Painting Small Business
Starting a home based painting business will keep you busy and provide an extra income, if not your main income. This type of small business requires a bare minimum investment to start and you provide the man power to grow your painting business. Here tips on start a home based painting business.
Instructions
1. Small Business License and Insurance
Liability insurance is essential.
Other types of insurance needs ,to start your home based painting business, depends on:
• Are you part of a union?
• Will you be doing both interior or exterior painting or just primarily one or the other?
• Will you be having a carrier for ladders on a truck, transporting chemicals of any kind, and putting any advertising on a truck?
• Will you be having people working for you whom you will consider to be actual employees of yours?
Those things will make a difference as far as your cost and coverage in the possible types of insurance that you will need to get in addition to liability insurance.
To start a home based painting business you may not need a State contractor's license as most State contractor licensing boards only require licenses of technical contracting specialties such as HVAC or electrical type work. You should get a business license so you can take jobs in several different cities, town, or municipalities.
2. Painting Services to Offer
Determine what services you will offer.
• Interior
• Exterior
o Wood
o Stucco
o Brick
• Specialty painting
• Commercial work
3. Tools Needed For Your Painting Small Business
To start your home based painting business you will need a truck or van, ladders, brushes, rollers, masking tape, and some drop cloths. A pair of white painting pants will help you look the part, also. Build up your tools slowly as your business increases by adding air compressors, electrical paint rollers, scaffolding, and other equipment as you need and can afford it.
4. Small Business Marketing and Advertising
To get your phone ringing without investing a lot on advertising use the following small business marketing tactics:
• Get sturdy lawn signs made. Make sure there is plenty of white background with blue letters with the name of your company and a statement about how you provide a service that they need. Put them on intersections, where there are homes being built, etc.
• Make up flyers and take a couple of hours each week canvassing different neighborhoods distributing them.
• Print out business cards and pass them out to everyone you meet. Remember them when you go shopping, to church, your child's sport events, even to the movie theater.
• Take a around your community and determine what homes look like they could need a new coat of paint. When you see a need, leave your card and/or a flyer for the homeowner letting them know you can spruce up their house.
• Paint your walls, or someone's you know, and take before and after pictures to start a professional portfolio. Bring this with you when providing bids/estimates for painting jobs.
• Remember to use the Internet and take advantage of websites that let you submit free classified ads. Some include www.craigslist.com, www.alibaba.com, www.hotfrog.com.au, www.kellysearch.com, www.kbclassifieds.com, and www.oodle.com.
• If you plan on spending money on advertising, plan to advertise on a regular basis, one ad in one issue of the newspaper never works, it should be continuous, at least until you have been in business for a length of time, have repeat customers and/or referrals.
• A good target marketing idea is to find the people, realtors, and banks that are purchasing the foreclosed homes and offer your painting services to them.
5. Painting Estimate Tips
Until you can, based on experience, look at a job and know what it will take to complete a complete painting service Here are some tips for bidding or estimating a painting job.
• Know exactly what your potential painting customer's needs are and what needs to be painted with which color.
• Measure the square footage of all the surfaces to be painted and subtract openings such as doors and windows. This is the amount of surface to be used for your painting estimate.
• Each type of paint will be able to cover a certain number of square feet. Use this information to determine how much paint will be needed.
• Note how many small surfaces such as window sills and trim and determine the amount of paint needed and if it is a different color.
• Have an average cost per square footage determined, making sure you include all of your expenses for tools, paint, mileage, etc.
