From Zero To $100K Net Profit/Year: How This Husband & Wife Built A Home Painting Company

Matt Stone

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Published: December 20th, 2022

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Matt Stone

Founder, Hometown Painting LLC

$27.5K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Hometown Painting...

hometownpaintingokc.com

from Oklahoma City, OK, USA

started July 2018

$27,500

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools recommends to grow your business!

Discover what books Matt recommends to grow your business!

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Wor... Michael E. Gerber

Want more updates on Hometown Painting LLC? Check out these stories:

1. Our Painting Business Hit $300K Per Year And Is Still Growing (2024) ➜

Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

My name is Matt and my wife and I started a local painting company called Hometown Painting LLC. We help homeowners in Oklahoma City protect and beautify their homes with paint.

Our primary service is exterior residential painting. We prepare and paint all exterior surfaces on homes. We also provide interior painting for walls, woodwork, and cabinets. Fence staining is becoming a more common service we offer as well.

We started this company in July of 2018 and did not make a single sale for the rest of that year. From those humble beginnings, we have grown this company to the point that it now provides our full-time income. This year we should exceed $100,000 net profit from the company.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

I came from what I would consider a normal middle-class American household. There was a certain mindset ingrained in my family; get a job at a big company and work there until you retire. My grandmother worked for the same company for over 50 years. I appreciate the work ethic that was modeled for me as I was growing up. Entrepreneurship, however, was not something that my family highly valued.

Over 10 years ago I decided to start my own handyman company. I knew it would be challenging because starting a business was completely foreign to me. I was pretty handy and knew I could do the work but I was intimidated by things like having to market myself. I knew that the success or failure of the business would rest completely on my shoulders. Fortunately, my wife was completely on board and supported me every step of the way.

My wife was also instrumental in the transformation from a single-man handyman company to the multi-person painting company we have today. It was through many conversations with her that the idea for the new company took shape. I would complain about never having enough time to do all the work, meet with new customers, and keep up with all the paperwork. We agreed that it was time to make a change in the way we were doing business.

Through a chance encounter online I became aware of Eric Barstow, who offers business training/coaching online for those who want to start a painting company. He teaches entrepreneurs how to create systems that allow their painting businesses to run efficiently and effectively. We saw this system as an opportunity to deal with the frustration we had with the current way we were doing business.

Selling is not about being a certain type of personality. It is about listening to what people want and providing the best solution for getting it.

Take us through the process of designing your services

As a service-based business, in many ways, our company is our product. There is not too much “design” work to do to plan a painting service. There is already a basically “right” way to paint a house. The challenge is creating a company that can consistently provide high-quality painting services, at a good price, and with excellent customer service. Eric’s coaching was immensely helpful in setting up the systems that would be required to make this happen. These systems fall into three basic categories: marketing, sales, and production.

It doesn’t make sense to create an amazing company that no one will ever hear about. We learned that marketing is the first step in the customer journey. It is where new clients meet our company. My wife and I had a lot of fun branding our new company. She is the one who came up with the name, Hometown Painting. We felt like this name would convey the feeling we wanted customers to have about our company. We chose colors and had a logo designed.

We then used a combination of ads, word of mouth, and door-to-door marketing to start growing our company. I printed up flyers about our painting company and went door to door asking if people wanted a free quote. I also let all the customers that I had done handyman work for know that I had started the painting company. I also signed up for a couple of pay per lead services to supplement the flow of leads to our company.

Once we had a few potential customers through these marketing efforts, we had to figure out how to sell them our services. This area was the most challenging for me personally. I have a naturally quiet, unassuming personality so persuading people that we were the best painting company to choose did not come naturally. I have since learned that selling is not about being a certain type of personality. More than anything it is about listening to what people want and providing the best solution for getting it.

After selling a job, we have to do a good job painting the house. I chose to use subcontractors for our production. This allows more flexibility both for us and the sub. Often people will say that if you use subcontractors instead of employees you will get an inferior quality of work. I have learned that this is not the case. Both employees and subcontractors can do great work. The business owner must have systems in place to ensure quality results every time.

Describe the process of launching the business.

I am a naturally conservative person. To reduce the risk of starting our new company I gradually transitioned from handyman work to painting work. This approach made the transition happen more slowly. As I mentioned above, we did not have any sales for the painting company in the first calendar year we were in operation. It was only at the beginning of our third year in operation as a painting company that I decided to turn down any handyman jobs that came along and focus exclusively on painting.

During the transition period, I would use any spare time I had at the painting company. I believe the reason it took me months to make my first sale is that it took that long for me to build up my confidence. I wanted the clients to accept my quotes but I also was terrified of it at the same time. I had to make sure I had a contractor lined up to do the work when I sold it but it is hard to have painters ready when you have no work for them yet. I believe my nervousness was apparent to a lot of homeowners and was part of the reason they didn’t go with our company at first.

I was finally able to find a subcontractor who had enough of his work but wanted to take on a little more. This relieved the pressure to find the labor in a short time frame. Also, the more painting quotes I did the more I got comfortable talking to customers. Once I got over my apprehensions the sales started to flow.

Even though beginning part-time made for a slow start, this approach meant that our income remained steady throughout this time. Our income steadily grew since the painting company was providing higher profits than my handyman services ever had.

We did not need any outside funding for our business launch. Because we chose a business model that uses subcontractors we did not have to purchase painting equipment to get started. We cash flowed the entire launch and the total start-up costs for branding, website, and initial marketing materials were under $3000. Our state is very favorable to business so there weren’t many legal hoops to jump through.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

We have used many avenues to attract new customers. The best analogy I have heard is that your marketing approach should look like a diversified investment portfolio. You will put a little money into many different marketing approaches and track how many sales you are getting from each marketing channel. If something doesn’t result in sales we quit spending money on it. If it does result in sales we double down.

So far the best return on investment we have gotten through marketing has come from search engine optimization (SEO). After having bad experiences with two digital marketing companies in a row, I took the time to learn SEO myself and have used it to increase the number of leads we are getting through our website. I began by devouring any SEO related youtube video or article I could get my hands on.

I have found that most of the information you need to learn SEO is available if you are willing to search for it. I have not paid for any expensive courses or consulting. It is a challenge to wade through the large amount of information that is out there but if you are persistent you will find guides that will help you. I am amazed by the amount of content that is now available completely for free. I have given specific recommendations in the resources section below.

As the business grows I plan to outsource the SEO work to another company. Since I now have a much better understanding of how SEO works I think I can do a much better job vetting digital marketers.

I am very proud of our 5-star cumulative rating on Google. We have had many customers tell us that they decided to call us because of our outstanding reviews online.

My best advice for business owners is to educate themselves about all the areas of their company. While it is necessary to outsource or employ someone to do many of the tasks in a growing company, the better a business owner understands each function, the better they will be able to work with the freelancer or employee. They will also be better able to provide oversight in that area.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

Currently, my wife and I run the day-to-day operations of the company. We split the administrative duties. I do more of the sales meetings and production management. She helps with bookkeeping and marketing. We have one crew to whom we subcontract our work. Finding this great crew has made our business run so much more smoothly.

We plan to increase our marketing budget for next year to double our current output. With this increase in sales, we plan to add crew next year. This should allow our business to reach about half a million in sales annually. This should be pretty comfortable for my wife and me to run together during a regular work week. With this business model, we expect to see a 30-35% net margin.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

Probably the most helpful thing I have learned from starting this business is to think of a business in terms of systems. There is a certain way you do each step of the business. Whether you have ever intentionally planned how you will do the thing or not, you still will have a certain way it gets done. By changing the process by which you go about your business tasks you can change the outcomes you get. This is the essence of systems thinking.

To give an example; earlier this year we needed to hire a new crew. We went through several before we found one that we wanted to work with long-term. In the process, we learned a lot about how to evaluate a crew that was wanting to work for us.

We make a system to assess each crew by certain exact criteria. This included a series of questions we would ask each crew leader, a jobsite visit on a job they had done, and contacting references they could provide us for their work. By using this system we can avoid hiring someone who is not properly vetted.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

We have tried several online marketing platforms to grow our business. This includes Angi, Homeadvisor, and Craftjack. While I know contractors that have had a lot of success with these platforms they have never worked well for us.

After researching their business model and how they source the leads they sell to contractors I have decided not to do business with them. I do still use one lead generation service that is designed specifically for painters called Painter’s Choice.

For software, we have been very interested in PaintScout. It is a CRM/estimating software rolled into one. We will likely be using this software in the coming year in our company.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

I enjoy reading so many of the resources I have relied on have been books. The E-myth series by Michael Gerber has been tremendously helpful. Also, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin has helped me as a leader. The book Love People, Use Things has had a profound influence on my personal life which also affects my effectiveness as a business owner.

I have made great use of podcasts and blogs to learn about SEO which is a key component of our marketing strategy. I would suggest material by Miles Beckler or Brendan Hufford.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

My advice to future entrepreneurs is to seek mentors or training from someone who knows your industry. There are so many sources available today online. Many times it is possible to find so much information available for free.

That being said, it is also possible to get conflicting information. There are often different approaches to a certain type of business. I would suggest finding one or two main sources and sticking with them. Trying to implement 10 different people’s strategies will pull you in too many directions.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

We are not currently looking to hire. Our next hire would be a manager to oversee the production of our paint jobs. We may also be outsourcing our digital marketing sometime next year.