This is page 7 of the Pricing Playbook · the chapter on the five mistakes that destroy margin on coatings work. The full Playbook is 60 pages. The full system is at the bottom of this page.
From the Pricing Playbook · Coatings Pricing Pro · 2026 edition
Most coatings operators do not lose money because their materials are too expensive or their labor is too slow. They lose money because of five specific pricing mistakes, all of which feel reasonable at the moment they happen. Every one of these is fixable.
The most common mistake. The operator looks at a 480-square-foot garage, calculates roughly $680 in material (epoxy basecoat + polyaspartic topcoat + color flake), doubles it, and quotes $1,360. Then they spend 14 labor hours and three days of crew utilization on the job. They have just earned $48 an hour gross and forgotten about overhead entirely.
Operators say "I run a 50% markup" and believe they are earning 50% margin. They are not. A 50% markup ($680 material becomes $1,020 sell price) yields a 33% gross margin. A 100% markup yields a 50% margin. A 1.85x multiplier (the default in the Calculator) yields a 46% margin. The gap between the markup the operator says and the margin they earn is where profit dies.
The operator walks a slab, sees light cracking, quotes the standard system, and starts the job. On Day 1 they find that the slab is below grade and pulling moisture. The epoxy basecoat will not bond. They have three options · stop and renegotiate, swap to a moisture-tolerant primer at their own cost, or take the L and pray. None of those options should have ever been on the table.
The operator is hungry. The quoting pipeline is thin this month. They underbid by 12% on a job they should have walked away from, win it, run it at break-even, and tell themselves it was good for cash flow. They do this four more times that quarter. By month-end they have done $80,000 in revenue and earned almost no margin. They are working at full capacity and going broke.
The operator walks the job, the buyer says "what would you charge to do this," the operator estimates on the spot, and quotes a number $400 below what the Calculator would have produced. The operator commits to that number in front of the buyer and now cannot raise it without losing trust. The whole job runs at 32% margin instead of 46%.
End of sample · Page 7 of 60 from the Pricing Playbook
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