Your $100k Skill Assessment - Painting
Your Skill Is Painting. Here's What That Means
Intro: Your $100k Skill
Painting
Here’s why:
It’s the one you can do for hours without losing interest
It’s the one that gives you energy
It’s the one that’s most marketable
Cooking and handyman work are useful skills, but they don’t give you the same energy, and painting can get you paid just as much as the other two. Painting is your $100k skill.
Lesson 1: Find what people are already asking on Reddit
You don’t have to guess what to post about. Go where people are already screaming for answers.
Open an AI and ask: “What do people on Reddit most ask about or have trouble with around painting?” I’m not sure if you meant painting in terms of painting homes an similar spaces, or painting in terms of art. So you’ll have to see what most applies as you search.
Take the top question. Then go to Reddit and search that exact question. You can find real posts from real people describing their pain.
Screenshot the pains you see, or write them down. Now you have a list of topics. Each topic is a blog post waiting to happen.
We already found stuff related to your skill:
“How do I stand out from other painters?”
“What makes a painter high-end?”
“Is painting a viable long-term career?”
“How do I learn advanced techniques?”
Lesson 2: Record your answer instead of writing it from scratch
Now it’s time to make the first draft of your post. If your thinking “but I don’t know how to make videos” right now, don’t worry. You don’t need to be a social media star. You just need to do a little talking.
Videos must be quality get attention, but you don’t need Hollywood equipment.
Pick one of your post topics from Reddit. Open CapCut or your phone’s camera and use vertical mode. Record yourself giving great answers and solutions. Keep it under 60 seconds. Edit lightly and add captions if you want. Post to TikTok or YouTube Shorts. Then repeat.
Over time, your only goal is to make each video slightly better than the last.
Lesson 3: Market Yourself
Next, I you’ll need to keep posting these short videos related to the topics around your skill. Then, post the videos organically on YouTube Shorts and TikTok.
Make at least 30 of these videos. Of your 30 TikToks/Shorts related to the book, some of them will get significantly more views or engagement than the others. This doesn’t mean that the videos are viral at all. They just have to perform at least 2x or 3x better than my average video. All you need is something that performed better than your average.
Average views:
Better than average views:
There are some different options for marketing your product or service. You can send cold emails. You can also cold call. But those take time, energy, and frustration. If you already have a full time or part time job, you might not have the time and energy after work that’s required to do cold calls and emails consistently.
If you want a more efficient way to delegate the marketing, run ads. If you don’t know how to run an ad online or haven’t done this before, don’t worry. I’ll explain how to setup your first social media ad in the steps below:
Download your higher performing videos from TikTok.
Post the same videos again on Facebook. But instead of posting them organically, make each post into an ad by pushing “Boost Post”.
The “title” of the post should talk about whatever you’re offering in the ad. So if you’re offering a cookbook with over 100 recipes, the title should say something like “Get my 100+ recipe cookbook”.
Finally, add a “learn more” or “click here” button to your ad that sends people to your product or service.
To start, set your budget to $5/day for 7 days. The first 7 days is just to see if the ad works well enough to put more money into. For the audience, just let Facebook pick it for you.
After a week, look at the results. If the ad made you money or broke even, run it again. If it lost money, tweak the headline or try a different video.
My first mistake with the Facebook ads was putting all of my money behind the one video that got the most engagement organically. I thought that just because people loved the video, it had to lead to sales. And I bet everything on this.
Don’t be like me. Don’t bet on one video that you haven’t tested yet. Even a video that did well organically can flop when you put money behind it.
Bonus Lesson - Give People Free Stuff First
A problem I personally came across was that people clicked my ads, but they never bought my product or service after they looked at it. The biggest reason was that people don’t feel safe buying from a person or brand they don’t know is credible. And on Facebook, I was an unknown guy with no following and no reviews from someone who had already bought from me.
I needed a way for the people who clicked on my ad to know I was credible and could actually produce results around my skill. I needed them to feel safe that they’d get their money’s worth if they bought from me. To do this, I stopped advertising my paid products and services. Instead, I started offering people free stuff that leads to my products and services.
For example, I sell an e-book on Amazon that teaches people to set their goals in a way that guarantees they’ll reach the finish line instead of giving up early. It sells for $4.99. However, I took one of the chapters from the book and made it into a 7 page pdf. On the last page of the pdf, I added a message that says “Want more tips on the best way to hit your goal? Get the full book”. Below that, I added a button that says “Click Here for More Goal Tips”. It links to my book on Amazon. Since the pdf is so much shorter than the book, I’m willing to give it away for free.
Now, instead of making ads that talk about the book for $4.99, I make ads that talk about(and send people to) the free pdf. The pdf is short, so it’s easy for people to consume. Best of all, it gives people a valuable snippet of the info they’d get in the paid book. So if they get to the end of the pdf, see I’m competent, and want more, they’ll be a lot more likely to buy the book without feeling risk.
Here’s an idea for something you could give away for free around your skill:
The Painter’s Pricing Calculator: Know What to Charge in 5 Minutes
Description:
You love painting. You hate guessing what to charge.
This simple calculator helps you:
Estimate the cost of any job (including materials and labor)
Determine your hourly rate based on your experience
Build a professional quote in minutes
Know when to say yes and when to walk away
What’s Inside:
A downloadable spreadsheet template
Step-by-step instructions
Sample pricing for common jobs
A checklist of what to include in every quote
Call to Action: “Get the Calculator”
In case you have no idea how to make that calculator, try copy and pasting the instructions below into an AI app like Chat GPT:
“Hey AI, I need a Google Sheets template for a painting pricing calculator. Please create one with the following columns and formulas:
1. Job name (text)
2. Room dimensions (length x width x height) — entered in feet
3. Total wall square footage — calculated automatically (add all walls, subtract doors and windows)
4. Paint type (dropdown: standard, premium, eco)
5. Paint cost per gallon (number)
6. Number of coats (number)
7. Labor hours estimated (number)
8. Labor rate per hour (number)
9. Materials cost — calculated automatically (paint cost per gallon x number of gallons needed)
10. Total labor cost — calculated automatically (labor hours x labor rate)
*11. Total job cost — calculated automatically (materials + labor + 15% overhead)*
12. Recommended price — calculated automatically (total job cost x 1.3 for profit margin)
13. Final quote (formatted as a professional PDF or text block)
Please also add a summary section at the top that shows:
- Total square footage
- Total materials cost
- Total labor cost
- Final recommended price
Format the sheet so it’s clean, easy to use, and looks professional for a painting business. Also add a note at the bottom explaining how to use the calculator.”
The video you saw that lead you to this assessment was a “lead form”. If you’d like to offer someone that calculator in exchange for their email so that you can follow up with them, choose the target to find leads when you’re boosting your Facebook posts. And setup a lead form just asking for someone’s email in exchange for access to the calculator/spreadsheet. Good luck!!!