their brand of quality, craftsmanship, customer service, and accountability has led them to grow from a one-man band to one of the largest nonfranchise painting companies in middle Tennessee. He continues to push the limits of prep, process, training, customer service, and culture.
Welcome to your ValiantCEO exclusive interview! Let’s start with a little introduction. Tell us about yourself.
Bill Nishanian: I am a 40 year old salesman/painter converted into an entrepreneur CEO. I’m a faithful follower of Jesus Christ, father of one adopted three-year-old son, husband to my wife of 20 years, outdoorsman, white water adventure tandem canoeist, and handyman extraordinaire. I love Mexican food, beach vacations, spending time with family and friends, spending time in the word, and learning and gleaning new information from those who know more than me.
NO child ever says I want to be a CEO when I grow up. What did you want to be and how did you get to where you are today? Give us some lessons you learned along the way.
Bill Nishanian: I knew when I was young that I wanted to start a business which to me at the time meant working for myself. I assumed that not having a boss, and working hard would be easy and the money would be in abundance. This has been the case at times and it has absolutely not been the case in seasons.
I learned that owning a business and working in the business does not make you a business owner or a CEO but rather self-employed. Over the years I’ve slowly removed myself from the hourglass and focused on growing the business and honing the business rather than generating the income myself. I used to very easily become distracted by shiny things and chasing a dollar wherever I thought there was a dollar to be made. I now work almost entirely on the business with the occasional sales call here and there, and we are laser-focused on our target market even within our own range of service types.
Tell us about your business, what does the company do? What is unique about the company?
Bill Nishanian: Our company is a high-quality interior and exterior residential repainting company. A unique thing about our company is we focus on repaints only. Mini painting companies do new construction, remodeling, and volume painting like apartments. We exclusively focus on buildings that are finished and in need of repainting. Our clients generally are property owners that need a smooth process and a high-quality outcome every time without any hassle.
How to become a CEO? Some will focus on qualities, others on degrees, how would you answer that question?
Bill Nishanian: I think school is important, but learning from others, reading books, and learning from mistakes are the top three ways to become a CEO. Some qualities needed to be a CEO cannot be learned in some cases depending on our personality profiles. I would highly recommend hiring a consultant to do something like a disk profile to help you realize your strengths and weaknesses.
What are the secrets to becoming a successful CEO? Who inspires you, who are your role models and why? Illustrate your choices.
Bill Nishanian: I believe this question is directed more towards working up a corporate ladder. Being an entrepreneur I did not have to work my way up.
I can say that although I own a company I was not always a CEO. One of my favorite Books is traction by Gino Wickman. Having a business operating system gives me the data that I need to make executive decisions. Two CEOs that helped me a lot that I still look up two to this day or Kevin Nolan the owner of Nolan painting company, and Brian Nolan the owner of Nolan consulting group. Kevin and Brian are brothers and are constantly on the cutting edge of business, books, strategy. They do a great job leading by example and inspired me two move my business forward rather than coast.
Many CEOs fall into the trap of being all over the place. What are the top activities a CEO should focus on to be the best leader the company needs? Explain.
Bill Nishanian: I personally try to keep myself out of the hourglass. One of the ways to do this is to hire, train and trust employees to make decisions. CEOs that are afraid of losing money will cripple themselves with a funnel that Has to run through them. I believe it’s important to allow your team to make decisions, coach them when decisions are incorrect, and use the mistakes as paid experience on how to be successful in the future
The Covid-19 Pandemic put the leadership skills of many to the test, what were some of the most difficult challenges that you faced as a CEO/Leader in the past year? Please list and explain in detail.
Bill Nishanian: The most difficult challenge that we faced being a majority residential repainting company is the possibility of putting our employees or our customers at risk in order to keep the company solvent. The data that was coming out was confusing, the CDC recommendations were changing almost daily, and tensions were at an all-time high. At one point we had over $500,000 worth of work that was sold but we could not complete the work for various reasons. Owners were scared of getting sick, worried about the economy, concerned for their own businesses, or financial troubles delaying their projects.
What are some of the greatest mistakes you’ve noticed some business leaders made during these unprecedented times? What are the takeaways you gleaned from those mistakes?
Bill Nishanian: I don’t know that I personally saw someone make a mistake that I knew was the wrong move. I think we were all navigating a crisis that was not in the business books. One mistake I know was made by many was allowing good employees to distance themselves too much which lead to heavy turnover. We kept everyone on the payroll with the help of the PPP loan, as well as kept the team fully engaged as if we were at full capacity.
In your opinion, what changes played the most critical role in enabling your business to survive/remain profitable, or maybe even thrive? What lessons did all this teach you?
Bill Nishanian: There is no doubt that the PPP loan gave us the ability to not only stay open, but to stay in business. We backed off all of our nonoperational budget items that were not crucial to filling the pipeline and focused on hiring during this time to hopefully pick up talent.
What is the #1 most pressing challenge you’re trying to solve in your business right now?
Bill Nishanian: Our most difficult challenge every year is maintaining enough business through the first quarter so as to not lose any of our workforces before the 2nd quarter. Our industry is somewhat seasonal, and winter temperatures force all painting contractors indoors all at the same time which dries up the opportunities.
You already shared a lot of insights with our readers and we thank you for your generosity. Normally, leaders are asked about their most useful qualities but let’s change things up a bit. What is the most useless skill you have learned, at school or during your career?
Bill Nishanian: The most useless skill I’ve ever learned was web design. It was useful for a season, but quickly became outdated, and irrelevant without continued education. I think it’s key to choose your college courses based on timeless information unless it is your anticipated line of work.
Thank you so much for your time but before we finish things off, we do have one more question. We will select these answers for our ValiantCEO Award 2021 edition. The best answers will be selected to challenge the award.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make, this past year 2021, for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Bill Nishanian: Back in March we hit critical mass with our debt and minimal workload. We decided to keep everyone on full-time and bet on a positive year. This allowed us to be fully staffed and prepared for the record year we’ve had, without losing any team members due to unemployment, and we’ve increased our workforce by 30%.
This interview was originally published on ValiantCEO.
