First impressions count

The front door sets the tone for your entire home. Whether it’s a new coat of paint to freshen up a well-loved hue or adding a new pop of colour to your front door, don’t be afraid to make a statement with your entryway.

“A richly saturated sapphire blue, like Blue Danube 2062-30, will add interest and elegance to your front door,” says Grech. Looking to take your transformation one step further? “Painting the ceiling of a covered porch in a coordinating colour is a great way to add even more visual interest and appeal to your front entrance.”

The difference is in the details

Not ready to repaint your whole exterior? Choose small but impactful areas to update. A fresh coat of paint to exterior shutters or window and door trim can instantly elevate curb appeal. Brighten up an otherwise neutral look with a vibrant new shade, or add neutrals to complement bolder hues. “Benjamin Moore Aura Grand Entrance paint is a perfect choice for Canadian home exteriors because it ensures a beautiful and resilient finish that will last for years,” says Grech.

Bring the indoors out

 Get the most out of the summer months by creating inviting outdoor living spaces that reflect the style and comfort of your home. “Simple additions like a welcome mat, outdoor rug or cozy throws and cushions for your outdoor furniture are ideal ways to add texture. Adding flowers, plants and herbs in your own hand-painted pots will bring more colour and a seamless sense of indoor/outdoor living.”

You don’t have to DIY

Don’t want to do it yourself? Consider hiring a professional painting contractor who can achieve a flawless finish on your home’s exterior. Hiring a professional will help you achieve beautiful results and has the added benefit of supporting small businesses in your community.

Editorial provided by Benjamin Moore

The post Boost Your Home’s Curb Appeal with Colour first appeared on Professional Painter Magazine.

I hear this complaint from owners of big companies that rely on teams of painters to operate, from owners of small businesses with just a few painters, and even from solo painters who might need to hire extra help for big jobs or tight schedules. But when it comes to life’s problems, the issue isn’t really about the difficulty itself, but rather what you do about it. The shortage of skilled labour in the building and renovation trades has been talked about for decades, and the talk will continue. The main thing to understand is that it’s almost certain there are things you could be doing better right now to get the kind of painters you need and to keep them. It all comes down to the three essentials: recruitment, training and retention.

Geez, I don’t know. Been trying to answer that question for years. Unless you want a lazy guy who smokes in the garage and checks Facebook for an hour at a time. That’s the kind of people you’re going to find these days.
Bryan M.

Recruiting Good Painters

Imagine your painting business is a stage coach. The horses are the painters you’ve hired and the stage coach itself are the clients you serve. Is your stage coach running slowly or fast? Does it fail to roll sometimes because the horses don’t show up? Or worse, do some of the horses bite and kick at the clients climbing into the coach? The success of your business comes down to the quality of people you have pulling in the harness, and recruitment is the job of actively seeking high quality people to work for you.

Chances are pretty good that you’ve never actually pursued painters in the best way possible. Recruitment is sort of like finding and winning painting jobs, except the people you’re pursuing are painters, not clients with painting that needs doing. The crazy thing is, most painting business owners spend much more time inviting clients to ride in their stage coach, than they do finding strong, capable, experienced horses to pull it. But perhaps things will look different to you when you realize that each capable painter you have in your employ should add $15,000 to $35,000 to your gross profits each year. You may think you’re in the painting business, but you’re also in the business of buying paint labour in the wholesale market, then selling that labour for retail prices. So what are you doing to find and maintain good sources of supply for the thing you’re really selling, namely labour?

Brandon Lewis, founder of the Academy for Professional Painting Contractors (www.paintersacademy.com; 423-800-0520), is one of the biggest proponents of active recruitment to attract skilled painters. You probably haven’t heard anything like Lewis‘s message on the issue of finding good people.

“Many business owners tell me it’s impossible to find good painters” says Lewis, “and I always ask a question: How much time and money have you spent over the last 30 days trying to solve this problem?”

“Many business owners tell me it’s impossible to find good painters” says Lewis, “and I always ask a question: How much time and money have you spent over the last 30 days trying to solve this problem? Typically the answer I get is, ‘Well, I’ve asked my guys if they know of anybody and I posted an ad on Craigslist.’ So you’ve spent about 20 bucks and three minutes in the last 30 days to solve this major problem. What if you spent 20 bucks and three minutes on your last painting project. How much would you have gotten done?”

Lewis maintains that there’s no shortage of good painters for hire in the economy, it’s just that all the good ones are working. Chances are pretty slim that you’ll find a good painter among the ranks of the unemployed, yet this is exactly where almost all painting company owners look for help.

“Of the few painting business owners who do recruit” explains Lewis, “most use messaging something like this: ‘We’re hiring. Come grow with us. Experienced painters wanted.’ This is a terrible message, especially for people who already have a job. Instead, appeal to painters whose bosses don’t appreciate them. This is where a lot of painters can identify. Most people don’t quit their companies, they quit their bosses. When you write good, strong copy like that and you follow it up with solutions to the problems that most painters experience, letting them know that you’re different. It works.”

Training Good Painters

Developing your own painters with in-house training can be a worthwhile strategy, but it’s easy to do this job wrong. Start with the right person and put them in the right situation and you can end up with a loyal, skilled employee who is part of a solid foundation for your business. A certain amount of training is your responsibility to the trade, too. But do the training thing wrong and it can be a big waste of time and money. The trick is avoiding the typical training mistakes. One of the most common is hiring people who are too inexperienced.

“I do my best to earn loyalty and respect from my guys. I call them my team. They know some of the sacrifices I make to keep them working. Week before Christmas was a very slow. I paid each of them a full week’s pay, then I gave them pay for Christmas Day. Yeah, it was tough for me,  but my guys wouldn’t leave me just to make a little more somewhere else. That’s just a few of the things I do.”

The less experienced a painter is, the less they cost per hour. That’s the attraction, but hiring a cheap, enthusiastic greenhorn can easily be too much of a gamble given the size and stability of your business. Beware of being penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to hiring. A capable journeyman earning $40 an hour can generate more profits for you than a help-dependent beginner earning minimum wage. And the smaller your business is, the more you need a stable base of journeymen painters who can perform reliably without supervision. The trainee painters in your company should never total more than 20% of the total labour pool. Any more than this and you run the risk of losing too much if the trainee doesn’t work out. You also need a critical mass of experienced painters to train your trainee without slowing jobs down.

Never hire a trainee who hasn’t first proven themselves in some way in a labour situation.

Another common error is hiring trainees who haven’t proven their interest and aptitude for being a professional painter. Painting is good old fashioned work, and it’s easy for a person to say they’d like to learn to paint professionally without knowing what that means. Never hire a trainee who hasn’t first proven themselves in some way in a labour situation. Community colleges and apprenticeship programs are the kinds of places you’ll find field-proven people who are good candidates for training. Talk to the people in charge and consider hiring a top candidate on a trial basis. Don’t do it to save money, do it to help someone get into a good trade and to build your business.

Keeping Good Painters

Monitor results, reward excellence and remove incompetence. This is how you retain a good painting team. “You have to build a culture around expectations and performance,” says Lewis, “and you have to reward it.”

So many owners only have a casual conversation with somebody new on the back of a tailgate, then set them loose. We don’t ever tell them what they’re supposed to do. We don’t ever write it down. We don’t ever measure it. We expect these people to be the quality of an owner. Well, if they were the quality of an owner, they would be owning a painting business. They wouldn’t be working for us in most cases. You’ve got to have clear, written goals and processes in place. You have to have paperwork and procedures and tools to sustain whatever it is you want them to do. People who are really good at performing – that are worth retaining – they like structure and they like clear directions.

I’ve learned over time that some of your best employees come from those that know nothing about the trade. A fresh guy that can be taught your ways always pays off in the long run and as a bonus they stay longer and show more loyalty.
Steve Green

Once you’ve got all that basic stuff, you need to give folks monetary incentives for making you money. If they save labor hours on a project, give your painters half of what they’ve saved you. You also need to do personal recognition from the boss. Not everybody is motivated by money, and it took me a long time to realize this. When I owned my own painting business I got in the habit of putting a handwritten note in each and every paycheck talking about something good they’d done. People don’t get a kind word and they especially don’t get it in writing.

The post Getting Good Painters first appeared on Professional Painter Magazine.

Bad Reason #1: “I Want to Make More Money”

I get to talk to a lot of painters, and the most common reason they give up as a business owner and go back to painting solo comes down to lack of profits and too much work. They expected to make more money as an owner but they actually earn less than a journeyman, at least at first. And the painting business is more likely than other trades to deliver this unhappy out-come. Why is that? It all comes down to lack of value delivered as a business owner.

In the long run, the free market only ever pays for value. If you want to earn a profit as the boss of a painting company, you need to bring real value to the venture as a manager.  And simply calling up some painting buddies, giving them the address of the next painting job, then writing some pay cheques does not constitute value. Your painters could have done that on their own.

Painting has one of the low-est barriers to entry of any trade because the tools are inexpensive and you don’t necessarily need a big, fancy vehicle to get into the game. It’s actually harder for a painting company owner to deliver value than with other trades because it’s so easy for individual painters to work on their own. So what legitimate value can you bring to the table as the owner of a painting company? See “Seven Ways to Create Value” on page 27. Just because you call yourself a business owner doesn’t mean the market place will pay you.

The paint business remains, in spite of its challenges, a tremendous opportunity for a hard-working entrepreneur. But getting into this business for any one of these six bad reasons will lead to owner dissatisfaction.

Bad Reason #2: “I Want to Work Fewer Hours”

Creating a business is about building a system, and this never hap-pens easily. You’ll make mistakes, people will let you down, and things always take longer than you expect as you build. On top of all this you also need to keep yourself and your family fed while you’re creating your business. All this is why you’ll probably need to work at least 50% more hours as you start a painting business than simply working as a painter. It could be more. How long will you have to keep this up? It depends on how efficiently you build your business system, and how well it works when it’s done. The fact is, you’ll need to work way more hours building your business rather than just painting. Eventually, if you do your work well, you may be able to work fewer hours, but only if you design your business to function without your constant involvement. Starting a business always involves way more work than you expect.

Bad Reason #3: “I Love Painting”

Whenever I hear people talk about starting a business, the enthusiastic reasoning often sounds some-thing like this: “I want to start a (insert business idea here) because I like (insert product or service enjoyed here).

“I want to start a restaurant because I like to cook”, is a common example.
“I’m starting a clothing store because I love to dress up.”
“I want to make video games because I love to play”, is a common delusion among teenage boys.

This sort of dangerous nonsense is probably responsible for more failed businesses than any other mistaken notion.  Enjoying your work as a painter is no reason to think that you’d enjoy life as the owner of a painting business. The two are entirely different. In fact, if you absolutely love painting it’s probably a sign that you shouldn’t start a painting business at all. Very few painting business owners actually do much painting. Sure, you need to know all the details behind successful painting, but only so you can hire, manage and sell painting jobs better than the other guy. Love of painting is not sufficient reason to start a painting business.

Bad Reason #4: “All I Need Is a Few Painters”

Imagine you met a farmer with a great new dairy barn. He takes you inside and shows you the stalls, feed storage and milking equipment. Everything’s impressive, except for the fact that he only has two cows. You can be the best farmer in the world, but two cows simply don’t create enough value to support the operation. Same goes for a painting business. It takes a minimum number of painters to support your work as a business owner. You can do everything else right, but if you don’t have enough cows in your barn you’re going down. Your profits as a business owner come from the fact that you’ve got to pay your crew members less than the value they create for you. It’s this spread between value and pay that makes your profits, but of course the spread can only be so wide. If you’re not managing enough painters, you’ll be caught in that nasty place where you need to paint to keep eating while also somehow finding time to manage your crew. It’s hell. So how many painters does it take to support you as a business owner? That depends, but start looking at simple numbers. If you pay your people $8 less per hour than they generate for you in value, you’ll need to employ six painters to generate $48 an hour for you. This might seem like a big hourly rate at your end, but it’s actually a bare minimum when you have to cover all overhead costs, marketing, company vehicle, bad debt and expenses. Don’t under estimate the number of painters you need to support your business.

Even the smallest business has a surprising number of hidden expenses that leak money out of the venture. Eventually, those expenses will demand to be paid even when they are ‘invisible’ at the outset.

Bad Reason #5: “I’m a People Person Not a Numbers Person”

Even the smallest business has a surprising number of hidden expenses that leak money out of the venture, and eventually these expenses will demand to be paid even if you can’t see them at first. The total cost of running a truck, for instance, is actually twice what you pay in gas, all things considered. Employees cost wages, but there are also benefits to be paid, vacation pay, sick days and possibly severance.  Even some-thing as insignificant as the cost of paper towels and hand cleaner adds up big-time. It’s fine to be a people person, but you also need to be something of a stickler for numbers and accounting if you expect your painting business to succeed. If you hate numbers, definitely don’t try to start a painting business.

Bad Reason #6: “I Want a Simpler Life”

There’s no professional life simpler than being an employee or solo con-tractor. Even the boss of the smallest business has way more hassles than meets the eye. Naturally, good management will reduce these hassles, but they’ll never go away. In fact, your entire role as a business owner is all about smoothing out the bumps and making things happen properly in a world that’s hardwired for trouble. As a painting boss, you’ll need to deal with unreasonable clients, unreliable employees, incompetent suppliers, government regulations and a whole bunch of other troubles. If troubles follow you to bed at night, you’ll need to strengthen your mental resilience or stick to solo painting.

The world will always need business organizations and there’s room for your new painting business, too. Just be sure you really understand what the role of successful business owner looks like before you jump in. Get this essential part right and the rest is just hard work.

Three Benefits of Building a Real Business

If running a business is riskier, more demanding and more worrisome than being an employee or solo painter, why would anyone do it? A few reasons:

1.    You can make more money. If you get the whole value thing right and you attract enough painters to work with you reliably, you can easily make 2x or 3x as much as a journeyman painter.

2.     You like the challenge. Building and running a business is a complicated challenge that involves diplomacy, salesmanship, financial management and luck. If you’re tired of the technical challenges of painting, the variety of business challenges might be just what you need.

3.    Freedom from the work-for-pay lifestyle. As a painter, if you stop painting you stop eating. There is no accumulated value to sell after a lifetime spent painting solo. If you build a business properly, you or your kids will have something of value to cash in on in the future.

Seven Ways to Create Value

You’ll never earn a profit as a painting business owner unless you bring real value to the table. Here are six essential ways to make that happen:

SELL WELL: Selling jobs at profitable prices is a completely different skill than painting, and most painters don’t like to find new jobs and clinch deals. Selling well is key to any business, and if you don’t like selling you shouldn’t try starting a painting company. And selling effectively these days always involves some kind of online presence. It’s certainly not the only part of selling, but it is the new normal for any painting business owner who expects to thrive. If the internet scares you, don’t try starting a painting business.

ORGANIZE BIG JOBS: The larger the painting job, the greater the role for you to coordinate painters, supplies, timelines and financials. Solo painters simply can’t do this on their own, so it’s a natural role for you as manager. Many successful painting companies find a profit-able niche doing jobs that are too big for anything other than an organization to handle.

STREAMLINE THE FINANCIALS: Invoicing and collecting payments will always take too much time and too much effort if you don’t design a streamlined financial system intentionally from the start. The slickest I’ve seen painting business owners use is on-the-job digital payment systems at the end of each project. Swipe the clients credit card through a reader on a cell phone and you’re done. You get instant payment and there’s no need to follow up with paperwork. Painting business owners I know who use on-the-job payment also find that clients are less likely to call back for touchups and repainting when they’ve paid immediately, too.

PROTECT YOUR PAINTERS: Part of running a successful painting business involves finding and keeping skilled and loyal employees or contractors. And a big part of loyalty comes down to creating a hassle-free zone for your painters to work within. You need to protect them from the conflict caused by angry customers and the hassles involved in gathering paints and painting tools. Eliminating everything beyond the work of painting is one way you can bring value to your work as a painting business owner. Painters will want to work for you because it’s a simple, hassle-free experience for them.

PAY LIKE CLOCKWORK: This is huge. One of your main roles as a business owner is to cushion your employees against all financial shocks. Making payroll late is a recipe for disaster because your painters will jump ship. It doesn’t matter if a client pays late or stiffs you for an invoice. Your job is to take the hit and make it up another day. If you don’t have enough cash on hand to make at least three months of payroll with no revenues, don’t start a painting business. You’ll fail.

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT: As the painting world advances, it’s your job to stay on top of technical advances, try them out, then introduce the good ones to your crew and clients. Don’t neglect this role or your business will slowly lose vitality and profitability as the painting world advances.

GATHER AND ANALYZE NUMBERS: Bidding profitably on jobs is the single most important skill you need as a business owner, but it’s a skill that requires informed practice. And the only way to get that practice is by monitoring the numbers to see if they lead to profit or loss. Keep close tabs on what your crew actually costs you in time, wages and benefits, then compare these costs to the offsetting revenues from your bids. While you’re at it, monitor the productivity of individual employees and contractors. You need to know who’s actually delivering more value than you’re paying them for. Some employees will contribute much more to your bottom line than others.

The post 6 Bad Reasons to Start a Painting Business first appeared on Professional Painter Magazine.

Money might not be the only reason you paint, but it’s important just the same. Maybe even the most important part of your work. You give up time with your family and time doing things you enjoy in exchange for money, so it better be worthwhile. Professional painting is not a hobby. Are you interested in earning more money in less time? These five tips can help.

Profit Boosting Tip#1: Talk Less, Paint More

I’ve been alive long enough to notice that the more people talk the less they get done. This is not true all the time, but often enough to be worth remembering. Nobody pays tradespeople to talk, yet I still see many consume what probably adds up to an hour or two a day talking pointlessly. That’s an hour or more away from the things that matter in your life, all for no financial gain. Chat if you like, but realize that it comes at a price.

A proportionally high number of chatters I know have gone out of business.  And although it’s not talked about very much, the fact is that one of the leading causes of family breakdown is insufficient finances.

Profit Boosting Tip#2: Bid By the Job, Not By The Hour

Being a painter is like any other trade. It involves uncertainty, and
that’s why some painters work by the hour, not by the bid. Time and materials contracts eliminate all the risk of underbidding a job, but they also cost you big time in hidden ways. Hourly work harms you in two things. First it provides no financial incentive for you to work more efficiently. And second, if you do get better and faster and more efficient, all that gain goes to the client. Don’t be unfair to yourself. You should be paid for the experience you bring to the job, not just for the time you spend spreading paint in pleasing ways. If an efficient painter can work twice as fast as a slow one, then that efficient painter deserves to take home twice as much money in a day. This can only happen by bidding on the job.

So what about the risk of bidding? If you’re a new painter, the best way to get good at bidding is by paying attention to the hours different jobs take you.  Start your bidding hourly if you like, to gain experience, but be sure to use that experience to hone your estimation skills. In the same way that it took time and practice to get good with a brush and roller, it takes time and practice to get good at estimating.

Estimating large projects is one of the areas where costly mistakes are possible, especially for painters just getting into commercial and institutional work.

Profit Boosting Tip#3: Find Trusted Partners

At least half the painters I’ve met have tried to get bigger by hiring employees, but most regret the move. They give up and go back to solo work forever. Complication is the reason why. Employees come with hidden costs, paperwork is required of you, and there’s no direct connection between what you pay an employee and the amount of money they earn for you. A drywaller I know jokes that he should pay $10/hr less to anyone who smokes and owns a smart-phone. That may be extreme, but the fact is that distractions on the jobsite today are a huge issue.

Distracted workers can easily be half as productive as a painter who delivers 8 hours of actual work for 8 hours of pay. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that you always need to work solo just because hourly-paid employees haven’t worked out for you in the past. Some painters manage nicely connecting with the right kind of people, especially when those people fit into the right kind of financial structure. Partnering with trusted contractors paid for the work they complete can be a win-win situation. Since you only pay them for results, you’re free of making sure they work efficiently. Hiring contractors instead of employees also saves on paperwork big-time.

Profit Boosting Tip#4: Collect and Use Testimonials

Besides painting work itself, your biggest challenge as a professional painter is ensuring a steady supply of work. While new clients might come to you automatically at some times, lean times are never far away, either. This is where testimonials can help. Nothing else convinces potential clients to become actual clients as effectively as testimonials delivered online. This is especially true if you’re a good painter. Ultimately, as with all the manual trades in the world, efficiency makes the difference between thriving and simply surviving. Collecting and using testimonials online in some way is the cheapest and most effective sales tool you can use.

Profit Boosting Tip#5: Claim All Tax Deductions

As a professional painter, you’re entitled to deduct every last little business expense before paying Big Brother, but it’s surprising how many professionals don’t make full use of this option.  Most of your expenses come is small chunks, but they add up. Gas, brushes, rollers, meals on the road, that new brake job on your work vehicle, the garage and office space in your house that you use for work – it adds up to a nice chunk taken off your bottom line before the tax man takes his cut. It’s bad enough you need to buy these things in the first place, but you should never pay income taxes on these expenses. So how can you deal with all those little sales receipts in an efficient way? Add them up as you go. Here’s what I do . . .

After collecting about a week’s worth of receipts, I spend a few minutes typing the amounts into a spreadsheet. No big deal, I have half a dozen headings up top that correspond to the expense headings I’ll use on my income tax return. I then put the paper sales slips in a cardboard accordion folder in case I need to present receipts to the government one day. This folder has internal dividers to keep the different categories of slips separate. Claiming legitimate expenses saves me thousands of dollars in tax each year, and the paperwork is almost automatic. Having a spread sheet also lets me see exactly what I spend on gas, supplies, vehicle repairs, restaurant meals and every other expense I incur. Knowledge is the best management tool.

Sooner or later, painting stops being fun. At least for a while it does. But at times like these, there is another source of professional enthusiasm. Unless you win the lottery, striving for better efficiencies and more profits is a goal that never seems to get stale.

The post Boosting Business first appeared on Professional Painter Magazine.

In this interview ProPainter Editor, Steve Maxwell talked to Brandon Lewis, Founder of The Academy for Professional Painting Contractors, about recruitment, retention of painters and customers for Painting Companies.

Brandon Lewis is the founder of the Academy for Professional Painting Contractors and helps owners with marketing, sales, referral, and retention strategies. For a free CD, report, and video training series on the fundamentals of the APPC’s Core-5 Systems, visit www.PaintersAcademy.com or call 423-800-0520.

January 2, 2018

The post How to recruit and retain good painters (Audio) first appeared on Professional Painter Magazine.

Money-Saving Tip#1 – Buy Used

Everyone knows that used is cheaper than new. What you might not realize is just how much more expensive new can be. Besides the higher purchase price, you’ve got the higher cost of insurance for a brand new vehicle. There’s also the need for dealer-servicing. But the biggest drawback of all when buying new wheels is depreciation. The last vehicle I bought was one model year old. It cost me $39,000, it had 28,000 km on the clock and it cost $15,000 less than the same make and model available new. Depreciation during the first year I owned the vehicle was probably less than $7,000, saving me $8,000 from the steepest part of the depreciation curve. Buying new saved me more than $650 per month in depreciation avoided. And I am still driving this vehicle at more than 300,000 km.

Money-Saving Tip#2 – Buy Reliability

Once upon a time, consumers didn’t have much to go by when it came to choosing a reliable vehicle. You could buy brand names and hope for the best, but that wasn’t much to go by. None of us ever got the chance to learn from the experience of many previous owners of the same model, so we bought in the dark, often suffering the consequences. These days, things are different. The results of large and trustworthy vehicle reliability studies are easy to find and often surprising. Consumer Reports compiles one of the largest collections of vehicle reliability information in the world, involving data from about 500,000 vehicles each year. The difference between best and worst vehicles is huge. The cost of owning a trouble-prone vehicle can easily be 300 to 400 per cent higher than a trouble-free make and model– not to mention the hassles of dealing with a vehicle that breaks down when it shouldn’t. A couple of makes consistently have much higher reliability ratings than others from brands that can’t seem to get their act together.

Money-Saving Tip#3 – Remember Body Maintenance

Almost all of Canada is hard on vehicle bodies. Except for a few locations in this country, road salt and moist spring conditions cause lots of vehicle rusting. And rusting is the one thing that can never be repaired properly. Sure, you can use body filler and paint to fix body rust, but that’s expensive and ultimately ineffective. Structural rust kills Canadian vehicles faster than mechanical issues, and this means unnecessarily higher overhead costs for you. So how do you stop rust? Creeping oil spray treatments, that’s how. There are many rust-preventative treatments on the market, but most don’t work. My oldest vehicle is a 1990 F-150 that has always been driven in the salt country of Ontario, yet it’s completely free of rust. I know for sure because I had it repainted professionally when the old paint got chalky and dull. Not a spec of filler was required.
A simple sanding job and a $2,000 coat of new paint and the old truck still shines, five years after that paint job. I’ve used both Krown and Rust Check and I find them equally good. These days I spray my own vehicles with product I buy in 20 litre pails. A couple of hours and $50 worth of rust compound does each of my three vehicles. Body maintenance like this makes vehicle rust a non-issue, and it’s the foundation for the next money-saving tip. In my experience if a rust preventative product doesn’t creep and lead to oily, dusty residue along the bottoms of doors and body panels months after application, then it doesn’t work.

Money-Saving Tip#4 – Maintenance is Cheaper Than Replacement

People replace vehicles for all kinds of emotional reasons, and many of these reasons are justified with something that’s simply not true. The flaw in logic usually goes something like this: “Why should I pay $3000 for repairs on a used vehicle that’s only worth $2000? That doesn’t make sense.” Well, actually, a repair like this probably does make sense if you’ve kept up with the rust preventative maintenance work in Tip#3 and you’ve chosen a reliable model. Here’s the logic . . . Let’s say the transmission goes on your otherwise-good work truck, and it’ll cost $3K for a new one. What’s the monthly payments for owning a new vehicle? It could easily be $400 to $600, not including depreciation. Will that new transmission keep working for another 5 to 7 months? Of course it will. It will probably last many years. Will something else go wrong in the mean time? Yes, it could, but the same logic about the value of repairs applies. As vehicles age, more than one thing might go wrong with them, and you could end up averaging hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month in repairs for a while. But when the wear items have been replaced, you’ll probably get many years of repair-free service from that same vehicle assuming two vital things: Have you made rust a non-issue with regular oil sprays? Have you chosen a vehicle that’s got a proven, multiyear track record of reliability? Repairs arrive in bumps. Get over the bump and you’ll be fine for a long time.

Money-Saving Tip#5 – Choose a Vehicle for Practicality, Not Ego

Painting is one of the few trades where a big vehicle is not always necessary. Sure, it’s nice to have a honking big truck and a work trailer and some painting businesses can justify this. Many can’t. Remember, the definition of being able to afford something is not if you can come up with a loan to pay for it. Even having enough cash is not the definition of “affordability”. When it comes to a work vehicle, the big question is “does it pay?” Does that big, fancy painting truck that costs you twice as much two run pay for itself in double the profits? I know painters whose main work vehicle is a medium-sized car. The smaller and simpler the vehicle you own, the cheaper the fuel bill, spare parts, tires and insurance.

The post Driving Cheap: How to earn more by spending less on your work vehicle first appeared on Professional Painter Magazine.

Real-world insights about hiring painters and growing a painting business.

Got a dream to hire painters and expand? There’s good money to be made if you’re the right kind of person, but you need to understand the challenges up front. Learn from what real painters have to say about their experiences moving from solo to boss.

1. Expect it to be hard to find and keep good help

“I’ve hired painters in the past, and they all start out eager and take pride in their work. But as time goes by, the more comfortable they get the more their work suffers. They start showing up late, leaving early or calling in sick. Work gets sloppy. If I have to micro-manage an employee, or I don’t have 100 per cent faith in the quality of their work, I’d prefer to work alone and keep my high standards.”

“I’m a solo painter, but over the years I’ve hired help. The first was a temp guy. I asked for a non-smoker, and he lit up in the church bathroom during our job. I trained a nephew and niece, and they were the best summer helpers but moved on to careers. Things were getting busy, so I hired a relative part time to help with the office work , and hired a full-time lady as a painter who needed training. That lasted 4 months.”

2. Be sure you understand yourself

“I’ve had 12 guys working for me, I’ve painted solo, and I’ve painted every way in between. For my money, I like the smaller feel. I keep a guy or two around pretty much all year full time. It’s manageable. Finding the right people is everything. I’ve had one guy for seven years, and another for two years straight.”

“I did all my own work for a number of years and never had an issue. Not one complaint. So when the work was too much, I decided to hire a friend who was looking for work. Why not share with a friend, right? Well, that’s when the com- plaints started rolling in!”

3. Get big enough to make it worthwhile

“I had nine employees during my best year, three of which had their papers and six didn’t. It was my best grossing year ever, but it burnt me out. The best advise I ever got was from a caterer. If you really wanna make money, you gotta get a bigger crew. Six guys or 60 are gonna be the same headaches. So which direction do you wanna go? I went small.”

I’ll never hire again. I’ll work as part of somebody else’s project but that’s it.

“I hired a guy five years ago and have kept him busy ever since. Last year I had a client recommend a helper who was a recent university grad. I was only going to use him for the summer but have kept him gainfully employed for the last 12 months. When I was solo, I worked less and socialized more with vendors and clients. With two people on board you have a sounding board for ideas.
Days go by quicker and you can leave your painter alone to attend to banking, estimates, sick days with kids, etc. You’ve also got another body to clean the shop. But with your second painter hired, you can’t have downtime. The income statement needs to be the main focus. Estimation accuracy as well as cash-flow management are key.
Fast forward today and I’m booked three months out with interior projects. I’m trying to say no, but clients are willing to wait. Most of my days are in the field, nights
spent estimating, even later nights typing them up. Early mornings I do payroll, meet deduction deadlines, lists for materials, etc. With two painters on board there’s no
breathing room for me. Three painters might actually be better so I can focus more on sales and administration and less in the field.”

One extra guy is almost a necessity. Together we often do the job of a three-man crew.

4. Hire for attitude, train for skill

“I wouldn’t work alone. Never did, never will. My suggestion is to find someone younger and mold them. There are good people out there. Just avoid the ones into drinking, drugs, showing up late and those who’ve become painters by default. In my opinion you can make a lot more money with a crew working for you. The big hitters have one to five crews. Is it easy finding the right people? No, it’s not. But ultimately if you want to grow you need more hands. Stop hiring know-it-alls!”

“I constantly manage crews of one to 12 people who have little or no experience. We get it done and I swear it’s all about the prep, teaching and supervision. On average we deal with only five or six deficiencies for 25 homes.”

“I’ve seen people who think that the longer your roller sits on the wall the faster you’re painting. I call those people dry rollers. In my opinion, it’s the amount of time that roller is not on the wall – the time between dips – that matters. I’ve worked with guys that I dip three times to their one. I go farther on the wall and put more paint on per square foot, so obviously my work looks better. And be sure to teach your painters to keep that cut pot within easy reach for dips. I worked next to a guy who would cut out of a 5 gallon pail. One day when I saw him going up and down a ladder for every dip I was extremely annoyed, and he wasn’t even my employee.”

5. You’ll need to be patient & persistent

“I’ve had up to 14 painters employed – seven painters and seven guys who thought they were painters. Quality help is difficult to find. I’ve had three ads on Craigslist with no luck. I’ve had a couple of guys filling in with me on the weekends and I now have a part time apprentice who works when she’s not in school. Needless to say I am still searching.”

“I have ONE guy that I call when I need REAL help…not just another pair of hands. He does what he’s there for and he’s a damn good painter!”

6. You’ve got to be an effective and fair leader

“If you’re going to hire someone – especially if you want to eventually delegate responsibility to them – it becomes your job to teach the heart of why you make the decisions you do. You always have to explain every- thing 100 times to employees before there’s a problem. Explain until you see their eyes glaze over, then explain things a little more – always with humor and fun. And be sure to pay them well when they make you money!”

“I hope you’re using an app called Joist or something similar for typing up estimates. I usually reserve one day a week for office work, or I work a 6-hour painting day then spend time in the evening on administration.”

“I was foreman of nine crews of two guys for a boss. I did estimates, scheduling, supervising, client relations, color and design collaboration and payroll. Buying paint, delivering supplies. setting up jobs and cleaning up after- wards. Follow up visits, cold calls, advertising ideas, lay- ing off when times were slow. I never did the hiring, training or bookkeeping. I had to use my own vehicle for all this, too. The final straw was when I found out my boss had spent three days driving around the Maritimes trying to get the best deal on a pickup truck. He brought me into the office and said times were slow (I was working 60 to 80 hours a week), and told me he had to cut my pay from $16/ hr. to $12.50/hr. I walked out to work on my own and never looked back. BTW, that old boss never did get his truck and went out of business two years later.”

“I’ve had hundreds of different men and women work for me. I can name at least two who had been convicted and served for murder. I can name three who had been convicted and served for bank robbery. (BTW, bank robbers seem to be pretty honourable guys for some weird reason.) I’ve had drunks, junkies, coke freaks and worse. I’m now down to a five man crew and I’m back on the tools myself because I kinda like it. At my age maybe it’s time to get off the horse and leave the game to others. I feel that those entering the trades will be able to ask for open cheques – as real tradespeople are becoming rare.”

So, does being your own painting boss sound like it’s for you? It really comes down to what you want from the trade and what kind of person you are.

The post Going from Solo to Boss first appeared on Professional Painter Magazine.

While it’s true that running a crew of painters isn’t for everyone, it doesn’t necessarily have to be more trouble than it’s worth. Someone’s got to lead, and the make-or-break skill is delegation. Master the ability to hand out work to others and you might just decide you like running crews after all.

Treat All Painters With Respect

During the winter of 1989, I worked under the best leader I’ve ever seen. He had a thick Scottish accent and he was the kind of guy who you’d happily go to battle with if it came to that. His secret was simple: Offer everyone respect and decency all the time. He was a firm, skilled tradesman, and he wasn’t afraid to take on dirty work himself if it came up. We loved him. Treating everyone with respect like this is a learned skill, so don’t expect it to come naturally. Master this ability and good painters will happily give you their best.

Leading is Different Than Doing

Running a crew is like wielding a big, organic power tool. Your painters do most of the work, but only as you lead. Moving away from production and into leadership is often especially hard for veteran painters because painting is about hands-on craftsmanship. Leadership, on the other hand, is mostly about juggling the big picture. Learning to let go from the one main job of painting to the much more varied job of handing out work to others is often the biggest challenge new crew leaders face. Know the challenge is there and it won’t bother you nearly so much.

Praise When You Can, Correct When You Have To

It’s easy to mistakenly think that everyone in your crew needs to paint the way you do. They don’t. As long as the outcome is good, the approach is good. Be humble enough to recognize that you don’t know it all and delegation becomes a whole lot easier.

Weed the Garden

It’s getting harder to find tradespeople with good work ethics, real skills and the decency to deliver a full day’s work for a full day’s pay. The paint trade is no exception and that’s why you need to tune your crew and prune out dead wood. Not everyone is capable of keeping up, and a poor painter can foul up a team that otherwise might work well. This is one job you can’t delegate.

Running a crew takes different skills than painting does, so don’t expect the experience to be the same. Master the skill of delegation and you might just find yourself telling people that running a painting crew isn’t that bad after all.

The post Delegation: The art of running a productive painting crew first appeared on Professional Painter Magazine.

The success of every profession in the world ultimately comes down to making sales in one form or another. And as an independent painter, your sales skills have at least as much to do with your profitability as your ability to apply paint does. Even people who don’t like “selling” rely on other people somewhere in their organization to make connections, create agreement and settle on a price. As a painter you probably don’t have much of an organization to do this for you, and that’s why the ability to sell is a make-or-break detail in your professional life. I’m sorry to see more and more independent painters struggling to make ends meet as time goes on, even with household partners bringing in a second income.

Painting is skilled work and it can bring in better money than it does for many painters. The painters I see thriving have learned to consistently sell their services at top rates, and this is more important than you might realize. Regardless of your personal feelings about selling, there are three goals that are crucial, and not just for getting work. You need to get work at a high enough rate that will allow you and your family to thrive. Feel guilty about charging more? Read “Earning Less Than You Think” and your guilt will probably disappear.

Strategy #1 – Sell more than painting

The public sees painting as commodity work, and that’s a problem. They don’t automatically recognize a difference between one painter and another, and changing this perception is your first job when it comes to making the most of any sale. By making yourself into more of a painter than average – and presenting this fact to the world – you’ll give people a reason to hire you ahead of others and to pay you more. So, what can set you apart from the crowd of painters you’re competing against for jobs and pay? Carefulness, timeliness and skill are the first things.

Environmentally responsible painting methods are another selling feature you can build around yourself. There’s definitely a segment of the public that values this. Clean clothes and  politeness go a long way to impressing people, too. All this said, none of these virtues matter from a sales point of view if the public doesn’t know about them. That’s why you need to get intentional about communication.

By making yourself into more of a painter than average, you’ll give people a reason to hire you ahead of others.

Sit down, list your special skills and values (those you have and those you want to have), then create a method for letting people know you’re different. This doesn’t have to be fancy, just effective. A photo book of your nicest jobs, a handout explaining the values you bring to your work, or even a simple website will vault you above the crowd of commodity painters that are competing with each other on price alone. Being special and showing the world you’re different won’t impress every potential client that calls, but it will matter to enough of them that it becomes worthwhile.

Strategy #2 – Sell by the job, not the hour

Working smart and working efficiently is one of the best ways to boost your profitability as a painter, but working smart only improves your financial bottom line if you’ve negotiated fee-for-work jobs. Working more efficiently by the hour only helps your client, not your family. The ability to estimate how long it takes to complete a job is key to selling profitably by the job, and even when you’re good at it, risk still remains. Just don’t let fear of risk keep you working by the hour. The money you lose by not harnessing your ability to work more efficiently is far greater than the money you’ll leave on the table by estimating poorly or running into unexpected difficulties as you transition from hourly rates to project fees.

Strategy #3 – Harness happy customers

Every successful painter leaves behind a trail of happy clients, and making use of their admiration is a powerful sales tool. In fact, glowing testimonials offer the biggest potential boost to your sales efforts. Getting testimonials is as easy as asking for them, but making use of testimonials takes a little more effort. The simplest option is to print them up on a piece of paper to hand out when you meet with potential clients. Better yet, put the testimonials into your photo book, as part of the pages where various jobs are shown. Ideally, you want to get permission for potential clients to contact your happy references. Every wise new client will want to do this, so encourage them and make it easy. All business is a competition, and when you do more to sell yourself it only matters to the extent that other painters aren’t doing it yet. If every painter had a photo book of jobs complete with glowing testimonials, the understanding to paint in an environmentally sound way, crisp clean clothes for every sales call, and the ability to estimate jobs perfectly with a smile on their face, it wouldn’t be an advantage it would just be what’s expected. Would you be unusual in your area if you raised your sales efforts to the next level of professionalism? If so, that’s good news because
it means they’ll make a difference where you live.

Earning less than YOU think

Feeling poorer than you used to? You probably are. Middle class people across North America are able to buy significantly less than they could 25 years ago, and inflation is the biggest reason why. Go back further and the trend continues. In 2010, Statistics Canada reported the median annual income for people between 20 and 24 years old was $13,800. Back in 1976, this same age group enjoyed an income of $23,400 each year adjusted for inflation. Slowly but surely, inflation has been eating away at the buying power of a typical Canadian hourly painting rate, while public perception of that rate hasn’t risen nearly as fast. Take the figure of $30 per hour for instance. I know painters who still think this is a decent rate to charge, without realizing that $30 an hour today buys at least 40% less than it did in 1989, according to the Bank of Canada inflation stats.

The fact that inflation is eroding your earning power at a rate of 2% per year doesn’t seem like much, but it’s the reason you constantly need to re-evaluate your costs and earnings as a painter. Worse than this, gas prices have shot up 250% more than the inflation rate since the early 1970s, and gasoline costs are a big part of running any painting business because of the travel involved. So in fact, a given hourly painting rate has actually shrunk by even more than 40% over the last 25 years when you consider gas costs. So don’t feel guilty about slowly asking for more money. In fact, it’s probably just the same money disguised by a bigger number.

The post How to sell. Three super strategies for profiting most form your painting business first appeared on Professional Painter Magazine.

OK, you’re paid to paint. But can you SELL your business one day? That’s the acid test of business ownership.

As a professional painter, you probably think of yourself as a business owner. But do you really own a business? Does your “business” pass the business existence test? It’s easy to find out. Just ask yourself one question: Could your painting venture be sold for more than the value of the equipment and vehicle you own?

If yes, then you’ve got a business. If not, then you’re the owner of a job, not a business. And while some of us consider being our own boss better than working for someone else, owning an actual business offers other financial advantages, too.

Do you fancy the idea of someday selling the goodwill, reputation, contacts and  technical experience you’ve built up over the years? Do you like the idea of creating your own severance package for the day you’ve had enough of painting?

Creating a marketable painting business means you profit twice from your work – once every time you get paid for a job, then again when you decide to quit painting for good or move to another area. Building a marketable business does take a little more effort than painting alone, but not much. You really just need to work a little differently in key ways.

Why Should They Buy?

A marketable painting business doesn’t happen just because you’ve done lots of jobs over the years and have many happy clients. It doesn’t even happen if you’ve got employees. No, a marketable business needs to have something valuable to offer a buyer, and to make this happen you need to start thinking like the person you hope might buy your business someday.

What could you be doing now in the day-to-day running of your business to create an ongoing accumulation of tangible value for another painter who takes over from you? What could you provide that would make them flourish in the future? To begin with, it would have to save the new owner time, effort and uncertainty. A business worth buying would also have to shorten the time it takes to become fully skilled and profitable. All this is why a marketable painting business has three key features.

1. MARKETABLE FEATURE
A Business With Identity

All marketable businesses have a distinct, visible identity. Businesses have logos, they might have a motto, and every successful business has a unique selling proposition.

Building a business happens alongside your work as a painter, but it’s different, too. In fact, a marketable business must be different enough from you as a person that it won’t take away from some future sale of the operation. Even a business name as plain sounding as ACME Painting Co. is a more marketable brand than, say, Al Brown Painter. How attractive would it be to a prospective buyer of your business if they didn’t happen to be named Al Brown?

A logo boosts the marketability of your business big-time, and creating a logo these days is easier than most people realize. You could hire a logo artist and pay hundreds of dollars, or you could Google the word “logo maker” and make use of any one of the dozens of online DIY logo creation tools. I’ve used these several times and it’s  amazing how well they work. You start with a template, add your own words, shuffle the details and arrangement a bit, and bingo: a serviceable logo that’s the foundation of your marketable painting business.

If you expect someone to pay money for your business, you need to do everything you can to capture client information and stay connected with those clients.

2. MARKETABLE FEATURE
A Community of Clients

If you expect someone to pay money for your business, you need to do everything you can to capture client information and stay connected with those clients. Repeat business is the name of the game. Not even the best paint jobs last forever, so there’s every reason to think of each project with a new client as the beginning of a long-term relationship, not a one-shot business transaction. Passing those  relationships on to the new owner of your painting business is a big part of what they’ll pay you for, but you need to have those relationships in good order and easy to retrieve.

I’m all for computers, but you really should have some kind of hard cover journal to record names, phone numbers, addresses and job information. Take this journal  wherever you go on jobs so you can capture raw client information in the field:
names, addresses, paint type and colours chosen and any personal details that might help you stay connected. A client list is gold for any painter looking to profit someday from the sale of their business, and a bound journal is an excellent way to reliably gather information in the field. The best I’ve found is called Everyman’s
Journal, published by Lee Valley Tools (800-267-8767; www.leevalley.com)

I’ve used these journals for years and they’re tough and top-notch. At the end of each day, week or month, transfer client information onto your computer, then back up this information off-site using one of the many free services. Only an idiot loses their client list (and most of their business equity) because of a hard drive failure.

Better than just a digital archive, keeping in touch with your clients by email newsletter every month or so makes a lot of sense. There are countless painters that clients can choose from for their next job, and the biggest reason they’ll choose someone other than you is because they forget who you are. It can be years between painting jobs, so it’s up to you to help previous clients remember you.

Mailchimp is my favourite tool for reaching a subscriber list via email, and it’s nearly as simple to use as an ordinary email program. Mailchimp is also free for lists up to 2000 subscribers, which is plenty of space for any small painting business. Interact with your clients even a little after doing a good job for them and they’re much more likely to become regulars. A list of clients is the most marketable part of your business.

3. MARKETABLE FEATURE
A Skills Transfer Process

Fully skilled professional painters almost certainly aren’t the market you’ll be selling your business to. Why would they be interested? They’re probably already busy, and if they’re not, something is wrong. No, your prospective business buyer will more likely be someone who knows something about painting, likes what they’ve seen, and is willing to pay you money to fast-forward through the business growth and building phase. They want to get right down to earning good money and they’re willing to pay for it. That’s why you need to include a teaching phase as part of your business sale.

If you’ve built your painting business right, and established ongoing client  relationships, you won’t want to turn those clients over to just anyone buying your business. Committing to a business transfer period where you show the new owner everything needed for success in the field over a period of a few months helps both the new owner and the clients you’ve come to know. The best approach is for you to continue to receive all payments for the jobs completed in the transfer period, with the new owner tagging along and learning for free.

The world is filled with people who have many different ambition and enthusiasm levels, and that’s why building a marketable painting business isn’t for everyone. But if you’re as interested in business and profits as you are in your life as a pro painter, why not set things up so you can cash in someday on what you’ve built?

The post Do you really own a painting business? first appeared on Professional Painter Magazine.