Past posting
I accidentally came across this discussion today for the first time, 12 months after it was posted. I am Jim Baker, the person no-one knows about.
Michael, from Pacific Painters, is a very good colleague and friend of mine. We have only known each other for around 3-4 years and I so much admire him for the tireless work he is doing in helping painters through his website edu-bytes. The information he has on there is invaluable. I did not realise he put a link to my programs or my video but I know it was not posted to make anything out of it, but just to let people know that there was information out there that could be of use.
I turn 60 next week and have been painting for 44 years now. For the last 8 years my aim has been to help painters become more professional in their trade, something that most painters do not want to share as they fear it could mean stronger competition. This I feel is far from the truth. To me, improving a painters profile means a better type of painter. I would rather compete against someone that is professional in this trade than competing against the person that wins jobs (or bids that you call them) on being the cheapest. If we could all lift our standard, then we can all lift our prices.
I started writing down my experience in the trade for a competition that Dulux was running. It has the do's and don'ts of how I ran by business. It eventually became a book. Dulux Australia saw the benefit and bought 2 thousand copies to give to all final stage painting apprentices in Australia. They have also just bought another 100 copies to give to their new Dulux Accredited members that join.
Exactly 12 months ago, I released my two programs online. One being an Hourly Rate program that calculates exactly how much your break-even cost is per hour and the other, a Paint Costing Guide, that by just entering the area of walls, or number of doors, etc, calculates automatically the cost. The cost of paint, coverage, hourly, etc, are all variables that you can adapt to your own needs. These two have only been made for the Australian market as 1. we have a different tax system and a lot of benefits we have to abide by and 2. you still work in feet and inches, lol.
I am adapting these to the New Zealand market now and would then like to look at if these would be of use to the US painters. I have had glowing reports here so I can't see why not.
So now, I hope you have an idea who Jim Baker is. I am just someone who is trying to help out other painters. Yes. I do make some money on my products, but then I have put a lot of work into them too. My next project is a Job Tracking Program which will most probably cost me around $10,000 by the time it is finished. This will be one that everyone should have. Imagine being able to track every single client you have and knowing where that initial contact originated from. I tracked one client 2 years ago that originally came from someone that saw my signage on my work vehicle. That one sighting led to over 40 clients totalling 1.1 million dollars of accepted quotes. How much would it be worth to you if you knew exactly how your advertising campaigns were working for you and how much work is accepted or not? Anyway. Stayed tuned for that one. My programmer is putting the finishing touches on it now.
If you would like to read my monthly articles in a paint magazine, go to
www.aussiepaintersnetwork.com.au The articles are quite good if you don't mind me saying. They range from 'On-Site Etiquette' Jan 14, 'Niche Marketing' Oct 13, 'Painting in Russia' Nov 13, (I would like to do one on a US painting business if anyone is interested) and 'Prostate Cancer' Dec 13, (this is a must for all men to read as it comes from someone who has it). The magazine is run by another good friend of mine that likes to give out FREE information on the paint industry, so enjoy the read.
Well I think I have said enough. Sorry for rambling on but my main concern was Michael's first post on me. It looked like it got sorted out though. Cheers