How to Succeed in Business as a Painting Contractor

Hey guys, in the summer and in the early fall, I talk to painting contractors that are typically in a different situation than the painters that I talk to and the late fall. winter, and early spring. And here’s the difference. Often, those painters are truly struggling in their business.

Now, a lot of people can be busy all summer not making any money. I see that routinely. People I kid you not, work 60 hours a week for a year and make 30 grand. It’s sad. It’s all because they don’t know anything about job costing, sales, marketing, operations, whatever it is. Maybe that’s you. And you’re worried, even if you’ve got a big business and you’re surrounded by vans and you’re surrounded by people and you’re surrounded by vendors and everything looks good on the outside, but it ain’t going well financially. Or maybe it’s not going well in your personal life. I don’t know what it is. But there are a lot of painters who truly think inside their heart, even though they put on a good show, they just do not think they can succeed in business. They don’t think they can do it. I’m here to tell you that is simply NOT the case.

You Are Loved

So the first thing I want to tell you is that God loves you. He’s not mad at you. He’s not waiting on you to get it right. It’s a weird thing to talk to painters about in a video. But I have seen men who are unanchored and we’re a 97.3% male industry, unanchored. And they can’t see their life through a prism of faith. And it just feels wrong to them. It just feels like nobody cares. It feels like there’s no purpose. It feels like life’s dealt them a bad hand. They want to do certain things that they don’t do. They don’t want to do other things that they do. Paul talks about that. And it’s just tough.

And I’m on the phone with people all the time that are in that situation. And I’m not a very good counselor, I’ll be honest. I’m really good at helping people solve their business problems. I’m a problem solver. Let’s get the systems fixed type of guy because that’s what’s required. But the first thing I just want to tell you is that you are loved not only by God, but you’re loved by your wife, or your kids, or your mama or your daddy. And there are people that care about you. And you can do whatever you want to do. And God has given you the talents to do those things.

You CAN Improve Your Situation with Hard Work and Dedication

Second thing, I’ve never seen anyone, anyone, and I mean nobody, who applied themselves a little bit, never, ever, ever, ever to do a simple, especially just seeing a simple system all the way through to the end. A few Word documents, a few Excel sheets, a little bit of communication, never, ever, ever, ever seen anyone, and I’m not lying about this. Six years. Never seen anyone not improve their life or their business. No one. I don’t care if they had substance abuse issues. I don’t care if they didn’t graduate high school. I don’t care if they’ve gone through a divorce. I don’t care if they’ve been in prison, I don’t care. You do the inputs, the outputs will follow.

So you may have a bad situation, a sad situation. You may have piled yourself up in tons of debt. You may have run off the people that you love. But if you’re running a painting business right now, I promise you, if you will get off your ass and do something, you can improve your life. I promise you. So number one, you’re loved. Number two, all you got to do is take a very simple action. You don’t have to fix your whole painting business tomorrow. Pick one thing a month, get the thing done. Move on to the next thing.

I want you to take out a piece of paper. And I want you on the left-hand side to write down your biggest challenge or problem. What is it? Your biggest challenge or problem. On the other side, I want you to write down your biggest opportunity. Where could you make the most money? Where could see the biggest improvement in your business? Where could you relieve the most stress? Sometimes that’s related to the problems. And I want you to set aside four hours a week. “Oh my God, four hours a week. I don’t have time for that.”

Make Time to be Successful

If you don’t have time to be successful, success does not have time for you. If you don’t have time to be successful, success does not have time for you. And it needs to be when you’re alert and when you’re awake and when you can focus on things. It does not need to be tacked on in the evening when you’re dead tired. Every owner has the same amount of time every week. Some of them use that time to build remarkable painting businesses and lives. Some of them use that time to just brush roll and paint. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I promise you a little bit of time invested in solving problems, and going after opportunities is really helpful.

When you set aside that time, research things, Google things, look for things, write down practical things that you can do to improve, and just spend that four hours improving them. If you don’t know where to start, you don’t know what to do, contact our office. We’ll help you as best we can. If you can’t afford it, we’ll shoot you some free resources or point you to some free resources. And hopefully, that will help you.

But I’ve just got off the phone with a string of people and I can hear it in their voice. They just don’t have the self-confidence. They don’t have anyone cheerleading for them because owning a painting business can be a little lonely. I’m cheerleading for you. God wants you to succeed. You’ve got people in your life that wants you to succeed. You’ve got customers that if you treat them right, they want you to succeed. You’ll have painters that if you treat them right, they’ll want you to succeed.

And maybe you don’t have the skills that you need right now, but I’ll promise you, you can go out and do them. Business owners are not born. You never hear of a six-pound, five-ounce, baby boy born who’s a business owner. You see them die that are business owners, which means that somewhere between birth and death, we’re turned into what we want to become. We’re not born that way.

So if you’ll start that journey of turning yourself into it, I’ll promise you, you can succeed. I’ve seen it too many times. So get out there, get to work, and know that with confidence and with a good peace of mind, that’s anchored in the things that it should be anchored in, you can succeed in this business. There’s nothing standing between you and success, but air and opportunity. So go get it done.