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J & J's Final Coat Painting, Inc. in 5 Useful Answers
Well, I'll tell you, it was like a lifetime ago. In 1983, my, my older brother started his own painting contracting business in Marin County. And, uh, I was just a kid back then. So, my other brother worked for him. I mean, shortly after, myself, all three of us were in the same business. So, um, that's pretty much it. 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. Um, you know, so I got raises as my employer thought I was to get a raise. Um, 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, uh, painting in general is a seasonal business and, quite often in the winter times, they get slow. So, um, 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, sometimes I just couldn't do a quality job working for another painting contractor. So, that's when I jumped out on my own. Well, I'll tell you, the number one thing I enjoy the most is the customer's faces when they were looking at their old, tired house with caulking and dry rot and everything and, you know, um, 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, um, and keeping in touch during the job before, during, and after. Um, it's very satisfying because in my trade, the paint trade that is, you really see your 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, let's tell, the first thing that we do is we screen our potential team members. So, we hire professionals. Um, 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 correctly. Um, so, and also there's a foreman on each job in charge of quality control, in charge of keeping the job moving. Um, those kind of things, uh, 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, um, 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, uh, ingredients that go into the paint job is what we really, uh, we strive to find the best because in California everything's changing. Well, there was a customer that always comes to mind, um, a couple, uh, Anne and Jim. Well, Anne 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 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 them. She sat and had lunch with them. Pretty much got to know, I mean, got to know them, some of them better than I know them. 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. Um, so that was very cool. I mean, she just, she ranted and raved about my main foreman, Rick, which everybody does. Um, but 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. Um, but that couple was, she was, they were just fant—I can't say enough about it.