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You carry the payroll, the risk, the insurance, and the stress—so why does your paycheck still feel like an afterthought? We open the books on owner compensation for painting contractors and explain how to know, in dollars, whether you’re underpaid or right on target. Using a simple benchmark—the 15 percent “beach test”—you’ll learn how to measure what your business should pay you even if you step away from day-to-day work.

From there, we get practical. We break down owner discretionary earnings into salary, distributions, and perks, and show why a reasonable W-2 salary plus S corp distributions is often the most tax-efficient path. You’ll hear clear role-based pay ranges tailored to painting companies: sales at 7–9 percent, production management at 4–7 percent, admin at 2–4 percent, executive leadership at 3–5 percent, and a passive 15 percent owner return. Then we run real numbers at $750,000 in revenue so you can see how a combined 33 percent total owner benefit can look in the real world without confusing salary for true earnings.

We also cover how compensation evolves as you scale past $1 million, $2 million, and $3 million by removing hats and keeping the owner return. A case study with Chris in North Carolina shows the tax savings and clarity that come from defining roles, electing S corp status, setting a reasonable salary, and stabilizing gross profit and overhead. Finally, we share a three-bucket pay model—salary for work performed, monthly or quarterly distributions from profit, and performance-based bonuses—that keeps your pay predictable, tax-smart, and tied to healthy margins.

If your business can’t fund a 15 percent owner return while paying fairly for the roles you fill, the problem isn’t you—it’s your margins. Tune in to learn the benchmarks, the math, and the steps to align pricing, gross margin, and overhead so you finally get paid like an owner. If this helped, subscribe, share it with a fellow contractor, and leave a review with the one metric you’ll fix first.

This episode was originally recorded as a video for YouTube.

If you hear me say things like “in this video” or reference visuals, don’t worry —
the content still works perfectly in audio form.

And if you ever want to watch the video version, you can find it on the
 Profitable Painter YouTube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/@BookkeepingForPainters