Painting Business Scheduling: Maximizing Crew Efficiency & Systems/Tips to Help

Speaker A: If you really want to maximize the efficiency with your team, you need a dedicated project manager to make this run smoothly. Um, if you have five to eight employees and you're wearing all the hats, we have to accept that 90% efficiency is good enough because you can't focus on it to make it 98% while also being the sales guy, the finance guy, the head of marketing, the HR department, and every other role that you're in. Welcome back to another episode of the Elite Business Advice Podcast. My name is Chris Moore, the founder of Elite Business Advisors, your host here of the podcast. We still have some spots left for our 2026 elite business retreat. It's not too late. We're just about four weeks away. I think four weeks from the day this releases will be the day that people will be converging here in St. Louis. Some of us will be out on the golf course that morning at 9:30 having a fun round with our friends. Before we head into an awesome couple of days and get your spots, we've got all the details on our website@elitebusinessadvisors.com retreat, including the schedule, the content, the topics, the speakers, everything you need to know is right there in one spot. We try to make it easy for you guys. Come join us. You will have FOMO if you don't. All right, for today's episode. One of the most common problems that we hear in the painting industry revolves around scheduling. Uh, we talked last week about hiring an administrative person in that role in your company and how that's one of the things that most contractors don't do soon enough. Uh, one of the other pain points we see a lot is about scheduling. I see this a lot in questions on Facebook groups that I'm a part of for the industry. Um, it pops up here and there in our Slack community that we have for our clients. Uh, and just trying to benchmark some better practices. Uh, uh, it's something that comes up at events too, that we go to, you know, when people are having conversations, uh, you know, here and there about, you know, hey, what, what's working for you? Hey, we're struggling with this. How are you doing this? It comes up everywhere from the simple things of what software do you use? Or how do you navigate it to kind of the more complicated and this, the more strategic questions. How do you make sure your guys all get their, you know, 38 to 40 hours a week efficiently? So we're going to cover all of it here along with a few points to maybe give yourself some grace and Maybe feel better if you're asking these same questions, so I hope it helps. Thanks for plugging in. This is the elite business advice podcast. All right, I want to start off with two comforting facts before we dive into this too far. Okay? Number one, I want you to understand there is no perfect solution. All right? There is no perfect solution to the scheduling problem. Because scheduling is always going to be dependent upon things outside of our control and some inside our control. Unfortunately, most of them tend to be outside of our control. So when things are outside of our control, there's usually never a perfect solution. Uh, my good friends Matt and Maggie Kuyper, down with Harpeth Painting in Nashville, always said we are a scheduling company who happens to apply paint. And I love that because as their company has grown over the years, scheduling has become even a more complex problem thing to work through, and they pretty much just accepted that they are now a scheduling and logistics company who happens to also apply paint. Um, the second thing that maybe will help you feel better. Okay. Unless you have the exact perfect ratio of painters to project managers, your team will never run it 100% max efficiency, no matter what. So I want you to find some peace in those two things. Now, I'm not saying that because there's no perfect solution, we shouldn't still try to be better and talk about some of the stuff we're going to cover today. I'm, um, also not saying that, you know, you should just give up on having your team run as close to 100% efficiency as possible. Okay? Um. Um, I'm also not saying to accept 60% efficiency either. Right. Um. Um. And so this would be a really short, crappy episode if I just was like, well, there's these two facts. Find some peace in this and go back to what you're doing. Right. Um, not what I'm saying at all. But I do want you to understand that sometimes we overthink, sometimes we over criticize, sometimes we are scratching the surface for things that really is never going to be 100% right and perfection of a system and also in efficiency. And so we want to strive to get as close to that as we can. We want to strive to alleviate some of the bottlenecks and, you know, be better as time goes on and as new things are rolled out. Um, but at the end of the day, um, we're going to control what we can and let go of what we can. I'll talk more about that here in a little bit. So, uh, just is kind of a surface level entry point into this, uh, you know, a lot of people ask us, what are you seeing people use for scheduling and for this? And by that they usually mean softwares, tools, tips, organization, how are people doing it? Okay, some, um, people we see do utilize, you know, their, the CRM that they're using, if, if that's an option, um, or, and, or you know, a project management software out there. Um, you know, something, you know, whether you're using your CRM and drip jobs. I know Paint Scouts rolled out some operations and production stuff. I haven't personally hopped into it too, since it just rolled out within the last month or two. Um, I need to get into that a little bit more here when I get a little time. Uh, or you're using a software like Busy Busy, um, that, that's the one that we recommend the most. Um, I also know some people will use like Monday or Work Glue or something else. Right. So sometimes, you know, a software you're using has kind of a feature built into it that just integrates with everything else you're already doing. Um, even if you're using those tools. Uh, some people prefer things like Google Calendar. Um, I can say with certainty that uh, Harpeth Painting broke Google Calendar eventually. Finally, um, literally to the point there was so much data in there from all the years of it and all of the jobs they have running, uh, because of how much they've grown in the last eight years that um, the Calendar literally started glitching out on them. And so they've, they're in the middle of working through a new solution on that. Um, but Google Calendar works great. You can color code it by crew. I'll talk more about that in a second. Uh, you can, you know, organize things in there. You can put the work order in there as an attachment. You can, you know, invite, you know, your subcruise to it. Uh, you can have the address in there. You can have a lot of information, um, you know, in there as well, uh, all in one place. Uh, so Google Calendar could be a great option for you. Uh, some people prefer just like a calendar on a Google sheet tour. They can go through and just kind of, you know, line item out what crews are where. We have a production tracker that we built, um, as part of the resources for our clients. Um, that's been super helpful for some people. Whether it's in house crews or subcruise, it's all in one place to kind of see, you know, what crews have availability, you know, the first week, second week, third week, fourth week of the month. Five weeks, if, if we're in one of those months, the four months out of the year. Um, and so sometimes a Google Sheet can just be helpful with that. Um, and so to me, what I would say is figure out what feels most natural with the tech stack you have, with your capabilities, your, you know, systems that you're using. This is where there's not a one size fits all answer. Um, because a lot of it can depend upon, you know, a lot of factors in what you're doing, how your crew set up, you know, how. How plugged into technology are they, all the different things. Okay, um, one thing that. Another question that comes up a lot when this, um, and again, this comes to us, it's at events I hear about, it's things I see online, it's things I even see on our Slack workspace. Um, so I understand, I'm coming to that. You know, that's where I'm coming out with some kind of, some of these questions that I see and hear about. But a lot of people ask, well, what about having a whiteboard in the office? Right? We love a good dry erase board in our office where, you know, our admin can see, you know, our project manager can see, our estimators can see, and they can see it. And I know that works for people. Um, they love the convenience of just, you know, erase, move things around. Um, I don't hate it. I'm not gonna say it doesn't work. What I don't love about it is the systematic point of view of it. Um, you know, one thing that we really kind of share with a lot of our clients in honestly, all of the systems they have, from job costing to scheduling to their sales pipeline to the, you know, sales to production handoff, um, everything that exists in a company, from a systematic point, point of view of flowing smoothly, you know, through the stages and the different kind of things that happen. I, I want it to be at a systematic level and also a simplistic level to where like, literally I could log into anything that they have, where they're doing these things at, and be able to do XYZ functionality. Okay. What I mean by that is, you know, if you're a client in Richmond, Virginia, I want to be able to get into your Google Calendar, your Google Sheet or, you know, your CRM, wherever you're. You're scheduling your projects and pretty much see it to where if you needed me, I'm never going to do this, but if you needed me to call a customer and give them an update, I Could do it because there's a system there, right? Um, and I like that because not everybody's in the office, right? Your project managers are out in the field having a whiteboard in the office. Like, they don't have access to that. Right. Owner, um, goes on vacation for a week they need. Again, I don't want you guys working on vacation, but let's all be real, it happens, right? You can't look at your schedule. You have to text your admin, like, hey, can you send me a picture of the schedule again if Your admin's there 40 hours a week? Yeah, you know, he or she can do that. But now you're just literally wasting their time because you're having them take pictures and text them out intermittently when people need that information. Right? So, you know, same thing as I mentioned. Just not to go off on a tangent, but like, with job costing or even a sales to production handoff, right? Um, I want to be able to log into any of our clients, you know, CRMs, company cams, whatever it is, and literally be able to look at the bid, look at the notes they took, look at the pictures and videos they took, and literally be able to just order the paint for them and go kick a crew off on the project. Because, you know, again, remotely we can log in and we can see all that stuff. Right? So, like, that's kind of a big thing that we talk about, like systems and being able to do that, but do it at a level that's simplistic but also, um, accessible to where we literally could log in and do any core function of the business in that next stage. Okay. Uh, so because of that, I just gave you a really long answer about why I don't love whiteboards in the office. But hopefully it spiraled into some other thoughts of levels of simplicity and, you know, ease and systems. As you're building out, all the systems in your company, go through that lens and that filter, and I have no doubt you're going to build a great system for your company. All right, um, the second part of this is how do you maximize efficiency with your team? Okay. I said in the intro, it's not going to be a hundred percent. I don't know that it's possible for, you know, things to run at 100%, maybe for one day, which is a huge win for you, right? Maybe for a week. You know, you have eight guys and they all work exactly 40 hours and nobody really had any time at all that was wasted. Great job. I don't know that's replicatable for another week. Right. Um, so give yourself the grace in that and understand that this is, you know, to, to play off of Simon Sinek's book the Infinite Game. Um, you're never going to have just made it right again. You might make it for a day, you might make it for a week. I would argue it's probably even the best of the best at any point. Have never even made it for a month. Even if you're a solo painter, you're probably not at 100% efficiency for an entire month. Right. It happens. Okay, so give yourself that grace. But how can we focus on maximizing the efficiency with our team? First off, we need a project manager. Um, if you really want to maximize the efficiency with your team, you need a dedicated project manager to make this run smoothly. Um, if you have five to eight employees and you're wearing all the hats, we have to accept that 90% efficiency is good enough because you can't focus on it to make it 98% while also being the sales guy, the finance guy, the head of marketing, the HR department and every other role that you're in. Okay? So understand that to maximize the efficiency and what I mean by that is making sure that there's not waste in downtime. And yes, on a, on a job level that kind of falls on the crew leads, responsibility, but on a bigger picture scheduling point of view, that falls on you or the project manager, operations manager, project coordinator, whatever role is in charge of scheduling. And uh, what I mean by that is getting an update on a Wednesday to realize that you only need to send two guys there on Thursday. And those two guys will work a full day, but they'll wrap that job up and now you can send that third painter elsewhere for the day. Okay, versus you send all three of them there, they're done at like 1:32 o'. Clock. There's no room for them to really go do anything else of, of productivity the rest of the day. Maybe you catch this a little early and send the third guy somewhere else at lunchtime. But again, when you have, you know, once you get to that five to eight employee mark, you're wearing all the hat. If you're wearing all the hats still, um, we really just have to kind of accept that like 90 efficiency is just going to be what it's going to be at the time until you can have somebody that their full time job is dedicated to making sure all, you know, seven, eight, nine employees are running it. You know, 98% efficiency. Um, you know, there's going to be little things, right, that are just going to fall through the cracks. With needing to get paint, needing to get a supply, somebody has to run to Sherwin Williams. I would argue that's a while. You should delegate that out. Um, that's also a inefficient, uh, or a place of, you know, efficiency. I don't know what I'm trying to say. A place of inefficiency, uh, because they're not applying liquid on walls. Right, I understand. Prep and cleanup and other stuff goes into that. Um, so again, if they can do it at lunch break, great. You're still running pretty efficiently if they got to stop at 2 o', clock, especially if the crew's waiting on them back at the job site to finish something up. Right. It's all these little things that we just have to accept are not going to be perfect. Okay, um, so what I want you to understand in all this, uh, especially what I just said there, I want you to focus on this. This to me is the key of scheduling. In every way, every shape and form. We have to focus on controlling what we can control and let go of what we can't. Okay. M. Vague. Giving the homeowner a vague timeline, time frame from the very beginning when the job is sold is the best thing you can do to start this process. People just need an expectation and they just need communication along the way. And typically, unless they got a hard deadline for something they've communicated to you about, it's not a big deal. Right. We always booked pretty much six to eight weeks out year round. When I had my painting company, interior, exterior, cabinets, whatever we were, we were six to eight weeks out pretty consistently. So, you know, it's mid June right now, and I would be telling homeowners like, hey, you know, we're scheduling out right now for early to mid August. I would always give like an early to mid, mid to end, somewhere in that kind of rough time range. Because I knew every time something got scheduled, I slotted it into our schedule. But it also left us some flexibility for weather delays, projects going a little bit long, change order, uh, if we needed to squeeze something in because somebody had a really tight timeline and I knew I had the flexibility and bandwidth to move some stuff around, whatever. Um, it was right. I get very big time frame. Once we got inside a month, ish, three and a half weeks, I'd start giving them like a week. Hey, we're targeting the week of August 14th, right? And uh, you know, but every time I would say this I would say assuming the weather holds up on us and everything goes kind of roughly according to plan, we leave a little buffer in there. But just assuming everything goes roughly according to plan, the next four weeks. Right. Um, so it's about the expectation you set. It's about communicating with them. I always checked in, you know, I would say about every two weeks, um, from the moment the job was sold, 10 days to two weeks from the moment the job was sold until once we got inside that four week window. And then I would check in at least weekly. Um, and then as we got closer, that would be, uh, you know, two to three times a week, even if it's just a quick text, email, something. Right. Um, and then we would kind of narrow in that date. And truthfully, I never told somebody with like 100 certainty that we were going to be there until it was like tomorrow and I was texting them at three o'. Clock. Right. Like, even up until that, I would say, hey, you know, if it's Tuesday and uh, you know, we're, we're, we're starting a job, I think we're going to wrap up this project on Wednesday and I think we're going to the new one on Thursday. I would reach out to them and say, hey, listen, we're tracking to be done with this job tomorrow. That's the case. We should be there Thursday. No problem. I'm gonna do everything I can to at least make sure I get one or two painters over there Thursday. Um, however, understand things change, especially if we're doing an exterior deck, something like that. I'll check in tomorrow to give you 100% confirmation that is the game plan. Please understand, anything can happen. Right. And again, most people. Understood. So, uh, another big thing that you can control is having set crews and scheduling the crews kind of independently on their own schedules. This can be really helpful. This allows you to schedule them on strengths and weaknesses. I've done whole episodes before about the power and the chemistry of having, you know, your set crews and your teams working together every day to build that chemistry. Um, this is also great if you have kind of different divisions with inside your company. Right. You know, we've got some clients that have like, you know, a cabinet crew that they do all their cabinets and so they just kind of their cabinet schedule is independent of all the rest of the stuff. You know, they'll say, hey, we're booking seven weeks out for cabinets, four weeks for interiors, and you know, eight weeks for exteriors. Right. Because they've got crews that kind of do different things. And that also mitigates those weather issues that we can run into as well. So I love having set crews. I love having them kind of operate on their own schedules based on strengths, based on, you know, specific, different types of work that you do based on your services, whatever that looks like. Set cruise schedule accordingly. Makes it a lot easier. Um, one thing, and I kind of mentioned this, but I want to just hit on this. Um, every time I sold a job, I put it into our schedule again. Whether I kind of really communicated that with the homeowner, um, again, I would never give them that date, but I would always, okay, sold. It's a cabinet job. It's going on the back end of our cabinet team's schedule. And so now they're booked out, you know, an additional week or whatever. So, um, one strategy to have too is, and again, this, this is never perfect, but it does work well, especially if you have some larger ones. Um, keep an interior project going at all times if possible. Right. If you have two or three crews, you know, keeping a crew of two guys going on interiors, you know, ah, the whole entire summer, um, can be a great thing. Just, um, if you do get a couple of days of rain, you can, you know, throw a few more guys. You may not throw everybody on that project, um, but that can be a really solid thing if you are able to always keep an interior project on this schedule. Something that's, you know, more than a few thousand dollars, again, if you're selling larger interiors. So, um, I do know some people have like a rain day list too. Like any interior projects under a thousand bucks, they kind of just go on a rain day list, um, and kind of say, like, hey, worst case scenario, we'll get to you in that, you know, six week window where we're scheduling out our interiors for really good chance we can get to you sooner if you're flexible and, you know, we could possibly come on 24 to 48 hours notice. Um, and then, you know, anything under a thousand dollars will chip away at that. That can work really good to again, try to maximize that efficiency. So, um, this also works well if you do have like big commercial project. Um, sometimes, you know, if you're able to get enough progress done on that project, keep two or three guys there at all times. And then that way if you do have a rain day again, assuming it's an interior, um, you could throw, you know, six, seven guys on it, still stay pretty efficient. That could be a really good, um, kind of strategy to have as well. Rather than cramming all your commercial work in at one time. That also wouldn't be great for cash flow. So, um, another thing that we can control, kind of my last point here and then I'll wrap this up. Um, set the expectation for working especially, you know, on busy season, during busy season, doing exteriors for working on Saturdays. If you get like a full rain out day during the week, obviously again, you're going to do what you can to mitigate these rain outs and keep guys busy moving them around. But set the expectation like, hey, we still really want you guys to get your 40 hours for both of our sakes. Um, so, you know, I'm never going to. My personal policy was I never forced somebody to work a Saturday. I didn't say, hey, we got rained out Tuesday. You guys now have to be here on Saturday because I understand people are gonna have plans. It's summertime, they might be out of town, there's something going on, families in town, whatever. Right? Um, but I would kind of set that expectation. Hey, we really would like for you guys to plan on working Saturday if you're able to. Um, again, we're not gonna fire you. Sometimes that can be a slippery slope because sometimes people are like, oh, yeah, I can't come in. And then all of a sudden, like, your crew's never coming in. That just needs to be a reset conversation to have with them. If all of a sudden nobody ever comes in to work Saturdays, that's a little suspicious. Um, you could also go to working like 10 hour days. Hey, we're gonna be rained out probably Tuesday. So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, we're gonna at least kind of work, you know, 10 hour days to kind of make up for it. Understand, um, this is pretty normal for a lot of construction and trades, right? Dealing with weather dependency and stuff. Um, I mean, there were guys out digging a basement foundation and doing work there on Sunday this last weekend. Um, in the neighborhood we live in because of some rain that we got here in St. Louis last week. Like, uh, my personal rule is nobody ever worked on Sundays. Um, I think there might have been one case that we did that and it was because we just got rain for like three weeks straight and Sundays seem to be the only nice day. So it was like, well, hey, you guys are getting a ton of other days off. Um, so have that expectation in place again. Maybe that's something that you can kind of start pushing a little bit now. Um, give people that option and again, make sure they understand it's a win, win on, um, you know, again, this is if you're, if you're not able to schedule them on an interior commercial project, something else. So, um, just to bring this home. All right. The reason why I wanted to bring up the control, what you can control is because I see way too many people, they're stressing out about things they can't control. Painter calling off sick, the weather raining out a couple of days. Like, I know it's tough. Again, I've been there, I've been in your shoes. I get stressed even in this business sometimes, like, just as things ebb and flow, like, I get, it's natural for us to feel the overwhelm and distress about it. Um, but at the end of the day, this is why we have to strategize. This is why we do things in our business. We don't just react and we don't just keep up with it. This is why we try to do things in our business with strategies, with our crews and how we handle this and all the different things so that we can control what we can and we can let go of what we can. Thanks for plugging into this week's episode. I hope you're able to take a few nuggets away from it to implement into your business. Remember, knowledge without implementation is useless. If you're curious about what we do and how we help painting contractors all over North America, schedule a free business analysis meeting with us, uh, at www.elitebusinessadvisors.com. our entire team of advisors have ran and managed painting companies just like myself and are here to help support you on your journey. We have packages available for at every stage of business, from flying solo and just starting out all the way to multimillion dollar businesses. And lastly, if you love this episode, please leave us a rating and a review. It helps others on the platform find our podcast and it could be the best blessing that's ever happened to them. Thanks to you. Thanks for plugging in and we'll see you back for next week's episode.