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Are you tired of the 9–5 grind? 😩 Ready to take control of your time and income?
In this video, I reveal a simple yet powerful business model that anyone can start — with low startup costs, flexible hours, and high profit potential.

Whether you’re looking to work from home, build passive income, or finally achieve financial freedom, this is your blueprint.

I’ll walk you through:
What this business is
How much it costs to start
Step-by-step how to launch
How much you can realistically earn 💰

Perfect for beginners, side hustlers, and anyone ready to break free from the 9–5 system.

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00:00Imagine going from having only $12 in your bank account to having the biggest painting
00:06company in the country. That's what Steven did. I'll be the biggest painting company in Austin,
00:10Texas. I'm gonna be ridiculous and I'm gonna build a ridiculously sized business. What kind
00:15of revenue do you guys do today? That one painter alone will do at least 80 million this year.
00:18We're gonna break down exactly how he did it so you can learn from it too. Door knocking seems so
00:24much scarier than it is. Hi, just letting you know that we're the painting company across the way.
00:29Can I show you how to hold a paintbrush? I can feel the concern like this. Yes. But then how do you?
00:36No. I love this business model. It's two things. It's painting and it's sales.
00:50Hey, you're late. Let's start with the tape. Let's go. What do we got on the plate today? Well,
00:56we're painting a lot of walls. So are you getting help? Yeah. Or did you just hear that film? Mostly film.
01:00We'll have you do all the work today. I did all this math and kind of dreamt of starting my own
01:06painting company one day. So when you think the word painting, it seems to me you kind of think
01:10the word freedom. Yeah, absolutely. I didn't know how to do much else because I dropped out of college,
01:15decided it wasn't for me. But I knew that I could figure it out. And so I just started painting rooms
01:19for people, stuff like that. I reached out all the realtors that I knew. I would door knock. And so
01:23if I didn't have any jobs for that day or for the rest of the week, I would knock on doors until
01:27somebody gave me a job for the same day or the next day. And it would typically only take me an
01:31hour to four hours. And I would have a job to start that afternoon. That's amazing. As a kid,
01:34making 220 bucks a day. Sometimes more. Yeah, sometimes I mean, if you're doing the work
01:40yourself, you can make 500 bucks a day or more. Okay, so a blue collar business, not typically
01:48something young people who are highly capable doing math in their heads are going to jump right
01:53into. Right. What was it about owning this type of business that was so interesting to you? It was a
01:58skill that I could offer with my time. I didn't need a lot of equipment. I didn't need to do marketing.
02:02I didn't do any of that. I didn't even need a team. It was just something that I could do. And I
02:06knew from a really young age that I didn't want to work for anybody else. Like I might be that bad
02:10of an employee. You're unemployable. I'm unemployable. Yeah. So I just wanted to do something for myself.
02:16And I also figured like I'm 21. I had just gotten married. I had been doing some sub work for another
02:20company. I called her. I was soaking wet from a pressure washing job. And I was like, I cannot work for
02:25anybody else. I need to quit today. There's also like something really therapeutic about painting in
02:29particular as an industry. Yeah. Like pressure washing. I've done it. It is hard. Yeah. Like
02:35when I was like trying the trigger on that thing. And you're soaking wet all day. So by the end of the
02:39day, your little finger. You smell like bleach. You go out to dinner after work. You still smell like
02:42bleach. Right. That's tough. But with painting, like people do this for a hobby. Yeah. And there's
02:48something really nice about we're going to get into it today and paint. But when you can finish the
02:52whole job and seeing like kind of that transition at the end is cool. It's really rewarding. And also like
02:57paint has the biggest, most dramatic effect for the lowest price. You started this thing with 12
03:03bucks in your pocket. $12. I thought I had a job booked when I quit my other gig for like 2,700
03:09bucks. And the day after I quit my job, I thought I was going to go start that job. He called me and
03:13said, the household, I don't need it painted anymore. And so I had nothing. I had 12 bucks. And so I
03:18started knocking on doors and calling real estate agents. Wow. So I always tell everybody, you don't need
03:22anything other than a paintbrush and a customer to start a business. You don't need an LLC. You don't even need a bank
03:27account yet. Worry about those things once you actually have some money in your pocket. Yeah,
03:30totally underrated. Unit economics of this job. How much do you make on a house like this? Typically
03:35our average job is $5,300. Wow. Okay. 5k per job. Fascinating. How long does it take per job?
03:42$5,300 jobs, three days, maybe four. What is an hourly rate you make if you're an individual painter?
03:48We charge around $700 a day and our paintings are going to make about $300 a day. Amazing. Then if you have
03:54to think about insurance, what does that cost you? Insurance for a small crew, you're going
03:58to be looking at like $150, $200 a month. Marketing? Marketing. If you have happy customers, you don't
04:04have to do anything. But typically about 5% of our budget is marketing. How many jobs can
04:08you do in one day? So it depends on the number of crews you have. In my Austin location, we
04:14can do 10 to 15 jobs a week. Okay. And then how much do you think you can make as an individual?
04:19Like as somebody just painting by themselves? Yeah. They were just painting by themselves.
04:24It depends on what you're charging in your area, but I used to charge around $400 or $500
04:29a day just for me painting by myself. It's pretty good money for a 21-year-old that dropped out
04:34of college. 100%. Okay. So rough numbers. Let's say year one. I did about $100,000 in sales.
04:41Woo. Which is a lot of money for a 21-year-old. Yeah. Year two to three. I was doing probably
04:47$250,000. Wow. $250,000 to $300,000. Mm-hmm. What about years, let's call it four and five?
04:54I would say from year four to probably all the way to year eight, I was doing about $400,000
04:58or $500,000 a year. So one dude and some employees equals somewhere between $100,000 to $500,000
05:04in a paint business. Yep. You can do this with just one crew pretty much. You can do this with
05:09one crew. Wow. Let's break down some hard and fast numbers that nobody else shares on the internet,
05:13but we're about to. Okay. Let's start with how much a margin of the job is and also labor costs.
05:20Yep. Explain this. All right. So you're going to have about 15% is going to be stuff like the floor
05:23paper, paint, and any other materials you need. And then 35% is typically going to be what you're
05:28paying your painter as your labor for. Nice. What about these numbers? That would mean that a bad
05:34gross profit is going to be 30, 40%. A good gross profit is going to be 45 and up. So you're shooting
05:39for 50 or more. Lastly, the top closers are going to close about 40 to 50% of their estimates. We're
05:45seeing Julio even a little above that. Wow. So you go to one or two houses, you try to close one of
05:50them. To be safe, you're a newbie. Let's say you're going to go to five or 10, but God, those odds are
05:54pretty good. They're great. Oh, I'm Cody. If you're new to this channel, I own 25 businesses and now I own
06:02part of this one. Also subscribe. This is how you get your ownership and your business.
06:09So if I was going to do a job, one job to start this business, how much would this cost? So you
06:16would need, I don't know, a few of these. That's a pretty nice brush. That's 20 bucks.
06:21Ooh. Okay. Okay. It's a fancy brush. It's a fancy brush. It feels like it. Okay. So let's call it
06:26what? Three or four brushes? Yeah. You probably need three brushes. There's different types for
06:30different stuff. You probably need three brushes. You're going to need a roller. The nicer rollers,
06:35these are about 10 bucks. You don't want to buy the cheap six pack ones. If you got your rollers in
06:39a six pack, throw it away and buy something nice. Okay. Okay. You literally, the time you will save
06:44by getting a nicer roll, you can cut the rolling time in half. We need painter's plastic. This is what,
06:49like 30, 40 bucks. Oh, that's probably 20 bucks. Yeah. 20 bucks. Yep. Okay. Painter's plastic.
06:55We got that. We need, what is this? This is like a, oh, oh, that's a masking machine. So that makes
07:00it easier to cover. This is what we'll use on the baseboards and stuff. So I can show you. Yeah.
07:06This thing saves you a ton of time too, because see that. There you go. And you can just cover the
07:12baseboards if you want like that. So typically what would have been like a two-step process is one.
07:27Now we're done besides a little bit of tape, which is, I don't know what these costs.
07:31The other thing that every painter needs is sandpaper. Yep. So you can just make sure that
07:36things are smooth and actually look really nice when the paint's on it. And then you need paint,
07:40which is probably your most important ingredient. Yes. Paint's the most expensive typically compared
07:44to your prep materials. This is super paint from Sherwin-Williams. Yep. So they're pretty heavy.
07:50They're heavy. Just looking at my workout in today. Okay. So when it comes to paint,
07:54I would guess that this is the most expensive part of every job. And if you want to make money painting,
07:59you have to be able to properly price this plus labor, right? Yes. Yes. That's the...
08:03Yeah. You got to make sure your labor is right, but you really have to make sure you get your
08:06materials right. And paint's going to be the most expensive part. That five gallon bucket,
08:10is going to be retail for 250, 300, depending on where you're buying it, what your account is.
08:15But if you're off by one, two buckets, like that's, it's going to be a lot. It's a lot. Yeah. So
08:20typically 30 to $50 a gallon on paint. And then if you're getting a five gallon bucket,
08:24it's going to be, you know, 250 or something. And then how do you decide how much of this you need
08:28for a place? Shortcut way to do it is a hundred square feet of the floor plan. You're going to need a
08:34gallon. So if it's a 2000 square foot house to do the walls, you're going to need 20 gallons. If you're going to
08:39paint the ceilings, you're going to need at least 10 gallons. That's kind of like baseline. But we
08:43train our guys how to go through the house and assess any other variables that would either
08:47increase it or decrease it. Yeah. That's amazing. So higher roofs, higher ceilings. If we mess up
08:53on the paint, it's our fault, not the customers. Oh, so I'm going to eat it and take care of it.
08:57Oh, really? I'd rather have a happy customer and I lose a little bit of profit and they're referring
09:02me to the neighbor. Yeah. Then have somebody who's upset. Even the job's going to look great,
09:06but now they have to pay $500 more on paint because I didn't know what I was doing. I'm
09:10not going to put that mistake on the customer. That's cool. Yeah. My painters should take note.
09:14They never did that for me. It's okay. We are painters for me. Deal. Deal.
09:21All right. Customer said you get to pick the color. No pressure. Maybe, maybe we want to go pink.
09:27No. Okay. He doesn't like that. Something a little more on brand. Oh, right. Right.
09:33Branding. How about a blue? Sounds good. All right. We're going to go with
09:40Maria Baja. Perfect. We want to make sure we don't get paint all over these,
09:43so let's go ahead and brush around it so there's no risk of hitting it with a roller.
09:46Okay. Sound good? Yes. Okay. Okay.
09:49All right. Can I show you how to hold a hand brush?
09:52Like it feels the concern. You know what, like kind of, kind of like that. Okay.
09:56Yeah. Okay. All right. Like this? Yes. But then how do you, no. Just like, like this,
10:02like from the other side. Like if you're going to, we can practice that. Just practice that.
10:08Like this? Like this? No. How is this still not right? Are you guys watching? Doesn't this look the
10:14same? Let's talk about how to make some money in this business. How could you get a client without a
10:18single dollar of advertising? So we call it the five hours of revenue. So the five hours of revenue,
10:23I started with real estate agents. Not only can real estate agents introduce you to homeowners
10:26who need their house painted, but they also know all the other contractors, roofers,
10:30whoever else you might want to get referrals from also. So it's real estate agents, then it's referrals.
10:34So that could be referrals like from a real estate agent or it could be referrals from your customers,
10:38your happy customers. And you have repeat business. So it's not a reoccurring revenue model,
10:42but we're doing the inside of this house now. I'd love to do the exterior of this house in a year.
10:47And so you have a lot of repeat business. It could be, it could be 10% of your business in painting.
10:51It could be as much as 35% in some locations. Then you have reputation, which is going to be
10:58your online reputation or reviews like Google reviews or Yelp reviews. And then you're going
11:03to have relationships. So everybody that you know could be a client or they can introduce you to
11:07somebody. So those are the five hours of revenue. Steven, subscribe.
11:14Let's break down kind of the wild story that you've had at T1P because you basically started
11:21with 12 bucks, then a hundred, 200, 300, 500 in a couple of years. But this year,
11:26you're going to do a hell of a lot more than that. How big is this company right now?
11:28I think we'll finish the year around 80 million. That's wild. And last year,
11:32how much did you do? A little over 30 million.
11:34What do you think is the reason why you guys were able to grow a trade service-based business?
11:39Yeah. To such a size. You got to bring other people along for the ride. So in 2019, I hired a
11:45manager, started delegating a lot of things to him, started working on sales and developing more
11:50systems. And then we ultimately led to us franchising in 2021. We became the fastest
11:55growing painting company of all time. And I think the very best thing that I had wasn't even my painting
11:59skills or any of that. It was the freedom that I had in this good business model. So I invited other
12:05people to buy in as a franchise partner and we blew up. One of the coolest things about your business
12:08model is it's for other people who want ownership, who care about having sovereignty and being able
12:14to be their own boss. They want skin in the game, but they also need a playbook. What I've realized
12:19after helping thousands of people buy businesses is not everybody is cut out for buying a business and
12:25being all by themselves running it. In fact, there's a lot of health that comes from being
12:30with a tribe of humans who are all building right alongside you. It's like the best parts of a team,
12:36but you get to own your business. Exactly. Which is why I think I used to not like franchises because
12:41I saw a lot of bad ones. Yeah. But then when I saw what you guys were doing at TMP, that totally
12:46changed it for me. And I think what we have is 10 years of my mistakes that you don't have to make
12:52because we've written all the systems, we have all the training, we have all the marketing dial,
12:56that all that stuff that you would need, it's all ready to go. And they get to launch their business,
13:00they can hire managers, hire painters, do the whole thing. And they're hitting numbers that took me
13:05eight, nine years to hit in their first year. Freedom happens in constraints. So when somebody
13:10gives you, hey, here's the playbook for how to do all the mindless things that you shouldn't have to
13:14figure out, but you do when you're brand new as a business owner, here's all of the playbook. But then
13:19go and have fun executing on the reason why we all like to run businesses, which is go and have fun with
13:23your sales process. Go and have fun with closing people. Exactly. Be creative with your local
13:28marketing. Exactly. You can do all sorts of stuff. Yeah. But do you want to really get creative with
13:33how to clean and prep and prepare a space? No. You kind of want to show me how to do it the fastest
13:40way possible so I never have to think about it again. Exactly. We tell everybody because they're
13:43like, I don't know anything about paint. I'm going to teach you more about paint than you ever wanted to
13:47know. And then we're going to go out and build a really great business together where it's actually all
13:50about team building and customer service, which anybody can do if they focus on it. People ask
13:54me all the time, what is your marketing secret? I'm like, happy customers. I've never hired a
13:59marketing agency or a marketing staff member that has ever been able to do as much for me or my
14:04locations as my happy customers will be. And so if you show up on time, you communicate with them.
14:08And then most importantly, paint's really messy. So if you don't leave a mess and you actually leave
14:11the house cleaner than when you started, people will tell the whole street about you. One of my favorite
14:16CEOs once told me, if you pretend like your very first customer is the only customer you're ever
14:22going to get, your business will expand exponentially. And most people don't do that
14:28because we're always thinking about the next one, the next one, the next one. And we don't realize
14:31that humans are built as viral networks. And so instead of having a viral piece of content,
14:36one human in a world in which competency is super scarce can be your viral Facebook ad.
14:41Okay. I think we should go try to make you some money. Let's do it. Let's go.
14:45Let's go try to door knock, right? So explain this process really quickly. You come to a house
14:49and immediately try to do more houses than they run, right? That's our first goal is like, we're here.
14:55Why don't we paint some more homes? And so we call it courtesy knocking. We're letting the 20 homes
14:59nearest this house know that we're the ones painting this house. So if they see a truck park where it
15:04shouldn't be, they see some paint spilled, whatever, they see somebody maybe spraying, there's overspray.
15:10We're telling them that we're the people that can take care of them, right? And so because of that,
15:15it basically drops down that barrier with the customer because we're not trying to sell them
15:18when we knock on that door. We're telling them we're here. If you see any issues, I'm your guy.
15:23And then now that I'm at the door, I'm also offering them an S-man. Amazing. Okay. What should I not do
15:28when at the door? So we walk up to the door. It's the two of us. Yes. What do we do? We knock on the door.
15:33How many times? I like to do a one knuckle knock because it's soft or ring the doorbell.
15:42You don't want to come and sound like you're the cops. Right. Right. And I've seen so many
15:45door knockers walk up. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah. Like you're just frustrated the customer a lot.
15:50And then you have your hands available so that they can see you're not threatening. Exactly.
15:55You dress like a pro. You get paid like a pro. Yes.
15:57Hi. Hey, sorry. No, you're fine. I just, I hate door knockers too. At least we're not the cops,
16:03right? Yeah. So if you're going to door knock, the whole idea is to bring the barrier down because
16:07immediately they're going to throw up a kind of a defense, right? Yeah. And so throw up a shield.
16:11And so we're trying to bring that down. Humor is my favorite. Say, hey, I know you hate door knockers.
16:16I do too, but at least I'm not the cops. Yeah. So they immediately will kind of like smile and then
16:21you can tell them while you're there. Okay, let's do it. Julio's our project manager. So yeah, cool.
16:25Thank you so much. Yeah. No problem. Love your doggo too. Come on buddy. You want to come back inside?
16:29I think door knocking seems so much scarier than it is. That's great. I didn't, I could just bend
16:34down and pay attention to the dog. People are nice. People want to help people. Hi,
16:39just letting you know that we're the painting company across the way. You know, the services with
16:44a company like this, you can stain, you can paint indoor, you can paint outdoor, you can pressure wash.
16:50Every one of these houses here needs the services. And I know because I've been somebody who needs the
16:54services that there's some money to be had. Should we let him try one? All right, let's go with Julio.
17:00Julio's the man. Okay, but you two go. All right. I want you to win us a job. How about that? Does that
17:05sound good? Okay. What's up man? How are you? Good. How you doing? I'm Steven. We, we're actually doing
17:10the work at the house next door here. I think these eaves are good up in here. Killing it. God. Yeah,
17:19if any of them are soft or have wood rot, we'll take care of it. No problem. I think Julio's the
17:23solution, so. Nice flow. We tried to hard sell him. What happened? He didn't like that. He didn't
17:29like that? No. But we got his information. Amazing. And we're, he's got to get his boss's
17:34approval, his wife, so. I love that. Nice job, guys. Dude, six houses. Six houses. That'd be about a,
17:41what? $4,900 estimate? Yeah. Okay. How long did we not? Six, like 10 minutes. 10 minutes. We got an estimate. So,
17:4810 minutes of knocking, or you can spend a hundred bucks on ads, or you just knock for 10 minutes.
17:53Fans, like, often times, I think there's going to be one human who goes, oh, thank God,
17:56I've been looking for somebody like you. Yeah. We've always put these in people's yards,
18:00but Julio had the creative idea. If you put little razor blade cuts at the top,
18:03he can put all of his cards on the top, which allow the customer to walk by and grab one.
18:08This is so good. Love this. Super cool. Pros and cons of this business. The pros of the business
18:14are many-fold. One, recession-resistant. Why? Well, I might not want to do an $85,000 kitchen
18:20remodel, but I might paint my cabinets $5,000 if I'm going to stay in my house longer because now I
18:25can't sell it. Oh, by the way, homes are getting foreclosed on more? Well, the bank needs somebody
18:31to take care of houses and upkeep them before they can sell them, which means even in a down market,
18:36a company like this does pretty well. Also, painting is one of the cheaper ways to actually
18:41totally redo the look of your house, which means instead of doing brand new wood floors,
18:46which means instead of doing a remodel on the inside, you could just paint the bad boy. I really
18:52like that. All right. What are the cons to this business? The cons are we have to find ways to
18:57make this a recurring revenue business because people don't paint consistently. So you might want
19:02to do a subscription model where people stain their decks once a year and you get them on a
19:07subscription for that. Right now, this is a transactional business, so they got to get that
19:11customer every single time. The second reason is because labor can be difficult. So you got to
19:15make sure you can find people who can actually do the painting, not just people to sell the services.
19:20You also have to make sure that if you're going to have a fulfillment guarantee, like if the estimate
19:25is wrong, we'll eat the costs that you have wide enough margins or good enough people in order to eat
19:30those costs. If you're going to do something, go big. Everyone admires the courageous. Nobody admires the
19:36timid. And don't listen to what they tell you. Size does matter.
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