Start Your Own Painting Business TODAY

this Krissy Idaho painter here on paint live TV today we're gonna be talking about how to start a painting company and some of the things we're going to talk about in this video is getting the proper insurance having a license so you're licensed painter what tools you're gonna need having a bid packet that's gonna win you a whole lot of bids and we're gonna be talking about a whole lot more so stay tuned for this video so here we are we're gonna start a painting company you might be running around right now in a truck with some tools and doing some painting jobs or you might have a painting company with a business card but it's just not saved just totally legitimate so some of the things we're gonna be talking about and this is getting your painting company up and running being a legitimate business having insurance and licenses as part of that process so we'll start in the very beginning and that is having a license and I'll talk about our state here I'm in the United States I live in Boise Idaho and every state in the nation typically has their own rules and regulations when it comes to being licensed I'll talk specifically about my state and then I'll talk a little bit about some other states out there that have some different rules and regulations now in the state of Idaho you don't have to have a license to be a painter so I can just grab a truck I can throw a paint brush and a bucket in the back I could throw an arrow sprayer and actually I don't even they throw any of that stuff in the back I can just call myself a painter and start painting people's houses with no limit to how much those houses or the job's gonna cost so there are some things in Idaho that are a little unusual and different there is what we call being a registered contractor now I do need to be a registered contractor if I'm gonna act in any type of contracting business that could be painting it could be framing drywall I have to be a registered contractor now are all contractors registered no maybe not even 50% of them and it is just a $25 fee and you become registered so the state of Idaho knows you're doing business now that differs from state to state that's kind of what it looks like in Idaho to become a painter now I'll talk about California who's significantly different and I had a student in one of my academies that we just had and it was our painting and deck or wallpaper and decorative coatings Academy and he's a painter in the state of California and he's not a licensed painter and I asked him what it took to be licensed and and who needs to be licensed and he said in California if you do any type of painting job that's over five hundred dollars then you need to have a license and my understanding in the state of California is you have to go through some competent to Seeds tests to show that you're a qualified journeyman so you have to work up through an apprentice process under a journeyman painter who documents it and then you can eventually get licensed after you take an extensive test and pass that test so it is different from state to state so you're gonna have to investigate your state we'll leave some links down below to our state of the government agencies where you can go get a license and you can follow up of that and that'll give you some leads to possibly some other states but I think it's very important that you if you're acting as a painter in your state to know the rules and regulations so you're doing everything legally and by the rules so it doesn't end up coming back to haunt you and you get nailed by your government organization and get fined a whole lot of money which could put you out of business a lot of your prospective clients and customers are gonna look up whether you have a license and look up whether you're insured and what this insurance does is for instance if I do something with an airless sprayer that does something that burns down the customers home and so that's an extreme circumstance but here recently with some painters in several times in Texas painters were painting with lacquers and there was something that set off the locker and explosion boom it burnt the house all the way to the ground so when that thing burns down well who's liable for that you as the painter are liable for that and your insurance would be the one to step in to take care of that and pay that if you don't have insurance the homeowner is probably going to come after you personally and they can end up suing you personally and take your business take your home and any other assets you have in the bank or whatever so you've got to be really careful and be a licensed contractor and have insurance insurance is extremely important and any any customer that is truly doing their background check on you and looking and making sure they're protected they're gonna look at your insurance insurance is also going to cover you'll accidents that could happen employees I won't get into workers comp Oh a whole lot in depth but if an employee falls on the property and gets injured that's workers comp and that's part of your insurance package you know you should be looking into but insurance could be you know I'm spray and trim inside the customers house and my sprayer hose breaks and then all of a sudden paint's start spraying all over inside their house on their carpet somebody's got to pay for that it could be an enormous cost that's where insurance is going to step in and cover that in insurance there's a lot of different types of insurance you can have you can one of them is over spray insurance so I had a friend of mine who's a painter he is painting downtown Boise and he was spraying epoxy and it was kind of windy and it was inside of a garage facility when a downtown parking structures and he got overspray epoxy on I believe is over 200 cars and so every one of those cars had to be detailed and gotten repaired and had that overspray you know dealt with so there's overspray insurance and there's just a lot of other things that you could on run into that would require insurance investigate it look into it I'll kind of hopefully I'll leave some links down here of maybe our insurance company and some ideas where you can go to seek out insurance and it's just something you just got to pay on a monthly basis and it's not a lot of money but it is money out of your pocket and it is part of running a business and it's part of business expenses so now we're going to talk about painting tools and what it takes to actually have a legitimate painting company or a painting company that is operating say you know fast and efficient and making your really good money I mean you you can start off I started off in the very beginning my career I had a 76 Chevy truck and I just got a ladder do a ladder in the back got a few paintbrushes the very first job I did I had an inherited sprayer I had a Titan 440 eye and airless sprayer and you know a couple other miscellaneous tools and I just started painting just with that it doesn't take a whole lot and that's the one of the beauty of painting as a career and as a business you don't need a whole lot there are a kind of I wouldn't say a big list or a large list but there is a list of tools that is gonna make you money and make your life a lot easier and make it faster and more efficient as a painter and one of them I had the very beginning was an airless sprayer and airless sprayer is an invaluable tool it's a tool that is gonna put the paint on significantly probably ten times faster then you can ever put it on with a brush and the roller and I would say at least 50% of the scenarios that you're gonna run into you know you can utilize in hairless sprayer to help you make money and the very first airless sprayer I ever had which is a professional model and it's a very small and affordable model was a Titan 440 eye and now they don't have that money more do they have the Titan 440 impact but there's a wide variety of hairless sprayers you're just gonna have to seek you know how what is the best model for you and what you can afford now one of the cool things that I have now is a store and it's on the website or you can find it at store the Idaho painter com or you can go to the Idaho Peter calm and it'll take you directly to our store and on that store is only items that we keep in our vehicles that we feel are real game changers or tools that every painter needs we have that you can or you can just go down in the video description and I'll give you a link to what we call our toolkit and that's going to show you different toolkits we have for say rolling walls or doing prep work and stuff and you can look at the tools that I feel are very valuable all right so now we got our insurance we've got our license all set up we've got a business card we've got a web page we bought our tools we threw them all on the back of our truck and now we're ready to go and we got our first phone call and a the customer says hey I want to bid and now we're gonna show up and we're going to do an estimate I'm gonna show up look professional act professional gathered all the information that I need to write a bid and I do offer you know this in our Academy we'd have an estimating course at our Academy you can come you know to that course I do have a video that talks about estimating and our bid packet but you can go check that out after this video but now I've met the customer and they give me all the information I need I'm gonna take that back home and now I'm gonna write my bid or some people just write out the bid right then and there but here's the thing this this is your opportunity to sell yourself and win this job and one of them I've always been a big proponent of having a good quality very explanatory bid packet and now what I do an estimate on something so simple as a bedroom I don't offer the the estimate to the customer right then because I'm gonna go home with the information I'm gonna personalize a bid packet and take it right back to them and just for a single bedroom I bid packet is somewhere around 18 to 20 pages just for that bedroom and some people might watch in this video just think that that's absolutely overkill but I'm trying to win every single job that I bid and I want to look professional and I want to look like the most qualified candidate in your bid packet when you leave that's the best opportunity to portray that image and my bid katka includes a lot of things including an estimate what I'm going to actually do with the job site pictures of the people are going to show up at the job site in a whole lot of other doctor pieces of paper and documents that really sell my company and this is your one chance because more than likely it's not just going to be you sitting there you know your bid and your packet sitting there at the table when you leave it's gonna be multiple and they're gonna be looking and evaluating who they're gonna hire and this is your chance to convince them to hire you and it needs to be professional if you're handing them just a one-page scratched out hand written document to them and leaving that with you it's probably not gonna win you a whole lot of bids you know some people may want it right there right then and there or want you to give them a number write them in there I always you know shy away from that say you know for me to write you a proper estimate I need to go back to the office look at the numbers calculated it up and then if you really want to you know have a high you know a high win rate on your estimates you would hand-deliver them back the bid packet I email it back to them nowadays because I kind of like to save trees save gas and actually save time but you have the two options but that document needs to be very professional-looking and be very explanatory of everything you're gonna do everything you're gonna offer and be focused on what you're gonna have for as a painter and what you're gonna do for them so now if writing a bid packet is one of the things that you know isn't you know your strengths you know I do offer on my website the Idaho painter calm or stored on the Idaho painter calm you know copies of our bid packet and I've got editable versions and non-edible versions I've even got our invoice package some of the door hangers that I used to use you know when I was out there you know going door-to-door trying to you know get prospective clients and stuff so there you have it this is the condensed version of how to start a painting company if you got any questions or comments about this video you want to ask us questions just leave them right down in the comment section below don't forget to subscribe to our channel hit this scribe button the notification bell it's free simple easy to do if you want to see the full-length version just let us know down in the comment section below that we should make it available right here on YouTube it is available to our paint life mafia 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