Diamond Certified Video Reports

J & J's Final Coat Painting, Inc. in 5 Useful Answers

• Play from Beginning
• How did you get into this industry?
• What inspired you to start your business?
• What’s the favorite thing you enjoy about the work that you do?
• What are some of the key things your company does to deliver high quality?
• Tell me a short story about an interesting job or customer.

J & J's Final Coat Painting, Inc. - Diamond Certified 5 Useful Answers - video transcript

Thank you. Well, I'll tell you, it was like a lifetime ago in 1983. My older brother started his own painting contracting business in Marin County, and I was just a kid back then. My other brother worked for, I mean, shortly after myself. All three of us were in the same business. So, that's pretty much, you know, it was so long ago that I can barely remember it, but that's how I got in. Well, it really comes down to limitations. I was limited to an hourly wage. You know, so I got raises as my employer thought I was to get a raise. I was also limited to when I was going to work, when I was going to be laid off because we're a seasonal business, and painting in general is a seasonal business. And quite often in the winter times, they get slow. So, then I could choose when I'm going to work. Also, I can do the quality work that I want to do, as opposed to my employer telling me, "Hey, you only have this much time to do a job, so you got to get it done." You know? And quite frankly, I sometimes, I just couldn't do a quality job working for another painting contractor. So, that's when I jumped out on my own. I'll tell you, the number one thing I enjoy the most is the customers' faces when they took, when they were looking at their old, tired house with caulking and dry rot and everything. And you know, just the weight that it puts on you, you need to paint your house, you need to maintain your house. When they see that house looking brand new or practically brand new at the end of the job and me walking them through the steps, and keeping in touch during the job, before, during, and after. It's very satisfying because in my trade, the paint trade, that is, you really see what you work as opposed to a plumber. Okay, the drain doesn't work, you know you need that to work, but we have visual, you know, it's very satisfying. Well, the first thing that we do is we screen our potential team members. So, we hire professionals. There's not always professionals available. So, what we do is we train them, you know, once we find a good candidate, we train them. And we train them in quality, not just, you know, speed, getting it done. We train them how to do things correct. So, and also there's a foreman on each job in charge of quality control, in charge of keeping the job moving, those kind of things. We call them systems that we have in place. Plus, I come personally and look at the job and make sure it's being done right during the course of the job. Also, one of the other things is the materials, the paint, the primers, and the caulking, the three key components to a good paint job, besides the prep work, of course. But the quality ingredients that go into the paint job is what we really strive to find the best because in California, everything's changing. Well, there was a customer that always comes to mind, a couple, Ann and Jim. Well, Ann was a retired school teacher, and Jim was a retired, um, professor at Hayward University. Super nice people up in Ruby Hills. And we did a whole interior, exterior. And the reason that it resonates with me is because she actually took the time, being a school teacher of a younger, you know, I might have even been teenage kids that she was teaching, but she got to know my guys. I mean, she, she got to know him. She sat and had lunch with them, pretty much got to know, I mean, got to know him. Some of them better than I know. I mean, she was just one of those great people. Well, she ends up writing a short story about us and published it in a short one, you know, blurb in a short story book of hers. As a matter of fact, this is it right here. So, that was very cool. I mean, she just, she ranted and raved about my main foreman, Rick, which everybody does. And he's been here for like 19 years now. He's been here forever. We have a lot of long-term team members working with us. But that couple, it was, she was, they were just fans. I can't say enough about it. [End of transcript]