I own a $1M/YR House Painting Business and Someone works for my company that I’ve never met before

heyheyheynoname

New member
Maybe to some of you big wigs in this group this is no big deal…but to me! This is CRAZY.

What this really indicates is that I’ve truly mastered my company's production to the point where it’s automated itself (obviously through various systems I have in place and checks and balances)

This is truly a huge milestone in my business, and I figured there’d be no better place to share some of the aspects of this than here r/sweatystartup !

So in terms of the system, we have 10 employees.

1 guy is my “Allstar” he’s a phenomenal employee. He really is someone that takes so much pride in his work, and I’m really thankful to have him.

His role in the company has now transitioned from an On-Site project manager, to Company Supervisor, and job estimator.

His main responsibility is to ensure that our jobs are being checked after the Crew Leader lets him know they're "complete". This was a responsibility of mine that, because of having so much outside responsibility of running the marketing and sales, got neglected and I would just take the Crew Leader's word for it.

After too many "touch-up" calls, I knew this position had to be filled by someone else other than me, and of course other than the person working there all day (you miss things...it's natural)

He’s also a “flex”. His painting skills and job knowledge from working with the crews allows me to use him to keep the pace of the schedule if a job is lagging behind.

We do things a little bit differently, instead of having multiple crews taking on multiple jobs that will take longer, the system I developed is big teams (of 4 and 5) to get the jobs done faster. Our customers love it, the guys love it (less burnout) and It’s great for the “team” atmosphere I’m always trying to create.

My role in the company is customer relations (mostly via phone), pricing (100% virtually), and scheduling.

So in order to keep things efficient, I needed to hire a new applicant, so I went through my hiring process and had someone apply who I thought would be a great fit. I called him and set up a time for him to meet with my Supervisor, and for the first time, I let him conduct the interview.

I gave him some general guideline questions to ask (my hiring form helps me garnish a lot of work-related questions) I had him more or less do a character interview and fill out a form to be submitted to me. At the end of the form, I gave him the ability to note whether he thought we should bring him on board.

Last week, my Supervisor hired him, and he’s been working with one of the crews all week. I haven’t met him personally, but have called him a few times to ask how he’s adjusting with our team and so far he’s loving it.

Now, if you know a little bit about my story, you’d know that I started this business right out of working for a bank. I had no painting experience aside from what I learned from my dad as a young kid.

This is a huge milestone for us, but it’s something I teach a lot of the people I help, and that’s to create a system of production that is independent of you (as the owner)

Now the next phase of this would be for me to replace myself completely in the business, but that won’t be for a while. I could delegate the pricing to my Supervisor but I don’t want to overload him right now with project management and pricing jobs (requires longer times during the quotation process)

Our goal would be to eventually expand to 3 teams, this would open the door for us to give some raises, and serve a broader market, but we will continue with our core services of exterior and interior painting.

I hope you enjoyed this little snippet of what’s going on in my business. I share a lot on my IG at instagram.com/tradethrive along with r/paintingbusiness

If you have any questions leave them below I’ll do my best to answer them all!
 
@heyheyheynoname What I find interesting is your customers love that you guys get the job done really fast. Ive had more people than not complain that I didn't spend enough time on the job ( although the quality is great) and asking for cheaper pricing / discounts and overall acting unhappy. So now our system is doing the majority of the work fast and then dragging it out with 1-2 guys for a few more days lol
 
@johnsaviorman It's really disappointing how customers can act like that. I'm in a different business, landscaping, but the customers are still the same.

I spend an hour cutting a lawn by myself, the customer is happy. I have two of my guys do it in half an hour, and the customer says they rushed the job. Can't win...
 
@613jono This same thing happens with my professional cleaning service. Shit drives me bonkers and what's crazy is that we stress, we do NOT charge by hour, we charge per job and they still want to act unhappy. Even when asked, "Do you like the quality of work we did?" "YES! We love it!" Geeze Louise.
 
@ccxerein Charging by the hour just causes the customer stress I think. They feel the need to oversee the workers to make sure they're getting their money's worth, and they don't know what the final bill will be.

Charging by the job shifts that stress onto me instead of the customer. If we go over the estimated time, I'm just losing profit by the minute.
 
@613jono Right, which is why we specifically mention that we don't, yet they still are displeased with the amount of time you're there, despite "loving" your work. It's odd to me lol
 
@johnsaviorman I do not understand this mindset at all. My landscaper has like 3-4 guys on my tiny ass yard and they're done in like 20 minutes. It is fantastic. I'm currently getting quotes for painting basically my entire downstairs and I would LOVE if a huge crew came in and was done fast. This will massively disrupt my life and I don't like disruption.
 
@johnsaviorman those customer are just trying to haggle the price

the easy answer is "it's better to send a bigger team to get the job done quicker so the inconvenience to you is reduced to fewer days. would you prefer if it was just one guy in your house all day every day for two weeks taking forever to finish? surely not"
 

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