My Paint Buckets

I firmly believe in a digital-first approach, and nothing will deter me from embracing it with Renegade Paint or recommending it to other painters. In construction administration and project management, I see technology not as an option, but as the foundation for efficiency, innovation, and business survival. Why? As a painting company owner, strong digital processes provide greater autonomy, efficiency, flexibility, scalability, and measurable data—empowering painting business owners to streamline operations, reduce errors, optimize resource allocation, and ultimately deliver higher-quality results while maintaining a competitive edge in the industry. This frees up more time for the next highest priority: Investing in people.

The top four texts I F**KING HATE getting from a construction manager because they are 100% my fault: 1️⃣ “The guys didn’t do <paint task> yesterday…” 2️⃣ “Sending a back charge for paint on pavers…” 3️⃣ “<Subcon> never sent me a PO for the work they did last week…” 4️⃣  “Isn’t the front door for <project> supposed to be Tricorn Black..?” When I first entered new residential painting in 2017, these texts were a daily occurrence. I quickly realized we had outgrown our simple workflows and communication strategy, and I didn’t have a solid process to manage 30+ communities with 100+ paint tasks per week across the Orlando area. I was f**king things up badly and at scale. Not the subcontractors, supervisors, or construction managers Just me. So, in 2019, I made a choice—I wasn’t going to be the problem anymore. I was going to be the solution. These were the first problems I tackled while building My Paint Buckets. If you're a painting contractor and these texts are blowing up your work phone, let's chat.

“This week has been paint task hell!  We have sooo many Final paints…and I am not sure where these tasks came from.” This was a recent frustration shared with me by one of My Paint Buckets larger painting contractors (>$5M in revenue). My immediate response: Me: “Are you using our ‘Schedule all Tasks feature’?” Contractor: “No….but why would that help?” We created a simple feature which schedules ONLY the contracted tasks the painter is responsible for and automatically schedules them based on estimate versus actual completion data from previous tasks. This delivers two key efficiencies for painting contractors and their subcontractors: ⚖️ Painting contractors stay aligned with only the contracted tasks and can quickly identify if a new task is being added unexpectedly by a CM. 🗾 Provides new residential painters with stronger short and long term planning insight, enabling them to identify high-tempo weeks in advance and efficiently manage subcontracting and personnel resources. Even the tiniest data points can fuel powerful, scalable strategic planning.

National Home Builders: Slapping a cheap UI over your outdated database isn’t innovation—it’s a clumsy shortcut. If you want to truly connect with painters and trades, it’s time to re-think how construction information flows, how trades interact, and how efficiency can be improved.

Using Renegade Painting to grow and develop My Paint Buckets has proven to be an exceptional strategy. Why? 1. I gain a deeper understanding of painter project, administrative, and financial challenges—and an quickly implement software-driven solutions. 2. I am building a competitive edge against competition. 3. It strengthens our 10-year growth plan. 4. It establishes a compelling exit strategy for when the time is right. I'm not sure even a Corona and lime can compete with this mix 🍻

Renegade Painting just received its first Purchase Order! Positives: Using My Paint Buckets eliminated most of my anxiety by making it easy to create and manage project details and share them with my supervisors and subcontractors for questions. Negatives: There are so many accent walls…. (it’s a model home) First paint is soon!

I want to publicly apologize to all painting company office administrators. I failed to fully appreciate the immense workload (and frustration) you endure daily while managing the dreadful invoicing procedures from top national home builders… Joseph Dattilo and I kicked off the My Paint Buckets 2025 development efforts, focusing on automated subcontractor payments. As part of this initiative, I initially oversimplified the process of how project information is received by painting contractors and transformed into: ✅ Executable paint tasks. 💰 Accounts receivable. 💸 Accounts payable. I assumed top five national homebuilders had an efficient billing workflow between themselves and contractors... I was so damn wrong. One of the financial managers we support shared the following with me: “I spend at least 1-2 hours on each project from <National Builder> to accurately build a payment invoice.” 🤯 Within the first 10 minutes of observing her workflow, we were floored—she was extracting information from their system, cross-referencing it against their separate 70+ page PDF document, double-checking details with sales office emails, and more. Just silly. We made a slight pivot in our development efforts to reduce the workload for her and other painting company offices. Stay tuned.

Big win for one of our #painters!  We helped one of our partners recover $20K in fees which were withheld by the construction manager. A few weeks ago, I shared how one of the painters we support had $20K in service fees withheld by the GC warranty manager, who claimed that 'these fees operated against contractual agreements'. For context, most national home builders offer homeowners a one-year warranty after move-in. During this period, any issues that arise typically result in billable services for the painter (or trade). A recent friction point between painters and some national builders has been the trade’s service fee or 'trip charge.' Although we are a tech company, and I prefer to codify lessons learned as digital features, I NEVER miss an opportunity to listen to our painters' challenges—and, when interested, provide free consultation. In this case, a listening ear, a fresh perspective, and some My Paint Buckets data proved to be a winning combination. Here was the key takeaway from our partner's feedback: 🔑 📊 "The data we extracted was critically valuable to their case and became the lynchpin in demonstrating not only “why” the service fee complied with the contract but also how the painter was providing services beyond the original scope of work." Absolutely thrilled we could help a family-owned business score a hard-earned victory!