Painter Growth Podcast

What happens when you 5X your revenue in a single year — and still can't let yourself win?

In this raw, unfiltered live coaching call, Jesse sits down with James Mitchell, a painting contractor who went from $179K to nearly $1M in revenue in 2025. By every external measure, he's crushing it. But internally? He's been drowning — falling out of integrity, losing his routines, and quietly sabotaging the very success he worked so hard to build.

In one of the most eye-opening moments on the podcast, Jesse guides James through a visualization: a $5 million check, no strings attached, lands in his mailbox. James's response? Pure hesitation. Not excitement — doubt.

What unfolds next is the breakthrough neither of them planned for.

This episode goes deep on:

• The subconscious belief that you have to suffer to deserve success
• Why chaos in your environment is always a mirror of chaos within
• The 3-part integrity framework that separates high performers from everyone else
• How your body holds the breakthroughs your mind can't reach alone
• What it actually means to become a million-dollar business owner — not just run one

If you've ever hit a new level and somehow found a way to self-destruct it, this one is for you.

James rated this call an 11 out of 10. You'll understand why.

Logan Platt started Clean Cut Painters in Bozeman, Montana with zero business background, just a neuroscience degree, a paintbrush, and a crew of independent contractors. For years, his company survived on one or two builder relationships. When that dried up, the clock started ticking. In this episode, Logan shares how he went from anxiety-inducing hand-to-mouth revenue to $150K sales weeks, a full leadership team, and a business he's actually building for the future. If you're doing revenue but don't have a real business yet, this one's for you.

In this episode of Brush Busters, coaches Lucas and Chris tackle real letters from painting business owners and share their no-nonsense solutions.

From Marcus in Calgary dealing with chunky paint batches to strategies for keeping customers happy while holding suppliers accountable, this episode dives deep into the real-world challenges painters face every day.

Whether it’s quality control, client communication, or knowing when to push back on a vendor, Lucas and Chris break down practical steps to turn frustrating problems into opportunities to build trust and improve your business.

Hiring a sales rep can help you grow faster.

It can also create a mess if you do it too early or without the right systems in place.

In this episode, we break down what painting business owners need to get right before bringing on a sales rep: when the timing makes sense, what responsibilities the role should actually own, how to structure compensation, and why your first rep should be more than just an order taker.

We also get into one of the biggest mistakes owners make: hiring before they’ve documented the process, built a real onboarding system, or defined what success looks like.

If you’re trying to decide whether it’s time to hire, or you want to avoid an expensive mistake, this episode is worth the listen.

In this episode, Jesse sits down with Isaac from White Oak Painting and his new field marketing manager for a live coaching session focused on one of the biggest opportunities in a painting business: generating more leads from the neighborhoods you’re already working in.

They talk through what the field marketing manager role should actually look like, how to use job site marketing more intentionally, and what it takes to turn nearby homeowners into real estimate opportunities. The conversation also covers flyer drops, door knocking, confidence in the field, tracking activity, measuring ROI, and setting realistic expectations for performance.

If you’ve ever wondered how to make your marketing more local, more proactive, and more measurable, this episode gives you a practical look at how to build that system inside your painting company.

What does it really take to stop living paycheck to paycheck when you own a trades business? In this episode, Jesse Teron sits down with Kedma Ough, the financial genius behind Iron Books, to unpack the practical and psychological tools that help contractors, painters, and tradespeople finally get a grip on their money.

Jesse opens up about a painful personal low: selling his car just to cover rent in December 2019. That rock-bottom moment sparked the creation of "Baseline 1", the concept of earning enough each month to cover both your business overhead AND your personal bills. It sounds simple, but hitting that number changes everything.

Kedma brings the neuroscience and the numbers. She walks through the exact tools Iron Books uses to turn struggling businesses around, from Debt Schedules and Zero-Based Budgeting to Cash Flow Analysis and Turnaround Consulting, and shares why the words you use about money might be the biggest obstacle standing between you and profitability.

In this episode you'll learn:

• What "Baseline 1" means and why hitting it is a game-changer

• How language and self-talk directly impact your financial results

• The Iron Books toolkit: Debt Schedules, Zero-Based Budgeting & more

• Why bankruptcy isn't the end and what it taught Kedma about resilience

• How to identify your "genius zone" and stop doing everything yourself

• The 15% net profit target and why anything below zero compounds against you

Whether you're drowning in debt or just ready to grow, this episode will shift how you think about money, and give you real tools to act on.

🔗 Take the Profit X-Ray Audit: https://www.paintergrowth.com/book-a-call

If your income has not moved in 3 years, if your business keeps hitting the same ceiling, if your life looks basically the same as it did 5 years ago, there’s a hard truth hiding in plain sight.

Most of the time, it is not the economy. It is not the market. It is not your team. It is not your situation.

It is your environment.

Your results cannot outgrow what you tolerate. The standards you allow. The habits you repeat. The level of accountability you keep. The people and inputs you sit around every day.

A lot of guys say they want growth, but they protect comfort like it is their job. They hit a new normal, then start living like that is the top of the mountain.

If you want a new level, you usually need a new room. New expectations. New routines. New “this is who I am now” behavior.

In today’s episode, we break down how to actually change your environment so your results finally have room to change too.

What’s the biggest thing you’re tolerating right now that you know is keeping you stuck?

What happens when a homeowner nearly falls off her chair from your price, and still leaves you a 5-star review before you do the job?

In this episode, we unpack a Momentum coaching call filled with real stories and real wins. From placing 350+ door hangers to unlocking $40K in builder work, these painting contractors are proving that consistent marketing, honest communication, and clear expectations can change everything. You'll hear from Josh, who locked in investor partnerships and scaled to a 16-man crew, and Rachel, who booked nearly $40K in one week using just one simple sales play.

If you’re a painting contractor stuck in the weeds or wondering how to get higher-paying jobs, this conversation will shift how you think about growth.

In this raw Coffee Conversation, Coach Jesse gets real. He opens up about the moment he hit rock bottom while building his second painting company. He had four jobs open, no reliable crews, cash pressure mounting… and a full-blown panic attack on the side of the road.
Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Didn’t know how he was going to get through it.
What saved him wasn’t a new marketing tactic.
It wasn’t better estimating software.
It wasn’t hiring another salesperson.
It was a lesson he learned years earlier during a 10-day silent Vipassana meditation retreat, a mental discipline so simple it sounds almost ridiculous:
In this episode, Jesse breaks down:

• The exact moment his painting business felt like it was collapsing
• How overwhelm destroys decision-making for painting contractors
• The “10-Second Rule” that pulled him out of panic
• How he went from chaos to running 6 painting crews in a matter of weeks
• Why most painting company owners fail in the first 18 months
• And how to manufacture wins when cash flow, crews, and customers feel out of control

• Crew issues
• Subcontractor unreliability
• Production bottlenecks
• Cash flow stress
• Customer communication pressure
• Or just the silent weight of running a growing painting business

If you’re a painting contractor dealing with:
This is not a tactics episode. This is about mental resilience for entrepreneurs. This is about emotional control under pressure. This is about how to survive the hard season so you can scale. Because every serious painting company owner will face a moment where the business feels bigger than them.
The question is: will you quit or will you narrow the clock and win the next 10 seconds?
If you’re in a season of struggle, uncertainty, or personal pressure while building your painting company… this is a must-listen.
Press play.
Then go win your next 10 seconds.

What happens when your painting business grows faster than your leadership systems?

In this Brush Busters episode, Josh and Wayne break down real questions from owners running multi-million dollar painting companies who feel like they’re losing control. Jobs happening without visibility. Teams ignoring systems. High revenue with low profit. Managers burning out. Payroll crushing margins.

This is not theory. It’s practical, field-tested advice for owners who have already “made it” on paper but are drowning operationally.

You’ll learn:

• How to install structure when growth outpaces leadership

• Why systems fail without accountability and how to fix compliance

• Where large painting companies actually leak profit

• How to prevent estimator and production manager burnout

• When labor becomes too expensive and how to restructure without blowing up the company

If your business feels bigger but messier than it should, this episode will help you regain control and rebuild clarity.