01/16/2026
I want to address something I see every single day in local Facebook town groups.
When someone posts âLooking for a painter/contractor at a reasonable price,â what that almost always means is price is the first and only deciding factorânot quality, not experience, not process, not results, not warranty, not professionalism.
And that mindset didnât always exist.
We actually traced this shift back years ago. Around 2016â2017, when town pages exploded, the industry began to changeâand not for the better. Thatâs when the race to the bottom started. Free estimates became expected. Free consultations became demanded. Instant revisions, unpaid planning, and endless back-and-forth became ânormal.â Contractors were pressured to give away expertise just to maybe win a job.
That behavior devalued the trades.
Hereâs the truth most people donât want to hear:
As costs continue to riseâlabor, materials, insurance, fuel, complianceâthe people living in these town groups are no longer legitimate clientele for established businesses.
The clients you should be after are not scrolling Facebook begging for the cheapest option.
The best clients:
Care about results
Care about experience
Care about professionalism
Care about accountability
Care about outcomes, not line-item haggling
Those clients are not in town groups. They are reached through intentional marketing, branding, and filtering. Thatâs where real money is madeânot arguing over a $15 towel bar or dealing with someone who simply cannot afford professional services.
This is exactly why legitimate companies qualify customers.
Customers donât âhireâ usâwe decide whether they are qualified to work with us. Itâs not our job to sell ourselves to everyone who asks. Itâs the customerâs job to meet the standard required to engage a professional firm.
On the flip side, the contractors bidding by square-foot pricing and racing each other to the bottom are the ones suffering. Theyâre cash-strapped, overworked, underpaidâand they create most of the problems in this industry. Those are also the contractors whose customers end up back on Facebook later complaining, because they believed they could get big-company results for a fraction of the cost.
Facebook town groups are the perfect tool for customers to pit contractors against each other and grab the cheapest number. I see it daily in every local group around here.
Quality has a cost.
Professionalism has a cost.
Sustainability has a cost.
And if someoneâs primary concern is being âreasonable,â theyâre usually not looking for excellenceâtheyâre looking for a discount.
Nowâthis needs to be a wake-up call for a lot of so-called contractors who think theyâre âwinningâ because theyâre the cheapest person in town.
If youâre honest with yourself and take a hard look at your operation, many of you are not running businessesâyouâre running jobs you own.
Ask yourself:
Do your employees have health insurance, dental, vision, or retirement benefits?
Are you paying payroll taxes, workersâ comp, unemployment, and liability insurance correctly?
Are you operating legallyâor in a gray (or outright illegal) zone because you canât afford to do it right?
Many of you are living paycheck to paycheck, with no retirement, no equity, no exit strategy, and no real business value. Measuring success by âstaying busyâ or âwinning jobs because youâre cheapestâ isnât successâitâs failure in slow motion.
Hereâs another uncomfortable truth:
The square-foot pricing many of you rely on today is actually lower than it was 15 years ago, despite massive increases in labor, materials, fuel, insurance, and compliance costs. By continuing to underprice yourselves, youâve pushed yourselves deeper and deeper into the abyssâand most donât even realize it.
This is exactly how large firms stay profitable: not by magic, but by exploitation. They take 50% up front, then flood the same Facebook groups with posts like âLooking for painting subsâ or âNeed carpenter subs ASAP.â They know many subcontractors donât understand business, pricing, or riskâand they use that ignorance to keep you cheap, uninsured, unprotected, and replaceable.
Every time a general contractor asks you to submit a rate sheet, understand whatâs really happening: they already see you as incompetent at business.
Every project is differentâdistance, access, prep, logistics, scheduling, risk, and scope all change. Construction is not an assembly line. You cannot charge the same unit price for every job as if nothing varies.
This isnât a factory where someone stands in one place installing the same lug nut all day with no variables. Job sites change. Conditions change. Risk changes. If you donât price accordingly, youâre not being âsimpleââyouâre being exploited.
The industry isnât broken because customers want cheap work.
Itâs broken because too many contractors agreed to be cheapâat the expense of their employees, their futures, and themselves.
