An Excerpt from Getting Out of the Bucket: Starting a Business

Starting a painting business is easy. Starting a painting business that will be successful isn’t.

There is much more to operating a successful painting business than putting paint on the wall. Issues such as marketing, estimating, sales, administration, and production management are all crucial components to success.

While each business owner will have different goals and expectations for his business, the basic principles necessary for success do not vary. Whether you want to have a one-man operation or a twenty man shop, sound business principles are a necessary component of achieving the goals you establish.

If I had to start my painting business all over again, I would take the following 5 steps:

1. Learn about owning a small business. There are many resources, including books, tapes, forums such as Paint Talk, and of course, Out of the Bucket.com.

2. Identify where I want to be in 1 year. For example, what kind of revenue, what kind of profit, what kind of income. And then I'd develop a plan for accomplishing this.

3. Invest in marketing-- signs, business cards, web site, and fliers/ door hangers. The bulk of the money would go into fliers/ door hangers and I would hand them out myself. I would invest at least $500, and more if I could afford it.

4. Learn to sell at the right price, which implies that I know what the right price is. I would learn more about the financial side of the business.

5. Develop some simple systems for the basics of the business. Such as, how will I prep an exterior job, how will I prep an interior job, etc. I would include some administration issues as well. And I would put this in writing.

These 5 steps do not exhaust the possibilities, but after 22 years in business I am confident that the above steps would save a tremendous amount of time and money.

There are certainly multiple paths to business success. It is possible to be successful and act in complete defiance of the above suggestions. However, the above steps are proven—they do lead to success. From my perspective, anything that makes the journey easier is certainly worth investigating.

To learn more about Getting Out of the Bucket, click here.