89-Paint's Nutshell Testimonial

How a Central Virginia painting contractor uses Nutshell to standardize follow-up, track won work, and keep projects moving

89-Paint is a commercial and residential interior/exterior painting contractor serving Central Virginia—primarily in and around Richmond. Co-founders Ethan Wart and his wife Suzanne take on everything from large-scale commercial community projects (multifamily properties, malls, and more) down to smaller residential jobs. They also run a shop dedicated to refinishing cabinetry, built-ins, and custom cabinet work.

With that kind of range, 89-Paint needs more than a place to store contacts—they need a system that keeps every opportunity and every active job organized, visible, and moving forward.

Over a decade of using Nutshell, 89-Paint has logged 5,345 lifetime leads won—that’s about 534 wins per year—while building a repeatable, trackable process their whole team can rely on.

The Challenge

In contracting, winning the job is only the start. Once an opportunity turns into a “won” lead, the real work begins: scheduling, coordinating, communicating, and ensuring the job stays on track all the way to completion.

For 89-Paint, that challenge is multiplied by:

• A mix of commercial and residential work
• Multiple project types and job sizes happening at the same time
• The need for consistent, fast communication (follow-up is everything)
• The risk of details or next steps slipping through the cracks as volume grows

As Ethan put it, being a successful contractor comes down to the fundamentals—communication and follow-through—and having a process that ensures every client moves through the pipeline correctly.

“We’re much less likely to let… things slip through the cracks.”
— Ethan Wart, Co-founder, 89-Paint

The Solution

89-Paint uses Nutshell as the operational backbone for their sales and post-sale workflow— customizing the CRM to fit how they work.

Turning CRM data into a repeatable process

Rather than forcing their business into a rigid template, 89-Paint used Nutshell’s flexibility to build a system that mirrors their real-world process.

They rely heavily on:

• Custom fields to capture the details that matter to their team
• Pipelines to keep each opportunity and job moving through defined stages
• A built-in workflow-style approach that lets their team check off key steps as work progresses
• Reporting and segmentation to understand performance and workload across the business

Ethan shared that Nutshell makes it easy to analyze performance across multiple angles—so they can understand what’s happening and keep improving:

• By salesperson
• By project manager
• By project type
• By customer type

“We like the ability to… dice and splice the data… real easily.”
— Ethan Wart, Co-owner, 89-Paint

Keeping follow-up consistent (and visible)

With an established pipeline and a standardized process, 89-Paint is able to stay proactive about communication—making sure the right people get contacted at the right time.

That includes tracking key engagement signals like last-contacted activity, so the team can confidently answer questions like:

• “Who needs a follow-up today?”
• “Which opportunities have stalled?”
• “Where are we most likely to lose momentum?”

The result is a workflow that supports what matters most: responsive service and consistent follow-through.

The Results

After building their Nutshell setup around their real sales + delivery process, 89-Paint has seen meaningful, compounding benefits over time—from visibility and accountability to process consistency across the team.

Results at a glance

• 5,345 lifetime leads won tracked in Nutshell over ~10 years
• A CRM process that supports both winning work and tracking work after it’s won
• A standardized pipeline that helps ensure opportunities don’t get forgotten
• Cleaner reporting across roles, project types, and customer categories

Most importantly, Nutshell helps 89-Paint run a tight operation where follow-up is consistent and nothing critical gets missed.

What 89-Paint would tell other teams considering Nutshell

Ethan’s advice is simple: Nutshell has a lot of power—but you don’t have to do everything at once to see value.

“ Start small, find a win, keep building from there.”
— Ethan Wart, Co-founder, 89-Paint

Focus on one win first (like a pipeline that matches your real process), then build from there. That approach is exactly how 89-Paint turned Nutshell into a system that supports their day-to-day operations—and scales with them as they grow.