Jon Bryant: Boosting Profits with Time-Based Estimation in Painting

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For more than 10 years , he went from guesstimating to pricing based on previous projects or market rates to finally finding the right approach time-based estimation , also called production rates .

He soon discovered that , while some estimating softwares exist for general contractors , there wasn't anything designed to solve a critical problem in the painting industry how to properly price and sell painting projects quickly and consistently .

Today , with the help of a solid team , paintscout serves an awesome community of painting contractors worldwide and has helped deliver over 400,000 estimates that have created over $1 billion in painting sales .

John has been featured in and written articles for a number of trade magazines , spoken on the topic of sales and estimation , and is passionate about improving the painting industry as a whole . John , welcome to the show .

My goal was trying to go bankrupt A week before my 20th birthday . I had no direction as to what that business was , but I just asked a friend and he said you know , there's other college students doing this , you could probably do it too . I had no better ideas there . I was starting a painting company with the goal of going bankrupt in two years .

I would have done that pretty successfully . It's not hard to do if I wasn't living at home at the time . But through that journey of going through that whole process of figuring out this business from ultimately having no experience none at all just starting out going to the paint store literally saying you guys have water , you have oil , tell me more .

That's where I started from . I quickly realized that pricing painting projects is really it's a hidden art . You can go ask 100 contractors how they do it . Probably 95 of them will tell you a pound of sand . Five of them will try to explain their process , or maybe four , and one of them actually knows and can explain it properly .

It took me a few years to be exposed to what the right method was for consistent pricing , once we found that in production estimating in the company , it was really about how to deliver this in a modern way , how to allow for a building a sales team . We were trying to scale our business .

We just didn't find a great fit in the marketplace for that type of estimation . That's what led us to build it . That was in 2018 . From then , it's been a lot of educational days and years just on how this works and how to do it really well .

Generally , when people get into it I think they're not thinking like I could be wrong here , but my initial feeling is they're not thinking exactly like a business owner . They're thinking more like a technician just trying to get work so they can stay busy and get the job . It's kind of this mix between I'm going to guess at what price the customer might pay .

I'm hoping that keeps me busy for next week . I'm not going to worry about the accounting right now because that's not what my credit word is . I think the pitfalls are just that you really don't know why you're charging what you charge when you guesstimate . You really don't know why Square footage .

A lot of times I think that information comes from hearsay at the start . You don't really know why . At the end of the day , figuring out how long the average person takes to paint , that's a variable that's really consistent and will be throughout time , I doubt we're going to get tremendously faster . Maybe technology will help that .

Different sprayers , different brushes , but we can adjust our rates to match that . Pitfalls of the square footage . Guesstimate it is you're not really tailoring that to your business . You don't know the why . Once you start to move to production rates , you now have a why you do everything and why you price it the way you do .

That helps you dial that in and really truly run a successful business . Would you do that ? Is that what you see ?

You hit the nail right on the head . And the big problem with that , I think , is you're kind of projecting , like you as a painter , assuming you're in the trades , you wouldn't pay someone $10,000 to paint your house . So you're like , oh , I wouldn't pay that much , so I'm not going to charge this person that much money .

So they're kind of projecting what they would pay , maybe . And so they're guessing , you know , because painting is something they know and it's super easy to them . So why am I going to charge a lot of money for it ? But most folks don't know anything about painting .

They don't want to do it , they don't have it , they don't want to have to go to the paint store , they don't want to do anything . So they would gladly pay someone you know tens of thousands of dollars a lot of in some cases to do it for them . So I think that's a good insight there . Yeah , so you can go ahead quick question .

If it's over 40% , then they're they might be doing something right because they're above average . If they're below 40% gross profit , then there's probably something wrong with the pricing or the efficiency . So then it just becomes okay a line of questioning to determine which one it could be and maybe some additional analysis .

So most of the time it's pricing , I mean .

So I usually just ask how are you generating ? How are you generating your pricing to your customer ? So that's the first question . And you know , here are probably all the things that you've heard and what you've already mentioned , and so if they say something other than production rates , that's you know the go to . Okay , have you considered production rates ?

And you know , you know the PCA has the some resources on that . You can buy a to get a set of production rates and then obviously , paint scout , you can build in your your production rates and generate estimates .

But question for you , for those just who are unfamiliar with production rates that might be listening Did you explain what production rate estimating actually means , or time based estimation , what that actually means ?

You know that's what this project mostly takes , and so what production rate estimate is is figuring out the time , on average , things take for your team to do . You know an example of that might be you know how many square feet of drywall can you paint two coats in an hour and so ?

Or you know how many linear feet of baseball can you paint two coats in an hour and then these types of things like you can measure over time and so you can start out with a number . Then you can , you can time your team and see what it takes , and maybe it's more or less than adjust .

So that's what production rates are is really breaking down your , your project into two time at the end of the day , which you can sell and price and understand what what that takes and you know , add material on separately if you want , but for the most part it's . It's just understanding the time .

You might have to adjust as you learn more , but there's a lot of upfront work with that . Is there any initial steps people can take to get a head start on this ? Or is this pretty much you got to get you know , start timing your crews on painting different services and just log it ?

Or do you have any kind of guidance for how to actually implement that , that kind and get that , that log of all these different production rates so that they can start you know pricing appropriately ?

The one thing with the PCA has some guys that is challenging is that they're they're hard to distill into , into simplicity , and what I mean by that is that they list out things as one , two , three codes based on different types of application , and that gets a little bit confusing .

And so great place to start , just as a baseline , but you're still going to have to do that testing , you know . The second would be you know we have some preloaded , as you know , production rates in pain scout that people can start to use , and those have been based off of , you know , amalgamated data from a lot of different sources . So that's another place .

The third you know you could time . Timing is very , you know , laborious . You've got all the other things in your in your life going on . You know you really want to time your crews , and so what I've heard people say is that you can .

One thing that's really helpful is get your team together , bring them into a space so , guys , you know we're painting this room and get each of them to write down how long they think it would take . Hey , this is the square footage . Here's our room . We're painting the walls two codes Everyone write it down .

And now we're paying the baseboards Everyone write it down and I think for the most part , painters kind of know intuitively what it'll take and the more data points you can get , the better . So the more people you can get in that discussion , the more helpful it'll be .

You take those points , put them all together , get your square footage , get your dimensions and start to look at that data and say , okay , this is what my team is telling me , let's go out and do an estimate and see if this works based on what my team is telling me .

So that process is going to cut down all the timing , all the you know moving site to site , looking at different substrates or surfaces , and really just kind of bring your team together and get them to tell you start to base it off that and you'll find more buy-in from your team . You'll find a little bit more .

You know they're going to know at least a place to start and start measuring , measuring , testing , doing some job costing , and you're going to see .

So that's a great point of allowing them to be a part of that process of developing the production rates so that they kind of understand it better maybe and also know that they had a role in it and that they were heard . So my mind went to you know when we're recording this . This is September , maybe the tail end of painting season for some .

If you're doing an annual kind of barbecue maybe , like or annual employee outing , you could take that opportunity to kind of do some of this . Maybe that would be a tax write-off have a barbecue and then go through some of the production rates and introduce this concept . So that's a great idea .

You need to still test because every team is different , right , like , the way people produce is different , the culture of every company is different . So it's worth looking at .

But I think getting those baselines and taking away the like the really laborious work of sitting there with a timer , I mean that kind of thing is we're all , I think , inherently a little lazy . So let's go with the laziest solution and then test . Yeah , and I think PayneScout , you get those rates in there you can ask your team .

Together with those , you're going to get kind of a sense of what's going on .

did time-wise and make adjustments , coming back to the start . And so you get more and more confident as you go , as well as when you price this way , you can deliver that work order or that information necessary to give your team the ability to know how to get to the proper destination .

And so if you're pricing using a guesswork or sometimes square footage , even you don't really know the path to success in order to be profitable . You're still kind of wondering what it might be , whereas when you price on time , you know how long it should take and you price your time appropriately . You can .

Now , if you get to that proper point where you've said this will be 40 hours , it took us 40 hours , therefore we are profitable and that there's a lot of power to that for your team , for your company , for your estimators , the whole process becomes a lot more predictable and understandable . I think .

There's that initial excitement like , yes , I closed it , but then you're like , okay , now we have to produce it . Did I actually price this right ? Because I don't know , am I going to lose money on this ? Because , yeah , I booked it . But then the excitement goes away Because I'm like , okay , well , I actually pressed this right .

So that's the peace of mind there is definitely big . I can see that .

So that excitement at the start of being like man I just sold this huge job almost destroyed his company because he didn't know really what the time was going to take to do a lead job I've never done one and you can run into some real problems . And then the second is like another guy that I've talked to . This happens a lot .

This isn't one guy , but they go do the estimate , they go to the house , they talk to the customer All of that's fine . They go back to their

car to do up the estimate and they get this incredible amount of anxiety Like what is the price on this job ? What I don't know ? I don't want to screw up again .

And hearing that feeling , I know that feeling all too well , that anxiety and that feeling of like I don't know where is this $5,000 , $10,000 , $15,000 , I don't know and that could really mess with my business .

That feeling sucks and I think when you I don't know what your experience was , daniel like did you learn about production rates and start to get that figured out , or ?

But I wasn't super confident in it , just kind of 18 years old and going to people's houses and doing this first time business type of thing .

So I think , coming full circle , like when we made that transition as a company to production estimating and really committed to it , man , we saw our you know gross profits increase . We saw a company morale increase . We saw a net profit increase . We saw a net profits increase .

I mean these were just straight across the board increases because all of a sudden we had control of our business and every time I think we sell a job , really we're selling our business .

And so if you're guessing , you're not really selling your business , you're just giving it a number and so getting like like I mean I've heard you talk about production as many before like like you get it .

And I think sometimes I just want lots of people to get that feeling of confidence and like recapturing what they set out to do their life with the business Just make money and get the lifestyle they want . Let the dream , but without . With painting , it's that moment of pricing is just so vital , so critical .

That's going to naturally open up , like you said , your net profit , which is the money going in your pocket . That that's gonna solve a whole bunch of problems there . And then the other thing you know you kind of have a system of doing things .

So you said freedom , like then you have the freedom to Let somebody else do the estimating because they have a system to actually work off of . Can you talk to that at all ?

Hiring the salespeople is a real challenge , especially when it's experience-based pricing , like if you're the one who's actually been , you know pricing , using guesstimating and got really good . How do you transfer on that knowledge ?

How do you , if you're just doing square footage pricing , how do you trust that that number , when there's preparation and all this other stuff that comes in , is going to be spot-on ?

And so I think the freedom comes when you know that when you pass on the sales which is really critical point to getting your business to be a business that you know that that information can be passed on easily to another party and that they're going to be able to price the projects in order for you to run the business that you want .

And so you know , for us it was , you know , really tied to this concept of time-based estimating , understanding our times . You know , working with technology to take pictures and videos and ensure that new reps weren't under pricing .

Working with a mentor to you know whether it's the business owner like myself , or it was , you know , another rep who had gone through our system . These things allowed us to get the business to be a business , everyone to do their role properly and for this place to operate really , really well , and I think it .

It comes down ultimate freedom , and having a business in painting comes down to passing along the hardest part , which is sales . That gets a lot more streamlined when you have a system and understand why , why you price what you do .

And then the secondary one is the efficiency side of things .

And you know , if you have that system where you know the budgeted hours for each of these projects that you're closing , you can improve your efficiency with using this , the same framework , production rates , because Now you know how long it should take your team to complete the project and you can hold them accountable .

And , uh , this is one of the big things I like about pain scout is that you do your estimate and pain scout and you know it calculates the , the budgeted hours , and it transfers that over to the work order , um , and so then you have a work order that you can hand over to your crew leader , to your Subcontractor , whoever it is , and you can say , hey ,

here is the budget hours for this project , um , and you can hold them accountable , which will improve your efficiency . So it's , uh , this is like you know To be the dead horse . This is . This is critical to get down . Um , what other things features or Workflows ? Does pain scout help with that process of we're transferring the Estimate to a work order ?

You can pass on your subcontractor to your team . It breaks down not only labor but also preparation . It'll give them a sense of how much paint or materials needed .

Um , it also has a really cool feature which you know as , coming from a paint paint contracting background , I really wanted , which was that when you , um , when you typically estimate most programs , you do it by area . So you say , like , in this area we're painting Walls , trim ceiling . In this area we're painting , you know , walls , trim , wayne scouting .

So walls , baseboards , wayne scouting , whatever that might be . And what I always got questions from customers about was well , that price is a little bit too much . What if we took out the , the walls ? I just want to do the , the baseboard , the ceiling and the Wayne scouting ? Um , and that was a very labor intensive For us to go back and remove everything .

And so what paint scale lets you do is break down everything into surfaces so it has a separate view surfaces .

So when the customer you want to present that information to your customer , you can enter it all in by area but then it'll display to the customer if you want , in walls , baseboard , wayne , scouting ceiling , so they can now see the prices for each one and make decisions to to , you know , engineer a price that they're looking for .

But what that does is it transfers so well over to a work order where we don't only give you an area view that you're doing , we also tell you by surface what your , your work time and your prep time is . And that helps a lot so that you can break down the job properly . So when your crew comes in they don't have to see the whole house .

As you know , in the bedroom we're doing the walls . In the , you know , office we're doing the walls . In the bathroom , the walls . They can see walls , see those areas , see how long it should take , break down the job appropriately .

So they do one task at a time , one task at a time and and when that happens we see even greater efficiency because people aren't jumping from area to area doing separate tasks . So the system has been designed to work like a painter , should work and sell like the customer actually wants , because the customer didn't ask you to break it down by area .

They just said I want the walls painted in my house and so we can deliver information to the customer and to your crew . That's both efficient for the sales process and the production process .

That's pretty cool , Basically , if a customer says , hey , paint the interior of my house , and then you can present the bid to them with the walls and the baseboards and the ceilings and then they can come back and say well , actually we were hoping my budget was more like filing $5,000 instead of $7,500 . Can we just not paint the ceilings ?

And then that would be in my budget . That gives them more information to make a decision , as opposed to here's where painting your living room , your kitchen , your bedroom , one bedroom , two , and it has all these . They want to paint all those places , but maybe the ceilings are not as important to them . Is that what ?

So they now have control over what they want to spend and they feel like it's more of

an Alucard-type experience , which we've seen that be very successful in the sales process , where you're not telling the customer what they want , you let them choose what they want , and so that's been really helpful . From the start , I felt that that was really helpful for customers and so we built that in .

It was a huge pain to build because mathematically it's all really complicated , but it's helpful for the customer to see what they're getting and for the crew at the end of the day to break it down . When you I think a lot of teams it's hard for them to see the project properly , even with a work order by area . They need to see it by .

Hey , I've got , I have 30 hours for baseboards . I have 42 hours for walls . Hey , there's actually 12 hours of preparation on the walls . So , hey , jim , I'm going to have you work on the preparation of the walls for the next day and a half , because that's 12 hours , so I want you to go mud Meanwhile .

Sue , I'd like you to get going on the baseboards for the next couple of days , because we have that time . And so now those people are more efficient because they work on specific tasks , not on the whole project .

As you know , they're not jumping walls , ceiling trim , they just have their role and they have their time , and so they can be more specific , better craftsmen as well as produce better yeah , that makes sense and , yeah , that is an awesome feature .

It will give you an estimated amount of paint to buy for at the paint store , which I would imagine would , you know , make your paint purchasing process a little bit more efficient . Is that kind of how it works ?

It's a great place to start and it's really helpful if you just say , like , you know , we're going to cut this in half for now and we're going to order up as we need to , but you're getting a good sense of how to you know how much product that space should use .

In theory , our system lets you adjust coverage rates , so you can start to make those adjustments as you go to . So , say , a manufacturer says , you know , 350 square feet per gallon or whatever , but you find that , based on the average room , there's 100 square feet that aren't being covered .

Your coverage might go further on a product because you're not doing the windows , that kind of thing , but the bottom line , yes , is it does calculate that as you go , and it's it's really , really helpful when you're trying to be , you know , efficient for ordering and getting the right product to the job site .

Is there anything else that folks run into a challenge or an objection when trying to switch from their current method to production rates , and how might they be able to to kind of overcome that challenge ?

For us , it really took a commitment , you know , I'd say 10 years ago , committing to production rates and knowing that you know the first couple of jobs were a learning experience , and so you need to set yourself up for that . Right , this is a learning experience .

I'm going to give this , you know , some time before you just abort , and so I think that , yeah , that's kind of the emotion that I think we can describe is that lack of trust in the system and and failure leading you back to what you used to do .

So I'd say commit , just know that it's going to work out , start the discussion with your team , start looking at each project as it comes in how long did it take , how did it ? Was it successful and make adjustments

from there . So I think that's a barrier and I think , yeah , just just get started , try it out .

Whatever the case may be , you know how can paint scout kind of push that information in another software or talk to Quipx online . And from what I my experience with paint scout , a lot of that is you have a Zapier integration , you have Quipx online integration integrations with other CRMs I think Workloo is one of them .

I really like that kind of built-in capability to really to be able to work with most softwares . It seems like that's been a deliberate effort on your behalf and the paint scout team . Is there anything I missed with that kind of capability ?

We want to be laser focused on that , and for us , it's all about delivering estimates quickly , professionally , that you're going to allow you to build the company that you want to build , and so we've . You know we , every day we fight , you know , feature requests that are outside of what we want to do , and we just believe that .

You know there's really amazing CRMs out there , there's better accounting software , there's far better scheduling software than we're ever going to be able to build , but the thing that we can be role class at is pricing and selling painted jobs , and that's where we want to live , and so we'll do everything in our power to make sure that you know your tech stack

works , that you can get information in and out of the system as you need , and that we can allow you to build a world class tech stack that lets you build an amazing business . And so that's our , you know , one of our founding principles , and we'll hold true to that for forever .

In terms of us being some a company that makes painting pricing and selling paint jobs really easy . So we don't want to be distracted by that , I guess .

I didn't know what they meant , like I was in the same position you were , and so it wasn't until , you know , someone showed me here's a basic production rate system , try it .

And I actually committed to it because I was just essentially so beat down by everything else that I actually went and did it in the amount of relief that I felt once we started to implement this system .

I would say it was the biggest , most important day of me staying in the painting industry , because finally I understood what it meant to run a business and that feeling of hey , I have control . And so my advice to people you know , if you want to feel like you have control of your business , give it a shot , just do it .

If it doesn't work for you , well , at least you tried . But give it a real effort and hopefully you'll get that same feeling I got , which was like sweet relief . So that's my two cents . I think right there .

If you want to get involved in the discussion , start asking questions , see what other people are asking . I think that's a great way to start . We also have a lot of great resources on our website . So you know how to calculate our hourly rate is on there how to come up with production rates , you know starting production rate sets .

Those are all available through us . So you know , come on over , check it out . We're not for everybody . We get that , but you know , in the meantime you might learn something . So I don't think there's any harm .