r/paint • u/Commercial_Sector_18 • 5h ago
Advice Wanted Experiencing Burnout
I’m a 23yr old Painting Contractor and I usually come across a lot of residential projects. I’ve been a painter for a total of 5 years and just recently a business owner of 1.5 years.
I’ve honestly fallen out of love with what I do and it’s to the point I’m not thinking ahead anymore and I dread the next time I lose an estimate to a handyman.
I’ve worked hard to be to the point I am even with the debts I had to collect but now I’ve lost all interest to continue doing what I do.
Anyone have advice for me on other career opportunities or just general advice?
I feel like I’m at a loss.
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u/Jesters_thorny_crown 4h ago
You could move into cabinetry finishing/refacing.
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u/JaguarOwn2076 4h ago
I switched to cabinet finishing because I prefer to work in a shop, it's nice to not have to deal with customers
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u/Jesters_thorny_crown 4h ago
I do both. When I start to get burn out on one, I focus my time and energy on the other.
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u/No-Scheme-9700 5h ago
Honestly, you’re young for business ownership. It takes a lot. Why are you losing estimates?
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u/zearsman 5h ago
I started my business 21 years ago at 23 years old. It was a rough 10 years of doing great work at a discount to secure jobs. Kept trying to get bigger, more crews, because I thought that was success. Almost closed the doors 12 years in and decided, fuck it, I’m going to charge way more than I think and see what happens. Still got the jobs. Covid hit, went down to two guys and myself. Along the way, hit a niche of custom builders, high end realtors, designers, and previous clients (word of mouth). Love the work, hate running a business. Inside 90% of the time year round. This is my sweet spot. Love it, but it takes time.
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u/Jealous_Difference44 4h ago
If I were 23 again id try harder to get out of this trade. Its very demanding and someone is always cheaper even if it hurts them
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u/Flat_Memory_2407 4h ago
My advice is don’t throw away your business if you have 20-30 customers already. Take it slow as it comes and spend some time on socials, websites and leads. Get a second part time job 2 days a week to break up the pace or just open a second different kind of business all together so you keep busy and aren’t getting board with the same painting daily. You can also go sub in with other contractors and do different trades work part time with them
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u/Money_Progress5580 4h ago
You can network with other trade guys and become a general contractor/project manager. You can be the front end guy/sales on residential renovations. You don’t have to do the physical work, you just need to know people to sub contract out as needed for all trades. I am a landlord and I use my painter sometimes as my GC since he has so many connections and knows a lot about renovation projects.
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u/lyonwh 5h ago
Go work for Uncle Sherwin or at a Benny Moore store. Your experience as a painter would be invaluable.
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u/pizzacholula 4h ago
As someone who worked for both, he’d probably be taking a massive pay cut for a similar but different type of stress.
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u/Dry-Cry-3158 2h ago
I hit the same place a while ago, then stumbled across a book called Profit First For Contractors. Implementing it's basic principles of financial structure got me over my burnout.
If the issue is the actual work of painting instead of managing your painting business, then you can try other trades, or look into going to school to break into a career that seems more interesting.
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u/finepnutty 5h ago
Painting isn’t for everyone, move on with your life
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u/Interesting_Tea5715 4h ago
This. I had nepotism on my side, I started my business at 25yo and was crazy successful because I had built a solid reputation working under my dad.
I got tired of the grind and got myself an office job doing IT instead (I had gone to college). No regrets. I do miss painting though, it's hard to leave behind something I was really good at.
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u/Full_Fan_3774 5h ago
Are you still on the tools? Are you painting? If so I’d recommend getting off the tools and focusing exclusively on selling and production management. You know the trade. Focus on transitioning your business to use subcontractors. You can spend all your time estimating and coordinating the production. Let other painters produce the work. General breakdown is 30-40% to the subs. 10-15% in materials. You make 50% gpm. This is how larger operations run (all the franchises and all the regional players) Just my two cents. Cheers
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u/ihrtbeer 5h ago
I dig this advice. Still on the tools myself just at the intersection of having almost enough work to hire out but also one of my strongest selling points is I'm the one bidding & the one doing the work. Been at it a long time and never advertised and have a great reputation but I'm gettin old (not too old to sling it yet tho!)
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u/zearsman 4h ago
That’s what I never understood, you’re selling yourself, then send in another crew. If you have great subs, okay. But if they are so good, why can’t they get their own jobs?
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u/Full_Fan_3774 4h ago
Because craftsmen aren’t necessarily businessmen and vice versa. Many of our subs don’t want to deal with … advertising estimating, sending quotes, picking out colors, sending invoices, running social media campaigns, building commercial / realtor partnerships, paying vendors, training staff, etc etc etc. they just want to show up and paint and make $30-40 a hour consistently 50 weeks a year.
If you’re on the tools you’ll never exceed a certain amount. With 10-20+ sub crews you can produce $500k a month or more. Your team grows in the way of estimators and PMs. This is how you make real money In this business. There are many ways to skin a cat. No one way is right or wrong. It’s all about how you want to build your business in a way that fits your life. I contend we ALL should be doing the least amount of work possible for the highest dollar amount so we can spend more time with our friends / family and pursue our passion. Whatever gets you there in a balanced way is “success”. Just my two cents. Cheers
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u/ihrtbeer 4h ago
I'm thinking about bringing subs "in house" if I can. So we share branding but carry our own insurance and work based on percentages. Could use a sales person in the same perspective too
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u/foundtheseeker 5h ago
Heck op could even bring on another young buck and have an agreement with him from the start that he buys the business from op over some amount of time. Op gets out of the business slowly if he wants or all at once or maybe a change of pace rekindles his love for all things coatings.
Honestly, op, I'd do this AND get a job as a business rep at Uncle Sherwin and then when young buck buys the business from you, start another one and do it all over again1
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u/brettfish5 4h ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted. This is exactly the advice they need. Focus on the business side of painting business and either use subcontractors or w2 employees to produce the work. Not enough hours in the day to paint, market, sell, and project management. Need to get off the brush to properly scale the business.
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u/PutridDurian 5h ago edited 5h ago
Reality is that the concept of A Guy Who Comes To Your House and Paints Your Interior Walls But Gooder Than You Could Do It is going extinct. Rapidly. The upper-middle class and lower no longer values that idea. And why should they? In the information age, it’s silly. Resources are now available for literally anyone to educate themselves on how to do it decently. If you can piss, you can paint.
Pivot to a painting service that modern society actually sees value in for being too hard to DIY and sets you above in a volatile and kinda shitty macroeconomic climate. If you are a one man band then you need to be doing kitchen cabinets NOW. Properly, with KCMA certified products sprayed with HVLP, with the word “cabinet” in your DBA and on the side of your van/truck. Chasing exclusively an affluent target market, $500k+ homes only. $180–$200 per door. Stop bidding on jobs for middle class and poor people 🤷🏻. Walls are a here and there thing, and they are strictly going to be museum-grade, level 5, ultra smooth, with razor sharp edges, everything masked, no freehand cut-in.
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u/zearsman 5h ago
I used to think that there was no money in interior work because anyone can do it. Rich people, turns out, will pay you almost what ever you want not to do it. Time is money and they aren’t shopping around. They go with whoever they were recommended. Get your foot in the door, do good work.
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u/Flat_Memory_2407 4h ago
Everyone cannot do it. Maybe they can paint a bedroom or bathroom half ass but they aren’t painting kitchens, stairwells, high vault ceilings. When you get into larger more expensive home your average home owner absolutely cannot paint their own walls 26 feet up in the air and edge a straight line. Do you even paint?
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u/zearsman 4h ago
Sure, you’re not wrong. I was replying to the comment about access to information, to do things right. And when I was starting off, it was basic stuff that I didn’t think held much value. But getting more specialized, I see the value. That being said, I still get paid more than I should for basic painting due to access to disposable income. Not sure why you came in hot, but yes, I do paint, lol.
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u/cincomidi 3h ago
I agree with you 100% on the cabinets though. Excellent specialty market with way less competition, higher margins, easier to scale, climate controlled waist high work, etc.
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u/Flat_Memory_2407 3h ago
Large kitchens are 2-3 days of just prep work. Making sure the kitchen is completely sealed off from the rest of the house and exhaust systems out windows. Take off all the doors and hardware and set up a work station if don’t have access to a shop and even if you do its more time and driving. Then reinstall all the doors and hardware. For 7-8k most people just choose to buy new cabinets or new doors. I haven’t had much luck with kitchens. I believe only smaller kitchens of less quality sell and for around 4,5k and a weeks worth of work it’s definitely still worth the money but a tone of work for that 20k a month. I can’t decide if I would rather paint 1-2 houses a month or 4-5 kitchens a month lol
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u/cincomidi 2h ago
In my market new faces are pretty expensive and new customs are extremely expensive and still need finishing after installed. Refinishing cost about half, sometimes 25% even at 8k. I get as many as I can. I do have a home refinishing “shop” so that makes it easier to store faces. They do still take me about 4-5 days but material costs are pretty low compared to repaints. I find my labor rate and profit is about 30% higher on cabinets and I’m not dealing with wasps, large ladders, etc. I average about one per month, which adds about 50k/year in revenue.
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u/Flat_Memory_2407 3h ago
My bad the one commenter just had me heated. He probably can’t even paint or is off the brush.
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u/PutridDurian 1h ago
Have you always struggled this badly with reading comprehension? The point was: Stop going after people who don’t have the money to spend. I.e. pursue a wealthy client base.
Regular plebs like us don’t have high vault ceilings or any architectural scenario that could possibly involve a 26′ climb. That is expressly the domain of the rich who still value the service.
Most people in the U.S. are dealing with 8′ or 9′ ceilings and a stairwell that can be managed just fine with an extension pole. Regular people with regular houses are either going with the lowest price handyman, or just DIYing it, which affords them the opportunity to own any mistakes they make.
Literally anyone can paint interior walls reasonably well on Day One. I never said anyone can watch a couple YouTube videos and be a triple platinum ultra fine black belt of the brush. But passing, acceptable results? Absolutely. There’s a reason this profession is accessible even to people who are functionally illiterate. Fuckin anyone can paint walls.
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u/cincomidi 5h ago
“If you can piss, you can paint”
People like you keep my business thriving. I love charging big bucks fixing all the handyman/side gig/diy/wannabe painters sloppy ass work.
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u/Flat_Memory_2407 4h ago
$200 a door wtf and if you can piss you can paint? I been in the trades my whole life and a painter for 6 years with my own business there are many talented trades workers that cannot paint well if at all. And $200 a door unless you’re talking about a front door is basically robbing people and I am in an area with million dollar homes. The most I would charge for a large front door is $800 unless they want some high gloss finish where you can see your reflection in the dam door. NO not everyone can paint and not everyone can wipe their own ass well either apparently.
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u/Yes_bad 5h ago
HVAC, electric, plumbing. You can do all kinds of apprentice programs. Your young a lot of life to live. Don’t get trapped