Many businesses spell out the basics of their company culture, along with their mission, vision, and core values. Here’s how Forbes magazine spells it out: “It’s the secret sauce of your organization — one that goes far beyond holiday parties or casual Fridays. Company culture represents the living, breathing persona of your company, capturing the norms, values and behaviors that define the very character of your business.” At Ai Painting Plus, company owners Austin and Lacie Ilsley do more than spell it out: They live it out. In short, the Ai Painting Plus culture is part of the business’s DNA because it is a part of who they are, and it is an intentional way of doing business, training employees to be leaders, and creating remarkable, lasting, and memorable relationships with customers and the community. Austin and Lacie recently summarized their company culture and why it is important.

Our mission at Ai Painting Plus is to “paint joy into peoples’ homes and spaces.” This is the core purpose behind our operation, and we carry this purpose with us into every project. The Ai Painting Plus vision is to be a place where people love to work with people they love working with while providing the highest level of customer service possible. We are committed to employee support and development. As our company grows, we want to provide our team members with a path to growth — professionally and personally. Our goal for growth isn’t just increased profits and sales, but more opportunities for our team members. We encourage our employees to paint a picture of what their future looks like. (Pun intended!) A lot of times, people don’t typically see past today, this week, or next week. But what does your future look like, then break that into action items: what do you need to accomplish in the next 90 days, the next year, the next three years to achieve that goal?

What a leader does is empower and serve others to motivate their team to problem-solve together. A leader does not dictate. We demonstrate and teach servant leadership and empathy. We offer relentless support and one-on-one coaching to keep our team members progressing. We don’t avoid healthy conflict. We help everyone on our team understand the importance of giving and receiving feedback, and how to properly deliver feedback. Without healthy conflict, there’s no growth. We have to be able to challenge each other and disagree, then come together in pursuit of our main mission.

Our focus is on being Columbia’s premier painting service. That keeps us focused on giving really good customer service, and it starts with investing in our employees. If we do the people part right within our organization, customer satisfaction is the result. Some might wonder if we’re accidentally creating competition by training and equipping employees with the skills to be great painters and business leaders. That won’t be an accident. Our goal in general is to professionalize the painting industry, because painters have not been viewed as professional people. If we can create our own professionals who go out and create their own companies, there will be competition — but it will help the industry, changing the face of the industry in general.

Sharing knowledge and skills is definitely part of our culture. We do that to increase skills and to raise the level of the public’s perception of our industry. That’s a big reason why we have an apprenticeship program. During COVID, a lot of businesses couldn’t find people or good workers. We didn’t have those struggles, really. People were finding us. We do a good job of not only practicing what we preach, but showcasing it, too. We love to showcase our team and employees on social media.

We’ve already said it, but it really does come down to this: When you invest in and care about people — when you do those things right because it’s just how you do business — profit and revenue is the result.

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