Magic Bullets

Having been active on various forums for painting contractors for more than 8 years, I continue to be amazed at the number of people who ask for some magic bullet. It doesn’t matter whether the topic is estimating, pricing, marketing, or something else. They show up, introduce themselves, and then proceed to ask: What works best for…?

There is often no serious answer to these questions. What works best depends entirely on what one is trying to accomplish. Are you trying to grow your business, or simply maintain a steady work flow? Are you looking to enter a new market, or increase market share in an area where you have lots of customers?

Further, what works best for residential repaints will not work best for new construction. What works best for a company with 20 painters will not necessarily work best for a one-man operation.

But these questioners imply that every contractor, no matter his goals, his business, his market, etc. should do exactly the same things. While it is true that the same principles apply, the actual implementation of those principles will vary widely.

The applicable principles have been widely shared on the various forums, as well in many other places. It takes very little effort to find those principles. What does take effort is identifying how to apply those principles to a particular business. And this is where these questioners seek the magic bullet.

Rather than exert the effort to understand the principles, they want to be told exactly what action to take. Rather than exert the effort of identifying their goals and the means for achieving them, they want others to provide “the answer”. And sadly, they don’t realize that by looking for a magic bullet, they are really shooting themselves in the foot.

© BEP Enterprises Incorporated 2008