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Craftsmanship is not what makes a business successful

96K views 241 replies 159 participants last post by  CornerstonePainting 
I've worked for crews - where we would show up the next day with post-it notes all over the walls where there 'weak' spots - and the customer dragged out their step ladder to and put these post it notes 9 feet up! What do you do with those type of customers? I've had house wives watch me right over my back as I was working inspecting my work!
 
I guess the point of being out of the bucket vs. in the bucket - is that homeowner I think have an edge in taking advantage of 'in the bucket' painters - they can skirt the original proposal and get free work.

A more professional company with workers and a strict hierarchy - I think a homeowner will be less apt to try and get something for nothing.
 
My point Scott - is that the one-man-band show when confronted with picky homeowners and post-it notes or the last minute 'oh - aren't you going to paint the other side of those two doorways?' It's those little things that homeowners feel they can approach the owner/operator and get away with it for free. A hierarchy type painting company has workers, foremen, etc. And when confronted like this by a homeowner - protocal is followed, change orders are signed, etc.

Come on you know the drill - you are on your side painting some baseboard - and wife comes up to you and says - can you do so and so? You don't pull out a change order do you? As owner/operators - we usually nickeled and dimed to death, unless we confront homeowners head on. I know on one home I was asked to do extra scraping which was an extra $700 worth of work on top of the estimate. I did it - never said anything. Finally the housewife asked me if I was going to scrape another section of home that I wasn't even contracted to touch - and that's when I confronted and told her no - it's not on the estimate, I've already eaten $700 in labor - enough is enough. Big crews - the homeowner has no idea who to poke and prod during the job - and unless they make a phone call to 'headquarters' most requests never get brought up.
 
I can't believe this thread still continues. The problem with the majority of you guys, is that you don't deserve to have an opinion on the topic. Business is business, while the 'craftsmen' out there indulge in their own narcissistic fantasies of superior craftsmanship and doing 'right by the customer.' I see companies popping up here and there slowly that are actually applying true business principles to the trades. And guess what? These companies are being rewarded with jobs, yet they 'manage' their time and thus quality and are compensated at higher rates.

It's only a matter of time before all these rogue 'craftsmen' are made entirely extinct. It's time you guys let go of your egos and fantasies of working in the 19th century, and yes I am sure some of you even wished you were grinding your own pigments and mixing your own paint. Do everyone a favor, including your wives, and go get a job working for a 'real' paint company that charges the right money. You'll actually bring home more money.
 
N8, that is the general gist of the article. The thought I had while writing was not whether a craftsman driven service or being a production company has a singular advnatage over the other, it was more about making sure you are priced right.

100 jobs at $3,500 is a $350K gross. If one goes the craftsman route (solo or with a helper) and instead does "5 to the tee" they may have to charge over $40,000 for that same job to make the same net. More likely the craftsman would work his tail off to convince the homeowner was worth the $9K he charged. And at that price, craftsmanship will put him out of business.
I've been that craftsman, and you can't ever charge enough money to remain a craftsman. I painted this house on my road, where I sunk 385 Man-hours into. And most guys would ask, where the heck did all the labor go? It's simple, if you are not impressed with just scraping - then you start sanding - then you realize sanding isn't the best - then you start grinding. And pretty soon you are making clapboard siding like you are planing the wood. It will take 3-4X the amount of man-hours to perform, and looks the same from 40 feet away. Throw in Wrought iron restoration, front porch restoration - total paint removal from floor boards, and throw two days with two men grinding down 27 layers of paint on a farmers porch tongue and groove ceiling and the hours just melt away. And like Ken suggested, I fought hard to justify my $10,500 price tag just 5 years ago. So what were the results? A puny $24 per hour per man after paying out materials.

Yeah, I actually had a crew once - and I was fixated on quality. And the results were, I lost the crew, lost the customers, lost my momentum in business that I still struggle with today. To this day I still don't know where to draw the line in painting. I watched a painting crew paint the house next door - it was the most slapshod crap work I've seen, and yet the final result looks pretty good. Sometimes I thought something I sunk a ton of labor into looked worse than what I started with.

For those reasons, I stepped away from the market, even when I had a prospective customer contact me several weeks ago begging me to come take a look because he knew I was about quality - when I started going over the numbers and gave him an address of a home with 7 years - he started backpeddling and then became my biggest critic. Even though my work at 7 years is in better shape than my competition's at year #2. That's it I am done!

This is why when guys talk about quality, it really irks me sometimes. Because my 'quality' is another man's bottom of the barrel. There are no absolutes, some guys deliver quality work for a $2,000 price tag - some guys deliver what they consider quality for a $20,000 price tag. In the end it's what value you deliver for the price range that determines that vague concept of quality.

For me, in house painting, if it starts peeling a little bit in it's 3rd year - then that's a quality job for the 'going' price in this market. If I had to go back, I'd never choose an alternative model. I'd market the heck out of it call it 'quality' 24/7. But in the end as long as a job has gone 2-3 years without major peeling - you've satisfied most folks. Give 'em a 2 or 3 warranty, and skimp out on the prep work as much as possible, and save your hours for future repairs. Because no matter how much labor you put into prep, there is always something going to peel in a year or two. So why dump all your budget up front, and then end up doing it for a loss later on?
 
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