How to expand your drywall finishing contracting business

Are you a professional drywall finisher looking to expand your business? Working longer hours or weekends and skipping time off could bring a solution in the short term. But there are better ways to grow your business. Discover some of the options to consider.

When expanding your business, make sure to look at making your quotation and invoicing processes more efficient. On top of that, invest in effective promotion. That being said, the biggest opportunities to grow are right in front of you. You need to expand your core business!

There are two main strategies to expand, and they are almost as simple as they sound:

• Do more of the same, and/or
• Offer additional services.

Expand your business by doing more of the same

There are different Q or quality levels of finishing you can offer, from Q1 to Q4. Maybe your business focuses on Q1 and Q2. Or maybe you focus on smaller or remodeling jobs and not so much on larger real estate projects with more square meters to finish. So what if you want to remain an expert in the services you are familiar with, but still grow your business?

There are some tactics to help you work more quickly and easily and increase your profits:

• Enlarge your team: Do the math and look into what it costs to hire extra workers and what you can gain by finishing more square meters in the same time.
• Look into jobs with larger surfaces and fewer corners and angles: Prepping and cleaning up a site takes time, and the smaller sites sometimes take almost as long as the bigger ones. So, shifting towards larger remodeling or new real estate projects might lead to increased productivity, because you increase your time on the wall.
• Invest in tools that enable you to finish more easily and quickly: Drywall finishing is mainly about skills and experience, but also about a good set of tools. While manual tools might help you deliver a perfect job, it is worth looking into more automatic tools if you want to apply those skills more quickly and easily. Increasing your productivity through automatic tools might be just what you are looking for to boost your business!

Expand your business by offering additional services

On top of or instead of doing more of the same, you could also look into adding some extra services to your usual portfolio, like offering up to a Q3 or Q4 finishing level or even delivering a fully painted surface.

What is holding you back? Are you lacking some specific skills and experience, staff, or the right tools?

• Expand your tool set: Look into the extra tools you need to finish your jobs to higher standards.
• Acquire the skills: Approach your equipment supplier for demos and training and learn how to boost your skills from fellow contractors.
• Hire workers with the skills you need: By smart hiring, you can immediately offer the extra services that enable you to expand your business. At the same time your new team will benefit from the acquired knowledge by teaching and learning on the job. Win-win!

Look into the above and see how it would work for you. There is no one way to grow, but combining the above ideas might help you take some fruitful steps. Once you feel comfortable enough, look for larger jobs and get that business running at full speed. Are you unsure about taking on extra tools that require a certain investment? Look into renting options for the short term, until you get the hang of it and know which tools work best for you.