PaintED Podcast

In this episode, Daniel Honan and Brandon Pierpont break down why growing painting companies get stuck between $1.5M and $4M—and what it takes to break through. Discover how to escape the “swamp” by increasing profit margins, building a high-performing sales team, scaling marketing, creating irresistible offers, and tracking what actually drives revenue.

Every January, a lot of painting contractors are still trying to figure out what their plan is for the year, let alone how they're going to hit it. The successful painting business owners do it differently. They start planning in early November and have the whole thing locked in by December 15th, so they can actually enjoy the holidays with their friends and family.

In this episode of the Elite Business Advice Podcast, host Chris Moore, founder of Elite Business Advisors and owner of a residential painting company, walks through the plan before the plan: a simple 6-step framework for 2027 business planning, with target deadlines for where your painting company should be and when.

It's always good to have a plan for your plan. Call Chris the man with the plan for your plan.

The 6-step 2027 planning framework for painting contractors:

Goals: time, money, roles, and revenue numbers

Hires and your org chart

2027 production numbers (done by the end of November at the latest)

2027 financial planning: overhead, owner pay, and cash cushion

Spending plan: budget and track actuals, line by line

Q1 Rocks (everything solidified by December 15th to 20th)

What you'll learn in this episode:

How to set goals for your painting business around time, money, roles, and revenue

How to map out your hires and org chart for the year ahead

Why you start with the big production number and then get micro

How to forecast overhead: which hires you'll make and when, and what marketing you'll add (and whether it ebbs and flows through the year)

How much you'll take home as the owner, and whether that changes your org chart plan

How to spot the months your painting company might lose money, and whether your cash cushion can weather them

Why more painting companies are viewing the year as two stretches: a 4-month stretch from November through February where you bleed as little as possible, and an 8-month stretch where you maximize profitability and stack cash

How to build a spending plan and track actuals line by line, especially your marketing budget

How to set Q1 Rocks so you start January with clear priorities instead of a blank page

This episode is for painting contractors and painting company owners across the U.S. and Canada who want to finish the year strong, build a realistic 2027 budget and production plan, and walk into January knowing exactly where their painting business is headed.

🎯 Want to know where your painting business stands before you plan 2027? Take our free Business Health Assessment: score.elitebusinessadvisors.com

📞 Want to learn more about how Elite Business Advisors helps painting contractors grow their business? Schedule a discovery call at www.elitebusinessadvisors.com

New episodes of the Elite Business Advice Podcast drop weekly with real strategies for painting contractors on planning, job costing, production, hiring, sales, and scaling a profitable painting company.

We all know the Winter Slow Down for Painting Contractors happens each year, the question is are you prepared for it?

In today's episode, co-founder of Hirebus, Dan Fleisher and founder of Elite Business Advisors, Chris Moore, talk about how to prepare for it from a marketing and relationship perspective, what a good financial model looks like to weather the seasonality of a painting business, and some actionable tips you can implement immediately to help push through the next 4 months.

For more information on Hirebus and how they help Painting Contractors with recruiting the right employees, click here!

Interested in taking the new Business Health Assessment? Click Here!

In this episode, Daniel Honan and Brandon Pierpont explain how to grow a painting business from $500K to $1.5M. Learn how to scale marketing with Meta ads and Google Local Services Ads, improve profit margins, manage cash flow, hire key team members, and build long-term assets through SEO and your website.

Check out all of our podcast episodes at https://paintermarketingpros.com/painter-marketing-mastermind-podcast/

Want our podcast notes and in-depth resources related to this episode? Click here!

https://profitablepaintercpa.com/pmp-ppcpa-free-resource

Keeping receipts. It's the administrative task every painting contractor knows is necessary and nobody loves dealing with. But if your receipts are scattered across truck consoles, email inboxes, and a shoebox in the garage, your painting business is exposed in more ways than one.

In this episode of the Elite Business Advice Podcast, host Chris Moore, founder of Elite Business Advisors, goes back to the deep basics of running a painting company. This one's short and tactical: three easy systems for keeping receipts that work for you and your crew, plus the real reason it matters (and no, it's not just because the IRS says so).

And no, a paper copy in a box in your storage unit didn't make the list.

What you'll learn in this episode:

Why every painting business owner needs a receipt system before the IRS (or CRA) comes asking

System 1: iCloud. How to set up a master folder for each year with subfolders by category, upload PDFs, save emails as full-page PDFs, and snap photos of paper receipts, all organized by date for easy audit lookup

System 2: Google Drive. The more versatile option, with a mobile app and a shareable upload link your painters and project managers can use without a Google account

System 3: Receipt technology like Ramp, which texts your team right after every transaction to capture the category and what it was for

Why someone in your painting company has to own receipt accountability, whether that's spot checks or confirming every transaction has a receipt

How keeping receipts gives you a second set of eyes on what your company is actually spending money on, and what a recent situation with a project manager taught Chris about it

This episode is for painting contractors and painting company owners across the U.S. and Canada who want cleaner books, less tax-season stress, and real accountability over company spending as their painting business grows.

🎯 Want to see how your back office stacks up? Take our free Business Health Assessment: score.elitebusinessadvisors.com

📞 Want to learn more about how Elite Business Advisors helps painting contractors grow their business? Schedule a discovery call at www.elitebusinessadvisors.com

New episodes of the Elite Business Advice Podcast drop weekly with real strategies for painting contractors on operations, job costing, hiring, sales, and scaling a profitable painting company.

In this episode, Brandon Pierpont and Daniel Honan break down how to grow a painting business from $0 to $500K in 2026. Learn how to build a strong sales system, generate Google reviews and referrals, find leads through networking and door knocking, price jobs for healthy profit margins, and manage cash flow. Discover the essential marketing and financial systems that set your painting business up for sustainable growth.

Want our podcast notes and in-depth resources related to this episode? Click here! https://profitablepaintercpa.com/pmp-ppcpa-free-resource

"I need to build out a more robust sales process... but I don't know where to start." If you're a painting contractor and that sounds like you, this episode gives you the starting point. And it's sitting in the estimates you're running today.

In this episode of the Elite Business Advice Podcast, host Chris Moore, founder of Elite Business Advisors, lays out a simple framework for building a professional sales process in your painting business: pay attention to the questions customers ask and the feedback you get along the way, then build processes that handle those questions and objections before they ever come up.

Before you can build a polished, professionalized sales process, you need a set structure you follow 95% of the time. Chris walks through the 6-step sales process for a painting company:

Estimate scheduling phone call

Something of value: professional, branded, and informative

Walkthrough

Numbers and bid creation

Presentation

Follow up

What you'll learn in this episode:

The 6 steps every painting contractor's sales process should follow, and why consistency comes before polish

The FAQs homeowners ask during painting estimates (prep responsibilities, nail hole filling, carpentry and drywall repairs, paint products, crew size, who shows up, and what makes you different) and how to answer them before they're asked

How to define and communicate your painting company's "Dynamic Difference"

How to use customer feedback to find what's breaking your flow or costing you jobs

Why the fix is usually one step back in the process, like using an expectations document or video after the scheduling call

How to handle "your price is too expensive" by building value from the very first touchpoint: quality, prep, customer service, and professional handouts

A simple habit to start today: make a list, pay attention, and turn every repeat question or objection into a process

This episode is for painting contractors and painting company owners across the U.S. and Canada who want to close more painting estimates, raise their close rate, and run a sales process that sounds professional every single time.

🎯 Want to see how your sales process stacks up? Take our free Business Health Assessment: score.elitebusinessadvisors.com

📞 Want to learn more about how Elite Business Advisors helps painting contractors grow their business? Schedule a discovery call at www.elitebusinessadvisors.com

New episodes of the Elite Business Advice Podcast drop weekly with real strategies for painting contractors on sales, estimating, production, hiring, and scaling a profitable painting company.

While contractors and construction business owners are busy scrambling to get our websites ready for AI search, Phil Risher is asking a much bigger question: Will your website even matter in 3 years?

Phil is a digital marketing specialist who works exclusively with contractors.

He's been watching in real time as AI search puts an end to everything we thought we knew about modern marketing.

Traffic is dwindling. SEO is changing. And websites... well, they might be dying.

Instead, Phil says AI agents will dominate contractor digital marketing strategies in just a few years.

Phil shares his predictions, what they mean for the construction industry, and what you need to start building today to survive the next decade.

In a world full of AI tools, custom software, dashboards, and endless business education, it's easy for a painting contractor to lose sight of what a painting business actually does. Strip it all away and there are only four core functions that keep a painting company running.

In this episode of the Elite Business Advice Podcast, host Chris Moore, founder of Elite Business Advisors, goes off on a tangent (with good reason). Continuing this season's focus on first principles reasoning in your painting business, Chris zooms out from individual areas to look at the whole business, and why so many painting business owners are getting pulled away from the basics.

Running a painting company isn't easy. It takes processes, documentation, structure, intentionality, and a plan. But every system you build should amplify one of these four core functions:

1. Generate interest and demand

2. Book painting jobs

3. Produce paint jobs (the most important step)

4. Collect money

What you'll learn in this episode:

- The 4 core functions of a painting business and why producing the work matters most

- The pitfalls Chris sees when painting contractors chase complexity over fundamentals

- Where AI actually helps a painting company: analyzing data, gathering lists, handling tasks, and building automations and workflows

- Where AI and software become too much: complicated dashboards, custom software, and over-built workflows

- Why you shouldn't automate the things you need to stay in the know on, like your monthly numbers

- How to check whether your systems are serving your core functions or just adding noise

This episode is for painting contractors and painting company owners across the U.S. and Canada who feel buried in tools, tech, and information and want to get back to the simple steps of running a profitable painting business.

🎯 Not sure if you've lost sight of the basics? Take our free Business Health Assessment: score.elitebusinessadvisors.com

New episodes of the Elite Business Advice Podcast drop weekly with real strategies for painting contractors on sales, production, systems, and scaling a profitable painting company.

When ChatGPT released in 2022, we all knew the start of a new era in tech was coming.

But we couldn't possibly comprehend just how much our industry was about to change.

Although robotics are a few years away from replacing field labor, pretty much every other area of a contracting business has been totally disrupted.

DJ Carroll, a former contractor known for scaling home service companies through disciplined AI and automation, shares his opinions on where the industry is now, where it's headed, and the skills and concepts we HAVE to understand if we want our businesses to survive what he calls the next industrial revolution.

This is not a philosophical conversation. DJ gives some real, actionable advice any contractor can implement in the next week.