Jeff and Office Manager Aubrey

In this episode, Jeff is joined by Office Manager Aubrey for a behind-the-scenes conversation about what it takes to keep a painting business running smoothly. From customer communication and project coordination to the teamwork that delivers exceptional results, they share insights into the people and processes that make every project a success. Get to know the faces behind Jeff Adkins Painting and what sets their company apart. 

Intro

Ending 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Welcome to Inside a Perfect Paint Job. I'm Jeff Adkins, your host, and today we kind of have a special guest. This was my first hire. I was very nervous about this hire. I didn't think I could afford it. A lot of things were going through my head, but sometimes when the right human becomes available, you either jump on that opportunity and take it, or you don't. And I jumped on the opportunity and took it, and I've never regretted one minute since. She's been the most valuable employee to the company. She's helped us grow in the past two years tremendously. She's grown tremendously. And today I would like to welcome our operations manager at Jeff Adkins Painting, Aubrey Duckworth. Well, I'm back, and Aubrey's here. So welcome, Aubrey Duckworth.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Good morning. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

No, it's not real early, but uh it's before lunch.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

It's still morning.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

It's still morning. Um I wanted to bring Aubrey on here because um my podcast the other day about Jeff Atkins, the beginning, um, it didn't really touch on a lot of stuff, and Aubrey is part of that. Um, you know, um I touched a moment ago about uh being worried when I hired her, um, but not worried no more. So um it's been a good hire.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

I'm glad that you feel that way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

All right. So Aubrey, um, let's just let you talk to him a minute about um how you got involved with Jeff Adkins and Jeff Adkins painting. And uh if I have to bring Stewart on here, he gave me some good uh insight to Aubrey. Um Stewart's my business coach and he's been very helpful and involved with Aubrey and doing training with me and Aubrey to help us. And that just helps you, and that's what we're here to do is hopefully help more of you with this podcast. So Aubrey, um, how did you start? When did you start? What just you start and you talk.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Okay. Uh roughly maybe two years ago, uh met Jeff through Mutual People, and he was in need of a virtual assistant. I I was in need of something that would provide me more flexibility, and it it it just worked out. I feel like with my customer service background and history, I it's ultimately about giving the customer what they want, uh, what they're hoping to get from their paint project. And I feel like I just kind of stepped in and helped them where there was a need. And it's it's been truly awesome being a part of the team. And we really are too.

SPEAKER_00 3:33

Uh yeah, it's kind of common. But no, I say no, but I'll tell you what, she's a phenomenal, phenomenal person and a phenomenal help to the company.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Yes, thank you. I appreciate that. But I have been happy to be here. The position has has grown. Uh starting out as just answering phones has progressed uh tremendously.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Yeah, we've done a lot in the past two years.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

As now I am the operations manager, which basically from the first time that you call our office, uh you're you're calling to set or arrange an estimate, and I step right in, I'll help you to get you scheduled at a you know convenient time that works best for both you and Jeff. And then we'll get your your proposal put together. We'll make sure you don't have any questions or concerns. And from there we we just get the ball going, we go straight into getting these projects done, completed, making sure that the customer is always happy because that is the ultimate goal.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

We try real hard. Um, it doesn't always happen. But um the great thing about what we do is we paint stuff. So if somebody's not happy with the color in a room, we'll just paint it again. Yes, um it we That's the easy fix, and we don't care to do it. I don't like doing it, but it doesn't bother me because I want to make you happy. And if when I leave, if you're not happy, I didn't do my job.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Yes, bottom line. Ultimate goal is the customer is happy. If if there's a room in your home that has a completely different vibe, you want to change it, you want to make it feel something different entirely, that's that's what we're here to do. We're here to help you get your home.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

And just a little plug here, Aubrey does our color consultations as well. Uh we got her trained up last year to do this, and over the winter, so she's gonna be able to help the customer make sure that they get what they want. And another little bit, and this is kind of jumping ahead, is we use AI to help us show you the colors that you want to see wear so that you make the right decision and we can help you do that.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Absolutely. It's the fun part, it's the fun part in all of it.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

And it's honestly the AI is the easy part. We just tell it a few things and it does it all. But ours has been trained by us to do this, so it's a little better than the average um person's AI ability. You've got to you've got to train these and you've gotta do it right.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Absolutely, absolutely agree.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

So, Aubrey, um, that was uh early in the game. Um last year we brought on uh virtual assistant, um Claire. Yeah. And um Aubrey has been wonderful in training Claire and getting Claire handling about what do you say, half of what you did? Yeah. She probably does about half of what you did and a quarter of what I did.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Yeah, because like we were saying, you know, I started out just essentially answering the phone, which the position has grown tremendously, and uh Claire uh has helped tremendously as far as coming in and helping to take some of that off of me. Uh frees me up to obviously do more of the color consoles and things of that nature.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Claire's um very good at graphic design. Um we put her through some meta uh classes on advertising and stuff with all of the social media that we do. Everything, yeah. She's incredible. So that's the part that she took off my plate totally. Um the only thing I do for that anymore is occasionally I will mess around with AI and play when I'm bored. Uh doesn't happen all the time, but you know, one, two o'clock in the morning when I can't sleep, that's what I do.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Downtime, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

But um, you know, there's just so many things that Claire has helped and took off Aubrey's plate. Yes. And um since then we brought on another virtual assistant, which is taking care of all these podcasts, all of our video production and v editing and things of that nature, because one thing that I decided this year was we needed to do videos. Um I I've been very active with pictures. I've been very active with a lot of things on social media, but I needed to do video, and I'd seen this happening, and I bought a DJI Pocket 3. Excuse me. I bought a housing for it. I've I've I've played with this thing way too much. Um I'm enjoying it way too much, I guess is the way I should say that. But it's a wonderful piece of equipment, and it's allowed me to help Claire and Chan, our other virtual assistant, to um help bring you guys on the spot stuff live. Um we're doing videos, we're doing video walkarounds where I'm explaining. I'm trying to teach you, help you if I can. Um our podcast has been put together for that. It's exactly why Aubrey's here today.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

I feel like knowledge is key, and Jeff provides a lot of knowledge, and and a lot of times customers ask these very same questions that you're giving the information on. What you know, what's the process going to be like? These are all things that you would hope to cover in a podcast to provide that information to the customer so that there's no questions of what's next or I think we had a customer reach out late last night.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Um I gave an estimate for a new construction home that's got um all cement hardy board everywhere and just gonna be really nice. But um he called and I don't know what his question was, but um he directed it right to Aubrey because he knows who's gonna help him. And that's just kind of put in place because of the fact that not one person can do everything. Um I don't care what you're doing or who you are, that one person can't do it all. And if that one person i even if they just have somebody to answer the phones, it just helps so much.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

And that's where I was in the beginning. And here today, um, I don't think um Aubrey even talks to anybody that doesn't call in specifically for her or to be put to her because all new estimates go to her first.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

I would have to agree that at this point of being with you for as long as I have, there's there's very few questions I am not able to answer. And I think you know, that was what you wanted in the beginning was help for some of these things. Um, you know, even if it's just a little question of when can we start or well you know in the beginning I told you if you didn't know the answers, I was gonna cut your toes off. That's about all ten toes. She was a fast learner. Yeah. It's it's been great though. Um, and I think I have truly seen the business grow just since I think we've doubled since you started. Yeah, it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Doubled our revenue. Um we've now got five painters. Um, number six is starting his training today. I run all the new painters through the PCA um training, which is key. Not a whole lot of training for these guys because you don't come to work for me uh without a painting background. Um we just I I'm not set up to train you yet. Um we are working on that. Yes. But until I get there, we have to have people that know what they're doing. And um in past years, you know, I've had two or three painters, and sometimes one painter, it just depends on what's going on and everything. But um things change and we have five now, and we're in the middle of summer, and it's raining today.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

I know it is so nasty.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Yeah, thank God we did have a little bit of interior work that needed to be done. And um the gentleman this morning he says, Boy, you got this one right on time, didn't you? Because he told me two weeks ago that he his daughter was moving in in two weeks, and I told him we would be there Thursday or Friday.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Look at this weather.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

I mean Today it's Thursday and we're there.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

We are fortunate though that we have that ability.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

And you know, sometimes we don't, but uh our workload is vast, and you know, we've got a new construction home. Like I said, the exterior that we just bid, we just want to bid on an interior of a new construction. So all of these things will allow us to fill in rain dates uh and this, that, and the other. And believe it or not, we're really booked up for the summer and um most of the stuff that we get this summer we'll book towards the fall.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

So it's a it's a good thing to have. Um, but I think with the extra painters, we're gonna be able to blow through these rather fastly because when I put six guys on a job, sometimes they can paint a whole house in a day if they cannot keep from running over each other with six guys. So, you know, that's a lot. But you know, you can literally do that and they can all paint like twenty-five feet, and that's all they gotta do, and boom, it's done, and they clean up and go home for the day and go to the next one tomorrow. It's amazing. I don't like doing them like that. Yeah, most of our jobs last three to five days, sometimes seven. Uh bigger jobs are normally ten to fourteen days. Um, but we don't do a lot of ten to fourteen days. Um, we do a lot of the smaller jobs. We just finished a house, it was a repaint, it was yellow, we turned it white, put black trim. It's beautiful. And um we did this in four days. It took us one day per side to tape it off, spray it, get it ready.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Uh and it looks incredible.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

Oh, yeah, he he loves it.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

He's wanting the top hat taken off. Oh yeah. Yeah. I told him I'll talk to AI, see what I can do. See.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Yeah. But yes, I I think it's I think it's great that you're doing the podcast, you know, you're making the videos and the walkthroughs. I think people really do want to see what you're doing and they want to know these things, how long it typically takes, how many paint how many are on your paint crew, how many do you send out to each project, those kind of things.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

That's something that Claire's done a good job at is um she makes graphics up and we put them out on Facebook. And I know Facebook's not everything, but it's the only place we have consistently to put this stuff for everybody to see it. Yeah. And when they Google Jeff Adkins painting or ask ChatGPT, all of these things come up. So you can view it that way. But we try to do that. That way, if somebody shows up at your house, well, first of all, they're not going to do that without me. Number two, but if something like that happens and you happen to follow us on Facebook, you'll know what all of our guys look like. And if somebody shows up to your house and his picture ain't on our Facebook, it's not him because I promise you, the only guy that's not been introduced right as of now is Jonathan. And it was because I kept forgetting to get a picture of Jonathan. So I started this Tuesday and I missed him. He went to lunch and I left. Then Wednesday he went to lunch and I left. I come back. He says, I heard you've been wanting a picture of me. And I said, Yeah, I was going to be on your doorstep waiting on you tonight. But no, um, he was the last one. And um, so Claire will get that in the works.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Yeah. Oh, and then we got the new hire.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

And now, yeah, we do. And um that's something my buddy McFarland he said something this morning on one of my posts about a Motley crew, and I said, Yeah, I'm added one to it today.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

One.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

So, and um hoping that we can keep all six guys working year round. Um I've been able to keep three working year round for the past two years. So um I don't think it'll be a problem, but let's fingers crossed and everything goes well.

SPEAKER_01 16:01

Yeah, agree.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

What else do you have anything else you want to talk about, Aubrey?

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Um no, not today. I think that is all for today, but uh I'm sure there'll be other opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah, we're gonna do this, and actually um Aubrey might do this herself. I don't know. I haven't exactly mentioned this to her, but um with the new color consultations and stuff, we're gonna be doing some things. I don't know what we're gonna do because we've not exactly lined it all out. But um a lot of things are gonna be available. We're gonna do a few videos so that she can help you and just marketing and advertising stuff. But um keep in mind if you need help with your colors, Aubrey is here to help.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Yes, it is all very new and and most people aren't even aware that we we do offer this, but we are now offering this.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

And uh just so you know, Aubrey at Jeff AdkinsPainting.com if you need color consultations. And guys, if you all have any questions for me, it's Jeff at Jeff AdkinsPainting.com. And I think we're gonna sign off here and thank you all for joining inside a perfect paint job. And um, please like, share, and follow this podcast so that we can help others.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Yeah, thank you so much for having me and uh look forward to coming back.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

All right, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Thank you.