I remember when I started Mrs. Smiths’ house, she was not happy.
I told her we would paint her house in the middle of May, and it rained and rained, and rained, and of course, it came to the week that we were going to paint, and I said,
“You know what? We’ve got three jobs, and we’re going to have to move your job.”
and she was not happy at all…
I ended up getting the job done but didn’t get it done until the end of May and she, even though we did a good job, she was pretty unhappy.
So, I learned some valuable lessons there, three valuable lessons.
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Lesson 1. Leave gaps in your spring schedule for exteriors; make sure you have space in there for rain!
Get some of those interiors, the small interior jobs, and tell them that you will get to it, and you will give them a twenty-four-hour notice, if they can be patient and wait for the rain, because they want the work done too.
Lesson 2. Set expectations:
I did not do that with Mrs. Smith upfront. She was not happy. Had I told her, “yes, we had inclement weather, it happens every spring. We know it happens and we deal with the schedule the best that we can.”
I didn’t let her know, I just told her we would get it done, so, make sure you set the expectation upfront when you book some exteriors for the spring.
Lesson 3. Communicate, we always have to communicate. If rain happens, just let people know, even if they are booked out,
“Hey it rained for a couple weeks; your job may be delayed.”
An email is an easy way to do that. We’ve developed a couple of emails, and we have fun with it, so we name the type of rain that happened.
We make some jokes about it because you have to make light of it.
“Man, it’s been cold, wet, snowy, rainy for months!”
And the spring rolls around and you get teased by some nice days, and everybody thinks you can get out and paint, and you want to so bad.
To summarize,
- Leave gaps in your production schedule.
- Set expectations.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate.
Be patient, have fun with it, and the summer is around the corner, and you’ll be painting like crazy every day!