For more than 30 years, PPC magazine has been on job sites throughout the U.S. and Canada asking residential and commercial paint pros to share their stories. In our Pro to Pro column, we recap some of the best advice contractors have received and passed on over the last three decades.

THIS TIME: Jason McCool, President, Executive Coatings & Contracting, Inc., Denver, Colorado.

“Once I asked someone how to avoid getting too high when things were up and too low when things were down. He said if you want to have any sort of a balanced life, you have to know the difference between possible and probable.

“To be great at this business, you have to try to paint every single apartment complex that ever goes up for bid. To stay sane, you have to admit you’re not going to get them all. But that doesn’t stop me from trying.”

–from the Spring 2008 issue of PPC magazine

About the painter

Jason McCool learned the painting trade from his father growing up in Washington State, Oregon and Colorado.

“By the age of 13, I was already spraying apartment complexes,” he told PPC in 2008. Like many small family-owned painting companies, his dad ran the business from his home, with his wife answering the phone and doing the books. And, like a lot of small companies, they painted houses, apartments, offices – whatever jobs came their way.

When Jason started his own company, he took a different approach. Executive Coatings and Contracting (ECC) began operations in the Denver Metro area in the mid 1990s specializing in painting apartment complexes.

In order to fulfill client needs, the company began offering services such as wood replacement, re-siding, floor coatings and roof replacement. It is now one of the largest apartment painting and renovation companies in the western U.S., with regional offices in Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Texas, Utah and Washington State.

Story and photography by Mike Starling, PPC Editor. Read more of what pro painters have discovered on the job in the PPC What I’ve Learned archive.