TradesPaintersPricing and profit
Painter Business PricingA rate per square metre you copied off a cost guide is not a price. It is a guess.
Pricing for painting business owners who quote per square metre, per job or per house and are not certain any of it clears. This is how to build a painting price from your real costs up, then hold it when the client says someone else is cheaper.
The week this is about
Sound Like Your Painting Business?
Your square metre rate came from somewhere else
Published cost guides put interior work around $15 to $45 per square metre and exteriors higher, so you picked a number in the middle and stuck with it. It has never been checked against your award labour cost, your paint bill or your overheads.
Paint goes up between the quote and the job
You quoted the estate in March and start in July. Trade prices have moved, the tint has gone up, and the fixed rate you signed has not. On a job with any volume, a small rise on every tin quietly takes the whole margin.
The prep was never in the price
You quote coats because coats are easy to count. Then it is sugar soaping, filling, sanding back, spot priming and two days of it before a topcoat goes near the wall. Prep is where painting jobs go under, and it is the line nobody prices honestly.
Underprice by a little on every job and you will work a full year at capacity, exhausted, and finish it with nothing in the bank.
Pricing and profit
Here Is What We Do About It.
The Profitable Pricing Masterclass shows you how to build a painting charge-out rate from the ground up: award labour under MA000020, paint and consumables, overhead recovery, then margin. The Profit & Freedom Masterclass takes it further into what the business must earn to buy you time off, and Greg keeps your prices there.
Free tool, no sign-up
Charge-out rate calculator
Put in what labour costs you, how many hours you can actually invoice and what the business spends, and it builds the rate that covers all of it and leaves a margin. It runs in your browser and nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Work out your rateHow it works
Three Steps, Starting Tonight.
Work out what an hour really costs you
Not the wage. The wage plus the ute, the insurance, the phone, the unbilled hours and the time you spend quoting. Most owners have never put that number on paper.
Price off the number, not off the last bloke
The Profitable Pricing Masterclass takes you through building a rate that carries your overheads and a margin, so you stop pricing against whoever is cheapest this month.
Hold the price and watch what happens
The Profit and Freedom Masterclass covers the part nobody warns you about: what to do when someone pushes back, and why losing the wrong job is a win.
Why Greg
You speak to the owner who has already done it.
Greg built Response Electricians in Perth into a 30+ staff business with 1,950+ five-star reviews. A general manager runs it.
He has trained 9,000+ trade business owners across Australia and New Zealand.
He grew a coaching company to 35 staff, a CEO and 15 coaches, then cut it back so every owner deals with him directly.
Most coaching companies hand you to a salesperson, then to a coach who has never run a trade business. Here you get the owner.
What changes for you
The old way. The new way.
More customers meant more people doing the computer work, and more wages nobody invoices.
You stay with your customers and your team. The office stops landing on you.
The old way
More jobs. More paperwork. Less of the owner left.
Most trade businesses grow the same way.
More jobs means more quoting, invoicing, chasing and scheduling.
None of it gets paid for.
So the owner does it at night, after a full day on site.
Or hires an office person to do it.
The office grows. The wages grow. The margin does not.
And the owner is still the one everything waits on.
Where we take you
More work. More profit. More of you left.
The phone rings with the jobs you want, at the price you set.
You grow when you're ready, never faster than the business can carry.
Every job is priced to make money, so the busy months show up in the bank.
The best tradies in your area want to work for you, and they stay.
The chasing, the paperwork and the 9pm admin stop landing on you.
The business runs the day. You pick which parts of it you're in.
Bigger, without the headaches. Getting bigger stops meaning getting busier.
What changes
What Painting Business Pricing Actually Changes.
Three things painting business owners walk away able to do.
Build a square metre rate from your own labour, paint and overhead costs.
Price prep as its own line so a blowout does not eat the job.
Hold your price on a quote instead of dropping it to match a lowballer.
Questions
Painter Business Pricing, Answered.
Should I quote per square metre or by the job?
Why is my quote losing money at the rate everyone else charges?
The client says another painter is thousands cheaper. What do I say?
Painters
The Other Ways We Help Painters.
Painter Business Training
Structured training that turns what painters know on the tools into a business that runs properly.
CoachingPainter Business Coach
Greg Allan in your corner, holding painters to the plan. By application.
SystemsPainter Business Systems
Systems painters build on their own data, so the work runs properly without them standing there.
SoftwarePainter Business Software
Software painters build on their own data, instead of renting tools built for every trade at once.
Business appsPainter Business Apps
The simple screens painters build for their crew and customers, on their own data.
AIAI for Painting Businesses
AI agents that do the office work for painters, their way, so people stay on customers and the crew.
Marketing and leadsPainter Business Marketing
How painters get the phone ringing with the jobs worth having, not just the cheap ones.
Hiring and teamPainter Business Hiring
How painters build a crew that does it right without being watched.
Join the Waitlist to Work With Greg.
The Crew, daily Q&A and starter courses. Free for trade business owners. No card, no trial clock.
The Academy is at full capacity. Join the waitlist and when a place opens, Greg interviews the owners who look like the right fit.