Getting Started 4 min read
Don Resin Started Epoxy Floors at 17 With No One to Teach Him. Now He Teaches the Industry
He learned resin flooring by messing up floors and selling the next job to pay for the fix. Years later, he installs, teaches and hopes to be remembered as a pioneer.
Key takeaways
- Don started around 2017, at 17, when there were no courses and only a handful of people doing resin floors.
- The first two years were trial and error. He sometimes had to sell another job to pay for fixing a mistake.
- He teaches beginners to build long term product sales through a manufacturer partnership, and still installs.
- His rough 2026 pricing for a two car garage: about $2,500 to $3,500 for flake and $4,000 to $6,500 for metallic, depending on the installer.
Don Resin was talking with an old friend recently about how he got started. Looking back, he barely recognized the path.
“I never imagined that I’d be, you know, I’ve traveled the world doing it,” he says. “I never imagined I would be selling the product. I didn’t even think I’d be teaching, honestly.”
He did not even start for the money. “I didn’t even know it made money at that time,” he says. “It was kind of just like a passion.”
Learning the hard way
Don started around 2017. He was 17.
At the time, almost nobody was teaching resin floors. There were no courses. He remembers only a couple of other people in the space.
“No one at all was teaching,” he says. “So it was so hard to pick up. And the only way for you to do good at these floors is by messing up.”
That meant something painful for a teenager with no savings. Mess up a floor, then sell another job just to pay for the fix.
“You’re running in circles,” he says. “And when you’re a kid, you’re seventeen years old, you don’t have money to fix these errors. So it was a very rocky place.”
The first two years, he says, were trial and error.
“The only way for you to do good at these floors is by messing up.”
Why he loves the work
What kept him going was the work itself.
“Doing floors, there’s some satisfaction. It doesn’t feel like an office job,” he says. “You’re always meeting new people. You’re always seeing a new road, a new house, a new state. Nothing’s the same.”
Why he teaches
Don could simply install floors and do well. So why teach?
About five years before this interview, he partnered with a large manufacturer and started selling its products. Experienced installers already had suppliers they were loyal to. So he needed new people coming into the trade.
“I had to create students right off the rip,” he says.
His thinking is long term. The money is not in the class fees, he says. It is in what each student goes on to do.
“As long as they become good in the career and they start to sell jobs, the more money they’re making, the more I’m making,” he says.
He still installs, and he thinks that matters. “If you’re teaching, whatever you’re teaching in life, you have to be doing,” he says. “If you’re not doing and you’re teaching, there’s something wrong with that.”
“If you’re teaching, whatever you’re teaching in life, you have to be doing.”
He says most of his students come in with zero experience. But he has picked up a few things about prepping concrete from students who came from concrete sealing and polishing.
“There’s always something to learn from someone,” he says.
Flake or metallic? A guide for homeowners
Don’s answer to the most common homeowner question is simple: one floor is economical and practical, the other is a luxury.
A broadcast flake floor is the economical choice. It is easy to clean and maintain and has “a really clean look.” A metallic floor has all of that, but it is customized for someone who wants something flashier.
“Very good coatings,” he says. Then he gives rough numbers for a two car garage: about $2,500 to $3,500 for flake, and $4,000 to $6,500 for metallic, depending on the installer.
Is 2026 too late to start?
Don hears people say the trade is saturated. He does not buy it.
“Nothing in construction would ever be oversaturated,” he says. “As long as construction moves, floors will keep going.”
What matters, he says, is how you sell yourself: how you talk, move and present yourself. “If you come into this business and you stay booked out and you do at least three, four jobs a week, you’re making a lot of money,” he says, especially if the jobs are priced well.
The next four or five years will be a little harder, he adds, because installers will need to adapt to new styles, new marketing and new sales.
From installer to brand
The difference between an installer who stays small and one who builds a brand, Don says, is a mindset that grows over time.
“I also started small,” he says. “I didn’t see myself as a brand until one door opened the next and then the next and so on.”
He is honest about what that growth costs. “Entrepreneurship kind of hurts a little bit. Well, a lot,” he says.
Several of his former students have built big names of their own. His advice for anyone who wants to follow them is to take on the hard jobs.
“I was probably always doing the craziest installs, things that I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to handle, but I was willing to fail in order to become good at it,” he says. “Always trust your judgment and understand that you’re gonna fail, but it’s worth it.”
The legacy he wants
Ten years from now, Don hopes people remember him as one of the pioneers.
“I hope that they say that I was one of the pioneers that kind of started it all,” he says. “Hopefully I helped a lot of people get out of financial debt, become financially free.”
He wants to keep shaping the industry too, with new ideas like lighting in floors.
“Hopefully I can keep setting trends,” he says.
Watch on Epoxy Growth Guy
Clips from the interview
See Don Resin tell it in their own words, on Instagram.