CARSON GREENGROVE
House Painting
Project Overview #3

House Painting

Summer 2019
Purpose

To get experience with managing employees and starting a small business. To test business models based on a price differentiation and test out different leadership styles. To gain more entrepreneurial experience as a disrupter to an established industry.

Observation

I began painting a friend's house as a favor to them for letting me stay there for a little and so many parents came by and said it looked so nice. They would ask my friend and I if we could do theirs because the quotes that they were getting from painting companies were exorbitantly high. One of them mentioned that the quote on their house was $20,000 plus materials. There is no risk, as you give your time, but don't put anything down.

CARSON GREENGROVE
House Painting
Project Overview #3

IDEA

If painting companies were quoting people $20,000 for a house plus materials I only needed to paint one house the entire summer to make more money than I had ever made in my life.
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I did some analysis based off of difficulty of work, time estimates, and paying employees an hourly rate of $15 and decided that if I did it for half the quote that I would still come out with more than enough money to last me the school year.

I started putting my name out there to friends and family for people that wanted the exterior of their house painted or a garage or certain section of the house. I told them to get a quote from a painting company and I'd do it for half of their quote. I had my friends house which I painted with him as proof that I knew what I was doing.

To undercut the local painting market that could charge high prices because there was no major competition and create a sustainable business that I could eventually run without having to do any "actual" painting.
CARSON GREENGROVE
House Painting
Project Overview #3

Development

I had secured my first client with the $20,000 quote. I agreed to the job for $10,000 + materials included. I now had to find employees that would help me and develop a timeline and plan for the project. I recruited my brother, cousin, and some friends that I would pay $15/hour with their hours logged when the project was over and I received the money. I bought all of the materials needed for prepping and painting the house. FYI, the prep work ie. sanding the windows and fixing the old windows, took the longest. The painting part was the easiest.

I had a lot of disagreements with the effort that my employees were putting in and it allowed me to explore some creative ways of motivation. Rather than berating and nagging, which wasn't helping anyone, I learned my employees' primary motivations and played to them when I wanted to increase their work rate and productivity. It was an invaluable experience on leadership and how to proceed when things inevitably go wrong. In the end I ended up personally netting $7000 on the first project, which would undoubtedly last me the year at USC.

CARSON GREENGROVE
House Painting
Project Overview #3

Before

After

CARSON GREENGROVE
House Painting
Project Overview #3

Conclusion

This was an amazing overall learning experience that taught me a lot about how to motivate people to complete their work in a professional and productive way. I also learned to respect this kind of work because it is NOT easy and I often worked days where it was 95 degrees+ with 98% humidity. If I were to try and turn this into a full time business, I would recruit better employees that really needed the job and were skilled and efficient. In the end, everyone was happy as I saved the homeowner a LOT of money and I received a valuable learning experience. When I first started this, I had no idea what I was doing, but by the end I learned so much about painting and dealing with employees (mostly what can go wrong). I hope to transfer this experience to my career. Don't hesitate to reach out below if you need your house painted!!

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