Systems, Not Surprises: The Quiet Math Behind A Profitable Painting Business

Welcome to the Profitable Painter Podcast. The mission of this podcast is simple: to help you navigate the financial and tax aspects of starting, running, and scaling a professional painting business. From the brushes and ladders to the spreadsheets and balance sheets, we've got you covered. But before we dive in, a quick word of caution. While we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date financial and tax information, nothing you hear on this podcast should be considered as financial advice specifically for you or your business. We're here to share general knowledge and experiences, not to replace the tailored advice you get from a professional financial advisor or tax consultant. We strongly recommend you seeking individualized advice before making any significant financial decision.

Welcome to the Profitable Painter Podcast, the show where painting contractors learn how to boost profits, cut taxes, and build a business that works for them. I'm your host, Daniel Honan, CPA, former painting business owner, and your guide to mastering the numbers that drive success. Let's dive in and make your business more profitable one episode at a time. I'm super excited today to speak with Hassan out of Raleigh, North Carolina. He has an outstanding painting business out of Raleigh. Welcome to the podcast, Hassan. How's it going? Good, good.

Thanks, Daniel. Excited to be here.

I'm excited to have you. So for the listeners, could you give folks an understanding of how did you get started in the painting industry and what have been some major milestones along the way?

Yeah, yeah. Um, we started our painting company in 2019, end of 2019. Uh, how we got started, uh, it's a little bit of a funny story. So we are— my wife and I, our parents were always entrepreneurs, so we knew we wanted to be entrepreneurs. Um, you know, but we're your typical, uh, children of immigrants, so we, you know, we did the, uh, the route where you go to college, get a job, you enter the corporate world. Um, but at some point we knew that we wanted to kind of get out of the corporate world and start our own business. Uh, we had no idea it would be painting. We were renovating our house in 2018 when we got married, and during the renovation we had to deal with just a lot of trades, you know, painters, plumbers, electrician, drywall guys, carpenters. Uh, and we quickly realized how unprofessional just the construction industry is. People don't show up on time, nothing is ever clear, there's no date that's, you know, completion date. So we were— it was a big headache, we were very disappointed, um, and that's when we realized that we could do so much better. My wife's background's in design, so she went to, uh, ECU School of Design. So she's always loved, you know, renovation, construction. She always loved painting, uh, and so she had this idea that we would start a painting company. And, uh, we were convinced based on the experience that we got that we could do much better just by giving people just a very, uh, an elevated experience than what they're used to getting. And so that's how we got started in 2019. Nice.

So basically you experienced unprofessional contractors and like, man, we can do this way better. Got into it. Your wife sounds like she had a little bit of experience with design. And so you dove into that 2019. How did that— that first couple years, what did that look like?

Uh, great question. Um, we anticipated that it'd be a slow start, just like, you know, any business that you would start. Uh, one thing that really helped us, sadly enough, was COVID. Uh, everybody was at home, you know, nobody was leaving their house, especially here in North Carolina. Everybody wanted to renovate. Now that they're at home, they want to paint, they want to, you know, add on to the house, they want to redo their deck. And so we saw once COVID started, I want to say a couple months into COVID, we just saw a massive influx in leads. Uh, the phone was ringing all the time. People were calling contractors, and contractors were months out. Uh, so for us, uh, first year 2020 was amazing. Uh, you know, I was able to leave my job in the middle of COVID Business just started to grow so much, so fast, that we decided one of us, uh, you know, it would make sense for one of us to leave their jobs to run the company full-time. And, uh, we made the decision that I would be the one to do that. So I left my job in 2020, right around June, started running our company full-time, uh, and we just hit the ground running, you know, just meeting people. We would go do lunch and learns at design firms, real estate offices, um, just networking, meeting a bunch of— meet as many people as we can, doing a lot of marketing. And we just kind of picked up from there and kept the foot on the gas. And then going into 2021, business doubled from 2020. And then we've just kind of seen an uptick, uh, every, you know, every year after that.

So it sounds like you got started in 2019 And, um, then COVID, a lot of leads coming in from COVID And then in 2021, you doubled. What, what's the revenue kind of looking like from 2019 to 2025? Like, where have you kind of grown from there?

Yeah. Um, so I think to, you know, we started late in 2019, so we didn't do a lot of projects towards the end of the year. Uh, I want to say our sales are maybe under $20 grand. Um, we finished off 2020 at right around $300,000, and then we've been able to, uh, you know, double that every year. Uh, 2021, we were right about $600,000. 2022, we kind of hit a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a plateau, so we kind of stayed around there. Uh, we changed some marketing, we implemented, you know, new processes and things like that. So we saw another jump, uh, going into 2022, and then in 2023, uh, it wasn't until probably 2024, 2025 till we saw the biggest increase. And, uh, we just implemented just a really strong sales process. Uh, we actually hired a full-time marketing firm to do all of our marketing. Uh, we hired a call center to take in all of our calls, respond to our leads. And so we saw the biggest jump between, uh, 2023 and 2025. Use about the year and a half there is where we saw the biggest increase. Uh, 2025, we are tracking about 1.8 for the year.

1.8, uh, anticipated or so far this year?

Uh, we're tracking 1.8 anticipated for the year. Okay, nice.

All right, and it sounds like, so that's a huge increase. And it sounds like part of that was because you got a full-time marketing firm and you also got a phone answering service. Is that what you attribute a lot of the growth, the most recent growth to, or?

Yeah, yeah, I think those two probably contributed the most. Um, I would say implementing a strong sales process was the first thing that really helped us get over that hump and start to get more approvals. Um, our, our sales process was very typical, you know, typical of what you would see from, you know, a business in the home service industry. Um, we would go out, see what the customer's needs are, you know, kind of take all of our notes, ask all of our questions, and then we would leave an email, the, the estimate later. Um, we changed that to where we do everything on site. So now we have our tablets, we do our estimates on site, we're building out the estimate on site, and then we're actually sitting down, um, at the table with the homeowner and reviewing the estimate while we're there. Um, just doing everything on site, I want to say we saw a significant jump in, um, our approval rating. So our close rate I want to say it was between 25 to 30%. Uh, once we introduced a really strong sales process and started doing everything on site, uh, now we're consistently at about 50%, uh, 50 to 60%. Wow. Approval rating, close ratio.

So you basically double, at least double the amount of folks that you're closing by changing the sales process?

For sure, yeah.

So you're doing the kind of the traditional sales process of taking measurements and sending an email later on, uh, and that, that got you to about $600K, and then you kind of switched it up and did an on-site presentation, and that's kind of got you the part of the reason why you got to $1.8M. Um, is that right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then the other part of it is it's a numbers game. So once we, you know, implemented a really good sales process and we knew this is what we wanted to do, we brought on a full-time marketing firm to just handle all of our marketing. And so that definitely contributed, uh, to the numbers because obviously now we have way more leads coming in. So not only did you increase your close ratio, but you're bringing in a ton more leads. And so that helped us significantly get to the, to the numbers that we're doing today.

Okay. And before, before you had the marketing, um, team on board, you were just doing repeat and referral work, or how were you getting your leads before that?

Good question. Um, we've always gotten repeat and referral work. Uh, you know, we've done a really good job of networking and utilizing our circle. So my wife is in the, uh, she was in the design industry. Now she's in commercial flooring sales. But just networking and using our circle to, to get our, get our names out there and, uh, you know, just try to meet as many people as possible. Um, but, uh, yeah, we, uh, just those, those simple things, um, you know, really has really helped us, you know, get to, get to where we are today. Okay, so, and the marketing— I'm sorry, you asked me about, um, you know, what we're doing before we brought on the marketing. Um, we were just doing our own, you know, my wife was, you know, tinkering around with Facebook, just creating posts, before and after pictures. Um, you know, but you learn really quickly that if you If you're not really, uh, if you really don't know how to work Facebook's business page, um, and, you know, creating these ads, monitoring the ads, you know, figuring out how to work the algorithm, you learn really quickly that you need to hire somebody that does.

Yeah, yeah, there's a lot to it for sure. Um, it's changing all the time. There's a, a big update that just happened couple months ago, the Andromeda update to the, the fa— how Facebook ads are put out there. So if you're doing it, you, you can do it. It's just you got to stay educated for sure on, on it. And, uh, it's hard to, you know, it's like you have to basically pay someone to teach you how to do it because it's, it changes so much. It's hard to even take a course on this stuff because it changes so often. But, um, Yeah, so oftentimes it's easier, like you said, to, to get someone who already knows what they're doing and have them take care of it. So it sounds like you, you got to $600K in revenue. A lot of it was, you kind of rode the wave of COVID in terms of all the leads for people wanting to redo their homes while they had some time sitting around the house. And then that got you to $600K, you Then you started focusing on your sales process and making it more compelling and doubled the amount of people that you— doubled the rate at which you closed from 25% to 50%. And then at that point you're like, okay, let's— now, now that we got our sales process dialed in, let's go ahead and get more leads. So you hired a full-time marketing person and they're doing paid ads for you, or—

yeah, yeah, it's, it's, uh, paid, paid ads through Facebook and Instagram.

Okay, so they're doing paid ads, uh, through Meta, and, and then you also, you know, to— so you're getting more leads that way, but you also mentioned you also have a phone answering service. What does that look like and how does that help?

Yeah, great question. Um, so the company that does all of our marketing, they own a sister company that's basically a call center. So the reason why we were very intrigued by having them do that service for us is because they're already running all of our ads. They're, uh, you know, doing all the marketing for us. They're managing all the content. So we send them the content, they build out the ads. So like, for example, when we're going into the wintertime, they take our content and they create a bunch of really good interior painting ads. Going into the nicer months where we're doing a lot of exterior They're kind of, you know, changing that around, maybe not putting so much into interior, putting a little bit into exterior. So when we learned about the call center that they have, it made the most sense to have the person who's trying to bring you the leads to respond to the leads. So they basically do all the marketing, they get the leads to come in, and then the call center then responds to all the leads, reaches out, tries to book, you know, book a site visit on our calendar. And then they also handle all the incoming calls that we have, uh, that just come in through the phone lines. So it just made sense where you have one company that you're working with that's doing everything related to marketing and getting people on the phones and scheduling the site visits. At that point, we just need to show up and just follow a really strong sales process.

Nice. Okay, so they're not only just sitting back and taking calls where people are calling you, they're actually, uh, linked in with the marketing company, and when those Facebook leads come in, they'll actually do an outbound call to get the lead to, to get on the calendar. So they're doing those outbound and actually setting the appointment on your estimate calendar for you, correct?

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, that's, that's awesome. Do you happen to know what the set rate is for those leads?

So we're currently at about 40%. Wow, 40%.

Yeah, that's a solid set rate. And then you're, you're, you're setting 40%, but you also mentioned you're closing 50%. Uh, so that's a 20% conversion, which is huge.

Yeah.

And so I'm sure you're customer acquisition costs are very low. Consider, because, um, do you know how much you pay for leads by chance?

Right now I think we're close to about $30.

Oh, $30 per lead?

Wow.

Okay. And then you're, you're, you're setting 40%, so that's basically you have to pay $75 to get a booked estimate— I'm sorry, a booked appointment on the calendar to do an estimate?

Roughly, yeah.

Yeah. So then, and then you're only, and you're booking 1 out of 2. So that means you're paying like $150 for a closed deal, basically?

Roughly, yeah.

Yeah, maybe. So that's, there might be some people that don't show or cancel. So maybe $150 to $200. So that, that's super low, which is amazing. Which is definitely a testament to the set rate and the close rate being super high. And do you already have a salesperson in the company or is that still something that you're managing?

Yeah, yeah, good question. So I'm still doing all the sales. I'm 100% hands-off from all the projects and the production. So I'm still doing what I enjoy the most, which is people-facing. Uh, we had a part-time salesperson over the summer, uh, but they were just part-time and it was just a summer gig for them. Um, but going into 2026, we are going to start looking for a full-time salesperson to where I can step out a little bit and, you know, start to just work more on the business and not so much in the business.

Yeah, cool. Yeah, because I was gonna say that $1.8 million is probably like the, the the high end of what one person can close on themselves. Close themselves.

Yeah, yeah, we're definitely feeling like we're getting to the point to where I've kind of maxed out the most I could do, uh, with just doing sales full-time. Um, and that's, you know, one of the reasons why we're— 2026, we're going to bring on a full-time salesperson. I'll still continue to do some sales until we grow, you know, kind of the next tier. and then we'll bring on, you know, a second salesperson, and then we'll focus on a second production person. Nice.

Okay, that sounds like a plan. Um, and did you say that you already have a production manager, or—

Yes, yeah, we have a production manager. Um, he oversees 5 crews, so we have 5 total subs. Um, the thing that's really helped us is our subs have been with us for a very long time. And so we have— we had a really good system leading up to the point when we hired a production manager. Our subs, uh, manage their own projects. They do their own walkthroughs. They pick up all the materials. They pick up their own paints. And I would just work with the crew leader at each crew. So we would have weekly calls. We would meet weekly. We would meet at job sites, you know. But when you have somebody that's been with you for so long and, and they're doing everything the way that you want it done, and you you have such a good thing going, makes it a lot easier, you know, to run the business without you having to physically be there. And we could have, you know, we could have held off on hiring a production person a little bit longer. But in order to get ready for the next jump that we want to do in 2026, you know, we said it makes sense to just go ahead and bring on a full-time production person now, let them get rolling, you know, in 2025. That way going into 2026, that position would just be 100%. you know, on their own, and we wouldn't have to worry about a full-time salesperson and a full-time production guy at the same time.

Okay, so they're, so they're getting spun up, and, uh, how much do you— are you expecting the production manager to be able to produce on their own?

So right now, um, I would probably say right about the, the same, the same max as a salesperson as where I am now. I think right around the $1.5 million mark, and then you'd need to start thinking about another production person. Okay.

And, uh, do you have an office person as well? That's— is— or I don't know if your wife is still involved in the business or not, or if she's—

yeah, yeah. So, um, she does very little, um, for us, just really more advisory, advisory things. Um, you know, manages some of the content that we submit, you know, the types of content that we take, um, you know, when we're at these job sites. Uh, you know, she manages a lot of, you know, the stuff that we do with the marketing, um, the website, the design, the branding. But she's pretty much hands-off of like the day-to-day operations. Um, I'm pretty much the, the admin person. But we have it set up where, you know, when you have crews doing the work, you have a production person producing the work We have a bookkeeper that, uh, that, you know, manages our books. We have an accountant. The marketing team does the marketing. The call center answers the calls. So we've done a really good job of, you know, putting all the right pieces in place to where we can stay very lean on the cost side for, you know, for employees. Um, so that's why it's easy for me to manage all the admin work along with my sales, uh, because we have all these, you know, people managing you know, kind of the different, uh, different aspects of the business.

Nice. So it sounds like you're, you're a busy guy because you're, you're, uh, you have— you're doing all the sales, you're doing a little bit of the admin, which you have help with that, and obviously you're leading the company. Um, so, but you're, you're planning for those future hires, which, um, you're, you're getting the production manager spun up you're, uh, bringing on a salesperson, uh, I'm assuming is at the beginning of 2026, or you're already looking for one right now?

Yeah, we're going to start the process in the beginning of 2026. Um, as you know, just in the industry, you know, December, January, going into February, those are just very slow months for us. Um, so we don't see the need to bring somebody on at the beginning of the year. But if we start the process in January, hopefully by the beginning of spring, you know, that person would have been, you know, hired, onboarded, and just, you know, fully, uh, fully, uh, autonomous.

Nice. Cool. So what is— what has been, you know, growing from just getting started, starting from scratch to now? What's been the biggest challenge that you've had to overcome or fix?

Uh, yeah, so the biggest challenge, um, I'd say the two biggest challenges. One was finding the right marketing, finding the right marketing company. Um, unfortunately we didn't find this, this company right away. Um, there was some trial and error, so we went through several companies before we actually landed on this company and have seen really good results. But leading up to that, uh, when we decided it was time for us to step out of doing marketing and bring somebody on, um, we tried a few local guys, uh, people that, you know, somebody that, uh, someone else recommended, companies that we met online, you know, just doing some research. So I'd say that was one big challenge, was just finding the right company that's actually going to produce the leads for the amount of money that you're spending. Um, and as you know, which, you know, many of your followers know, You know, marketing is a huge expense for us, just for any painting company or, you know, home service businesses in general. Marketing is a very big expense. So we struggled with that before we actually landed this company. So that was, that was a, um, that was pretty challenging. Um, and then just, you know, figuring out the best estimating process. Um, you know, obviously we use production rate estimating, uh, but as you know, different crews, some work faster, some work slower. You know, some painters can, you know, get a room done significantly shorter time than somebody else. So really just honing in on the production rates and just trying to make our, our, uh, our estimating process rock solid, that was a little bit challenging. Um, there's always tweaks that need to be done, just like, you know, with anything else. You know, you figure out ways to do things faster, be more efficient, you know, use different materials, certain products. Um, so that's always changing, but that was also challenging in the beginning, you know, trying to figure out, okay, what's the best estimating process where it can be 100%, uh, dummy-proof? Because as you know, when we bring on a salesperson, or when we brought on our first salesperson, we don't necessarily want to bring on an estimator. We want a salesperson. You don't really need to know how to estimate paint. You don't need to you know, know everything about the painting industry. You just have to be a good salesperson and then just follow this process and use these tools that we give you. So, uh, I would say marketing and, you know, creating a really good solid estimating process were definitely the two biggest challenges.

That makes sense. For finding a marketing company, you said you went through several. What, what turned out to be like the magic sauce that makes this one work? Why, why is the— what are you looking for in a marketing company? And what, what, uh, really started to mesh that had you stay with the one that you're working with?

Yeah, um, so one, the first thing that, that impressed us is the— this marketing company specifically works with painters. They don't do like a wide variety or a wide range of home service businesses, so they only do marketing for painting companies. The owner of the company actually started his own painting company, and then he figured out all the marketing and what worked really well, and then he decided he wanted to start a marketing firm where he would, you know, provide those same services for other painters or other painting companies. Um, and so I think that is one of the things why they've just done so well. They know what works. They know how to target specific clientele. You know, they know how to put the ad together to be appealing. A lot of their ads, usually they recommend running a certain special. This is what's worked really well for some companies, certain regions. This type of special works really well. So we definitely, you know, follow their, follow their lead when it comes to the copy and, you know, how, what kind of specials we need to run, what kind of discounts we need to offer certain times of the year. So I think just the fact that they only focus on painting companies and the owner comes from the painting industry, I think that really helped, you know, that helped us realize, okay, this is, you know, and then quite frankly, just the, we just got a lot of leads, you know, whatever they're doing has been working.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're doing something right. I mean, the cost per lead, super low. And you're closing a lot of the leads, so something's working for sure. But yeah, it definitely— marketing company that specializes in the industry definitely can— knows the ads or should know the ads and the copy that work to get leads. So that makes a lot of sense. Cool. And the other thing you mentioned was production rates and what did you do to— because a lot of folks struggle with this and just to make sure that we're on the same page with, uh, folks that are listening, is, you know, production rates is just a measure of how long it takes a painter to paint a given surface. And this is helpful to, like you were saying, give kind of a dummy-proof process to a salesperson where they can just measure the different surfaces on the home, and then they can, uh, usually using software, calculate the the price to charge the customer based off of the surface type and measurement of it. And so how did you put the production rate process, how did you get it dialed in? Like, because I know some folks, they'll maybe start with the PCA Estimating Guide Volume 2, has a lot of production rates in there, or they'll just get with their crews and they'll like develop it from the ground up where they'll measure how long it takes them to paint a wall or door and, and just kind of start from there, or a combination of that. So how did you guys get your production rate style then?

Yeah, uh, so we, we started off with the guide, um, but as you know, the guide is just a very basic blueprint to start. Uh, you ideally need to first figure out, which is what we did, is we figured out What are our costs as a company? What are we spending on marketing? You know, what are we spending on labor? What are we spending on just basic dues and subscriptions? Um, and then you kind of start to work it backwards. Okay, this is how much profit we need to make. These are the margins that we have to make in order for this business to be profitable. Um, and then the second part of it was we actually were at the job site just seeing what your crew can produce. Um, you know, the PCA guide was great, but again, it's not your specific crew, and these are the guys that are working for you. These are the guys that you have to go by what they can produce. Uh, and then from there you try to then see, is there an average among all of our groups? You know, you can't just take one crew and see what they're producing and then assume that that's what your rate's going to be moving forward, because maybe your other 4 crews, some may work faster, some may work slower. So you have to really visit all the job sites and really hone in on what the crew is doing and how long it's taken them to do things. And, and we realized that we have to be even more specific. So if one crew is painting kitchen cabinets and you're trying to find what that rate is, you have to find out what the kitchen cabinet rate is for all of your crews and then just take the average. Then we did the same thing for interior, same thing for exterior, same thing for walls, same thing for ceilings. Um, And then we just basically saw what are our guys producing, and this is kind of how we're going to start to build out the, the production rates.

Okay, so it sounds like the estimating guide, PCA's Estimating Guide Volume 2, is just like a starting point.

It's a great starting point.

Yeah, yeah. But you really had to measure how long each of your crews at— how long it takes them to do— to paint the various surfaces, because you have some folks, I would imagine, that are really good at painting cabinets, and then others not so much. And so getting the average, uh, help dial in those, those production rates more so you're more precise on your, your estimates.

That's right, that's right.

Cool, awesome. So, um, right now, you know, with your— where your business is gonna hit around $1.8 million What do you think your biggest constraint is in the business? Like, what's preventing you from growing, doubling next year, let's say? What would be— what's the big constraint that you're trying to fix in your business right now?

Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily say it's a constraint. I think the only thing that's really stopping us from doubling is just, you know, adding more to the marketing spend. So once you've figured out your your estimating process, your sales process, and your production process, and you have the right people in place— and then the bigger part of that was the marketing. Once you figured that out, at that point, just to scale, all it is is just throwing more money at the marketing. So if you're spending this much and your sales is this much, maybe if you spend X amount more, your sales will be this much. At that point, scaling becomes easy. Because you want to hire another salesperson, great, add this much more to the marketing spend. You have those leads coming in to support that person. 6 months, 10 months down the road, you want to bring on another salesperson, add this much to the ad spend, and then the cycle just continues. At that point, you can grow as big as you want, you can stay as small as you want. Um, so I wouldn't necessarily say it's a constraint, um, but we're really trying to make all of our process bulletproof before we bring on a full-time salesperson. Because once we do that, at that point, the sales— the bringing on more and more salespeople is going to happen fairly quickly. So our goal is if we bring on a salesperson, you know, maybe beginning spring, by mid-summer, end of summer, we're already going to start figuring out another salesperson because all the processes are in place at that point. It's just a matter of bring them on, spend more on ads.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I think that, that, uh, I would agree, because right now I would think that you are the bottleneck for now, you know, until you can get that salesperson in there, and then that'll free you up to just focus really on hiring. Like you said, find those key roles and making sure they're being put in place, uh, and dialing dialing in the ad spend to grow appropriately. And yeah, that's exciting. So are you expecting a big year for 2026?

Yeah, yeah. For 2026, our goal is to finish the year somewhere between $2.6 and $3 million.

Nice. Be awesome. Excited to see that happen. Cool. Really, uh, thankful for you coming on and sharing what you've learned over the last several years. And I think you've built something really cool. And are there any last thoughts or asks of the audience before we let you go today?

Um, no, no, just, um, you know, just, uh, as far as the audience, I would say just, you know, stick to it, stick to it. Um, try to be uncomfortable. You know, human nature. We, we get into a little comfort zone and we just stay complacent, you know, especially when you first start a business and you start to see a little bit of success. It's very easy to get complacent because you've seen some success. You're a business owner now, you have a lot more freedom, your schedule's yours, you don't really have to report to anybody. So it's easy to just kind of stay on that high and just ride that out for as long as you can. Um, but then you quickly realize like, okay, this it's time to, to really take it to the next level. And once you start to see yourself getting to those levels, um, you know, it's, it's amazing what it does to your confidence and, you know, the motivation to want to continue growing. So, um, I would say just stick to it and constantly get up and grind. Get up and grind.

Get up and grind. Love it. All right, Hasan, I really appreciate your time today. Thank you for sharing. And, uh, enjoyed it. Yeah, absolutely. And for the audience, with that, we will see you next week.

Thanks, Daniel.