Warning to new painting bosses: hiring painters without knowing the trade yourself is a recipe for disaster

Hey folks, I've been running my painting crew for about 8 years now, and let me tell you, if you're jumping into this business from the sales side without ever picking up a Graco airless sprayer or dealing with Benjamin Moore Advance drips, you're asking for trouble managing employees. I see guys on here and in the Painting Contractors Facebook group thinking they can just hire skilled painters and boom, instant operation, but that's BS when you don't know the difference between a good cut-in on trim or how to handle super sticky situations like sanding lead paint in old houses. Last team I had, I brought on a couple guys who swore they were pros, but without me understanding the basics, they wasted days on botched jobs, over-spraying everything and leaving orange peel textures that pissed off clients. Now I make sure every hire demos a section with my Wagner roller setup before they touch a ladder. If you're like me and your strength is marketing and finance, not the brushwork, seriously consider shadowing a job or two first, or you'll end up firing half your crew and starting over. Saw a post on r/paintingbusiness last week from someone in the same boat, and it was a total crap-show. Don't let ego drive you into bad hires.

man i feel you, hired a guy last summer who said he could spray flawless but turned the whole living room into a popcorn ceiling nightmare with my old Titan sprayer. had to redo it myself and lost a week.

same here, been there with painters who cut corners on prep. knees still ache from all the scraping i had to do after their 'quick' jobs.

get 'em to paint a sample board with your go-to Sherwin-Williams Emerald on site during the interview. weeds out the talkers real quick.

hired this one clown who painted the outlets white. client laughed but i was mortified.

PE firms are scooping up painting outfits left and right, turning good crews into churn-and-burn machines. no loyalty, just quotas.

sharbite fittings? nah, for painting, pure oil-based over latex every time behind walls. saves headaches later. fight me if you disagree.

insurance rates are through the roof because of idiots like that. one bad spray job and you're paying claims for years.

tried managing a team without trade know-how early on. they ghosted after i called out their sloppy drop cloth work. back to square one.

frustrated as hell with apprentices who think watching idaho painter vids makes them pros. show me the work, not the phone.

boss made us paint in the rain once, said it'd dry fine. whole siding bubbled. never trust a suit calling the shots on weather.

watched tommy mello's take on this in the contractors network group. he says learn the trade or hire a foreman who does. saved my ass.

these big consolidators are ruining the painting game. forcing overtime on shoddy jobs, no time for proper taping or cleanup.

how do you even test for that in an interview without giving away trade secrets?

sharbites are garbage for anything visible. stick to soldered joints if you're hiding pipes, but yeah, paint side, oil over latex ain't wrong.

another crew i ran, guy mixed latex with oil without telling me. whole job peeled after a month. clients still bitch about it.

damn, that sucks. ever try bonding agents? saved a similar mess for me once.