5 High-Performance Habits for Painting Biz

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If you're new here, my name is Mike Gore-Hickman. I'm the founder of Painter Growth, a coaching company that helps painting contractors build real businesses instead of just running jobs.
We've worked with over 1,500 painting contractors. Our clients range from guys doing $300K a year to teams pushing past $5M. Our coaches are real painting business owners who built seven-figure companies themselves. Not theory guys.
Here's how I got here.
Early 20s: Running my own painting business. Couldn't close jobs. Underbidding everything. Painters showed up stoned. Spilled paint on driveways. Painted houses the wrong color. I fell off a ladder. Ended my first year with a $20,000 tax bill I couldn't pay.
Still early 20s: Almost quit. Didn't. Got obsessed with systems, sales, and getting help. I hired my first business coach, fixed the chaos & hit over $200K a month in sales before I turned 24.
Mid-20s: Followed my girlfriend (now wife) to a new city. Shut the painting business down. Took a job in SaaS. Spent five years helping grow a software company from scratch to nearly $10M a year. That's where I learned how to build and scale an online business.
During COVID: My two worlds collided. Running a painting business plus scaling software companies. I launched a side hustle that pulled both together. It became Painter Growth.
October 2021: Launched with an MVP and $10 a day in Facebook ads. No money. No clients. No connections.
End of 2021: Signed my first 10 clients. Eight got massive results. That was all the proof I needed.
Late 2022: Brought on Jesse, my partner and CFO. Hired our first coach and first VA. Reinvested everything back into the business.
2023 and beyond: Built a team of nearly 50, including seven-figure painting business owners coaching full time.
We became an official Sherwin-Williams partner and we’re the exclusive coaching program referred by them.
We we’re named PCA 2026 Partner of the Year.
You don't need to be a good painter to build a great painting business. You need to be a good business owner who hires good painters. Most contractors never make that switch. We help them make it.
What I'm focused on right now: AI and systems. We're building AI-powered tools inside Painter Growth, including a bookkeeping assistant and a proposal generator. The contractors who figure this out early are going to pull ahead.
I'm still building. Still figuring things out. But I'm doing it alongside 1,500 contractors who are all in the middle of their own fight to build something real.
If you're in that fight, you're in the right place.
Never quit,
Mike
Get a FREE Painting Business Growth Session. In 30 minutes, we'll build you a custom plan to grow → https://learn.paintergrowth.com/book-your-call-1?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=booking*Painter Growth content is for educational purposes only. Results vary. Individual outcomes depend on the effort, situation, and decisions of each business owner.*