Breaking into commercial painting.

Carlos built JD Paint Pros doing high end residential work. He was good at it, and he wanted more. Specifically, he wanted commercial.

The problem with breaking into commercial painting is the same problem every trade runs into. Nobody hands you a warehouse job because you did nice work on someone's living room. You need proof you can handle the scale, and you can't get proof until someone gives you a shot.

Carlos landed that first shot on his own. EcoFiber, a manufacturing company in Colfax, needed a 50,000 square foot former machine shop primed and painted, ceiling deck, walls, brick, all of it, while the building was still full of equipment that had to be moved section by section.

Then he called us. Not to get the job. To make sure it wasn't the last one.

We filmed across two days of the twelve day project.

Day three, we interviewed the client who hired him, the person who actually made the decision. We didn't ask him to say nice things. We asked why he chose JD Paint Pros over the several other quotes he'd collected.

What came back was specific: response time, the detail in the quote, the prep work.

“I was impressed with the details of the quote. I didn't have to come back and question him about it because he was very specific on the paints he was going to use.”EcoFiber, on hiring JD Paint Pros

Then we spent the rest of that day filming the crew working at full scale, sprayers, lifts, ceilings, walls.

Day ten, we came back and sat down with Carlos near the end of the project, when he could speak to how it actually went.

The finished piece runs under two minutes. Short on purpose. It moves.

Carlos sends it to nearly everyone who reaches out to him. It's the first thing a prospect sees when they ask about a building.

He's still using it, still landing commercial work with it, and he's moved further into higher end residential too.

There's a second thing that happened, and he probably didn't expect it. Watching the process changed how he thinks about his own business. He's shooting his own content now, job site footage on his phone, showing his crew at work, documenting projects as they happen.

The video didn't just get him work. It showed him what showing the work actually does.

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