Jeff Adkins The Beginning

In this episode, Jeff Adkins shares the story behind his journey in the painting industry from where he started to the experiences that shaped his approach to business, craftsmanship, and customer service. Get to know the person behind Jeff Adkins Painting and learn how a commitment to doing things the right way laid the foundation for everything that followed.

This is where the story begins.

Intro

Ending 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome to Inside a Perfect Paint Job. I'm Jeff Adkins, your host, and thank you very much for joining us. Today I want to talk about Jeff Adkins painting the beginning. Um The Beginning wasn't just painting. The beginning was Jeff Adkins Handyman. Um and actually back a step, the reason I even started all of this is because I kept getting hearing people talk about this and that, and this person didn't never came back, and that person never came back, and everybody lost money and never got the job done. So I said, Well, I can do better at that. So Jeff Adkins Handyman, here we are. Um I got real busy fast. Um I jumped in the game after COVID, and nobody was working. Um it gave me a tremendous leg up, honestly, because um we worked every day, seven days a week. And in the beginning, um a lot of the stuff I was doing was at night, a lot of commercial maintenance stuff. So um it was really good, but I kept getting busier and busier, and um in order to grow that I needed another person, and I just couldn't find a tin. Nobody wanted to work. Um everybody uh was getting really good money, uh COVID, and they decided they wasn't gonna work. So um I found a painter. Um, had a big painting job going on, found a painter to help me, and voila, Jeff Atkins painting arose. Um the painting need in this area was great. Um there was not a lot of painters. Um the painters, the the quality of um not the work, but of of everything else. I mean the the point of contact uh from from everything from who they called, who they talked to, and what happened in the end was just not really good, was not real professional. Um uh people have been doing that for years, but that was not what we needed to do. We needed to do something a little different, we needed to do it better, and like I said, here we have Jeff Adkins painting. Um I have really tried a lot um to make sure that I'm ahead of the game. If I think we can have a problem with a customer, I've got a solution before we have it so that there's not a problem, and we can just roll right through the project and go right on to the next one. Um that's our goal. Our goal is to bring quality service and professionalism to every customer that we meet. Um, this doesn't always happen. We try our hardest, and you know how that is. Um, not every customer um feels the same. Um, and that's the big thing about inside a perfect paint job. Um we want to show you what the perfect paint job is. That way, no matter who looks at it, it's to standard. It was done right. You might not like it, but uh that doesn't make it not right. That doesn't make it not a perfect paint job for the customer or the owner of this one. Not everybody likes the same thing that everybody else likes, and it's just uh one of those things. But painting is just a wonderful thing because we can walk in a room and we can change it. We can do the ceiling, we can do the walls, and we can do the trim. And you can walk in and not like it. And by the same time tomorrow, I can change it all again. Might not like it, might not want to do it, but we want you happy, we want to make sure we use some uh AI to show you what we're gonna do in case um you're not sure, we're not sure how it's gonna look 100%. It's not everybody can visualize um the same. Um so we use AI to show you. Um we use AI to help us do a better job for you. And um, it's just um we use all of the tools that we can. Um we use a CRM that notifies you and takes care of you once you call us all the way through the finished project and it invoices you. Um the portal that we have for this is just absolutely phenomenal of what you can see and do. Um if you need a copy of our insurance, it's in your portal. If you need a copy of the pictures that we took when we came out for the estimate, it's in your portal. Um there's just so much that's there. Umes that we use is uh Company Cam. It's a uh for pictures and videos of your project. Um it's what I use when I first come out to put all of this information into a spot that I can find it to do your estimate. And then from there, the guys add to it as we work on your project, and then the finished photos are on there. So it's a it's a wonderful tool. Um, and probably one of the next best tools we have is our phone system. Um I went to a phone system very early. Um, we had some customers that uh weren't really nice and um they wanted to lie, and um thank God for a phone system. Um my phone system is very nice, it allows us to um keep track of a lot of things, it allows us to um uh communicate within the company, communicate outside the company. It's just a really nice plus to our business. And these are all little things that we have put in place to help us make the perfect paint job for you. Um and we can't do it without these items now because they are so helpful to us in the end. And the guys have to do their part in the end and make the paint job perfect. But once they do that, and they always do, um, we never have a problem with that. Um but once all this comes together, uh the programs we use and the software that helps us and the software that helps you, um, it's just a really nice plus to Jeff Adkins painting. And um that doesn't really bring us up to date, but that brings us real close. Um we've had a couple of years uh where we've grown quite a bit. Um our first year we doubled to our second year, and our third year was not quite doubled, but it was almost. So um I don't want to double this year. Um that's too much, too fast. Um I'm comfortable where we are, I'm comfortable with the team that we have. Uh we currently have five painters and three office staff. Um the three office staff, um, one is my operations manager, Aubrey. She's gonna be on the show here real soon. Um Claire and Chan are two of our virtual assistants, and they do wonderful work. They are absolutely uh uh Chan does all of our video production and all of our audio work for our podcast and helps us with our blog and just is just wonderful, wonderful. Um Claire's the one that answers our phone. Claire does all of our social media and all of our graphics, uh, and like I said, just wonderful. Um and I really weird because I kind of hired Chan for this, but I didn't hire Claire for what she's doing. I hired Claire to, you know, answer the phones and do stuff. Um graphics and uh and stuff like that. But she is just blossoming into uh taking wonderful care of our social media, um all of the posts you see she does. Um I jump in on occasion and do one, but I don't do it very rarely. Most of the stuff you see from me is live feeds and stuff of that nature. But um Aubrey next on the list is just wonderful at everything she does. Um Aubrey does all of our intake, of our um project management prior to us getting to your job, and then once it gets to your job, I take it all over. Um I'm the one that oversees all of the projects. Um I do have crew leads on the job, uh, but they report to me and I check on almost every job on a daily basis in person. Um that doesn't happen always, um, but it happens more so than not. I think that brings us kind of current. Um I'm gonna call it short here and call it quits, excuse me. And um guys, I want to tell you if there's any way I can help you, uh shoot me an email. My personal email is Jeff at Jeff AdkinsPainting.com. If I can't help you, I'll find a way to help you. Please like, follow, and share this podcast. It helps us a whole bunch. You know it does. Share it all you can. And thank you for joining us. Stay tuned for the next episode coming up next week.