House Painting Invoice Example for Sales that Simplifies Your Workflows

House painting invoice example for Sales

what's going on guys today we're here with Tim olifant painting business he's been painting for about 15 years operating completely solo and getting over six figures in Revenue per year so tell us a little bit about how you got started in the painting business Painting came about as a college summertime job my junior year the previous two summers I worked in a factory it was torture kind of felt like I was imprisoned and the idea of having more freedom with painting preferably being outside was appealing to me so what led you to becoming an entrepreneur so I graduated college with an art degree and I say I probably did nothing with it I didn't know how to translate it into a career I was offered my boss's job at the painting company I was previously working for and immediately I knew I didn't want his position bossing people around manager style so about to turn 25 I feel like I had a quarter-centric life crisis and decided to quit one week's notice and broke off to do my own thing so how much is it to start a painting business or what do you need to invest how much money like tell us a little bit about that so because I started as a college student I acquired equipment as I went a few brushes here rollers there but really I'd say like a few hundred dollars is more than plenty to get started if you're going to invest in like an actual paint sprayer that's going to be pricey ladder up top but just like a step ladder and that stuff a few hundred dollars you can really get rolling [Music] all right I would love to see some of this equipment can you show us absolutely there we go this is about as organized as it gets we'll get some paint trays out first nine inch paint tray I've since graduated to the 18 inch and like what's the what's the difference whether you need nine or the 18. so I actually lied this is 14 inch I was going to say it's twice as wide you're going to cover way more ground rolling here are the 14 inch rollers this is what I've been living by for the last few years I keep three of them in rotation I basically retired the nine inch but in like a small bathroom it's nice to be handy and you can just toss these little roller naps next would obviously be the brushes so this is my favorite brush right here it's a purdy XL medium stiff two and a half inches I don't actually love this tip so the XL Glide is my favorite end what's the difference in the tips it's just a little thinner and I'm just so used to this this thickness in terms of how many brushes I'm actually going through you can see a five here written in Sharpie a couple years ago I like to track things and I was curious if I was burning through brushes a lot of times I'll really painstakingly spend time to clean them and I found I was really not going through that many brushes so I think in like two years I've really only gone through like six or so brushes so not a not a huge expense by any means a good brush is like 15 17 bucks how long do you like these guys last here it's hard to say I've had those quite a while many months it depends like the rotation you have going but if you're in a home they have three colors rather than rinsing it out each time it's nice to have one designated for each the frames are a little expensive and then these roller trays so you keep that fresh and you just throw in a new tray these are at least like five bucks but they get thicker and thicker and then you almost don't need the base once the tray has a skeleton to itself and how long those last about uh kind of similar to the brush it depends if you're getting paint out or if you're letting it Gunk up in areas but again you can stretch those weeks when you're painting with some of these brushes and you're doing different colors how do you do you have to wash them completely out or do you usually do new brushes with new colors yeah always new brushes with new colors even if you're switching sheens so like a ceiling is going to be flat paint walls are typically matte or satin and even if the whites appear similar having that brush interact with the different sheens is going to really throw it off so you're always starting fresh I don't wash the rollers on spot I'll usually do those in like a shower tub and like I said the smaller one is cheap I'll just throw that away after each use [Music] you mentioned different paints could you tell us a little bit about those paints and why they're different first up here and I'm a Sherwin guy you can even see uh I think the logos on the pants here get my discounted Sherwood and keep bringing the business my go-to is their duration product and so this is wall paint people these days are typically either doing matte finish or satin depending on how shiny you want and the real selling point for duration is washability people want to be able to scrub their walls up next also from Sherwin this is my go-to trim paint machine for that is typically either satin or semi-gloss so a bit shinier than walls are going to be and I'm rarely getting this tinted as opposed to wall paint you might want a crazy red accent wall lots of Grays lately creams but this is just extra white right out of the can shake it up you're good to go see if we can avoid a spill here not using this quite as much but this is oil primer so if you have like a heavy stain on the wall or if you have raw wood this is what I'll be using for oil primer you're going to want to make sure to have your braking bad respirator good to go with this if I'm rolling I'll wear the respirator because lots of paint is in the air but brushing I'm usually not as diligent with the respirator last almost forgot my ceiling paint buying that in bulk this is a five gallon bucket here also from Sherwin chb I believe it stands for Chicago house builders and that's just flat white paint like I referenced earlier so no shine in the ceilings so you don't have like the lawnmower track marks and like how many buckets are you going through on one job not all that much even a large interior so I just had I think it was around a four thousand dollar project took me six or seven days I only used four gallons of wall paint there was no ceiling paint involved and maybe half a gallon of trim paint so didn't put too much of a dent in the budget I get this stuff for 50 bucks a gallon list price might be closer to 70. so lots of profit on that project can you tell us a little bit about the projects that you're doing and where they might be so initially when I said I wanted to get outside I started painting outside staining lots of decks but now I'm entirely an indoor dog if you'll say lots of interior walls ceilings trim doors I tend to avoid cabinets but anywhere from like a single bedroom to a full interior so tell us a little bit about the lab letters you use and also what is behind you there so I yanked out my main two ladders that I basically live on and this is my pile of drop cloths this is maybe seven or so drop cloths little baby one on top they're typically three feet by 12 or 15 feet this is a mini one that I'm often making like a pouring station out of like a little Central spot where I'll keep all my equipment everyone recognizes a generic step stool the big 20-footer is up top here but the exciting ladder which customers actually get a kick out of sometimes I'll roll in and I'll be doing a giant foyer and this is the only ladder I show up with they're like you actually think you're going to get up there with a four foot tall ladder and then we go into Transformer mode so right now we're only at half the height oh boy and we've got a few more feet because I only did the one side here can we can we test on this wall over here sure I want to see how high it goes I'm not sure what this actually reaches it might say on the side here we're gonna get on top of the building so we are officially maxed out officially max out here nice let's see how high I can get this is sketchy yeah I think I'm good with right here it feels especially flimsy but once you get familiar with it you don't question it I'll show you how to scale it all right I think it's wobbly you're down I bought my dad one of these because he was getting on the roof with a dinky ladder they like barely reached and as smart as he is he's a biostatistician he refuses to use the ladder because I think he says it's too complicated to operate I'm like I'm a dumb painter and there's just a few options with it you can figure it out so Dad if you ever see this use the ladder I got you perfect for storage perfect height yeah it's nice especially if you don't have a ladder rack you can throw this inside most vehicles and they make shorter versions which obviously are only going to stand so far what's one of the craziest tools that you have in here hmm uh craziest tools let's see uh let's go around to the side door actually here all right not super crazy but unique a lot of people probably wouldn't realize what it is so this is back from like probably my first year of painting so I have no clue what that is good 15 years old this is a masking tool so especially when you're doing lots of spraying it's dispersing the brown masking paper and then the blue painters tape all together so you can do like a whole 10 foot 20 foot stretch of this and then you're going to apply it wherever you don't want paint and so on a spraying project you can gift wrap the whole house you're specifically I probably did this in Reverse I'd want to mask off the window and then we'd blast and spray here undo the GIF and you've got a sharp line all right now that we've seen the tools you have the van why the van tell us about the van sure so this is uh 2012 Dodge Ram cargo van it's basically like a soccer mom van except for it's only a two-seater I just closed it but I'm gonna yank it back open it's all caged out inside if you want to get a close-up here all the windows are protected so lots of junk inside but to me it's organized getting it logoed was huge for me for like the first year I had it I was just driving around in a blank white van friends would make fun of me they're like you're the creep in a painter Van with minimal windows but this was a great investment you're parked outside even on indoor projects you obviously have like the billboard visibility all the neighbors know who's in town and they can get a hold of you and has this brought you business like just from driving around do you think definitely has I'll get texture voicemails people will say I was just behind you on the road and then I always Panic I'm like oh how was I driving it's like I'm the only employee I've always joked that if someone called to report bad driving I would say that's like my new employee John but I'm the only one so it's it's definitely gotten me a lot of business it was only like a 300 investment in terms of getting the vinyl installed so super affordable and can you tell us a little bit about how you advertise your business outside of this and any other like marketing social media tips that you do to get customers yeah definitely so that's evolved over time I started off with makeshift like amateur Flyers when I first quit the job with the larger company went solo I just had like a generic template I used online it was like a blue cheesy flyer I tried to find one but I couldn't had a sunshine on it and then I would literally stuff it in mailboxes so either jogging rollerblading hanging my arm out the van window stuffing mailboxes that eventually evolved to going to the post office they have direct mailing where on their website you can select specific neighborhoods and it will show you the actual income of that neighborhood and you drop your stacks of Flyers off off and they'll deliver them for you that's pretty pricey though because you're paying for the cost of the Flyers and then it's these days because this is a while ago it's probably at least a quarter per flyer for them to deliver so if you're doing hundreds or thousands of Flyers that's going to add up I didn't know that was that existed that's crazy I was surprised to find out about it too especially when I put like years into manually delivering all the Flyers it was rewarding like in an afternoon getting 300 out there and feeling like you conquered a neighborhood but you're spreading a blanket on a community that maybe no one actually wants painting so maybe 300 Flyers go out and you get two phone calls I eventually evolved to we can shift back over this way yard signs this will go any project I'm working on in the front yard right into the lawn and then I decided I'm going to go to busy intersections and just sprinkle these around town they can get yanked in like a day or linger for months I eventually realized if I get the Little Giant ladder out and get it 12 feet up on a telephone pole not many people are going to bother getting up there like competitors are only so ambitious so this was a good few years of advertising after flyers I couldn't find that amateur flyer I mentioned but this is a look at my more professional version and I haven't sent any of these out in years these were how I went for the longest time and how much do these cost like the print so again this was years ago but if you're getting hundreds or thousands made at a time a single flyer comes down to pennies it's all about buying in bulk these I want to say if you buy a hundred at a time they could be like maybe 13 bucks again I'm a little cloudy on that because I've really pulled back on Advertising for quite a few years now word of mouth if you can get established is huge everyone trusts their friends recommending services like your vehicle's already been test driven in a Way the final marketing that I've like entirely gone to not surprisingly online ads so Facebook ads and then Google ads that's been huge once you can actually pour money into a budget and you're specifically targeting areas to go to people that have searched for painting rather than blankening a whole neighborhood how much do you think you spend a month on that right now I've got it dialed down to zero because I'm only painting part-time but a few years ago in the height of it I could spend maybe 300 a week on ads one thing I really loved about it is if you decide like your burnout I don't want to work the next few weeks you can just quickly with a couple clicks turn all your ads off and then the phone is going to mostly stop ringing so a lot of control there some people are intimidated by Google ads but it's uh if you have a halfway decent website and some Google reviews it's really the way to go tell us how you got your first client and how that got started yes so we were mentioning uh spreading Flyers throughout neighborhoods I want to say after just a couple weeks I had some calls some minor like deck staining projects outside front trim what really held me over though when I first broke away from the company becoming solo was that they would subcontract me projects it's a good Testament as to why you shouldn't burn bridges in Business Without that I think it would have been a real slow climb to be completely on my own and for starting out what do you need in terms of like licenses or what do you need to start I remember doing that research early on and I really don't even remember the conclusions I came to in terms of like is there a painter's license we're in Michigan I actually I'm very say I don't know I'm An established LLC so a limited liability company that's just like a 25 expense a year and then more importantly I have liability insurance so if somehow I were to burn a house down I'm working on I'm covered up to two million dollars and that's a 500 a year charge so it's good to cover yourself with that but those are the only two license type things I have I don't know if I've been shortcutting things or what but I haven't run into any issues yet you don't need to pull permits like for construction I'm just changing the color of walls with the expenses that you mentioned what are other expenses that you have monthly or weekly or however you calculate it general overhead is pretty low I mentioned the liability insurance that's 500 a year it'll be easier if I tell you yearly rather than monthly 500 for liability measly 25 for LLC other main ones would be I think 125 dollars a year for my Squarespace website 150 for a work phone which Rings through my actual cell phone but to have the local area code I have two numbers on my cell phone other than that my expenses are really paint and advertising paint is pretty minimal per project and then just however much I want to advertise at a given time and you mentioned the website are people booking through the website or are they calling you to book like how do you schedule these jobs I'm not fancy enough to have it set up so I can book through the website my website is fairly limited but it's got the contact page people are either emailing me texting or voicemail I say voicemail because I'm so bad at actually like when I'm on the job I don't answer the phone at all rather than driving out to a project have people text you or email you pictures of the rooms early on I would drive like 30 40 minutes in a direction and I quickly realize I'm not interested in this project I'm wasting my time and their time so you can really shortcut things if on that initial interaction with the text they'll forward you over a couple pictures so you mentioned you're going to their place and driving there so you're giving estimates yeah and I used to dread this part of the job but I've come to appreciate it's arguably the most important part of the job in terms of business in terms of the money Revenue you're actually going to bring in those figures that you establish up front that's super important I've never wanted to quote a project at a thousand dollars and then part way into it go I'm gonna need 2 000 for this amount of work typically if anything I'll drop down we used one less gallon of paint people are excited to get that discount but estimates are very important getting that preview is huge but also seeing in person because cameras can be deceiving how far are you traveling for your jobs and what's like the closest ones and what's the furthest ones anymore I keep a very tight service radius typically no more than like 15 miles in any direction years ago I would drive an hour for a project I grew up an hour south of here and so when I was younger I would stay with my parents sometimes for a week work on a project in my hometown and then come back home after it was done but anymore I'm selective on work and it's nice to be picky and more exclusive do I want the project is it nearby and then I go from there what's some of the biggest jobs that you've done and what's some of the smallest ones in terms of Revenue and time just give us a little insight into that so I've done a whole Spectrum some small projects it could be like a single accent wall those are projects that aren't really going to attract my attention anymore because they're not necessarily worth me showing up for completely unloading early on I could do a project as small as like 200 bucks anymore I'm not going to show up for just like a half bath it's probably going to at least be a bedroom or two on the larger side I've done giant exteriors so projects that take two and a half weeks I've got multiple ladders out there I finally invested in scaffolding but then that was my final summer of exterior just realizing one-man crew for a giant exterior is really not ideal and it's exhausting for the exterior one like how much revenue did that bring in I think my largest revenue project would be around nine thousand dollars I've also had an interior project go about that high as well as I'm getting more experience and like I said more selective with work I'm working in Better Homes the likelihood of me being in a twenty thousand dollar home anymore is pretty small just in the past month I've been in two different million dollar homes and obviously that's where the money's at so if you can build up start in some rougher homes and then graduate to the big leagues in a way just to clarify for the audience is this new homes that are being built or is this homes that have already been Bill and they need repainted I've done some new construction projects and while that may sound appealing because it's new and fresh there's a lot of prep work in those so my ideal projects are just repaints where it's a nice home they've got some large rooms and they're sick of maybe like the dated tan walls and they want to go light gray white off-white repaints are ideal and specifically projects where maybe they're selling the home and they're already moved out there's no furniture it's going to be one color unified throughout you can really blast through all the rooms what has been the most beneficial thing to Growing your business not surprising here again just reiterating ads actually being willing to spend money on marketing for the longest time I was hesitant to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars but I realize if I'm sitting at home for two weeks off that's a lot of money that I'm missing out on if I would dial up my ads specifically Google ads to 50 a day it's worth making 500 dollars spending fifty dollars to make that five hundred dollars a day so don't be afraid to spend money on ads what do you think the average job brings in in Revenue average job is kind of tricky kind of like I mentioned if it's just a single bedroom that's going to really skew the numbers compared to like a two-week full interior but maybe the best example would be we'll say a two bedroom project like an average two medium-sized bedrooms lately I've been quoting that at around a thousand dollars total that'll probably be a hundred dollars worth of paint for expenses and then I'm making nine hundred dollars worth of profit if it's just walls the figures could be a little lower if it's ceiling and trim as well it could be a bit higher and how long does that take you to finish two bedrooms would be two days or less sometimes I'll try to push a long day but I'm at least going to need to show up a second day for like a day and a half total foreign do you have any competitors or how do you deal with competitors if you do have them oh yeah there's tons of painters in town if you go to any Sherwin painting store or any painting store in general they'll usually have a space on the wall with like two dozen business cards up there I used to wedge mine in there and sometimes other competitors you're like I just stocked this yesterday how are my cards already gone and then we were showing the yard sign for marketing sometimes you put 20 signs out in the next day there's only a few around I don't pull other yard signs but some people are more desperate for work I feel like there's a mutual respect thing where you know the grind so you don't try to do in your competitors I feel like the largest company in town is CertaPro I believe is their name but I don't know many other painters I'm a solo flying individual here do you have any tips for other painters that want to grow their business like what you've done that you would recommend I think being aware of your skill set so if you decide tomorrow that you want to be a painter don't try to get into a million dollar neighborhood and completely wreck the house know your abilities if you own your property or if your landlord's cool that practice and you're at your place working it's called when you're painting with the brush that's cutting in if you can practice painting the wall where it intersects with the ceiling that's how you can tell a painter's skill level how straight that cut line is just starting on lower level projects building up one thing I've kept in mind with painting I feel like reputation is everything and so getting those first positive reviews online when people search your company on Google they see five stars even if you only have a handful of reviews that's huge so pride yourself in your work know your skill level and build from there so can you tell us a little bit about expanding your operation or trying to grow it and how you might do that I'm actually planning to do quite the opposite so for years now I should have hired employees 10 years solo doing some of those large exteriors years ago they're not one-man projects but I just never wanted to be in charge of others and have to coordinate get the phone call sorry boss can't make it today I don't like to rely on others so I know that I've handled every corner of the project I've kind of hinted to it but I'm trying to transition into another career so I'm really scaling down the painting hours and the art degree that I got years ago I'm pursuing that more now with a couple different online shops selling my artwork so at what point would you know that you need to entire employee or do something different to expand I'd say just take a serious look at your schedule if you're really stretching yourself if you have more weeks that are like 50 or 60 hour work weeks and you could have a helper even if they're not a skilled painter Someone putting down the blue painter tape maybe doing some spackling patching on the walls just I'd say gauge your schedule and it depends on who you can find as a helper that's partly why I've strayed I had high standards and if you keep them limited to smaller tasks it can be helpful have you had any negative experiences when it comes to your painting business oh yeah if you've been painting long enough you're definitely going to have at least a few stories to tell all of my projects have gone great in terms of completion and and customers being happy with projects like I said I only take on projects I know that I can complete successfully probably the most negative experience I had it was many years ago now when I would still subcontract work from other companies I was working at the mall nearby and the guy just was not paying us and so he's like next week I can pay you next week I ended up being shorted uh four thousand dollars and I tried to like go after them and force them to pay me but since the project fell through and the mall didn't pay just like weeks of my life were stolen from me a less depressing funnier story would be working in a great house there were some flooring guys there it was going to be maybe my second to last day finishing it was a big project and the woman gets home she's pretty uptight as May often be the case in a nice expensive house and she pulls me aside because we already had a rapport going and she's like I just caught the flooring guy doing drugs on the very floor he's installing and then my reaction I was like oh don't panic too much like that's not uncommon in skilled trades I'm like oh no I don't I'm not doing drugs in your home but I was like he's almost done let him finish and then you can report it to the boss but she was freaked out gotta get those stimulants to finish the project apparently so what is your painting business help you learn about yourself so a lot of time by myself so a lot of time to think I've learned that I'm a very disciplined worker super hard worker you can push through grit like it's it's tiring work especially on larger projects lots of time with the earbuds in I have them in my pocket right now that all the tools we showed the earbuds are the most important tool to get you through the work day but moving away from painting towards art so I've been selling lots of prints online and if you'd like to take a look we can check out my art studio next maybe yeah that'd be cool let's go take a look [Music] all right Tim we're in your art studio here tell us about this transition from painting to artists yeah so just a few years ago I picked art back up I had like maybe a six or seven year stretch where I didn't draw anything but as you mentioned we are in my art studio these are all original drawings of mine on the wall here very random assortment of Interest Ninja Turtles the comedian wall is a little bit out of sight here but Joker Michael Jordan Breaking Bad selling prints online right now my website is in the background here you can find my residential painting part of the website but also my artwork Ninja Turtles Power Ranger piece I recently finished in front of us so my website that I just mentioned it's simply myname.com timolyphant.com you'll have already seen it on my van multiple times and then I'm most active on Instagram so if you follow me my name there is Tim Oliphant separated by underscore so Tim underscore Oli should be enough to get you I'm pretty well locked in on as a chimpanzee as my profile shot so you'll recognize me my painting Instagram which I'm very inactive Tim Oliphant painting all separated by underscores you can see more of the projects I've done there awesome thank you so much for taking the time with us and all of his links will be linked below check out his Instagram check out his art it is amazing and thank you so much I appreciate it thanks for having me it was a blast showing you guys around schooling you on the painting biz [Music]